In the Flower Adornment Scripture, the Avatamsaka Sutra, it says that the Buddha in ten directions sits, or the Buddha sits in ten directions, with unmoving presence, not coming or going, yet teaches beings appropriately, causing them all to see.  Someone said to me that she is concerned with how just sitting saves all beings.  This is the proposal that the sitting of the Buddha saves all beings.  The sitting of the Buddha, without moving one particle of dust, teaches appropriately, the sitting teaches appropriately, causing all to see.  How is the sitting saving all beings?  I said to this person, "Another way to think of it is how are beings saved?  How is an individual being saved and how are all beings saved?  The way that all beings are saved - that is Buddha's sitting."  Right now all Buddhas are sitting in ten directions and that sitting that is happening right now is how all beings are saved right now.  All beings are being saved right now.  This is called Buddha's sitting or the sitting of the Buddha.  Please memorize what I just said, not because I said it but because it is almost exactly the Avatamsaka Sutra, slightly reworked for Zen students.  For people who spend a lot of time sitting and hopefully learning how to sit as a Buddha sits.  
    The sutra also says that when the Buddha first sits at the sight of enlightenment, the world trembles in six ways and all worlds in ten directions are bathed in light and in this light all beings in all states are relieved from pain.  Zen monks wonder about this miraculous sitting, they ask questions about this, they are in awe about this, they worship this sitting.  They worship this sitting by practicing the ritual of the sitting as the form of worship of this sitting.  They worship sitting which creates such a light.  They worship it by actually physically assuming the sitting posture as a form of worshipping the saving function of the Buddha.  Zen monks have been doing that for a long time now.  
    In that context I bring up the story, the fifty-sixth case of the Book of Serenity.  As Dongshan and his spiritual Uncle Mi were walking along, a white rabbit ran out in front of them.  Uncle Mi said, "Swift."  Dongshan said, "How?"  Uncle Mi said, "Like a commoner being made into a prime minister."  Dongshan said, "Great great old old person still has such words!"  Uncle Mi said, "Well how about you?"  Dongshan said, "After generations of nobility, temporarily fallen into destitution."  
    This case we can study quite a long time, there is a great deal in this case.  It also offers the opportunity for me to talk about my trip to China, because this case took place in China, in the Tang dynasty and also the verse which celebrates this case was written by a Chinese Zen monk and the examples which are brought up in the verse are all from Chinese history.  So, there is a wealth of history and poetry in this case and this case is so relevant to understanding zazen.  Particularly, this case really brings to light the Lotus Sutra's understanding of zazen, the Avatamsaka Sutra's understanding of zazen, Dogen Zenji's understanding of zazen.  This case also is a commentary on different ways of studying koans, its a koan which can be used as a way of talking about different ways of studying koans.  So, today I will just start discussing how this case is.
    One of the things that I see in this case is two approaches to Buddhist practice, or two understandings of Buddhist practice.  One is that a living being can quickly go from being a commoner into a prime minister, by just running across the road for example.  That is one way that people sometimes think of practice.  That if you do a practice, by means of that practice you have a realization.  But in that way of understanding, there is some opposition between means and end.  Some people want to practice that way, they want to have a way of practicing which is not the realization which they seek.  
    Because people want that, want a practice which is not the same as the realization which they want, some Buddhist teachers out of kindness in their heart, give them something to do, give them a way to be, which is not really what they want, which will help them get what they want, a practice which if they do the practice, then they will get awakening and freedom and wisdom and compassion.  But the practice is not the wisdom and compassion and freedom, because they do not want a practice which is wisdom and compassion and freedom, they want a practice which will give that to them.  
