today is the first day of a seven-day Sashin. And you children know already what Sashin is a little bit, huh? Some of your parents are sitting Sashin. And I thought maybe if I were your age, maybe I wouldn't understand why people sit for seven days. But maybe I'm wrong, maybe you understand. Does it make sense to you? Not so much. You probably, you don't want to do it yourself, right? No. But some of your friends and parents do it, right? You know why they do it? To get enlightened? Did they tell you that or just... What?

[01:09]

Different people tell you that? But not your mom, right? Is that the reason why most of you think they sit? Any other reasons that you can think of why they might want to do it? No? Do you know why they want to be enlightened? They think it's nice, yeah. Do you know what would be nice about enlightenment? You start all over. One thing I would say is a little bit, when we sit sesshin, it's a little bit different than we sit sesshin in order to get enlightened. It's a little different. It's more like we sit sesshin in order to realize that we're enlightened.

[02:16]

We don't exactly get it. We more understand or we make enlightenment real in our life. Well, some people don't say it that way. I mean, I don't say that. I don't say I'm trying to get enlightened. I more say I try to make enlightenment alive in my life through sitting. Well, yeah, sort of, except I kind of like to de-emphasize the getting part. Because it's not exactly something you can get, because it's not exactly just for me, it's also for you. Right? Okay. So I wanted to just tell you a little, not exactly a story, but more like a poem. It's kind of like explaining to you in a kind of poetic way how we practice sashi.

[03:20]

And this is called How to Paint a Picture of a Bird. So first, you get a canvas. Do you know what a canvas is? It's like a piece of paper that you can draw on or paint on. So you get a canvas. A canvas is a little bit stronger than just a piece of paper. It'll stand up by itself because it's usually hung on a piece of wooden frame. We don't have a canvas painting in here, but anyway. You take a canvas, a blank canvas, and you take the canvas and you paint on the canvas a cage. Okay, a cage for the bird to go into. So first you paint the cage. Then inside the cage you paint something pretty.

[04:26]

something simple, something beautiful, and something useful for the bird. Can you think of something that you might paint into the picture for the bird? Feather, yeah. This is for the bird, to attract the bird. Food, something useful, food. Food is pretty? And pretty food? To a bird is pretty, yeah. Some pretty food? Some useful food? Anything else that you'd put in the cage for the bird? A mirror? Some flowers? What else? What else do you usually see inside of a bird cage? Something to sit on. That's about it.

[05:30]

Something to sit on, some food, pretty food, some water, and a mirror. And that's what we do actually in Zendo. We put in food, water, flowers, something to sit on, and a mirror. What? The mirror is yourself. Well, what you do is you look at your body inside, and you look at your thoughts, and you look at your feelings. You know, you can't see yourself, and you look at everybody else as a mirror of yourself. Well, that's true. That's true. Well, to think on the inside, yeah. Anyway, think about that. Because birds do like mirrors in their cage and so do we.

[06:34]

Well, I think it's a mirror. That's what I think. Maybe when you grow up, what? Right. Okay, so then you take this canvas with the cage. Oh, also you paint the door of the cage open. so the bird can get in. The bird hasn't come yet. See? You just paint the cage with the things inside to attract the bird. Then you put the picture, the canvas out against the tree. And you wait behind the tree. And you have to be patient because sometimes it takes a long time for the bird to come. But sometimes it comes right away and sometimes it takes years. But even if it takes years, the picture can be just as good as if it comes right away. And then when the bird comes, if the bird comes into the cage, then you take the brush and you paint the door shut on the bird.

[07:54]

It came in by itself. It voluntarily went in because it wanted to go in. You're trying to seduce something to come inside the cage. You're trying to, in some sense, seduce yourself into yourself. That's pretty hard, I know, but... Anyway... Then, after the bird gets in the cage, then the next thing you do is you paint the bars of the cage away. Paint the cage away. Paint each bar out so the bird's not in the cage anymore. Right. And then even you write in, in addition to the food and the water and the mirror and the place to sit, you draw in then a whole environment. You draw in a whole world, like you put a branch under the bird and you draw in insects and the sky and the sun and flowers.

[09:06]

for this bird to live in. And then, next thing you do is you wait again and you wait for the bird to sing. To sing because it's happy, right. If the bird doesn't sing, it's not a very good drawing. What? You're asking the bird. And the bird goes, yep, yep, it's good, it's good. Pardon? Right, but we're interested in this. This is not how to paint a portrait of a person. This is about painting a portrait of a bird. That's right. You didn't even have to paint the bird. It just came. And you got to see what it looked like without even painting it. Yes, but you failed and you just got a picture of a bird.

[10:13]

And then the next thing you do is you pull one of the feathers out of the bird and you sign the painting. The bird doesn't mind. This is a poem. It's not exactly like, it's not exactly like literally true, you know? It's kind of like just to give you a kind of a feeling for why we're sitting downstairs for a week and what we do. It's not, it's not exactly really a bird, okay? So that's the story. It's kind of like, it's kind of like a song about sitting. It's not, it's not exactly like, um, What?

