The San Francisco Zen Center presents Buddhism at Millennium's Edge. This is tape number BME 9814, The Zen of Everyday Living, with Tenshin Reb Anderson, recorded live in Green Gulch Farm, California. Sheet, and I saw there was two people named Appel, and I thought, is Helen bringing her mother? But you're sitting right next to each other. It's kind of an uncommon name. Another kind of interesting thing about this retreat is that the description for the retreat was written by someone other than me. But I'm happy to use the description as a text for the workshop. There's a few points in the description I thought would provide a nice format or structure for the day.

[01:10]

The first point that was made in the description of the day was that it's a relaxed retreat. My reading of relaxed retreat means it's relaxed compared to what it could be. In other words, it could be very rigorous with complete silence, perhaps, and lots of formality and maybe 15 periods of meditation. So we will have a little bit easier schedule than it could be. But at the same time, we'll offer some periods of formal sitting and walking meditation, so it'll be And there'll be some rigor in it, but somewhat relaxed compared to sometimes Zen's reputation for being very severe. Another point of the workshop, the description was that there would be some introduction to formal

[02:25]

sitting meditation or formal Zen sitting. So we'll have the introduction to formal Zen sitting. Next point is that there will be, what do you say, the basic insight will focus on the basic insight of Zen Buddhist practice. Does that sound okay? And another point is how this basic insight can be brought into focus or brought into realization in day-day life. So those are three basic points. And the sort of epigram at the beginning of the thing was a little Zen story, a short Zen story about two Zen monks in the Tang Dynasty.

[03:28]

One of them was sleeping in the ground and his brother came up to him and said, too busy. And the one who was sleeping said, you should know that there's one who's not busy. And the... The accuser said, then are there two moons? In other words, are there two truths? Is it true that you're busy and also that you're not busy? And the one with the broom raised the broom and said, which moon is this? I love that story. It's a good story to be mindful of. While we're involved in any kind of busyness, physical busyness, moving about, sweeping the ground, speaking busyness, or mental busyness, even perhaps sitting today,

[04:52]

quietly, not talking, not moving, but still in your mind there might be some dizziness. So someone could come up to you, perhaps me, while you're sitting and whisper in your ear, too busy, too busy, too noisy inside. You could say to me, you should know there's one who's not busy. In other words, right in the middle of our busyness, of our mental and verbal and physical activity, there is always one who's not busy. Part of our spirit, part of our being, no matter how active we get, is sitting quietly. Not rejecting the activity, not getting caught by it. Not rejecting the vivid and lively process of perception that we're involved in to our ever-changing sensations.

[06:15]

Right in the middle of that, somebody's not pushing that away or holding on to it. There's some way of being that's just attending to this tremendous activity of our life, attending to it, lovingly, always. Now, right now everybody is sitting, and so let me say a little bit about sitting, formal sitting. The first thing that comes to my mind is about sitting, in the sense I think of the Chinese character for sitting.

[07:24]

It's kind of a nice looking character in a way. which perhaps you can imagine. Imagine a horizontal line. Let's just say it's about this. We'll make the character kind of this size, about four feet wide, the horizontal line, four feet wide, okay? About three inches thick. See that? Make it black, okay? Then in the middle of that line, make a vertical line about three feet tall, and then in the middle of that line make another horizontal line about two and a half feet wide. Do you see that? It's kind of like how that looks like. That character means earth or ground. And then on the second story of that character, on that little shelf there up in the air, you make a character that looks like this, with one line leaning on another line. one line like this and one like that, and then set one of those characters on one side of the shelf and then another one on the other side of the shelf.

[08:35]

And that character means person. So the character for sitting has two persons sitting on the earth. Anyway, so the first thing to do when sitting And when doing sitting meditation is to notice a person sitting on the earth. And so formal sitting, one of the things about formal sitting is that oftentimes we say, now I start to sit. In other words, we notice the beginning of the sitting. And people sit, of course, many people sit during a day.

[09:39]

But a formal sitting, in some sense, is where you actually decide, now I'm going to sit. You intentionally sit down as a practice. You don't just sit down just because you're tired, just for convenience, or you don't sit down unconsciously. You consciously set yourself on the earth And again, I often say that in the introduction to sitting is that when you sit, seat yourself as though you were going to sit for a long time. So make yourself comfortable. Sit in such a way that you feel like, well, I could sit this way for a while, maybe for a long time. If I had to sit a long time, how would I sit? Sometimes we sit down with the feeling I'll sit down, but I can always move a little while later, so I'll just sit whatever way, rather than considering carefully taking this position.