    Well you might say "Why wouldn't someone want a practice which is wisdom and compassion and freedom?  Wouldn't they prefer that?"  And I would think, "Yeah, wouldn't you?"  But I guess the reason why people do not want it is because if you give them a practice which is wisdom and compassion and freedom, for example, sitting at your seat during a period of meditation, which is perfect enlightenment right there, they say, "Well, this is just like usual, I'm still the same person.  This isn't any improvement.  So, if this is the practice which is actually the realization, this is not the realization that I want.  I want a different realization from this one."  So they say, "OK, well this is the practice that you do to get the realization  If you keep doing this practice, then eventually you will get the realization that you want."  So they say "OK" and they do that.
    There are actually are some practices which are very fast in which you will very quickly go from the way you are now to the way you want to be, very swift.  So, it will not be long that you have to be the way you are now before you get to be the way you want to be, just a little bit longer.  But of course, you have to do it completely.  You have to do this practice which is not the same as what you want, you have to do it really correctly, thoroughly and completely, then very quickly you will be prime minister.  "How long will it take me to do it completely?"  Well, if you completely give yourself to it, not long.  If you half-heartedly do it, it will take you a really long time.  So, you get into this kind of thing, sound familiar?  
    But the problem with that kind of practice is that it is dualistic and it is deluded and it actually just reinforces delusion.  And again, reinforcing delusion is not all that bad because sometimes if you reinforce delusion and get it really intensely fully manifested as delusion, that sometimes becomes non-dualistic and you are just like a totally deluded person and you can forget about becoming Buddha and you are just completely deluded, that can be pretty much the same which is not something different from where you want to go but is just simply completely deluded.  So, it can be useful.  
    But, Dongshan did not like that too much.  That is the kind of practice that Uncle Mi was talking about.  Swift, like a person like you suddenly becoming a prime Buddha.  Dongshan's point of view is, after generations of nobility, you are temporarily like this.  The word that is used there for "temporarily fallen into" what is translated as poverty, stinginess, pettiness, meanness, and you if you like can go ahead and expand on that theme.  Petty, nasty, tight, strangled, self-concerned basically.  Can you sort of get into that?  Or at least you know some people who are like that?  You know, little petty tiny little people, temporarily, after generations of nobility, after generations of being big, after generations of like being huge, being unlimited, being magnimous, being free of self-concern, temporarily we have fallen down into being a little, tiny person whose kind of concerned with himself.  It is not like we are going to take this little person and then quickly make this person back into a great person.  It is that this person has not lost his fundamental character, it just has temporarily gotten squished a little bit.  
    So, it is not a matter of doing a practice to make you into something else.  It is doing a practice which appreciates what you are in the first place.  That is another Approach to Zen or to Buddhism.  One is do something to quickly or gradually become a Buddha.  The other is: not do anything but just be what you are, which is what a Buddha does.  A Buddha does not do something to become a Buddha.  A Buddha is just a Buddha.  But for a Buddha to be just a Buddha, is for a person just to be a person.  For a Buddha who has temporarily fallen into being a limited person, is for a Buddha to be a limited person, to sit there at that limited personhood.  A limited person sits at the place of being a limited person.  That is called the site of enlightenment.  
    A limited person is enlightened at the site of being a limited person.  It is not that being a limited person is enlightened by moving to some other place than where they are sitting.  Like you are limited person and you move next door and get enlightened there.  Or, expand your seat to take up a few other seats, ask your neighbors to move over so you can have three seats, and then there you get enlightened, or six, or take the whole zendo, get everybody out of the zendo and take the whole room up for yourself.  But even if you have the whole room, still, that is a limited seat for you.  It is there that you sit and it is at that place that you wake up.
    So, Dongshan is proposing that we have fallen, that we ordinary people have fallen into a state of meanness, a state of stinginess.  And some of us take it more seriously than others, or some of us are more conscious of how seriously we take it than others.  But in fact, it is not so much that I am here to tell you that you are in a fallen state, but rather, a characteristic of our existence is that it is fallen, it is mean, it is tight and small and petty and poor, relative to what it can be or what it is, really.  It has a petty, small fallen quality.  It is not that is all there is to it, but it has that aspect.  So, I would guess and we can discuss later who is not this way, that most of you understand something about the fallen quality of your life, or if not fallen, anyway, because you may not think you were ever anywhere else, but that there is a limited quality to your life, a pettiness in your life, a self-concerned, uptight quality about your existence.  In order to become free of that, in order to understand that in such a way that you can become free of that, we have to be grounded in that recognition.  