[11:16]

You want to sing it? Should we sing it? I didn't say I knew it. I did tell you, Justin. Another thing is that littler children sometimes can hear songs that little older children can't sing, can't hear. So sometimes, even though it doesn't sound like a song, it's a song like, you know, like you guys, do you think, when you go to service and you hear us sing, Do you think that's a song? No. He said no. Well, that destroys that theory. Anyway, some of us, when we first hear those songs, we don't think they're songs either.

[12:21]

But sometimes after we listen to them for a long time, we realize that they're songs, even though they don't sound exactly like rock and roll or something. They're songs of a different kind of type. They're songs, they're religious songs. Yeah, right. But there's some religious songs which, you know, like that one we sang last summer at Tassajara, remember? Remember that one? You want to do it? You know. When the night has come and the land is dark and the moon is the only light we'll see no I won't be afraid No, no, I won't be afraid just as long as you stand by me. Oh, darling, darling, stand by me. Oh, stand by me.

[13:23]

That's a religious song, too. Nova knows it really well. Thank you. So now we have more adult topics.

[14:50]

Maybe the children could handle this stuff, but I don't know if they'd be interested or not. We have now an intensive period of meditation, which we're going to plunge into. And I would just speak of this as one of many possible responses to what we call cyclic existence. One of the possible responses or maybe a generic type of response to the world of birth and death. I thought of this way of describing Sashin because just recently someone who works in the mental health profession or mental illness profession told me about

[16:16]

some people, some human beings that she met in the process of doing what they call outreach, where these therapists and doctors go out to people's houses to help them because they call for help or their family calls for help. And I also just read a book which impressed me. It's a book about the raising of... the training of rabbis. And maybe I'll tell that story first. There was this Hasidic... Hasidic rabbi, and he had a son...

[17:24]

a very brilliant son. And he said, when his son was four years old, he saw his boy reading a book. And he said, but he didn't read the book. He swallowed the book. In other words, he read it fast. At four years old, he read it fast. And... And he also memorized it simultaneously because he had the kind of mind that could remember everything that it saw. And the story that he read was about a man who had a great deal of suffering. But the little boy the story didn't touch the little boy or the little boy didn't feel any pain hearing the story.

[18:32]

He was mostly happy because he was so happy that he could memorize the book instantly. He was so happy with the power of his own mind that he didn't even notice the story was about somebody who suffered a great deal. And the rabbi said, you know, he was happy to have such a brilliant son, but also not so happy to have such a brilliant son. He said, what I need is a son who has compassion, who has heart, who has soul, who can feel people suffering. But he got such a brilliant son that the son was enamored with his own genius and really had no heart, had no empathy.

[19:37]

As a matter of fact, he even had disdain for most people since they were much less intelligent than him. And the father... decided at that time that he needed to find some way to awaken in his son the awareness of suffering in the world and to awaken in his son ears, to open his ears to the suffering of the world. And he loved his son very, very much Up until around that time, he always played with his son. He always had his son right next to his body, just like a mother nursing. Underneath his prayer clothes, the son was always nested inside of his clothing, always loving his son.

[20:41]

always talking to his son, always teaching his son, many songs, many wonderful stories, just always constant love because he loved his son all the time. But from around that time he stopped talking to his son, except when they studied the scriptures. And through this silence his son started to feel pain. to be able to hear in the silence the suffering of the world. This was a risky and frightening method that the father used to try to train his arrogant and brilliant son. And in the end of the story, the son's heart, the son's soul of compassion was awakened finally.

[21:46]

So the father was happy and successful, but it was always scary and difficult. Anyway, these people that my friend visited, one in San Francisco, one family was a family that was basically living in a garage and the lady called to have these people come and take her to the hospital. And they came into the house and the woman was just standing there and not moving at all. She was almost completely catatonic, except a slight movement of the jaw muscles. And everybody in her family

[22:56]

completely ignored her. They were walking around not relating to each other and relating to these doctors, but not paying any attention to the woman. And in another case, They went to a house of a very proper, middle-class home, a very neat and tidy house. And the door was answered by a woman who, completely sane apparently, and it was her son that needed to be hospitalized. And he hadn't left his room for many years. and never bathed, had matted hair and his clothes were literally falling off him in rot and other details that may be too gross to mention but anyway they took him to the hospital and the mother said when he gets out of the hospital please don't just let him go on the street I want him to come back here

[24:27]

So basically, what this person who told me this story said was that it's just so amazing, it's just so fascinating and amazing, all the different responses that people have to samsara, to birth and death. Some people do like these people, other people read books and enjoy how brilliant their mind is, and other people do Se Shin. So this week our response to the world of birth and death and all the inconsistencies and difficult to accept changes that happen, that have happened to us and that are happening to our friends, this week our response is to do the form called Sashim.

[25:54]

The word Sashin is written in two ways. It's a Chinese expression. And there's two ways it's written. One way it's written is with a character that means to focus or gather or unify the mind or the heart. Another character that she used, which looks very similar but means different, is to put in order, to arrange, to order the mind or heart. The Sashin is a response to birth and death, which is to order or arrange or unify. or focus our mind and heart. So what I'd like to talk about is this process or this response to the world of focusing or gathering the mind and heart with various examples.

