I like to use what comes into my hand.  Before I came in here I went into my room and I got this ceramic plate.  "Now all Buddhas and ancestors who uphold the Buddha dharma have made it the true path of enlightenment to sit upright practicing in the midst of self fulfilling samadhi"  This is my text, OK?  This is our text.  Thank you for whoever made it.  And then, my attendant Reverent Barros when he saw this he said "This plate is a rather bold statement."  Or maybe he said "a bold proposal."  It is a bold  proposal from lion's roar mouth of Dogen Zenji.  But also the people who want to have a pottery practice here are trying to make some proposal about how can we financially sustain it.  Here is another proposal in stone.  
    Yesterday, I told you about a person who realized he didn't trust anything other than himself and how painful that was.  Before saying that or around saying that, this person said that all she really wanted to do was just leave things alone.  But I proposed that in order to leave things alone, we have to know ourselves.  Because you know, the kind of self we have, doesn't leave things alone.  But if we can totally engage a self that doesn't leave things alone, then we can leave things alone.  As Nietzsche says "The thirst of the ring is in you.  Constantly reaching for itself."  The self is constantly reaching for its self.  It reaches for itself through everything.  It reaches for itself through  the other.  And yet, we cringe from reaching for the other because we don't understand we are reaching for our self.  And I suggested to you that you're very self is in every action.  So, courage in a way is to put yourself into everyone of your actions.  I remember one of my teachers said one time to either "Put compassion" or see compassion in every action."  So like when you see or when you hear or when you smell or when you think, put compassion into that.  I think that is a wonderful practice but today I feel a more direct approach is to put yourself into every action.  To feel this ring which is reaching for itself through every action.  Put yourself into every deed and if you can realize this courage your karma becomes virtue.  What do they say "make a virtue out of necessity"?  In fact, human beings think and speak and posture as though I we are doing this.  We actually do have the courage, the audacity to think that we can think.  That we can posture that we can speak.  And we cringe from our audacity.  We sit in this room and think that we sit in this room.  We have the courage to do this sesshin and we have the courage to sit a period of meditation.  To put ourselves there and to sit and yet we cringe from the very posture we make, not always but sometimes.  Or put it the other way sometimes we don't cringe from what we are doing and when we don't cringe from what we are doing, what we are doing becomes virtue.  By the courage to be responsible for our karma, the karma becomes virtue.  As disciples of Buddha, we make the vow to benefit all beings, to enter the mud of our own karma.  You can not enter other people's karma.  We live in the results of all of our karma but I cannot enter your karma and you cannot enter mine.  However, being the perpetrator of my own karma I can enter it and again strangely enough I can be a coward and not enter into, not put myself into my karma.  When I don't put myself into my karma, it's not virtue.  Virtue is to enter the mud and realize that you are putting yourself in the mud.  This self which is put into what you are doing is virtue.  This is your dearest self.  This is a self that you allow to do what it is doing or you allow to do what it appears to be doing.  This courage is the entrance into stillness.  If you flinch from what you're doing and you don't let yourself into what you are doing, you miss the chance to practice virtue and you have no place to sit upright.  You sit upright in the practice of virtue.  Receiving Buddha's precepts is a courageous act.  Where you say, "I put myself into right conduct."  And not only that but I even think in terms of, that I can do right or I do wrong and I put myself into that delusion, by accepting Buddha's precepts.  Accepting personally accepting buddha's precepts I enter into the practice of upright sitting.  Then in the upright sitting we can enjoy the dynamic life of the self fulfilling samadhi.  The thirst of the ring is in yourself.  It's a funny self that reaches for itself.  It doesn't just sit there it reaches for itself.  Its a self that can be aware of itself.  A self which can see the self as a object.  The kind of self we have is a self which is both subject and object and the subject reaches for the object.  This subject-object is the active structure of our self.  Some philosophers say it is our essential nature, this reaching of our self for itself by splitting itself into subject and object.  Yates said, "Nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent."  Strange beings that we are that we cannot be one without first being ripped into two.  Once we are ripped into two we thirst to be one again and we reach for our self through the other.  We reach for the other, however this is a pointless and vain activity to reach for ourselves.  We don't have to reach for ourselves, it is the way we are that we reach for ourselves.  I take that back, we do have to reach for ourselves.  However it is stupid for us to do so.  And we never get to ourselves because we always reach for half of ourselves.  If we turn around and reach for the subject we get nothing.  