Morning. Well, this is the end of, we're getting toward the end of our practice period. I mean, our sesshin. And practice period. So this afternoon we will have the so-called shuso hosen. Hosen means question and answer. Dharma Combat, a ceremony where everyone in the practice period, at Urdhva Sashin, will ask a question. For some people, it's really hard to pick up a question, take up a question.

[01:00]

What am I gonna ask? But anyway, do it. You know, every question puts the Juso on the spot. And the Juso's task is to reply to your question, but not to answer it in a, not to explain the answer. As soon as the shuso starts to explain anything, they're lost. So, the shuso asks, whatever your question is, the shuso should answer it from their deepest place.

[02:11]

Not answering, but responding. There's a difference between answering and responding. And an answer may be okay, but a response, from a pure place in their deepest heart or mind is what should come forth. And you may not understand the response, and even the shuso may not understand the response, but there's truth in that response, more truth than in any explanation. So, we're not testing this use of knowledge, we're asking for their understanding. Understanding is not knowledge. Prajna is not knowledge, it's intuitive understanding.

[03:16]

So the shuso brings, your question brings forth something from the shuso which is very deep, maybe not, maybe shallow, whatever it is. Some responses are really good, some responses are not so good. That's okay. But you do your best and the shuso does her best. to connect you. It's like connecting each other, like the grove of trees. The grove of trees is all one tree. So please be prepared. It's not exactly combat.

[04:29]

The term is combat. In Japan, like at the Heiji, Although I have not seen that at Eheji, I have seen a photograph, a movie, a little movie, and I know people who have done that at Eheji. But there's a list of questions and a list of responses. So the shusa is supposed to understand the responses to the questions that are set. So it's more formal, more formalistic, a little more mechanical. But our questions are like chickens, free-range. Free-range questions. Non-pasteurized. Yes, the energy is very strong, and that's the most important thing.

[06:06]

It's a strong energy. So I don't criticize that. It's a different way of doing things, different way of, and it's testing whether the shuso understands the questions that are scripted and what their response is. I don't want to go on about this because I really want to give my talk. That's my announcement. This is my talk. Yesterday, I think it was, during the Shuso's talk, the question was brought up, or what was brought up was Suzuki Roshi's commentary on sun-faced, moon-faced, and we came across this passage.

[07:21]

Whether I am at Tassajara, this is Zigiroshi talking, or at San Francisco, no problem. Even though I die, it is all right with me, and it is all right with you. And if it is not all right with you, you are not a Zen student. It is quite all right. That is Buddha. So there was some kind of question or quote. How can Suzuki Yoshi say, it's all right with you? Because you are you and he's him, right? It's all right with you, and it's all right, it's okay with me when I die. It's okay with me, and it's okay with you, and if not, you're not a Zen student. That makes perfect sense. except that it's presupposing that it's okay with you. Do you get that? Well, I translated this. I mean, not translated, I edited this talk with Ed Brown, and he may have said, actually, he may have said that

[08:36]

and it should be all right with you. He may have said that, but whether he said that or not, whether it should be all right with you or if it's not all right with you, it doesn't make any difference because it's all the same. It's really all the same. Even though I die, it is all right with me, and it is all right with you, or it should be all right with you. So this is the kind of statement that comes up when you feel very strongly about something, and you see that you're trying to make a point. So people would, as an extreme point, that people would get, they'd kind of shake people up a little bit.

[09:40]

When the teacher dies, or anybody, it should be okay with you. Because the purpose of living is to die. If you don't understand that, then you don't understand the purpose of life. The purpose of life is to live and to die. And living and dying is happening at the same time. It's not like dying is a part of living. Living is dying and dying is living at the same time. If we don't understand that, then we're not real Zen students. That's what he's saying. When we think about dying, we think it's awful. You can think that it's awful. That's one way of thinking. You can think it shouldn't happen. You can think that it shouldn't happen. You're free to do that.

[10:46]

But it should happen. It should happen, that we should die. Without dying, we can't live. There's no living. You can't have one without the other. You can't eat without shitting. Which is the most important, eating or shitting? Which is the most important, living or dying? It's all equal. So we should enjoy our dying. I can't say that I will enjoy my dying, but It's important to accept what is. Moon phase, sun phase, sun phase, moon phase, whatever it is, okay. It's got to be okay. How can it not be okay?

