fourth day of Seshim. And everyone is sitting very well. Congratulations. And I'm a little concerned. Some of you may have some residual desire. yet, or some strategy for success. Maybe thinking, if you do it in a certain way, or you do it right, then, well, you'll at least survive Sashin, or survive this period of Zazen. So it's good, you know, it's okay to have a strategy.

[01:07]

Just don't be attached to your strategy. It's a little bit like thinking that zazen is something that you can do, or that you can be in touch with, but it's still not fully accepting the reality of your body sitting. Like Kadagiri Roshi once said, it's like doing Zazen long distance, calling out Zazen. Hello Zazen! Hello! Hello breath, where are you? We're keeping it at arm's length. We have these wonderful arms and hands, and so we're used to sometimes being able to manipulate, manipulate things.

[02:16]

The word manipulate, mountain, has that word hand in it. So how can you manipulate some success in zazen? It's quite tempting, quite tempting. And so the secret is to know what you're doing and step back. Take a wider view. It says if you're manipulating something, it's here where you can hold it. But if you step back, you have to let go and you have a wider perspective. So the angle of your practice is wide. So this is, say, two aspects.

[03:21]

One is focus, focusing, being right there with your breath, the precision of the moment. And so that's important, and then letting go of it. Having a wide view. Room to include all the wild monkeys of your mind. When we were studying the Tenzo Kyokan, Dogen has that phrase, you know, that you're carried away by the wild. wild monkeys and wild birds of your thoughts, and so if you would just step back, rather than being carried away by them, then you'll arrive in your true being, your true nature, your Buddha nature. So it's particularly hard to resist some of those wild monkeys, ones that are making faces at you,

[04:29]

or the ones that are angry, or the ones that are telling you what you should be doing. Some of them are very compelling. They sound like a school teacher or your mother. So how to include them in your vow. Last night, Harsha Soh reminded us of vow and said that you really should recall your own personal vow and that when you do live your vow, then you are in touch with your deep happiness. Something like that.

[05:39]

So we have personal vow. I've talked a little bit about my own personal vow that I made when I was a child and then rediscovered and keep rediscovering. So it's good for you to know what is your own personal vow and then how to extend it, how to extend it forward into your life in a way that also includes the whole circle of your being, the reality around you. I just said, extend it forward, and then I had the thought of, pay it forward. People know the phrase, pay it forward? A few nodding heads. I actually ran out of gas in Lovelock, Nevada some years ago.

[06:50]

But then after that, so that's another story, actually. On the west side of Lovelock, Nevada, I ran out of gas. And then after getting gas and driving to the east side of Lovelock, Nevada, heading east, there seemed to be some problem with the transmission. And so I thought I had ruined the transmission. pulled over to the side of the road, called AAA. AAA started sending a truck from Reno, which is about 160 miles away. But then somebody actually drove by with a tow truck and took us back into Love Lock. And we checked in. It was getting dark, so we checked into this little motel. And I thought, OK, I'm going to have to kneel. This is going to change our whole trip. We may have to rent a car or something. But the owner of the motel said, well, my son's a mechanic, and so I'll call him.

[07:56]

So he came over and just fiddled around with a few things and had me push various buttons in certain sequence on the dashboard and move the gear shift around. He said, this is something electronic, actually, and just needs to be reset. And lo and behold, in a few minutes, It worked again. And I felt both relieved and foolish, stupid. And I asked him, you know, what I owed him for his professional assistance. And he said, nothing. I'm just paying it forward. And I didn't know at the time, paying it forward, what did that mean? And he told me there's this movie about paying it forward where you're actually, it's like building up good karma.

[08:59]

You're actually living in a beneficial way with the kind of trust that eventually that will help everyone including yourself when you need it. So paying it forward is part of, say, the goodness or compassionate level. Yesterday we were talking about when the Tao is lost, then we have virtue or we have compassion. So if you are not in touch with suchness, at least you can practice paying it forward. So if you're not in touch with your own practice of zazen, at least you can be kind to yourself, which includes making friends with the wild monkeys in your own mind.