[10:51]

In a sense, to sit down with this kind of carefulness and this kind of commitment, that embraces a great deal about what sitting meditation is. And it kind of implies, it implies, one can infer, great deal about what a meditative way of life is namely it is to be aware of your intention in each posture you become involved with So when you sit down, do you intend to sit down?

[12:16]

Well, maybe you do. Check it out. Do you intend to sit just for two minutes, or five minutes, or an hour? Are you sitting in such a way that almost you could be intending to sit that way for a long time? Or rather, not so much that you really intend to sit down forever, but that you intend to sit down in a way that you could sit forever. Again, then the question would be, what is the way that we can sit forever? What is that posture, that attitude in life, that's so close to the way we are, that's so much who we are and what we are, that we can be that way? that we can live that way.

[13:22]

What is the way you want to sit? What is the way you want to walk? What is the way you want to talk? What is the way you want to stand? What is the real way you want to be? And that is practical in the sense that not only you want to be this way, but you can be this way if you pay attention. And a formal period of meditation, in a sense, is a time to remember that. At the beginning of the period, to start saying, here is a time when I'm going to sit in this way that I want to sit, that I want to stand, that I want to live. What is that way? Do you want to live wholeheartedly?

[14:36]

Do you want to give yourself completely to this moment? Do you want to live completely in this moment? As you place your body on earth, do you want to completely be on the earth at this place at this time? Do you want to live each moment like that? And you could say yes, but in particular, do you want to live this moment like that? I'm going to ask you to stand up, but not yet.

[15:46]

Again, I'd like you to do the same thing when you stand up. See if you can stand up in the way that you would like to stand up. How do you want to stand up? Do you want to pay attention as you stand up? If you do, then you have a chance to pay attention as you stand up. If you don't, then of course you don't have to. I'd like you to stand up, please. Thank you. I just want to say that this is supposed to be a relaxed retreat. So I just want to tell you that maybe many people who are like residential monks in monasteries sometimes stand up without paying attention to what they're doing, without thinking now.

[16:53]

Now without really being mindful of how they stand up. So if you lose track of your mindfulness at some point during this day, don't feel as though that's not part of the practice. Part of the practice is to learn how to be mindful in each moment. And also part of the practice is to confess that we sometimes are not mindful, that we sometimes make motions and think thoughts and say things without mindfulness, without being attentive to what we're doing. we admit that we're not attentive we confess that and then we go back to being mindful and now I'd like to ask you with that same intention that I was asking you telling you about before to now begin a period of sitting meditation by taking your seat with this intention to sit on the earth, that you're going to now sit on the earth, that you intend to sit on the earth, and see if you can feel the intention to sit on the earth, and if you wish, follow that intention and sit on the earth.

[18:12]

And you can sit on the earth with the intermediary of a chair. or a brown cushion. So when you're ready, see if you can feel the intention to sit on the earth and then see if you want to follow that intention. As I said before, the simple basic activity of sitting on the earth embraces a great deal about what Zen meditation is.

[19:52]

Another thing which I didn't mention, which is involved here, is not only do we sit on the earth, but the earth supports us. In sitting this way, we touch the earth and the earth touches us back. In sitting this way, we enact one of the basic insights, or perhaps the basic insight of the Buddha. This is the insight or the wisdom of interdependence. earth supports us we support the earth the earth touches us we touch the earth the chair supports us we touch the chair and another thing that I don't always do but I sometimes do and I appreciate the practice is that when I sit down in a chair

[21:14]

or on the cushion or just on the earth, I sometimes check myself to see if I assume beforehand that the earth will support me or that the chair will support me. And if I feel that I assume that, I try to drop that assumption and sit down with more a feeling of checking to see if it will. And standing up from a chair with the feeling of checking to see will the earth, ah, yes, it does support me. And now sitting down, will this chair support me?