    So, Dongshan is saying we have been noble for awhile, for generations we have been noble, but now, we have got to ground ourselves in our pettiness.  Not ground ourselves in our pettiness but ground ourselves in the awareness of that.  Not try to take the petty person and promote her, because she is not really a petty person, she is a noble person, she is already good, but in order to realize that she has to be grounded in her pettiness.  That is why a lot of people do not want to do a practice that is non-dualistic because a non-dualistic practice means that you work with the pettiness you already have.  You do not try to get yourself to do something so you are not petty, rather you ground yourself in your pettiness and that is the basis for you to realize your greatness.  But if you do not want to do that, what you want to do is overlook, not put much emphasis on the fact of your limitation and put the emphasis on a practice which will get you out of your limitation.  Rather than admit your limitation, concentrate on what will move you away from it.  But if we try to get away from our limitation our limitation keeps pulling us back all the time.  Not only that, but the very process of trying to get away from your limitation is basically the same as our limitation.  That is the problem with that kind of practice, it backfires.
    The zazen of the Buddhas, the sitting meditation of the Buddhas, is not a way to make a sentient being into a Buddha.  It is a sentient being becoming a Buddha.  See the difference?  Sitting meditation is not a means by which this person uses this means and gets over into being a Buddha.  The sitting meditation is the person being a Buddha, is the person becoming a Buddha.  Want to know what a person becoming a Buddha is like?  It is sitting meditation.  They are not separate.  Zazen is the way that sentient beings are Buddhas.  Got a living being who is saving all beings, got a living being who is liberating all beings, that is zazen.  When a person like you and me is saving all beings, that is zazen.  When you got a person who is trying to make herself better by doing a practice by which they will get better, then that practice, call it whatever you want, sitting meditation, that sitting meditation is delusion.  It just keeps this person basically trying to do something for herself to get to be maybe somebody who would do something for other people's welfare.  That practice keeps you separated from the person you want to become.  
    Now, granted, and it is a big granted, that practice you are doing by which to make yourself into a better person, that practice is a lot better then a practice which you do to make yourself into a worse person.  There is you and then there is your goal and then there is the practice you do by which you make yourself into something else.  Now to do something to make yourself into a better person is a lot better then to do something to make you into a worse person.  One is called good karma and the other one is called bad karma.  So, there is a big difference.  But, karma is not Buddha's sitting meditation.  Again, we can talk about that more.
    Zazen is the whole being of you.  The sitting meditation of the Buddha is your whole being, is what you are completely.  That does not make you into Buddha, that is Buddha.  It means the whole being of your pettiness is Buddha.  Because Buddha can take on and become your pettiness.  But when Buddha takes on your pettiness, Buddha takes it on completely, with no reservation.  With no "OK, well I'll be like one of these people in this room, but at the same time I'll remember that I'm Buddha and I'm just visiting."  Like in Monopoly, just visiting jail, not actually in jail, I did not forget that I voluntarily entered here.  
    Most people visit their limited being, like winding up to be a man or woman, but they do not do it wholeheartedly.  One of the ways to not do it wholeheartedly is to overdo it, like to be more of a man than you need to be or less of a woman than you need to be.  But the Buddha is wholeheartedly, whole-being, you.  You in your wholeness are Buddha.  And everybody is that way.  That is precisely what a Buddha is.  You being completely what you are, not any more and not any less.