[10:07]

So to make friends with the wild monkeys of our mind, we actually need to look at how they arise. So first they may appear as big monkeys, little monkeys, powerful, compelling entities. But our practice is really to look at the fundamental interdependence of things and see how things arise. So we see how the monkeys of our mind actually come into being. So this takes a lot of careful, careful study. As Dogen said, to study the Buddha way is to study the Self. To study the Buddha way is to study the Self. And we'd like to leap ahead, I think, to where he says, forget the Self and be confirmed by the myriad things, and then the myriad things endlessly convey thusness. Even very experienced practitioners, maybe especially experienced practitioners who feel that they're beyond that learning stage, tend to get past the study of the Self, the close, careful investigation of the Self.

[11:46]

This temptation is sometimes expressed in thinking, oh, I understand. I understand Buddhism. Ah, now I understand Buddhism. Just now as I was offering incense at Manjushri's altar here, I thought, oh, this Manjushri is holding a nyoy. Not holding a sword and a sutra book. Usually, Manjushri is pictured holding a sword and a sutra book, and it just occurred to me now that Manjushri can take the sword and cut away the sutra book. Not being dependent on Buddhism, not being dependent on some teaching. Ryokan, one of our Soto Zen ancestors, well not in our lineage exactly, but one of our Soto Zen adopted lineage members, wrote a poem that goes like this, Buddha is something made up in the mind.

[13:10]

The way, the Tao, It doesn't exist either. I'm telling you, believe what I say, don't go off in some wild direction. If you point your cart shafts north and try to get to the tropics, when do you ever hope to arrive? So, not going off in some wild direction. Very difficult. Always so tempting. So when we're impatient, we want to jump ahead to where there's no trace. If we're feeling a little lazy, maybe say, please, just give me the secret. Give me the teaching. And then think that there's something

[14:14]

called Buddhism, that is other than your own study, your own study of the way. Sometimes what is most tantalizing is actually when you have some glimpse of awakening. some glimpse of body and mind dropping away, some glimpse of a deep, settled quality of samadhi. As Dogen talks about jijiyu sammai, the samadhi of the Self is receiving and generating simultaneously. in which there's a kind of ease and joy and you have some glimpse of that and so you want to, you fall in love with it instantly. Fall in love and want to hold it.

[15:21]

This kind of yearning and difficulty in accepting the loss of some beautiful moment I think is epitomized in the story of Orpheus, the Greek god-hero Orpheus, poet and musician, who lost his lover Eurydice when she stepped on a snake, and the snake bit her, and she suddenly died, and he was bereft. And because he was a god and he had special powers that all of us wish we had, right, that he could charm anyone. So he went to Hades and charmed Hades, the god of the underworld, and worked out an agreement that Eurydice could come back and live with him. His love could return.

[16:28]

But there was one condition, that he walk out of the underworld with Eurydice following behind him and that he not look back. And so you can picture Orpheus climbing up out of the underworld and Eurydice behind And at some point, he can't trust that she's actually there. He steals a glance behind and sees her just dissolving, fading back into the underworld. So this story was very fascinating to the poet Rainer Mario Rilke. And I wanted to read a couple of poems. He wrote a sonnet, a whole series of sonnets to Orpheus.

[17:36]

He was working with that quality of love and the tantalizing quality of love and loss. This actually comes up frequently in Sazen. many moments, moment after moment, actually. But especially when there's something that you find so compelling. So in this sonnet from the second section, number eight, by the way, these are translations by Stephen Mitchell, who is also a Zen student and poet. So here he is, Rilke, calling up an image of joy that arises naturally when you're playing like a child, free and completely wholeheartedly engaged.

[18:48]

You playmates of mine in the scattered parks of the city, small friends from a childhood of long ago, how we found and liked one another hesitantly and like the lamb with the talking scroll spoke with our silence when we were filled with joy it belonged to no one it was simply there and how it dissolved among all the adults who passed by and in the fears of the endless year Wheels rolled past us. We stood and stared at the carriages. Houses surrounded us, solid but untrue. And none of them ever knew us. What in that world was real? Nothing. Only the balls, their magnificent arches.