[22:18]

So far, it's supporting me, yes. Putting more weight onto it, yes. It's still holding, still holding. Now, it's all there. It's still holding. And also, do I assume that now that it's been holding me this long, it's going to continue? Actually, I find that in a way, I'm more awake if I don't then settle into that now it's going to support me. I'm supportive here now, but I don't know how much longer it's going to go on. Now, some of you might feel like, geez, you'd be good to be anxious if you were sitting like that, wouldn't you? And if I would be, it's not because of that that I'm anxious. It's because of something else, namely that I don't understand the interdependence of me in a chair. So sitting in this way, I start to meditate on interdependence. And I start to become aware that maybe I don't really have that insight.

[23:23]

I don't really trust that me and the chair are working together. When I first came to Zen Center, we had a temple over on Bush Street, and I had an interview with the IIT with the president of Zen Center, and I went up to his apartment, and he said, please sit down. So I sat in a chair. It was a wicker chair, and I went right through it. And he said, you must be rather dense. I assumed I was just starting to practice, you see. So I assumed that the wicker chair would hold me. So I sat down as though this is going to hold me. I don't have to check to see. And so there I went through the chair.

[24:28]

When the Buddha sat under the boat tree, he was assailed, we sometimes say, attacked, threatened, we sometimes say, by demons. Or you could say he was assailed and attacked by doubts. He doubted that it was appropriate. him to sit still under the tree of enlightenment and not move until he realized the way of enlightenment each time we sit we may doubt that we can sit there until we realize the way or another way to put it is we may doubt that we can be present in our life really be present, that we would be allowed to be unmovingly present in our life until we realize the way.

[25:38]

We may think that's too much. I have to run around. I have to be busy. I can't just be still like the Buddha in my daily life. That's too arrogant. Even the Buddha was assailed by the feeling that he was too arrogant. He was being arrogant to think, I'm going to sit here and not move until I understand the pentachorizing interdependence. So he asked the earth, touched the earth, he said, may I sit still here? Is it too much? And the earth said, yes. You can sit still until you realize enlightenment. You can be still. So when you sit down, in some sense, each time you place your butt on a chair, at work, at breakfast, in the meditation hall, each time you sit down, your body on the supporting surface, you could ask, may I sit here?

[26:46]

May I be still here? May I practice here? And when you start putting your weight on the surface and you feel the surface supporting you, the surface is saying, yes, yes. Yes, you can live that way. This is helpful to everybody for you to be present like this. But we have to check. We have to ask with our body and mind, can I be here in the midst of my difficulties, in the midst of my responsibilities, can I be still and present? And I think most of us have to ask again and again. And the asking, again, enacts our relationship with the environment. We ask the environment, do you support me to practice meditation? Am I taking this special time for myself, or do I feel supported?

[27:47]

And in the asking, may I sit here? You remind yourself that you're sitting. Without asking, you miss that side of getting the support, plus also you don't remind yourself that you're there. To say, I'm going to sit here is not the full story of sitting someplace. The full story of sitting someplace is that you're allowed to sit at that place. You're supported to sit at that place. The world is actually... aiding you in being present. Today, perhaps you could, each time you sit, ask that question, may I sit here? Earth, all beings, do you support me to practice meditation during this moment, during this period? And test it with your body.

[28:50]

Put your body down and see if it supports you. See if you can feel that support coming up from the earth into your body. Do you feel the support of the earth coming up to make it possible for you to sit? You're not doing it all by yourself. You're being supported. All that, you know, and I could go on discussing this with you, but just that one point of just the sitting contains all this if you're really mindful of the process of sitting. Every time you sit, you can bring your attention to this moment of sitting. The next point of posture is that we're not only sitting, but we're sitting upright.

[29:54]

We're sitting upright. Not upright necessarily, like upright as opposed to up wrong, but upright in the sense of, I don't know what, alive, balanced. That you find a way to sit where you feel like you're not leaning forward, you're not leaning backward, you're not leaning to the right, you're not leaning to the left. Another way to say this is that we're sitting on the earth and part of what makes it possible for us to sit on the earth is gravity. We attract the earth and the earth attracts us. Being so close to the earth, the attraction brings us right into contact with it. But gravity also, you know, if we're not balanced, gravity tends to want us to fall down.

[31:04]

For example, if we're not balanced, the gravity tends to want to bring our head down to the ground. You know what I mean? If you're leaning forward, your kind of gravity wants your head to go down, forward. Whereas if you're balanced, gravity's also pulling your head down, but not down through your body, so you don't fall forward or backwards. So in one sense, when you're sitting upright, You're both being pulled down and also you're asserting yourself upward. My wife once said to me, using her hands, she held her hand up straight and she said, you're always like this and you're always ready to go like this. I don't know if I'm always like this, but anyway, she said I was. But anyway, I'm sometimes like this, but I'm always ready to go like this.