    After generations of nobility, temporarily fallen into this stingy situation.  And also, in the Chinese it has the character for time.  The expression "temporarily fallen into poverty" is a four character sentence.  The first one means "suddenly" or "for a little bit of time."  The second character is "time."  Suddenly time fallen into meanness.  Some people who can really read Chinese would probably tell me I am really off to do this but I am going to go ahead and do it.  We have suddenly, and we do it suddenly, moment by moment, we suddenly fall into time.  Buddha falls into time, falls into the meanness of being in time.  So, part of what it takes to recognize what it means to be a limited being is to take responsibility that you are living in time and to be on time and to have the right timing.  After generations of being beyond time we suddenly enter into time.
    Reading many of your expressions of ultimate concern, one of the ones that has been repeated is unconditional love.  A number of people's ultimate concern is unconditional love, or, in some cases, they have other ultimate concerns and the practice which they need to do, that is involved in their ultimate concern, is unconditional love.  So, some people want to save all sentient beings or get rich, and the practice they need to do to accomplish that is unconditional love.  Other people want unconditional love and they have another practice which they hope will bring them unconditional love.  But, so far, I have not read one yet where the ultimate concern is unconditional love and the practice that entailed there is unconditional love, and that what they want to focus on is unconditional love.  But it is not too late to choose that one.
    Unconditional love means that conditions vary but the love does not.  That would be one way to talk about unconditional love.  Love, for me, does not mean you like something, it is not liking or disliking.  Like if you have a child.  You might unconditionally love your child but you might not like your child.  It is necessary, actually, for the child that you do not like it.  Because of unconditional love, you temporarily fall into meanness.  Because of unconditional love you don't like it.  The being needs you to be mean, sometimes, and say "I don't like that."  "No!" is required sometimes of unconditional love.  
    But what does unconditional love mean?  No one knows but anyway what does it mean?  It means you work with this, it means you sit here.  It means no matter what your situation is, you work with this.  It is not like "OK, this is my situation, fine, thanks and I'll start working with my situation later, when I get a better one.  I am not going to give my whole life energy to this moment.  This time right now is not going to get my full attention.  I've got something else to do right now, OK?  I got to walk across the room.  Don't ask me to pay attention to where I am now.  People won't let me actually like be here.  I mean I would be willing to be here but other people would think that I am weird and give me a hard time if I was actually like here, took my seat, that's been assigned to me.  My limited, petty place.  They'll tease me if they see me like actually inhabiting this spot.  So, later when they are not doing that, later when they are saying 'OK, you can sit there,' then I will use this opportunity."  No.  Unconditional love is this situation deserves my utmost, my complete attention, my complete devotion, my complete presence.  That applies to all situations.  This person, before me right now, deserves my complete attention.  Not my complete liking or disliking, but my complete life, including liking and disliking.  Including, "I don't like you."  But that is just part of what I am getting, "I don't like you," plus also "I will die for you!  But I don't like you."  Or "I like you, but that is nothing compared actually to what I am willing to give.  And I will give completely now and I will give completely forever.  No matter what you become, no matter what I become, I will be completely here.  And I do not even know what that is."  I wonder at such a sitting.  I'll live in time.  I'll be here now, with you, with me, as I am, not waiting for another <inaudible>.  This kind of sitting is a great light which releases all beings from pain.  This is the sitting which is the saving of beings.  This is going deep into the mountains and finding wisdom there, in the deep mist of the mountains.  But deep in the mountains means deep into where you sit.  And some people have to go actually into the mountains, like these mountains, in order to actually enter deeply into the place they sit.  Because, they say "In the city, I can't believe that people will let me sit here."  OK.  Fine, go into the mountains, go into the zendo, wherever you have to go and go there so you can actually enter deeply into where you are now.  