[11:50]

It's just a matter of whether we like it or don't like it, or want it or don't want So, I've been with many dying people. I guess it's many, it's a number. It's an awesome, wonderful experience. And sometimes people say, well, you know, my uncle died or my father died or my brother died or somebody I know died, but I didn't feel any remorse or any kind of emotional something, but I feel guilty that I didn't feel that. But there's no reason to feel guilty if you don't feel guilty.

[12:54]

Sometimes people feel it later, you know, a kind of numbness, which is usual, actually. To actually be with a person and go along with their dying in a very intimate way is, for me, a very awesome experience. When we were with Suzuki Roshi, when Suzuki Roshi was dying, he asked all of his ordained disciples to come in. We all came into his room. And it was really very heavy, but at the same time, it was very light.

[13:58]

It was hard to describe. But everyone had tears. I wouldn't say we were all bawling. It wasn't like that. It was like we all felt the same way, similar way. And we all had tears. And it was wonderful. It was just a wonderful event. He was kind of smiling and so forth. The feeling was more than sad. There was sadness, there was sadness, but it was something beyond sadness.

[15:04]

It was inexplicable. Sometimes, well, when Shakyamuni was dying, the arhats were all surrounding him and they were crying and bawling, and you see that in the picture where he's lying down. And then he says, you just don't understand, if you had really understood what was going on, you wouldn't be crying. But you should cry. You know, you should cry your heart out. If you're going to cry, you just cry your heart out. It's not just acceptable, it's what you should do. At the same time, we have to understand what's really happening.

[16:05]

So, what are we crying for? It doesn't help the person who died. It's about us. Our remorse is about us. About how we feel. And also to stay connected with the person. That connection is important. Because if we really understand, we're more helpful to the person who died than if we don't understand. But you have to go beyond our understanding to our emotional feeling. That's important. That's what helps us. Master Tozan, this story, whether it's apocryphal or not, we don't know.

[17:11]

But he was ready to die. And so he, I don't know, maybe he sat up in Zazen and said, I'm going now to his monks. And he closed his eyes and everybody was crying. And he said, he opened his eyes and he said, you just don't understand what's going on. He said, what I'd like to do, what I'd like you to do is take one week and prepare this wonderful stupidity purifying finale to my decease. And so they made this wonderful feast and they all had a kind of going away party. And the monks were dry-eyed, and he died, so to speak.

[18:17]

So whatever dying is, you don't know. It's the dark, right? That's just the idea. Because we live in the light, we think that dying is the dark. It's just a contrast. Dark and light are contrasts. So because we don't know, it seems dark. And then we think, well, the dark is bad. So dying is bad. But dying is just, it's like a flower, you know? We are flowers. We are flowers. and when we come up it's so joyful and then the flower takes on its various stations and blooms and so forth and then little by little it dies and its body goes back to the earth and fertilizes the ground and then it comes back up again in a new form.

[19:28]

This is our life and death happening all at the same time. So maybe death is the adventure. Anyway, I'm not ready to answer questions yet. So then Suzuki Roshi says, If I suffer while I'm dying, that is suffering Buddha, and there's no confusion in it. Maybe someone will struggle because of physical agony or spiritual agony, everyone, maybe everyone will struggle because of physical agony or spiritual agony, but that is not a problem. We feel it's a problem, but it's actually not a problem. We should be very grateful to have a limited body like yours and mine, If you had a limitless life, it would be a great problem for you.

[20:34]

But actually, the limitless life could be birth and death. So we think of life, as I said the other day, we think of life and death as opposites. But that's stopping short. There's birth. life and death. So, if we think that life and death are opposites, that's a mistake. Birth and death are opposites because they're both dynamics of life. Life includes birth and death. Birth and death are the activities of life, but life doesn't come and go. So if we think that life is the opposite of death, then we think that, then we don't, it looks like life is the end and death is nothing.

[21:52]

But that can't be. Logically, it doesn't make sense. Logically, it makes sense that there's nothing but continuation. continuation of birth and death, which is constantly, that's what creation is. Creation is birth and death. Without death, there's no life. And without life, there's no death. So if we think that death is the end of life, we think of life as the opposite of death. Birth and death are opposites. But in life, in birth there's death, and in death there's birth. As soon as we're born, we're experiencing death.