If we reach for the object at least we thing that we get something.  However as soon as we get it we feel upset.  And reaching for objects is violating the precepts.  However, it is courageous to admit that you reach for objects.  Because we do.  If you try to sit still without admitting what you are up to, you'll constantly be disturbed by what you are doing and not admitting.  Again, I see myself sitting, making a posture and cringing from the posture I am making.  I see other people too making postures but being some number of, some distance behind the posture that they are making.  And making a posture which says, "I'm not making this posture.  This is not the posture that I am making.  As a matter of fact, I am making no posture.  I'm no where.  Why? Because if I actually made the posture that I am making it would be painful."  But sometimes I see people making the posture that they are making.  They are admitting it.  They are having the courage to say, "I am making this posture.  It may be painful, it may be not painful but anyway, this is what I am doing.  Hey, I admit it.  I've got guts and I also admit that I say that I have guts.  I get into thinking that I have guts.  Or I can also get into thinking, I don't have guts.  Whatever I think that's my action and I enter that action."  That's a virtue.  That's the opening.  That's the gate to stillness.  That's the courage to be what you are to do what you're doing.  To be willing to be a willful person.  This subject-object structure of our consciousness is the active karmic structure of our consciousness.  And that is our willful nature, we are by nature willful.  We are willful moment after moment.  We do not miss a beat in willfulness.  It is rare, fairly rare to find someone who admits that they are being willful.  Children are willful, aren't they?  Adults are willful too.  The action which is implied by the subject-object structure of our self, the subject-object structure where the subject reaches for the object, in thought, in word and in posture.  This active structure collapses in stillness.  So, it says in the self-fulfilling self-receiving self-employing samadhi, it says that when the Buddha mudra is impressed on your activity then the entire phenomenal world is impressed by this mudra too.  This awareness of yourself reaching for your self in very action you do is the impression or the expression of the Buddha mudra in your actions.  So want to leave things alone?  Have the courage to be like you are, to be a willful critter.  And I feel that when I'm willing to be as willing as I am and I have the courage to be such a little ... whatever, lowly being.  So lowly as to go around thinking that I can will this and will that or that I can live and be willful, how do I get by with this?  I do.  I notice I feel more connected to people because they're up to the same thing and I am no better than them.  However, if I cringe at my own willfulness, I still notice that other people are into it, but I am superior to them, because I do not deign to become involved in such a pushy shovey way of being.  I can make dents in soft clay.  I can create things without being willful.  Whereas they, so willful, poor things, I lose my connection by being unwilling to admit what I am up to.  If I am willing be at what I am up to, it isn't that then I don't feel connected to other people who are unwilling to admit what they are up to.  I understand why they don't.  It hurts me though, to see it.  To see someone holding back from what they are doing.  
Although we have this contradictory nature where we can wince and cringe from what we are up to.  We can also transcend that.  We can transcend that.  I think so.  And the way to transcend it, is to do what you are doing.  By being willing to affirm yourself and have the courage to be the way you are, you life transcends itself.  In other words, you enter into life that transcends itself, in other words, you realize your life.  In other words, you sit still.  And when we sit still, we have a chance to see the world that's spoken of later in the text.  Where it says, "In stillness mind and object merge."  Mind and object merge, this is realized in stillness.  We want to be good but we can not figure out one sidedly what is good.  I listened to the conformation hearings for the supreme court on the radio and I was deeply moved by the effort, by the human effort to figure out whether so and so should be confirmed as a great ethical being and skill judge.  I was deeply touched by the care, the human care, by the effort, the willfulness that I heard through their voices.  By the human cry, I heard in the voice of a future Supreme Court Justice.  I felt that in one sense, the vanity of human effort and at the same time, I felt the willingness to be vain.  In the cry in her voice, I felt compassion.  That she was willing and the other people too were willing to be involved in a vain thing.  Trying to figure out what is good, by themselves.  But somehow the whole thing, all the people together struggling in the vanity of figuring out by themselves what is right, the whole thing together found a goodness which was inspiring.  If we can witness the realm where subject and object meet, where they merge in stillness, the actions that come forth from there are not anymore personal actions.  They are not any longer me acting, they are realization acting.  I just want to let things be.  If you can completely engage yourself then things will come forth in their truth.
