Homage to the realm of upright sitting. the realm where all Buddhas are sitting and the realm from which all trucks depart and come forth into the world. So I, I pay homage to this realm, this realm which we yearn to reach and realize and then express in our daily life through all our meetings with each sentient being.

[01:20]

And again, I would start by encouraging and trying to develop enthusiasm for reentering again and again this practice of upright sitting. to develop joy at the prospect of encountering this body-mind complex, so thoroughly encountering it, so thoroughly accepting it, that we are released from it. and release so thoroughly that it's not an escape but rather this body and breath and mind then become nothing at all and based on this empty body, mind and breath we can go to work to create a Buddhist community in this world.

[02:54]

We can go to work on the creative act of Buddhiland building. Settling down in this body and breath and again reminding you and reminding myself of having some point, some physical point that is the focus of your attention. In this session I have been emphasizing the physical point of focus being this cosmic mudra and particularly the touching of this cosmic mudra to your abdomen below your navel to place this realized symbol of harmony and balance at the center of your body.

[04:01]

At such a center, at such a precious place, Everything swirls around. All kinds of demons of distraction swirl around this center. And the more we threaten complete dedication to this place of focus, the more the demons clamor to distract us. Yesterday I was sitting here and I noticed that I was, in my own words, in my head, I was ghosting around.

[05:17]

Do you know what a ghost is, Dasha? Ghost, like a person dies, somebody dies, afterwards some spirit hanging around, you know? Ghost? What's the word in Czech? Ghost? Do you have that word? You understand ghost? So I said ghosting around to myself. I was thinking about, actually, I was thinking about umeboshi. Do you know what umeboshi is? Umeboshi is a salted plum, right? Japanese salted plum. I was thinking about it to ask Jordan to get me some umeboshi. I call that ghosting around.

[06:24]

So all these people are sitting here still, but various ghosts are flying around the room. Where's my umeboshi? And some other people are thinking some different things, flying around the room. And I noticed, right after I noticed this ghost, this umeboshi-thinking ghost, I noticed, guess what happened to my mudra? My mudra disappeared. These hands, they were together like this, but they were about, my little fingers were about this far from my abdomen, about three inches, two or three inches from my abdomen, out away from home. And so I brought them back to my abdomen, and the ghosts all went away. They were still Umaboshi's. in this world. There were still all kinds of things in this world but there was no ghosting anymore. When the hands came back to my abdomen

[07:36]

all the flames backed away. Now, I once was sitting in another zendo, in the Tassajara zendo, and I saw a ghost. But what the ghost was, I realized, was it was just something I had thought before, something I had experienced before, which I hadn't let go away. Something happened, and I was still playing with it. Therefore, because of the way I related to this experience, the experience turned into a ghost. So if you sit and you think of an umeboshi, if you think of a Japanese salt plum, if you think of it and you just think of it, It's not a ghost. It's a ghost when you get entangled with it, and after it passes, you still haven't finished it.

[08:51]

If my hands are really completely dedicated to my abdomen, then if I think of something, I just think of it, and that's it. It doesn't reach me. It just happens. And it just happens, and I just happen. Same thing. But if it happens and I happen and we kind of like keep happening for a while, then I notice my hand has slipped away from my abdomen. I'm not focused on what's happening. I'm in this ghost realm. When Shakyamuni Buddha said, I'm going to sit down and sit still until I realize complete perfect awakening, as soon as he said that, as soon as he completely decided to do that, he was assailed.

[09:55]

Many demons, many ghosts came to him to say, you know, come on, let's do something else. There's much more interesting things to do than to sit still. And the more determined he was, the more interesting these distractions became. And finally, the most interesting distraction of all was the leader of all the demons said, who do you think you are to attain complete perfect enlightenment? How arrogant of you. That was the most tempting distraction of all to the Buddha. He wasn't sure. So, just to check, to see if really it would be okay if he didn't move, he took his right hand and he touched the earth to see if the earth would support him in this sitting.

[11:03]

And the earth did support him. And the earth roared a thousand voices in support of his dedication to sit still. And the earth shook and trembled in support of his dedication to the welfare of all beings and not to move until he realized the truth which would enable him in his work. And at that time, when he touched the earth, all the demons dispersed. Similarly, you could touch the earth with your right hand or you can take this mudra which Shakyamuni Buddha transmitted to us and you can touch your abdomen with it. When you touch your abdomen, the demons disperse. They disperse, but the potential is always there. And as soon as you take your hand off the ground, as soon as your hand slips away from your abdomen, as soon as you lose your focus on your body and breath,

[12:09]

they come right back and take you away for another ride. When I was a little boy and I heard about the devil, I thought the devil was a person approximately life size, dressed in red or black or both with a tail, pitchfork and so on. I thought the devil would come up to you full size and tempt you to do things. Well, I think maybe there is such a devil, but there's other kinds of devils too, little teeny tiny ones, and they live around your ear like gnats or mosquitoes. They're always buzzing there. And if you lose your focus, they come in there and they tell you something to do. These gnats are all found in the dictionary, or a lot of them are anyway. They are words. Words are constantly buzzing around your ears.