[32:08]

So when you're sitting upright, in some sense, you're making this effort to sit up, but you're also ready to fall down. You're ready to relax, even while you're making this effort to sit up. In the midst of gravity, we often feel stressed. stressed by how to hold your body, how to hold our body in a way in relationship to gravity. Which is again similar for me anyway to in the midst of our life we often feel stressed by various emotions and feelings and responsibilities. We feel burdened. Sometimes the way to deal with the burden is just to lie down on the ground Another way to deal with the burden is to find a balanced way to be in the field of the burden. That's upright sitting or upright attitude.

[33:17]

It's the attitude that's most efficient in the midst of the burden of having a body. And when you find the upright posture, actually, which takes sometimes years to find really the whole body getting that balanced place, the burden of having the body drops off the body. And you find a place that's effortless. But we have to usually work for years of finding how the weight, how the body is stressed by being held upright in order to find the posture where the The body doesn't have to work. The muscles don't have to work to be upright. It's a long process of trial and error. But people do find it by trial and error.

[34:27]

The stress of leaning, the stress of imbalance in the face of gravity, I guide you to a posture that won't be stressed. My personal experience of long sitting meditations is that it's like a wind tunnel. And in some sense, I don't know, the wind is blowing from various directions, but in a sense it's blowing on the body vertically. And any holding that we have, any attachments we have in ways of holding our body, as we sit longer, The wind increases and blows on that holding until we realize it's untenable over a long period of time to have any holding and we let go. And so our body becomes in some sense streamlined by dropping all kinds of attachments to anything other than balance.

[35:41]

But sometimes they have to hurt quite a while before we find a way that's not holding. Let's see if you can find a posture that's balanced in sitting and walking. That's two points that I'm bringing up about formal sitting. Sitting and the upright posture. That you're balanced. And in both the sitting on the ground and on the upright posture, what's going on here is an opportunity to meditate on interdependence. And the physical leaning, forward or backwards, it also would apply to emotional or mental leaning forward or backward or right or left.

[37:16]

So just as your body is searching for this upright posture, the mind is also searching for an upright posture. Which means, for example, can you see if you can find the attitude, the mental attitude, which is not leaning into the future or leaning into the past? We have a past and future. We certainly have a past. I don't know if we've got a future, but we certainly have a past. We'll see if we have a future. But we certainly have the idea of a future. So like today, like today, like now, can you sit with a mental attitude of not leaning into the rest of the morning? The idea of the rest of the morning is probably swirling around the room someplace, or it's swirling around some of our minds. Like, you know, there's a break in the middle of the morning, supposedly.

[38:26]

And there's lunch. You know, maybe a good lunch. And then there's a break after the lunch. And maybe it'll be sunny, and so on. Such thoughts might occur in some people's minds. And also there's the past. How long has this retreat been going on? How long has my life been going on? What are the things I've done? All that's there. Can you find an attitude, a mental attitude, an upright attitude, that doesn't lean into the future, that doesn't lean into the future and doesn't lean into the past? this is the end of side one please turn aside to without fast-forwarding just simply notes the past for example you may note oh I did a good thing yesterday or I did a good thing this morning or I did a bad thing this morning I did unskillful thing a few minutes ago you mean that thought may occur in your mind well what do you do with that you just say there's the noting

[39:31]

There's the awareness of an unskillful thought, of an unskillful action. That's it. You don't have to lean into it to notice it. But you can lean into it. And leaning into it would be, you know, it would be a way of leaning backward, maybe. Let's say the past is in the back. Leaning back into it in such a way that you feel off balance. That you feel drained and stressed. There's a stressful way to think about your past and that's leaning into your past. And there's an upright way of thinking about your past which recognizes it for what it is and lets it drop. And there's a stressful way to think about your future. A way that makes you tired and pained and also which makes you feel afraid. Thinking of your future and being afraid means you're leaning into your future, even your death. But to recognize your death, to recognize your future, just to see it there and not lean into it, that's a non-stressful way to think of your future, including your death.