    When I was in China, near the city of Xian, thinking of the Chungnan (Sp?) mountains where all the Buddhist and Taoist yogis go to sit, go deep in the mountains to find their seat, thinking about what does it mean to go deeper into the mountains.  Then I went to Beijing, and I went to the imperial palace of the Ming and Ching dynasties, which is now called the "Forbidden City."  "Forbidden" means ordinary people were not allowed to enter.  So now ordinary people can enter.  So, you walk into the Forbidden City into these big huge buildings and one of them you can see the interior in that movie "The Last Emperor."  How many people saw that movie?  Remember the scene where he is sitting up on the throne with his cricket?  That is one of those rooms, one of the big ones.  You go behind those big throne rooms, then they have hundreds of other buildings that have little throne rooms in them.  In the big throne rooms you look in from outside, you cannot get in the building.  In the big throne rooms you just look in from outside.  Then as you get into the smaller ones, you can get closer and closer to the throne.  These are thrones for the emperor, but also for concubines and other people.  Some other thrones you can get closer to, you can get in the building but then they have the throne behind glass or plexiglass.  The biggest rooms you cannot even get into and the smaller ones you can get into the room, into the building but then they have the thrones behind protective shielding.  But one of the thrones, you go into the building, and the throne is just sitting there, with nothing between you and the throne, maybe there was a little rope restraint between you and the throne.  Perfectly good imperial throne sitting there.
    In this one particular room I went into, there was the throne and sitting on one side the throne was a Chinese, I guess he was Chinese, he looked Chinese, Chinese man sitting there.  On the other side was a Chinese woman.  And I was immediately struck by their postures, by the way they were both sitting, these two people, who I assume were government employees paid to guard the throne.  To guard the throne from what?  From tourists.  Here is a throne, can you imagine if there were no guards there, that maybe some people would go sit on the throne and have their picture taken on the imperial throne, maybe family photos, maybe some people would get up there and lounge or smoke cigarettes on the throne, who knows.  Anyway, maybe in Chinese there was a sign saying "Don't sit on the throne" or "Don't have lunch on the throne," I don't know.  I did not look around.  But nobody was doing that, everybody was standing away from it and there were guards.  
    But these guards were not upright.  They were not sitting upright.  I think I first noticed the woman.  She was a nice looking Chinese lady, a young girl actually, sitting there with her legs crossed and she was kicking one of her legs.  Kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick.  She was kicking it against this kind of a chest next to her.  Her foot was tapping on the chest.  Here is a guard, hitting the thing and I thought "God if she did that all day she would wear that piece of imperial furniture right down."  I watched her some more.  She also had a little radio on she was listening to, with Chinese popular music on it.  But actually she did not, I watched this for quite a while, she did not just keep kicking it like I thought she was going to and wear down the furniture.  She started changing her posture, crossing her legs the other way, kicking the other way, there was no furniture in the other direction.  And then she started wiggling in her seat.  And I started to notice the time-lapse photography of my mind, I could see that she probably spent the whole day, if not eight hours anyway, many hours a day assuming she worked there more than one day, but she spent day after day wiggling in her seat, kicking her feet this way, kicking her feet that way, switching her posture, wiggling around, listening to the music, looking at her watch, wiggling, wiggling, wiggling, wiggling, wiggling.  
    And then on the other side was a man guard.  He was just leaning back in his chair, and he was not wiggling, he had feet stuck out he was leaning back like this and he was picking his nose and picking his fingers.  Totally slouched out.  She was kind of nervous, he was like total plotz (sp?), phlegmatic.  They were both bored, she was like wiggling bored and he was like "How can I melt into this chair and not be here?"  I guess they were both getting paid money which they can use to buy noodles and stuff.  They looked well fed.  
    And what are they guarding?  They are guarding the throne of the empire.  They are guarding the seat that the emperor sits in.  Uncle Mi was talking about prime ministers.  They are guarding the seat of the emperor.  But they are not sitting in their own chair.  I mean they are sitting there but they are not happy campers.  They are not sitting on that chair as though this is the place I am going to live my life.  They were not sitting that way, and I do not mean to criticize them, but that is how they looked.  They were not willing to be on that chair for that time that they were on that chair.  I did not feel like for one moment that I saw them that they were willing to be there, just for one moment that they were willing to be on that chair, completely.  I saw them for quite a few moments.  This was a moving tour that I was on but somehow towards the end of the tour I got a chance to stop at some of these places.  