[19:55]

Not even the children, but sometimes one Oh, a vanishing one stepped under the plummeting ball." So here he has a feeling for that moment, that transient moment. The ball is arching through the air. The playmates are under the ball. There's that moment. and even the child vanishes. So then, Rilke, a little later in another one of these sonnets, which are not actually the sonnet form, by the way, but they're called sonnets, he is looking at, I'd say in a sense he's trying to help Orpheus, extend from his poet's insight to reach out and help Orpheus.

[21:13]

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were behind you, like the winter that has just gone by, for among these winters there is one so endlessly winter, that only by wintering through it, will your heart survive. Be forever dead in your ritzy, more gladly arise into the seamless life proclaimed in your song. Here in the realm of decline, among momentary days, Be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang. Be and yet know the great void where all things begin, the infinite source of your own intense vibration, so that this once you may give it your perfect ascent.

[22:21]

To all that is used up And to all the muffled and dumb creatures in the world's full reserve, the unsayable sums, joyfully add yourself and cancel the count." So when he says, here in the realm of decline among momentary days, be the crystal cup that shatters even as it rang. It's like that phrase from Dogen, the hammer striking emptiness. And so he first calls up the image of winter, and the winter that's so completely endless, that the only way you can actually survive

[23:25]

and enter your life is by being completely willing to winter through, to completely enter the winter. Like Deng Xian saying, go where there is no heat or cold. How do you do that? You completely die into cold, completely die into heat, completely die into winter. completely die into the experience of Eurydice's being gone. So he says, be forever dead in Eurydice. And then this is where your song arises. So all human beings have this this question, because we have consciousness.

[24:30]

This is a wonderful opportunity. Our great ancestor, Yunnan, was very careful in his teaching of Dongshan. He didn't want to bother, he didn't want to burden the genius of Dongshan with too much teaching. So one time when Dongshan asked, what should I do when I want to see my true being? And Yongyan simply said, Ask the messenger within. And then Dongshan said, that's what I'm doing. And Yunyan said, so what does he say?

[25:39]

So this is a suggestion, I think, in your practice to actually check the messenger within, which may be a wild monkey, mean, nasty monkey, naughty monkey, scary monkey, possibly even a demon. If you can stabilize your mind then you can meet what arises, knowing that it is already included. So Dukshan practiced with Yunyan. It's not clear how long, but he seemed to know when it was time. When he'd met his teacher, it was time to leave.

[26:50]

But just as he was Now, preparing to leave, he asked Yun Yan, after your death, if someone asks me if I can describe your reality, how should I answer? So remember, this is the teacher who said, when he asked about seeing the true self, which is seeing his own Buddha nature, the teacher said to ask the messenger within. So now he asks, what about your reality? If someone wants to know about your reality after you die, what should I tell them? And there was this long pause, and then Yunyan said, just this is it.

[28:00]

So Dongshan then went into silence himself, and Yunyan added, you must be most thorough going in your understanding of this matter. So evidently that was the last word that they exchanged. And then Dongshan walked away. pondering and still considering, he didn't completely understand, didn't completely understand Yun Yan's meaning or his teaching for him. And then as he was crossing the river, he looked and saw his reflection in the water and understood at that point, understood Yun Yan's teaching.

[29:10]

And then he expressed it poetically like this, don't seek from others or you'll be estranged from yourself. I now go on alone. Everywhere I encounter it. It now is me. I, now, am not it. One must understand in this way to merge with thusness. So you can picture him seeing his reflection. In this case, he saw his reflection in the water. But as he goes on alone now, he knows that his reflection is in everything he meets, right?

[30:23]

Saying, everywhere I encounter it, it now is me. I now am not it. So it now is me, is the this side of complete interrelationship, of complete recognition of connection, recognizing that you yourself are produced by all the causes and conditions, and anywhere you look, any particular cause, any particular condition, is essential to your being. essential to your ability to be who you are right now. You can't take anything away. And yet, you are not, you are not, say, defined by that.

[31:34]

even as it produces you like that real case crystal that breaks even as you hear the sound of it and it's gone. And then the song arises again. Orpheus continues to sing. Once he releases Eurydice, once he releases his grief, once you release the entrancement that you have with something that you believe, that you depend on, in that moment, then you can say with Dungshan, I am not it. So there's that side of of liberation, of being free.