[40:45]

So searching for this upright body, an upright mind, your guide is that the imbalanced ways are stressful, tiring, painful. And say, what if I'm already in pain? Look for a balanced way to experience the pain. Which again is, don't lean into the past of the pain or the future of the pain. So the upright posture in the face of pain is called the practice of patience. I've been going on for quite a while, so maybe that's enough for starters in terms of basic sitting meditation. Just those two points to start with. When you actually sit on the ground or in a chair and when you make your body upright.

[41:53]

When you sit mentally on the ground and you're mentally touching the earth and mentally feeling supported and physically sitting on the ground and physically feeling supported. physically being balanced and upright and mentally feeling balanced and upright. Those two points, those two attitudes in each period of sitting meditation. And the same for watching meditation. With standing and walking meditation, again, you and the earth in this interdependence and the standing posture, one where you're not leaning forward or backwards, right or left, Right or left could be interpreted mentally as like and dislike. Also, forward and backwards could be interpreted as like and dislike. This is a state I really like and I'm going to really like get into it.

[42:57]

This is a state which I don't like and I'm cringing from it. Okay? So what I'd like to do now is suggest that I'd like to give you instruction in walking meditation and then do a period of sitting meditation. I'd like to give you instruction in walking meditation and then practice walking meditation and then after the walking meditation do a period of sitting meditation. Okay? And one more point I'd like to mention to you about the sitting meditation. Woo! Now how am I going to get out of this position? Oh, that's one other point. And that is when you first start practicing mindfulness of your body and first start practicing trying to stand upright

[44:05]

and sit upright and walk upright, you may look perhaps like a zombie or certainly quite an awkward person. It's like learning, but it's like learning a new language. You know, when you first start speaking a language, you're kind of awkward. Like in Zen Center, some of us learn Japanese. And they teach Japanese to speak Japanese words often in syllables. So you learn, nega wa ku wa ko no ku do ku o. And you say that, and you feel it kind of awkward, and you look kind of awkward. And then after you say it over and over pretty soon, you say, nega wa ku wa It gets flowing. Same in learning a dance. When you're first learning, it's kind of like, you know, stick man, right?

[45:08]

But then, as you learn the steps more and more, it starts to flow. And the same in the walking meditation or sitting meditation, when you first learn all the parts, you feel awkward and stiff. But that's because you're starting to pay attention. So to switch from walking mindlessly to mindfully, there's a phase of self-consciousness and awkwardness because you're now learning this thing of being more aware and you're not used to being more aware. Or again, you know, I think of like when we first started to walk or when you see a child first walk, Have you ever been there at that moment when a child first walks? The first time, you know, you see them standing and then they walk and then they fall, right? They stand and they walk and they fall. But there's a time when they stand and they walk and they don't fall.

[46:11]

And if you're ever there at that moment, you of course are thrilled, but you also see the thrill of the child. I don't know if there's a child who isn't thrilled at that moment. of standing upright and walking upright. And after a while, we lose that thrill. We think, hey, this is no big deal. But it's really always a fabulous thing to be able to walk. So when you start to become mindful, you kind of tune back into whatever it is, the wonder of walking. you know, and the wonder of being able to stand, but it's also kind of like the, the fragileness of standing, like, bouncing. So now I, I stood up with some mindfulness and I figured, now how am I going to get over to my cushion to show you this thing? So here goes, move the foot, turn all, it's really complicated. Oh my God, gotta lean. So, you know, and I say, I don't want to be so awkward. What's the matter with that guy?

[47:13]

So anyway, uh, One more. Just a second. I've got to get over here. Move that leg. Come on. But after a while, you know, as you get more aware of it, you can start moving more easily and still not lose the mindfulness. Now, of course, you can speed up and then get ahead of your mindfulness. But you can actually, if you just are mindful, you can actually start moving more and more quickly and fluidly, but still stay mindful. yeah it's actually better that way to not be also intense and everything but but then if you get too fast you lose your mindfulness so you get to go back to tense and awkward does that make sense so you come to your seat and in traditional sitting before we sit we often bow to our seat we join our palms together

[48:17]

And again, formally speaking, we join the palms together and we actually put the tips of our fingers about even with our nose. This is just a form of this particular meditation hall. We put the tips of our fingers even with the tip of our nose, the bottom of our nose, and hold our arms away from our body a little bit when we get to our seat. And then we bend forward a little bit and bow to our seat. So this is an act of reverence to this place where we're going to sit. This place on the earth where we're going to sit. We bow to it. This place where we sit is called, in Sanskrit, bodhimandha. It means the mandala, or the circle, of enlightenment, of awakening. The place each one of you sit in a formal period of meditation, in this room or in your home, that place is called the place of enlightenment.