    Part of this thing on this trip was that I was with my wife.  She was talking about how she likes to see these things with me, like we are going through these various exhibits and places together and she likes to see them with me.  Like there was one thing she saw that she thought I would really be interested in but she was not sure if I saw it or not because she was not with me, she was ahead of me.  She said, "I like to see these things with you but you take so long.  You stop in front of these things and you just stay there and look at them.  You go look at one thing and you're just there forever."  
    So I was really spending a lot of time with this one because I was really struck by these people.  I was struck by these people who were not willing to sit on their seat.  They are no better then us, no worse then us, but they were not willing to sit on their seat, that I saw, for one minute they were not willing to just be there.  They were someplace else.  I thought, if this woman had a baby, her own baby, would she have shown some interest in the baby?  I thought probably so.  She probably would not be like kick, kick, kick but, "Hey, this is interesting, my baby."  Then there might be some love there for the moment.  If this guy was maybe gambling, and he had chance now to win a lot of money, he probably would not have been like this.  He probably would have been quite interested in the game, I imagine.
    But what struck me was, these two people are in the perfect position to go deep into the mountains.  They had nothing to do.  No one was expecting anything of them than just to be present.  Now if somebody tried to get up on the throne, they should stop them I suppose, but nobody does that.  Most of the day they are just sitting there and they could go deep into the mountains.  Anybody actually can go deep in the mountains to be able to sit in a job like that, were nothing is expected of you.  All you have to do is sit in that seat.  Right there in the middle of thousands of tourists coming by, millions of tourists coming by, just sit in your seat.  That's deep in the mountains.
    I told that to my wife and she said, "Yeah, but you would probably have to go to a monastery for many years to be able to sit that way in a job like that," and I said, "Yes, that's true."  It takes a great Zen master to have job like being a museum attendant and just sit at that place and not wish that you could go look at the show or talk to the customers but just stay at your place and realize that is what it is like to be deep in the mountains, that is what it is like to be Buddha.  Is to be actually able to be a Chinese throne attendant without wishing that you could play with your baby, or gamble or go get your paycheck, or even move a muscle, or even move a particle of dust in your mind.  That is unconditional love.  
    The very situation that is most suited for it might be the situation where it seems most difficult.  "Might."  I mean, to me, even though I said it, I am very impressed by what I just said.  That the very situation that is most suited to just sit at your place and not move, the situation that is most suited for it is the one that we think in some ways is the most difficult to practice in that way.  The situation that is most suited for unconditional love is the one that we have the most difficulty practicing unconditional love.  What is the situation that is most suited for unconditional love.  What is it?  It is this one.  This is the one, right now, here where you are is the situation that is most suited for unconditional love.  Not your past, not your future.  You cannot practice unconditional love in the past.  Sorry.  If you did, congratulations, but you cannot do it anymore there and you cannot do it in the future.  Right now, right where you are is the place that is most suited for it and this is the most difficult place to practice it.  And it is the only place that you can practice it.  Now you can say, "Isn't more difficult to practice in the past?"  It is not really difficult, it is irrelevant.  You cannot practice it in the past.  The place where it is most suited and where it is most difficult are the same place, always.  
    So, being a throne attendant is a difficult place to practice and a perfect place to practice.  And those people could sit in that seat and practice unconditional love sitting in that seat and sitting in that seat, in the Forbidden City in the middle of Beijing would be a Buddha.  And that light, from that sitting would pervade the entire world and liberate beings.  Buddha is right now sitting that way in ten directions.  In every cell of your body right now, Buddha is sitting that way, being willing to be stuck in one cell of your body, not wiggling, not slouching.  Buddha is practicing unconditional love in every cell of your body.  Can you practice that way with your whole body, moment after moment throughout the day here?  