[22:59]

We're creating, our life is a creative life going toward optimism. And then it starts going down toward pessimism. But it doesn't have to. Because death is within life, and life is within death. Nobody knows what will happen in the continuation of this birth-death continuum. We don't know. We have all kinds of theories and so forth. I don't have any theory. That may be theoretical what I'm talking about, but I don't think so. This is Buddhism. Buddhist understanding. There's really no birth. I mean, there's really no life and death.

[24:02]

Because there's only continuation. And we call it life and death or birth and death. I don't use the term birth and death, the opposites of life and death, because life contains both birth and death. So for me, life is the fundamental. So we talk about afterlife. Well, we think of afterlife if we think that This present life is the end. It's after something. So for many Zen masters, for Suzuki Roshi and Thich Nhat Hanh, it's interesting to me that they both have a very similar understanding. You don't go anywhere because

[25:10]

There's no self to go anywhere. That's Buddhist understanding. There's no self to go anywhere. When the conditions are there, something arises. And when the conditions are no longer there, it subsides. So one of the problems that we have is we identify ourself as separate. as an entity, and we are, you know, I am a self, but that which is myself that I feel is myself is not a self. So there's no place to go. We arise as this entity called myself, And when the conditions are no longer operating together, to keep it together, it goes back.

[26:16]

Or, I don't know about back, I don't know where it goes, but it doesn't go anywhere, because it didn't come from anywhere. So we should be very grateful to have a limited body like yours or mine. If you had a limitless life, it would be a great problem. A limitless life as a body. We do have a limitless universal life. Because we identify with the body, with ourself as an entity, it's hard to picture our life as the universal life, which is endless, but not in this form. So, I don't know about rebirth.

[27:19]

I have no belief in reincarnation, but rebirth is logical because energy continues, but the energy doesn't continue I don't know, but my theory is that energy continues on and on and takes various forms. That's logical. Whether energy is true to form is another question. That would be rebirth. whether we come back. But where is there to come back to? And who is it that goes? So we're already the universe. Our true body is the universe. That's also Buddhist understanding. Our true body is the whole universe.

[28:23]

Because we identify ourself as separate, it's hard to deal with that. Well, even though my whole body is the whole universe, or I'll lose my consciousness. But wouldn't it be wonderful if you lost it? We think that what we have is the best. Just hold on. We think that what we have is the best because we have it. But it's hard for us to imagine there could be something better. Well, heaven, that's right. Heaven and hell. That's where people's thinking went. So, who knows? But I don't speculate beyond that. I'm just open to whatever it is. Whatever it's going to be, it will be. And I don't say I'll be happy or unhappy, but I will accept it. So this is how we live our life.

[29:28]

This is what Suzuki Roshi is talking about. Whatever it is, OK, I'll deal with that. And OK, I'll deal with that is what makes us joyful. I expected this, but I got that. Too bad. If you don't accept it, you'll be unhappy. And if you accept it, you have the possibility of being happy. Now, I just want to read a little bit more. A human being is a human being, and we can enjoy our life only with our limited body. This limitation is vital. Without limitation, nothing exists, so we should enjoy it. Weak body, strong body, man or woman, the only way to enjoy our life is to enjoy the limitation that is given to us.

[30:32]

So sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha does not mean to be indifferent. I don't care whether it's the sun-faced Buddha or the moon-faced Buddha. That's a quote. It means that whatever it is, we just enjoy it. So when we sit in Zazen, we can just enjoy whatever it is. The purpose of Zazen, people say, I've heard, you know, I've been practicing for so long, now I don't even know why, now I don't even know what, you know. What is the purpose of Zazen? The purpose of Zazen is to let yourself go and enjoy your universal life as a vehicle for light. That's all. You let go of your ego so that the light can pour through. That's what it is for me.

[31:37]

That's my understanding. I didn't come to Zazen because I was unhappy or suffering. Not that I wasn't, not that those were not there, but that's not why I came to practice and continued. The reason I came to practice continues because I like to practice. That's the only reason. I didn't have all these reasons to get enlightened. I never went to practice seeking out to get enlightened or that I was unhappy or any of those things. As soon as I sat down, I was happy. And that's what I've been doing ever since. There's no other reason for me. I just enjoyed the practice and I enjoyed the pain. Not all the time.