[49:26]

So when you come to that place on the earth and you're going to now sit there and practice the Buddha's meditation, you bow to the place on the earth where you are going to practice sitting like the Buddha sat. The Buddha sat on the earth at the place called Bodhimanda Bodhimandala The Buddha sat in this upright, unmoving way and realized enlightenment. Each time we sit, we also can join the spirit of sitting as the Buddha sits. As the Buddha sat, as the Buddha sits. And we bow to the place we're going to sit to remind ourselves that this is what we're doing. We're going to do the same meditation practice the Buddha did. We're going to try. I do our best. And Suzuki Roshi said when he was old, when he was over 60, he said, now I'm old and I can't sit up as straight as I used to.

[50:37]

But I can try. So we can all do the practice of these great ancestors if we try. So we start by reminding ourselves. So if you'd like to today, before you take your seat here on the floor or up in the ponds or in the chairs, you can bow beforehand. Now I'd like to show you the walking meditation. And I don't think all of you can see my feet. So it's a little bit of a... Maybe I'll do something we don't usually do. I'll stand up here, up here where I think you may be able to see me better. So can you see my feet better?

[51:40]

So there's many ways of doing walking meditation, and this is just one. And so we start, again, formally speaking, by putting your thumb down and wrapping your fingers around, thumb of your left hand down, and wrapping your fingers around the thumb, and placing the thumb against your upper abdomen just below your sternum and then cover the left hand with the right and place your thumb in the little crevice of the left thumb and hold your hands like that with your arms away from your body. Standing up straight, again trying to have this upright posture and then start with your feet staggered about shoulder's width so that the toe of the back foot is even with the instep of the front foot and then check into your breathing and as you notice you're inhaling at the beginning of the inhale lift the back the heel of the back foot so starting to inhale you lift the heel of the back foot

[52:57]

Continuing to inhale, continuing to inhale, continuing to inhale. Finishing the inhale, starting to exhale. As I start to exhale, I take a step. And exhaling more, I continue to shift my weight onto my lead foot as I exhale more. And as I inhale, as I start to inhale again, I lift the heel of the back foot. Inhaling, inhaling, inhaling, exhaling, step. Exhaling, exhaling, [...] inhaling, lift the heel, inhaling, inhaling, inhaling, inhaling. Exhaling, step. Step. Exhaling, exhaling. Now inhaling, lifting the heel, inhaling, lifting the heel. Finishing the inhale, exhale, step. Inhaling, inhaling, inhaling, exhaling, step. Okay? And some people have trouble following their breathing. in sitting meditation, but it's in some ways easier to follow your breathing in this walking meditation.

[54:01]

And again, if you look at a person from the front to the back that's doing this walking meditation, they'll be kind of swaying from side to side as you shift your weight from right to left foot. So if you're watching me now, I'm inhaling. As I inhale, you see my weight As I inhale, lift my heel, my weight goes over to my left more, and then stepping comes back over to that foot. And then inhaling, inhaling, exhaling, exhaling, exhaling, inhaling, inhaling, exhaling, exhaling, exhaling, inhaling, inhaling, inhaling, like that. Okay? Any questions about the walking meditation? Okay, so now maybe we could make a big circle all the way around here for walking meditation.

[55:05]

And we could make a clockwise circle. This group might be too big to do it in the room here, in which case we may have to go outside. Let's see if we can make a circle. First make the circle and then if it's too big we can use the outside too. I mean if it's too tight, I should say. Yeah, I think it's a little too tight. So what I'm going to do is make the circle bigger. So we're going to walk a little faster now. And I'll take these people out this door here.

[56:13]

And you just keep facing the same way and this line will come out. Just follow me. We'll walk around a little bit the hall. Sooner you'll start moving too. Is it cold?

[57:15]

During this time, I'm gonna come around and check your posture. Thank you. Please carefully speak.

[59:41]

And for this walk in meditation, I'd like to make two circles, one inside circle and one circle that goes around the meditation hall and then across the back of the meditation hall. So you can choose whether you want to be inside or outside. of Zen Buddhism.