    So, temporarily fallen into poverty means Buddha has now inhabited your life where you are.  That's it.  Now, here it is, you've got it.  
    One of the people for whom unconditional love is his ultimate concern said to me, "What am I doing here?"  And I said, "You mean, what is the meaning of what you are doing here, what's the point of what you are doing here, is that what you mean?"  He said "Yeah."  And I said, "You just told me.   The meaning of what you are doing here is unconditional love."  The point of a person being here in this valley is unconditional love.  
    But he said "What am I doing here?"  We are humans.  We have fallen into this human state, this poverty of being a human, this meanness of being an individual person.  This is our situation.  OK.  Because of that we have to do things.  We did not come to Tassajara to do something.  Maybe you think you did but that is not what you said, nobody said, so far, as their ultimate concern, "My ultimate concern is to do something."  But, because we are limited we have to do things.  We have to think in those terms.  So you do things.  But that is not the point.  The point is, that although you are doing things, although you are fallen into the state, the condition, where you have to do things, where you have to think in those terms, the point of what you are doing is that you are practicing unconditional love while you are doing things, but unconditional love is not doing something.  So those people have to walk to work and sit on that seat next to the throne, that is what they are doing and they have to think in those terms, "I'm a throne attendant, that's what I'm doing."  OK.  That is not the point.  The point is that when they are doing what they are doing that they are practicing unconditional love.  
    So, no matter what you are doing, whether you are cooking, sitting in this room, walking across the construction site, eating lunch, no matter what you doing, no matter what small, petty human activity you are in, the point is to give yourself completely to it.  But that giving is not another action, it is appreciating what is happening by giving yourself completely to whatever it is.  Which means not moving, because when you completely give yourself to something you cannot move.  You are completely already given, there is nothing left over to wiggle, there is no pivot or leverage on your life, that is what it is like to love.  There is some song like that, hopelessly, utterly, completely in love? devoted to you.  Hopelessly devoted to you, overwhelmingly devoted so there is nobody left-over to do anything.  In the mean time there are people running all over the place doing all this stuff.  Hopelessly - you do not hope for anything else.
    So, part of the meanness of our situation is that there is a time limit to this talk.  I have to accept that.  There is a world where lunch is coming and that kind of thing.  I accept that.  So I am going to stop talking.  I'll be quiet.  But that is not really my feeling.  My feeling is that I am willing to be limited, and I am willing to stop, and I am willing to start.  And I invite you to inhabit your life in the same way.  I invite you noble beings to sit as a Buddha throughout the day.  Anyway, there is quite a bit more to this case and I will discuss that at another time.  If you have some questions we can discuss them right now.
    Jeremy (could not make out all of the words): "When you talked about falling into time, reading the characters that way, I had some associations to, one of the human perspectives on time is that it tends toward death, is there an association between accepting time and accepting mortality there?  Falling into time meaning falling into a recognition of death, mortality, is there a connection between the necessity of recognizing what time is and recognizing our mortality?"
    Tenshin Roshi: Yeah.  So, part of what we need to do is be grounded in the recognition that a characteristic of our life is that it has an end.  We have decided to live in way, we have taken an infinite life and let it be put into a package that dies.  It would be good if we would be conscious of that.  Part of what it takes to realize infinite life, life is infinite actually, Buddha's life is infinite, in order to realize infinite life, we have recognize finite life.  Finite life means we have to recognize that an aspect of our life is that we have a certain kind of life which ends.  