[13:12]

They're not going to stop. You can tell if you're focused by whether they take you off. You can tell if you're focused because if you are, these words do not reach you. They're like snowflakes in a blazing furnace. So I'm working, I work over and over again I'm tilting my pubic bone down, which also tilts my tailbone back, and I try to set my tailbone free. I just thought now of, like, setting my tailbone free, maybe like there's a tail, a devil's tail going up. Pulling my tailbone back, setting it free from my pelvis, setting this kind of, like,

[14:23]

like an anchor, anchoring the lower part of my back, anchoring my sitting bones and setting my tailbone free. And from that, the spine lifts up lightly out of that root, lifts up lightly to the top of my head. And then to keep this mudra against my abdomen, again and again, I go and make that effort. And sometimes I rest. Just this point of concentration itself may be enough. But joined with this, the breathing may additionally help. Each of us has our own unique experience of this body and breath.

[16:47]

So what I say is not what you should experience. I only tell you about these things in order to encourage you to use the opportunity of your breathing body to initiate yourself into stillness. I'm saying these things so that you will be able perhaps to completely dedicate your attention to your breathing body. Because I think that if you can do this, you will be able to be completely at one with the world of birth and death through this awareness of body breathing.

[17:50]

And if you can be completely aware, completely engaged with the body of birth and death, you will forget the body of birth and death. So when you're breathing, you are just breathing. When you're exhaling, you are exhaling. And you exhale, of course, until you get to the end of the exhale.

[18:59]

You go completely to the end of the exhale, and when the inhale starts, you're ready for it. And when it starts, you're completely at the beginning of the beginning. You're completely at one with the beginning of the inhale. And you live the inhale until it's over. And then you're ready for the beginning of the exhale. And you stay with it all the way And you can gauge, one way to gauge, to measure your engagement is by this mudra. If you think you're following your breath completely, check to see if your hand is touching your abdomen.

[20:12]

You may think you're following your breath pretty well or even completely, But then if you notice your hand has slipped away from your abdomen, you may be able to realize that you're somewhat distracted from this following, even though you seem to still be following. If you then bring your hand back and touch, you may notice a deeper engagement with your breath in relationship to the deep bodily engagement. Or vice versa, if you notice your mind drifting away from your breath, you may also notice your body's also losing its focus. So this way is possible for you to use. So I have spoken of this entry into this upright sitting by this focus on body and breath as initiation by fire.

[21:40]

You're living your life, you're doing what you're doing, and you see that you must do what you must do. You need to do what you need to do. Actually, moment by moment, you are doing what you need to do. You are. And yet, even so, we need to be initiated into what we're already doing. We need some standard to check against to make sure that we really understand that we're doing what we're doing. And I'm proposing the standard of this stillness. We can use this standard of stillness to check to see if we're really with what we're doing.

[22:58]

Moment after moment. And we will often notice that there is some gap, that there is some hesitation to be dealing with this. If we notice that, that's stillness. And we have just returned and taken another step back into stillness. I spoke of it as an initiation by fire, but today I could also talk about it as an initiation by demons, an initiation by ghosts, as an initiation by anything external to us, external standards.

[24:12]

as an initiation by all words. Anyway, if you can get to the place where all these words, demons and flames don't reach, that's the realm of upright sitting which we enter. And there is a self there still. but it's the self which we call the dropped off self or the forgotten self. And that's the self that goes to work. That's the self which receives the water initiation. That's the self which comes forth back into the world That's the self which creates a wholesome way of life.

[25:28]

Which creates a wholesome way of life without referring to any demons to tell you what wholesome is. So I don't like it, but the image of Rumpelstiltskin comes to mind.

[26:46]

Does anybody not know who Rumpelstiltskin is? Do you know who Rumpelstiltskin is? Do you know who Rumpelstiltskin is? Okay. No, a different one. It's close. Close. Once there was... a king, and he wanted to marry somebody. And so he told everyone, please bring me some possible queens. And one miller came, a miller, you know what a miller is? Somebody who grinds wheat to make bread. Mill, mill, mill. So Miller came and told the king, said, I have a daughter, she's very beautiful, and she can make straw change into gold.