    Wendy asked me to talk about my study, my work, my relationship with Gregory Bateson.  I had a fortunate opportunity to spend time with him, during the last few years of his life and then in particular during the last few months of his life.  He died on July 4th 1980 at the Zen Center guest house.  And from April to June, I was with him at Esalen.  And I already liked him a lot from previous meetings and so I spent a lot of time with him.  He liked to think and talk.  And he liked to play chess, so we played chess with his father's chess set.  A very plain chess set but made very well and on the cover it said 1860.  And right away when I started playing chess with him I decided to play chess differently than I usually did in the past.  I decided to play the best game, the game that he would enjoy the most, rather than to try to win.  And I felt that he wouldn't want me to like not pay attention to my moves so I carefully observed the consequences of my actions of my moves.  As I usually would.  Because I didn't think he would find it too entertaining to do something unthoughtful.  But in addition to thinking about the move I was making, I also thought about a move that he would find interesting or surprising.  Not necessarily that would beat him but that would be interesting for him to see.  I didn't know how close he was to death but I played those games that way and I watched my habit of winning hover and circle around the game.  The winning and the being careful can easily be confused.  To make a move and also protect yourself at the same time which is part of the interest of the game can be done without trying to beat the other person.  In other words, I was just continually taking care of my own pieces without trying to hurt his pieces and as far as I was concerned I could go on playing indefinitely without taking any of his pieces.  This is possible.  Although after a while things get kind of crowded.  So I would take pieces sometimes not to beat him but to take them in an interesting way.  No necessarily in a way that he would be able to take me back.
    While I was there he came to my classes and I went to his classes.  I was of course being much younger embarrassed to have this 76 year old man, he was born the same year as Suzuki-roshi, actually just a few days after Suzuki-roshi.  They were both born in May of 1904.  I think Suzuki-roshi was May 18th or 19th and Gregory was May 14th or something.  So I felt some fatherly sonly closeness to him.  Anyway he would come to my talks on Zen and I would go to his talks about various things.  He gave a series of classes on the Four Quartets of T.S. Elliot.  And he suggested that these Four Quartets are about three kinds of time.  The fourth one is about the integration of the three kinds of time.  The first one Burnt Norton is about human time.  The second one, East Coker, is about historical or cultural time and the next one, Dry Salvages, is about cosmic time.  And Little Giddy is about the integration of these three times.  Many of us have read these, I think, and have felt that they were very Buddhist.  T.S. Elliot's wife was very sick for a long time and he took care of her.  This was probably his zazen practice.  He also studied sanskrit when he was a young man, I think at Harvard.  So he already had some introduction to eastern thought.  But his yoga, I think, was taking care of his wife.  I don't think he, otherwise, had a physical yoga practice, but I don't know.  Anyway, you know what he said, right?  He said a lot of stuff, but anyway he said, "At the still point of the turning world (This is in human time.  Human time which passes by, not cyclic time.) neither flesh nor fleshless, neither from nor towards, at the still point there the dance is.  But neither at rest nor movement and do not it called fixity, where past and future are gathered.  Neither movement from nor towards.  Neither assent nor decline.  Except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance.  And there is only the dance.  I can only say, there we have been but I can't say where.  And I cannot say how long for that is to place it in time.  The inner freedom from practical desire, the release from action and suffering, release from inner and outer compulsion, yet surrounded by a grace of sense, a white light still and moving.  Concentration without elimination."
     When I left Esalen, he was getting really sick and there were many nights where he was coughing all night long.  So then I started to think that he might die soon.  I gave him my best set of beads, not because he was a Buddhist but just because they were pretty and felt nice to play with while he was coughing.  And I left Esalen and went back to San Francisco.  Just a few days after I left, I heard that he went up to UC Medical Center.  I got a message from his wife, that he hoped we could play chess again soon.  I never did play chess with him again but I share those chess games with you.
    So I planned to talk a little bit more about the stillness but I don't want to go on too long today so I will talk this stillness, what it is like there tomorrow.  And today, I meant to encourage you to be courageous again.  To encourage you by saying that to be brave is virtue.  You've got the material, its coming up in your face in your body and mind and thought every moment.  Question is do we have the courage to be totally engaged in what's happening in us.  And then our silly human actions become virtue and upon that virtue we can sit upright and be honest or actually we have already been honest.  We can sit upright and be straight forward with what's happening because we have not run away from what is happening.  So tomorrow, I will talk about the stillness and which means that I will talk about the dance.  But for myself and for you, in order for that talking about dance is not just a distraction we must be here.  And then the dance discussion will be not theoretical.  You can check it on yourself reaching for yourself.  This is the unique path of light.
    The thought crossed my mind and now it is crossing it again because I am talking about it that these talks have perhaps seemed somewhat serious and somber.  I haven't told many jokes and part of me wants to tell you jokes, to give you some relief.  Another part of me wants to tell you some joke not so you'll be relieved from your work but so that you will be flexible and gentle.  The third day of sesshin is a time that some of us have not yet settled completely.  So I don't want to distract anybody from doing this settling.  After you are settled then I feel more, its more appropriate to distract you.  To see if the distraction can be something that your settledness turns on.  Once you are settled the settling should transcend the settling but first we have to settle before we can transcend it.  So I hope you find a way to be gentle and at the same time you're being brave or be brave enough to be gentle with yourself.  Be brave enough to be tender.  And gently and tenderly settle yourself into your life.  It's really close.  So thank you Gregory Bateson.