[62:06]

Can you hear me okay? If you have your hand by your ear, is it... There it is. Now I will try to address the basic insight of Zen Buddhism. In a sense, you know, there are infinite So I wonder, what is the most basic insight? And, you know, you say Zen Buddhism, but let's just say Buddhism. Or let's not even say Buddhism, let's just say the basic insight of complete enlightenment. Complete Buddha. What's the basic insight of a complete Buddha? The basic insight of the complete Buddha is that everything is interrelated.

[63:13]

That, for example, each of us is interrelated with everyone else, and not just all other people, but all other plants, all other animals, the entire universe. That's a basic insight, I think, of Buddha's teaching. Actually, like, understand that. Like, that's the way you understand things. That's the way you see your life. That's the way you see life. Now, if you... Sometimes you may hear, you know, people talk about Buddhist teaching. They say that the Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths. And the first truth is the truth of suffering. But the four-knowledge truths are not the most basic insight. It's that when you understand the four-knowledge truths, then you understand, then you will have the basic insight.

[64:22]

But the four-knowledge truths, in some sense, I feel, arise from, the most basic insight of interdependence. So the Buddha, he understood interdependence, he understood the Four Noble Truths. So when you understand interdependence, then life and death are not suffering. When you don't understand interdependence, when you don't have insight into how everything arises together with everything else, if we don't have that insight, then life is suffering. Now, there's pleasure and pain even if you don't understand interdependence, but even when there's pleasure, there's anxiety if we don't understand interdependence.

[65:25]

So when the Buddha sat still and vowed not to move until realizing the enlightened vision, in sitting still that way, in that balanced way, his eyes opened and he saw how everything was interrelated. And he was liberated from suffering, which arises from ignoring interdependence. The Buddhists saw that by ignoring interdependence, we suffer. By ignoring interdependence, we crave interdependence. If we don't see interdependence, we can't help but crave. So all of our cravings, in some sense, we shouldn't be hard on ourselves for, in a way, but just understand that we crave because we don't yet understand how everything is working together.

[66:33]

But in some sense... Although I tell you this is the basic insight, it's hard to immediately start studying the basic insight. Because since we can't see it, since we're well established in ignoring it, it's hard to turn ourselves around and start looking at what we've been ignoring all along. So, in fact, although the Buddhist basic insight was this incredibly wonderful picture of how everything's working together in harmony, and how in that world, we're not born all by ourselves and we don't die all by ourselves. In the world of interdependence, we're marvelously, wondrously being born by the kindness of all beings,

[67:40]

And in a sense, because we're born by the kindness of all beings, we're not actually born. And because we die by the kindness of all beings, we don't actually die. So in the world of interdependence, we aren't born and we don't die. And there's not even a we or an I. There's just this thing that appears by the kindness of all beings. There's not birth and death in that world. But there's also not like an independent person who lives forever. There's just interdependence which can manifest infinite variety of life. What some people do is they try to like think of interdependence and think of a world of harmony where there's no birth and death and where we're not afraid of what's going to happen to us, which is fine.

[68:47]

But the Buddha didn't teach that way. Actually, he said, first is suffering. In other words, first face the consequences of ignorance. But again, you don't have to go around looking for suffering and say, where's the suffering? I'm going to face that. It's more like, again, you start by just being where you are. And like the Buddha, just don't run away from where you are. And the suffering will present itself to you. So if you go looking for suffering, in a sense, you're off balance. You're trying to stick your head into it. Of course, running away from it won't work either. But it isn't that you're looking for suffering. You just want to face it when it comes. And if you stop running away from where you are, which of course is impossible, but when you stop trying to do something that's not reasonable, namely not being here, you naturally become aware

[70:02]

that there's some anxiety and some discomfort. I told some of you this story. I've had quite a few experiences in these 55 years, but some of them are particularly interesting, so I tell the interesting ones over and over. So although my life is not that, you know, limited, I mostly hit the high points over and over because some things are so encouraging. So one time I was in a yoga class, and actually I was lying on my back in a posture called the corpse pose, and the yoga teacher said, if you stay in any yoga posture long enough, and I thought she was going to say, you will realize, you know, Supreme bliss, or something like that. Something really, I thought she was going to say something really good. I mean, something really fun, I don't know what.