[32:38]

You know, there's joy in pain, and there's pain in joy. That's the way it is. There's birth and death, and there's death and birth. It's all happening at the same time. It's not that someday I'll be enlightened. Enlightenment is our practice of unhappiness. or whatever. Enlightenment is accepting whatever's there. Okay. [...] It's all the same. It means that whatever it is, we just enjoy it. This is also beyond non-attachment, because when our attachment reaches the point of non-attachment, that is real attachment.

[33:50]

If you are attached to something, be attached to something completely. Sun face Buddha, moon face Buddha. I am here, I am here, I am right here. This kind of confidence is important. When you have this kind of confidence in yourself, in your being, you can practice true Zazen beyond perfect or imperfect, beyond good and bad. So, do you have a question? Besides John. It's not that I'm discriminating. It's just that I want you to sit back a little bit and let somebody else be first. Not be first. Gary. Yes.

[34:53]

Yes. Yes. Oh, you can do that. It's not up to me. That's up to you. It's not up to me. Well, 49 days is a kind of number that comes from the Shingon school, which in Tibet it's Shingon, and in Japanese it's… They have this bardo thing, the bardo, I don't know, there's no soul, I don't know what it is, because in Buddhism there's no soul, but whatever it is.

[36:24]

Continues for 49 days in a purgatory sort of thing. That's 49 days until they get to Sita Heaven, I'm not sure. But somebody else probably knows better than I do. Well, it's in there, yes. So it's not something I believe in, but I neither believe nor disbelieve. I don't say, oh, that's not true because it's folk stuff, which it is, but a lot of folk stuff gets into Buddhism. But if that's helpful for people, it's not helpful, I don't think it's helpful for the dead person, I think it's helpful for the alive people. So if people want to do that and it makes them feel good, do it. I have no problem with that, but I don't believe in it particularly, but do it.

[37:32]

All these rituals make the living feel good. That's my feeling. They're for the living, but it's a connection with the dead. So because we want to have this ongoing connection with the dead, we have the ceremonies. To me, that's what it's about. It's about our connection with the dead. Whether it helps the dead or not, maybe, I don't know. Maybe, that's okay. I don't hold to theories like that, although it's like prayer in a sense. Prayer's okay. We pray for people. And we don't have much prayer in our practice. We say what we pray is that, right, but that's, Instead of prayer, we said Zazen.

[38:39]

So having Zazen for 49 days, that's more our style. It's time-consuming. But that's all we have, right? It's time. Might as well do something with it. Okay, you know, I want to go to the back. And then I'll come back to you. I see two hands. You have to fight it out. You have to speak up too. Yes.

[39:51]

Yes. Just be with the person. Just be open and be with the person. Just, you know, do you need something? You know, I'm here. And I myself, because I myself am feeling settled. That helps them to feel settled. I don't try to tell them anything. Because mostly the people that I sit with are people that are Zen students. So they have some understanding of their own. But just to be with the person, listen to the person, be sympathetic and helpful, and allow yourself to die with them. I am going along with you and holding your hand all the way to when you're no longer breathing.

[40:59]

I will go with you that far, and then you're on your own after that. But to me, that's what I'm doing. I just go along with them, whatever they need, whatever they need to talk about. They have a companion holding their hand and walking with him to the edge, and hopefully not falling over. But that's what I do. You can do whatever you want, but that's what I think works for people. If I start crying and say, oh, you shouldn't be dying, that just makes them feel worse. Because what you're doing as a companion is helping them to feel that it's okay to do what they're doing. I feel that it's okay for them to be doing what—and then they feel okay about it, hopefully.

[42:08]

And that works. Yes. Yes. Yes, that's why I don't cry. I may have some feeling like that, but I have to feel that it's okay to die. And if I don't feel that it's okay, then I can't take them there. I have no idea what it's going to be like when it's me, but that's my preparation.

[43:10]

So it's the other person who had their hand up in the back. I can't see your head at all. Well, let's hear your voice. includes both awakening and ignorance? Yeah. The word life includes birth and death? Well, usually we call it birth and death or dharmakaya or whatever. I call it life. It's just words. I'm appropriating the word life to use it as Buddha nature. But because Buddha is a kind of abstract term, but life is something that we deal with all the time, and so I appropriate life in that sense. Penelope?

[44:17]

I cried, and I'm glad I did. I want them to know how beloved they are. I don't think you should hide anything. Well, let me say this. Yeah, let me say that. Not to show that it was going to hurt, if it's going to hinder them. Yeah. I can't tell you whether you should or shouldn't do anything, right? But I would say, For me, if someone was doing that, when I was dying, I'd say, don't do that.