[27:50]

With her spinning wheel, she can spin straw into gold. The king said, very good. Please bring your daughter. The king went home and told his daughter, what he had done. And I think the king said, if she can spin straw into gold, good. Then I will make her my queen. If she can't, I'll kill the miller. I will kill you if your daughter cannot do this. So he brought his daughter. Of course, she was very upset. The king put her in a big room full of straw and said, okay. I'll see you tomorrow morning. Spin this straw into gold. And she, of course, didn't know how to do this. Her father lied. And she cried and cried and cried. And then a little elf appeared.

[28:55]

A little elf, a demon. And said, it's okay, it's okay. I'll do it. So he knew how to change straw into gold, so he did. The king came back the next morning and was very happy to see all this straw change into gold. And he said, very good. Now, I'd like you to do that again tonight in a bigger room with more straw. So he put her in a bigger room with more straw and left her alone. So again, she still didn't learn how to do it, so she cried again. And again, the little man appeared and said, what's the matter? She said the same thing. I have to do this. He said, oh, well, it's too bad. I did it once. I'm not going to do it again. I'm not going to spin the straw into gold tonight. And she cried and cried and said, please, please, please, please.

[30:00]

I'll give you anything. He said, oh, anything? OK, well, all right. After you marry the king, if you give me your first baby, I will spin all this straw into gold. And she said, OK. And he spun the straw into gold. The king came back, was very happy, and the king married the miller's daughter. And then they had a baby. And when the baby was born, the little man came back and said, okay, please give me your baby. It's now mine. You promised. And she said, she cried again, I don't want to give you my baby. Please, please, please let me keep my baby.

[31:02]

I'll give you anything. I'll do anything. He said, okay, all right. Guess my name. So she guessed and she guessed and he said, no, no, no, no. That's not it. I'll give you another chance, though. So he came back the next day. And she guessed many, many names again. She couldn't guess. She said, that's enough. I can't stand anymore. I'll come back another day. But that's the last chance. You have to, next time I come, if you don't get my name, I'm going to take the baby. So this time she had all her helpers of the kingdom try to find all the possible names. And she had people looking all over the mountains for unusual names. And one of her people came upon a little area in the woods and they found a little man jumping around in the woods by a fire, dancing and dancing and dancing, saying, oh, it's a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful googly-goggly gook.

[32:09]

No one will ever guess my name, and I'll get the queen's little baby. She'll never know my name is Rumpelstiltskin. So the messenger, the spy, went back and told the queen about this story, and she said, that must be him. So when he came back the third time, she said, is your name by any chance Pio? And Rumpelstiltskin said, no. Is your name Brett? No. Is your name Wren? No. No. Is your name Rumpelstiltskin? And Rumpelstiltskin said, what demon told you?

[33:13]

How did you find that out? This is impossible. You can't have guessed it. You can't have guessed it. And he started jumping up and down on the floor, jumping up and down on the floor. And he jumped and he jumped and he jumped until he went through the floor. Poof. And all that was left was a little dust and a hole in the floor. And the queen lived happily ever after. What? So did the baby and so did the king. However, I think the story about the queen is very important. But the person I'm pointing to, the one I'm pointing to is the demon. The person I'm pointing to is Rumpelstiltskin. He's the Buddhist practitioner. because he jumped and jumped and jumped on that spot until he went through the floor and disappeared. The king and queen lived happily ever after, but they're gonna have to do that over and over and over. Rumpelstiltskin went through the floor, he's gone. That's our practice.

[34:18]

We don't spin straw into gold. We do that maybe, but the point is what we do is we jump up and down in the same spot. We jump and jump and jump until we go through the floor and we're gone and everybody else lives happily ever after. So we're like Rumpelstiltskin in his final performance. There's no demons to distract Rumpelstiltskin from his activity. There's nothing outside Rumpelstiltskin. Except, I guess, that baby. He wanted that baby, didn't he? Well, that was his problem. He didn't get the baby. And he got so upset about not getting the baby, and he got so angry, he became totally consumed by his anger and his disappointment and his jealousy until he went through the floor. Boom. That's what we have to do. However, after you go through the floor, then something else happens. after the dust clears and the queen's gone and everything, somebody's born.

[35:26]

A new person is born. Out of this ashes, out of this complete death, by complete exertion, death by complete exertion, a new being is born. And the image of this new being is sometimes said to be like a vigorously jumping fish. Like when a fish jumps out of the water, just like Rumpelstiltskin went to the floor, you come up out of the water like that fish. And the word they use for that to express that kind of activity in Japanese is kapatsupatsu. It's the sound of a fish breaking the water and splashing back down. But just at that breaking out of nothing, the nothing that comes from being totally willing to be where you are, that new birth is our real creative activity.