[71:07]

But anyway, she said, if you stay in any yoga posture long enough, you will eventually realize that you're uncomfortable. I was lying on my back and I was quite comfortable, you know. But I thought, that's good. This is worth the price of the class. So in yoga class, but actually she was teaching, I think, a Buddhist teaching, if you say stay still long enough in any posture, you will notice some discomfort. See how she went on to say, even when people are sleeping, in a nice comfortable bed, they still move around in the night to get into a more comfortable position, because even in a comfortable position, the captor gets to be uncomfortable eventually. So there is discomfort from heat and cold and things like that, but even when there's no heat or cold, eventually there's some basic pain that we never can really get away from until we understand how things are actually working.

[72:18]

So again, if we just be still under the bow tree, anxiety and pain will present themselves to us. Then, once that happens, then again we do the same practice. Now we sit under the bow tree with the first truth of anxiety and pain being revealed to us. And we see that in the world of pain and anxiety, that's the world of birth and death. So there is a birth. There is a birth of pain. Pain comes and pain goes. Pain is not eternal. Pain comes and goes. Pleasure comes and goes. if we can then continue the practice of being kind of like the Buddha, just sitting upright and balanced on this planet in the midst of pain, we will see the arising of the pain.

[73:31]

We will see the pain born. And if we can, again, face the birth of the pain, the arising of the pain, and the ceasing of the pain, and the rising of the pain, and the ceasing of the pain, if we can face that in this balanced way, we will see how the pain arises, what the pain depends on. As we start to see how the pain arises, what it depends on, we start to see that the pain is also an interdependent phenomena. And that the arising of the pain is interdependent with ourselves. And it arises independence on ourselves, and it also arises independence on the way we understand ourselves. we'll see that our understanding and our self and the pain, that combination, that's what the constant pain is about. And as we see more and more that this understanding goes with self, goes with pain, as we see that relationship, we get a new understanding called understanding of interdependence.

[74:43]

There is no pain without a certain kind of understanding of the self. If you see that, your understanding changes, and then your understanding becomes the understanding that goes with freedom from pain, or end of pain. And then you enter into the vision of interdependence, which is the end of pain. which the Buddha saw, and then people couldn't understand that view of interdependence, so he taught the world of pain. So by being upright and facing what's happening, our eyes open to the world of birth and death, the world of anxiety and pain, and if we continue that practice, our eyes open to the world of interdependence. If we open our eyes to the world of birth and death, it means we open our eyes to the world of impermanence.

[75:54]

We open our eyes to the world of death. We open our eyes to a world in which there is death. Death of, in particular, most importantly, death of me, of myself. This limited person... this independent person maybe has a death coming to it. Maybe this independent person, this independent being is going to die. I say maybe. When I see for sure, when I see for sure that it's going to die, when I'm really convinced that it's going to die, then I'm really facing the consequences of being an independent person. And when I see and I'm certain that this person, that my death, when I'm going to die, I don't know, plus I am for sure going to die when I'm convinced of that, my eyes open to the world of interdependence where there is no I separate from others.

[77:05]

And when I see that, then what we call great compassion arises spontaneously. Then I'm very happy to work for the welfare of all beings who are my life. Before I see that, my compassion and my willingness to work for the welfare of others still may be there to some extent, but after understanding interdependence, it is infinite. The compassion is infinite and makes no exceptions. Prior to the vision of interdependence, prior to the basic insight, I must have some compassion However, in order to allow the basic insight and compulsive... This is the end of tape number one.

[78:15]

Please go now to tape number two to continue. The gift of letting myself, you know, be where I am. I have to give myself the gift of of meditation, which means I have to give my body the gift of being my body. I have to give my feelings the gift of being my feelings. I have to give my perceptions the gift of being my perceptions. In other words, I have to be generous enough to let what's happening be what's happening. May I say that again? The gift, the generosity of letting what's happening be what's happening. So I'm in this strange position of I often give people permission to be what they are. Isn't that weird? Yes, you have my permission to be what you are.

[79:18]

It's ridiculous that I would give somebody permission to be who they are, but I sometimes do that. Because some people don't feel permission to be who they are. I say, go ahead. Please, as a matter of fact. Part of the compassion which leads to the birth of infinite compassion is the little compassion to let yourself be who you are. Let yourself take your seat, take your position on the earth, and have the experience you're having. Again, there's a kind of strangeness in this, isn't it? Let what's happening be what's happening. Sometimes we don't do that. We actually don't let what's happening be what's happening, or let what is happening. We fight that. That stinginess.

[80:19]

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