[32:41]

And we cultivate it by taking good care of what's right in front of us, not going off thinking that it's someplace else. And I wanted to read just a little phrase, a few phrases from Suzuki Roshi talking about caring for the soil. saying in Buddhism we're actually taking care of what is, say, the nominal, which is not only the phenomenal, not only the things. Like in Rilke's poem, when the children are playing and realizing that the houses are unreal, the life of their play is real. the moment of the ball arcing through the air. So Suzuki Roshi says, most of us study Buddhism as though it were something that was already given to us.

[33:54]

We think that what we should do is preserve the Buddha's teaching, like putting food in the refrigerator. Then, to study Buddhism, we take the food out of the refrigerator. Whenever you want it, it's there in the refrigerator. But instead, Zen students should be interested in how to produce food from the field, from the garden. We put emphasis on the ground. Mahayana understanding is that the original purpose of Buddhist teaching is to explain the interdependency of different things, of different beings. So our practice is to understand the relationship of the ground and what appears from the ground. So in your practice you may notice what's in the background of the various emotions and thoughts that arise.

[35:04]

You may not pick it up at first by the arising of emotion and thought, but you may pick it up as you see emotion and thought begin to come apart. Any conditioned bundle at some point comes apart. So if you stay with it, if you bring your awareness to that, Sometimes a very intense feeling may be very difficult to stay with, so you're feeling very angry. For years I myself could not even feel my anger because it was more than I could bear to feel it. So I didn't even know that I was angry. Since I couldn't feel it, I wasn't angry. One time I was walking out in the driveway there, and one of my teachers, Harry Roberts, who was a Yurok-trained shaman teacher, was sitting over by near where the stop sign is now in his yellow pickup truck.

[36:23]

And he saw me walking, and he gestured, waved me, or called me over. And he said, Why are you walking like you're angry at the earth? The way you put your feet, the way your feet touch the ground like you're angry at the earth. And I said, I don't know. I don't feel angry at the earth. So that took me some time to actually investigate how I was in relation to the earth. Did I actually see the beauty? Could I actually walk in beauty? In the process, then, I had to also feel that this hidden anger was something that I needed to study.

[37:37]

as Dogen says, study the self. So studying the anger that I didn't see and didn't feel, but someone else pointed out to me, then became a koan, you could say, a koan for me. And it's sometimes very intense just to stay with the present experience of some emotion like that until you can actually just penetrate it. See, what is there? How does it serve me? How does your belief serve you? How does your emotion serve you? Why are you depending on it? Why are you depending on not seeing it?

[38:37]

So exactly how that works then is a kind of allowing the breath, actually, to move through it. Because you're staying with the breath as it finds its own way, millisecond by millisecond. It actually takes a long time for the breath to arise and the breath to go. All that time it's finding its way in your body, into every cell of your body. This is happening on a molecular level. Because of the pine tree, you can breathe. The little molecules leaving the pine needles, finding their way into this room, finding their way into your lungs.

[39:58]

Precious. And then into each cell. So the breath is actually a kind of energy, and finding its way through your whole being. It takes some, say, protected place, like the zendo, for you to say, OK, I'll trust that the breath is actually finding its way. I don't have to do it. Doing it is too much. Realizing that you can't do Zazen. That Zazen is actually the Bodhisattva vow which is bigger than your being, bigger than your sense of self, bigger than the whole separation into self and other.

[41:08]

So how is this very big thing such a tiny, tiny movement? So it's very interesting to me then how that appreciating vastness comes down to appreciating breath and just minute particle. of energy moving into this area that I have defined as myself, breaking through the boundary of what I have defined as myself, completely dissolving it, letting it teach me So please take good care of each moment of your life in your zazen.

[42:31]

Recognize your affinity and notice the area where it's hard to trust and see if you can stay right there. Entering the area of your own body-mind that may be unfamiliar. It's already your, say, your true inheritance. It's already your inheritance of Buddha-mind, of true nature. So, see if you can allow the awareness that you have to not hinder that. Today I had said I would give a short talk.

[43:50]

I said to myself. And now the kitchen, people are leaving to prepare lunch. And I guess that doesn't make it a short talk. So my intention is to encourage your practice. Thank you for listening. May our intentions...

[44:25]

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