[36:29]

Fish doesn't say, well, is this going to be good? Is this going to be bad? It doesn't. It just breaks out of its life. It comes forth. This is authentic action in the world. Coming out of the water. So I told that story about Rumpelstiltskin just because that came into my mind Whatever of a vigorously jumping fish I am, that's what came into my vigorously jumping mind. I didn't want that particular story, but I told it anyway because that's what came up. I'm sorry. We're all vigorously jumping fish. It may not look like it to you, but we are.

[37:30]

we're all vigorously jumping out of nothing every moment and appearing like this and like this and like this. This is it that we are doing. However, if we don't reach the realm of upright sitting, we're very sad and we're ghosts. And we don't understand this vigorously jumping fishy that we are. We don't trust ourselves because we didn't trust ourselves. If you trust yourself completely, then you can trust yourself completely. If you engage yourself with yourself until you forget yourself, then this new person that will come forth from that forgotten self or that forgotten self that will then act in the world, you won't even think about trusting it. It is a person born from trust. Not born from trust in general, born from trust of this critter that you are.

[38:37]

Born from the world that you see and the way you feel about it. When you completely trust, you'll forget the whole thing and a new pattern will come forth. For one who sits in this way, nothing will be withheld. Everything will be given to you. Everything you need to go to work will be given to you. We've already been planning and equipping ourselves with lots of stuff for a long time. We don't need any more. What we need to do is to admit all we've accumulated. We don't need more. We need to confess that we've got already this much. We don't have too much. We don't have too little. We have exactly this amount of karmic baggage. We admit it. We fully avow. We atone this.

[39:41]

And we don't need any more than this. Then we go through the floor. So if any of you trust yourselves, if any of you have been able to trust yourself in this moment to completely be at one with the dying and being born person that you are, this moment and the next moment, please bring this settled person forth. Please show us this settled person. We want to meet this person. And we will all give you a water initiation. We will be the water in which you can come forth.

[40:46]

You can splash forth in our presence. If you haven't yet accepted yourself, we can't baptize you. You have to do that. No one can do that for you. I encourage you, we encourage you, but you have to do that. Once you've done that, then we are the water. We are your water. It is with us that you will vigorously jump and splash. And if we can't handle you, then we know we haven't done our work. And then we have to trust ourselves more so we can meet such an awesome being as you. Honestly. I would be very happy in every single case

[41:56]

person settling into himself or herself completely and forgetting themselves this makes me very happy it's real wonderful practice this is initiate to do that shows you have been initiated by silence by fire, by demons, into the realm of upright sitting. Although this is wonderful, this is still not enough. You must then have this forgotten self come forth. Otherwise, even this person who has been initiated by fire into this realm, who has finally come home, gets stuck. You still have to leave home again. leave your brand new attainment again. You can't stop here either. Tomorrow, I'm restraining myself, tomorrow I will tell you some stories about people who have trusted their breath, their body and breath completely, have gone to this place,

[43:23]

and either got stuck there or come forth. I won't tell you those stories today because I think you've already got enough. Tomorrow I'll tell you stories about people who trusted enough to go into this realm and realize the self which is dropped off, body and mind. And then I will talk about how their friends and teachers brought them out of that womb of light, brought them out of that womb of light into the world where they could splash freely. And how some of them had a little hard time getting out of there. And I'll tell you one more thing, and that is that every morning when we chant the jewel mirror samadhi, this jewel mirror samadhi is, today what I'd like to emphasize is the jewel mirror samadhi is not about entering the realm of upright sitting.

[44:36]

It's more about coming out of it. It's to some extent about entering, but it's also about how to come out of it. It's about how to express and put this forgotten self to work. It describes the process of a bodhisattva going to work. I'd like to actually start chanting it at morning and noon service. I heard this story about, I think either it was a Sufi or I don't know what it was, but anyway it was a person was put in prison in Persia or someplace like that.

[45:44]

And a friend of his, who was a Sufi, sent him a present. in prison. And the present he sent him was a prayer rug. And when the prisoner got the prayer rug, he thought, he thought, this is not a very good present to get me in prison. Why didn't he send me a saw or a bomb or a key? or money or a gun. Anyway, he was angry, but after a while he decided, well, maybe I'll use it. So he put the prayer rug on the floor and started bowing on it. And after he bowed on it for a long time, he realized that the pattern of the prayer rug was a diagram.

[46:50]

And he finally realized that it was the diagram of the lock of his cell. So once he realized that, he unlocked his cell and escaped. I don't know what happened to him after that. This Julemir Samadhi, if you just bow on it enough times, you may understand that it's a diagram of the lock on your cell. But that ain't the problem, folks. The problem is you got to get into the cell. And you got to bow in that cell until you start hearing the way out.

[47:59]

You got to get in your body and bow in there. And after a while, you'll notice that that truck is telling you about how to be free. Even I may be telling you about how to be free. Who knows? Who knows?

[48:29]

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