    Unfortunately, it often ends painfully, really painfully sometimes, we can get into that later, like drowning in your own lung juice.  That kind of thing.  Because the nature of life is also that it keeps trying to keep going.  So it has to get really uncomfortable before we say, "OK.  I've had enough."  Because life is infinite, so when it gets confined to something limited, it has some problems around ending, like it has to.  So this is part of what it takes to take your seat.  That is a nice thing about Tassajara.  People actually do feel something about their finiteness, don't you? and your mortality.  So it is grounding ourselves in the awareness of that is part of what it takes to realize the life which is free of that limitation.  
    After generations of unlimited life, we have temporarily fallen into limited life, life which is surrounded by death.  Can you feel that?  Part of the way you feel, which again we can talk about in more detail if you would like to, part of the way you feel, it is kind of surprising to say this, I am not surprised to say it but you may be surprised to hear it, but the way you can most fully experience and ground yourself in the awareness of your death is to fully express yourself.  
    So, I am encouraging you right off, not just to fully express yourself just to get off on expressing yourself, but for the purposes of grounding yourself in your death, in your awareness of your limitation, I feel that you have to express yourself fully.  Because when you express yourself fully you come to the end of yourself.  When you express your limited self fully, you come up to your death.  That is why we do not like to express ourselves fully, because we get so close to death.  Do you know what I mean?  If you hold back and be a good boy and be a good girl and do not say completely, honestly what you have to say, then your death is a few feet away or a block away.  But if you really honestly say how you feel and so on, your death comes real close to you.  Like maybe they will kill you if you say what you really think.  It is dangerous to really fully express yourself because your death comes right up to you when you fully express yourself.  
    So, yes, part of this is to ground yourself in the awareness of your mortality and the way to do this is not just to sit around and think "Oh well, gee, I guess I am mortal," or "I guess I'm gonna die someday," that is OK.  But the way to actually feel that death is to fully live, to fully express yourself.  Then the death starts coming close.  If you half live, the death stays far away.  
    So, that is part of what we mean by "When you first meet a master, you should just wholeheartedly sit and drop away body and mind."  That means when you first meet somebody who tells you that when you sit you should sit in way that fully expresses yourself, then that wholehearted sitting means that you sit in such a way that death comes close to you.  
    You may say "I am sitting that way, I'm really sitting and death is really like close to me, so now I'm really just sitting right?  Cause death is right there."  But meeting a master means that this other person brings death to you in way that you did not ask for.  Like, "Oh, really?  Can I open the door and let the cold air in?"  "Well I might catch a cold."  Yeah, don't worry, I won't open the door.  But do you see what I mean, it's tricky.  So that is the nice thing about a master is that they only open the door at the right time.  Not just to sort of like make you cold and arbitrarily challenge your sense of confrontation with death.  
    But if the master opens the door and exposes you to the cold and that is a full expression on the part of the master, the master is also getting close to death, right?  The master opens the door so that you people can like really feel close to death here as it gets colder and colder, then the master's life is in danger too, right?  Because the monks might get together and get that master under control so that that master does not open the door anymore and if necessary we may have to put some major constraints on this person because "I'm all up for confrontation with death but not the way they do it.  I mean, that's too much.  It's inappropriate.  I get to decide how I meet death.  It's not just a random meeting.  It's a controlled meeting."  It's an autistic version of meeting death.  Do you know what I mean?  That was kind of a leap.
    There is this lady, this wonderful lady, some of you may have read about her in the New Yorker, an autistic person who is very smart.  When she was a little girl she made herself a hugging machine because as many of you know, getting hugged by somebody there is kind of sensory thing happens, you feel a body around you, you ever have that feeling of being hugged and feel what it is like, and it is different from not being hugged, have you noticed?  Well, for this girl, like being hugged and not being hugged was like the difference between life and death.  When she was hugged it would totally overwhelm her and she thought she would die and so she totally freaked, but she liked to be hugged to.  So she made a hugging machine and she could get into it and it would hug her and she had this little way of turning it off so as soon as she started getting freaked she could turn the switch and the thing would release her.  This is an autistic person.  So she gradually by that way learned how to be hugged with this machine.  
    (Tape ends)