[27:31]

indications of how this process of gathering and unifying can occur. And in a sense I'm, like the story, like the poem I just said to the children, part of what I'm proposing to do here is to put something, to put maybe various simple things into the sashin container.

[28:38]

Something simple to attract, something simple for you to see. and something useful and something pretty. In some sense, maybe to seduce you or to seduce your mind away from various distracted responses to samsara and to attract you into a focused and unified response to birth and death. I will probably tell you a story later about this, but for now I'll just say part of what I'm suggesting is that while sitting, while walking, while eating, while sleeping, while serving, while bowing, while chanting,

[29:47]

through all these busy activities, breathing and adjusting your posture, and all the many thoughts and emotions which will occur to you, all the feelings you'll have moment by moment, day by day, throughout this week, during all these events, all this busyness, all this tremendous activity which you will experience, please recognize the one that's not busy. that's always there and never moves. The entrance or the door to this recognition Again, has many ways to describe it, infinite ways of describing it, but I'll just say one way that was suggested to me.

[31:05]

I asked people who are sitting sesshin, I asked people to try to express any kind of instruction they would give themselves. to gather, unify, and order their heart in the midst of Sashin. And people said various, made various suggestions to themselves, told me various suggestions they were making to themselves. And one of them was to embrace the tiger and return to the mountains. which I guess is the name of a Tai Chi move. But I think that's pretty good. Embrace the tiger and return to the mountains. I would also suggest to you that returning to the mountains is involuntary.

[32:19]

It's not something you do. But you can embrace the tiger. The tiger is that busyness. The tiger is the pain and confusion. The vast array of experiences which are going to arise in front of you while you're sitting. That's the tiger. And it deserves a name, tiger. To embrace the tiger means to stay with your experience moment by moment, completely. If you can stay with your experience completely, moment by moment, you will be able to recognize and realize

[33:25]

The one that's not moving. The mountains where the tiger returns. The unmoving, unbusy mountains. Tigers at a distance are dangerous. At a great distance, they don't seem to be so dangerous. But at a distance of 2 feet, 5 feet, 30 feet, I don't know if 30 feet is right, but anyway, distances around in that area, I would say tigers are pretty dangerous. But if you get in the back seat of a Volkswagen with a tiger, it won't hurt you. you're actually inside the den with the tiger and hugging it tight, it won't hurt you.

[34:33]

At least the tiger I'm talking about won't. To me that sounds like a simple instruction. I also believe it's useful, but it's difficult. It's difficult to stay with the tiger. In order to be with the tiger, you have to strip yourself. of everything. You can't play various little games. You have to just be with the tiger, your whole being. There's no extra time to play some other game.

[35:41]

Strip yourself of everything and also fall into everything completely. This is where we use the word in Soto Zen, Shikan. Shikan, as in Shikan Paza. Paza means to hit sitting or simply to sit. Shikan means just sit. Just means embrace the tiger. When you embrace the tiger, you drop all illusions and awaken. So in everything you do, just do that.

[36:48]

To settle into just your experience, Usually, in a seven-day sesshin, most people, sometime in the sesshin, oftentimes the fifth or sixth day, they just have an experience. But I actually today propose that seven days is here, And I would suggest that we try to start not on the sixth day or the fifth day, but start right now. Start today, completely embracing your experience with no other agenda than what's happening.

[37:57]

and then steep yourself in that suchness for the rest of Sashin, so that when it's over, you have a chance to continue this practice of non-discrimination. I propose to you that if you can allow yourself, allow your life to just be itself, completely allow yourself to be unified in your experience moment by moment, that behind you and all around you a spring flower of compassion will open.

[39:27]

compassion for you and your suffering, compassion for all beings. But this compassion to open and to awaken requires a great effort of us to dive into the center Dig down to the roots of every experience and completely be there. As Buddha said, please train yourself thus. Thus. In the herd, there will be just the herd.

[40:41]

In the scene, there will be just the scene. In the imagined there will be just the imagined. In the known there will be just the known. When for you In the seen, there is just the seen. In the heard, just the heard. In the imagined, just the imagined.

[41:54]

In the known, just the known. Then you will not identify with these things. When you do not identify with these, you will not locate yourself in them. When you do not locate yourself in them, there will be no here or there or in between, and this will be the end of suffering. You don't even locate yourself in the tiger. You don't even identify with the tiger. The tiger is closer than that. It's not far enough away to say, I'm the same as the tiger. There's just the tiger. There's not you reaching out for the tiger.

[43:03]

There's just the tiger. That's how close you are. but it comes most highly recommended of all responses to birth and death. It needs a tremendous amount of recommendation because it's not that attractive all by itself. Because it actually is birth and death. This tiger is not pleasant. This tiger kills us. But if we can become one with this tiger, this tiger

[44:12]

is our way to return to the mountains. Please excuse me for being the way I am. But I'm really asking you not to waste time. This is a great opportunity for you to resolve everything and bring great, great benefit to this world. They are in tension

[45:21]

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