[45:42]

I understand you're grieving, but I don't want to make you unhappy. Just because I'm dying, I don't want you to be unhappy. But then you say, but I am unhappy, and so please let me cry. What your intimacy is with the person is your intimacy, and I can't tell you what to do. And even though I'm saying what I would do, it doesn't mean that that's necessarily what I would do, because something else might come up. Yeah. Kelsey. And another one that's actually mid-flank frisbee, and the one that Tim Bates just stopped on the field. Well, not in front of me, no.

[46:59]

But every death is a surprise. But you should be prepared for anything. That's my response. You should be prepared. The Zen student's life should be prepared for anything at any time because your mind is totally open. You should keep your mind open and not have preconceptions about things as much as you can. And when something happens, you're ready to respond intuitively. John, let me come back to John. Okay. we hear in the Arhat's fruits or whatever, is intuition. That is to say, to penetrate the being of others and of things such that we understand what's going on with that.

[48:09]

So I'm imagining, so you go down in the roots of the trees and pretty soon all the roots are together and it's like, I don't know if I'm you or you and me, but you better share this water. You better share this nutrition. And so, I don't know who I am, I don't know who you are, and yet here we are doing what's next. Composting. Well, composting is important. Our world exists because of composting. So my question is, would you go so far as to step into that as an idea of what might be or not? Well, I'm sure that goes on. Yes, I'm not exactly sure of your exact point. Well, I guess my question is, when I see the roots, I also see the image of the balloon in the ocean, and as we dive, the balloon just disappears and we're all water.

[49:16]

Well, yes, I see what you're saying. We're all, you know, we're waves on the ocean. Everything is a wave on the great ocean of existence. But the waves and the ocean are the same thing. The waves are just the activity of the ocean. So yes, we are just the activity, the roots are the activity of the tree. And the earth is endless But I think it's important to understand. Suzuki people tend to, in our thinking, we have the essence and the function.

[50:23]

The essence is Buddha nature or Dharmakaya, and the function is all of our activities. And we tend to think of them as two things. When we return to the ocean or something like that, but the waves don't return to the ocean because they are the ocean. So at the same time that we're individual, we're one with everything. So it's not, we talk about two things because of their essence of function, but it's really one thing. The waves are the ocean and the ocean is the waves. So every wave contains the whole ocean. Each one of us is the whole universe. We're just microcosms of the universe, little microcosms running around relating to each other, you know, punching each other in the jaw and feeding each other. getting in each other's face, helping each other.

[51:29]

It's wild out there. The world is a wild place. There's a saying, this is hell and hell is where we dwell. I often think that that's what this place is. You know, we say, when we die, we go to heaven or hell. But actually, we're right here, you know, they're all right here. There's no other place where we're going to go with it to this heaven and hell. This is it. And it's also purgatory. We had this wonderful little ceremony at the grave site when my father died. And then three days later, we learned that actually he was buried three hours away and someone else was buried. Where we had this little heartfelt ceremony. And the way it was found out was that the woman who was being buried three hours away, just before they lowered the body, one of her children said, could we take one last look?

[52:44]

ceremony but you know it was like so obvious to me like it was wholehearted and it really I mean of course we switched them but what I'm trying to say is it didn't take away from our earnestness. The wrong person probably enjoyed it. Thank you. Yes, yes, it's for the people, yes, right. It's for the people, yes. So we want to remember, you know. Some people we don't want to remember, but it's because we want to remember and we want to do something for them and give them our feeling and that's good. It should be that way, you know. Otherwise we've become callous and thoughtless and so what?

[54:07]

So we have to be careful because to see the process as a process is one thing, but our emotions and feelings are another. And it's possible to not feel anything but it's really good to feel something because it makes us more human. But we also have to see it in both ways. We have to see that this is the process of life. Birth and death is the process of life, and there's nothing we can do about that except accept it. that we have feelings and thoughts and emotions, and they also have to be satisfied, even though they're delusional.

[55:12]

We have to satisfy our delusional feelings, thoughts, and so forth. So enlightenment has to include delusion. If we try to separate enlightenment from delusion, then we have another duality. So it's important. Our delusion is really important. Maybe delusion is not the right word. Our illusory understanding, our feelings, thoughts, and so forth, that has to be included. But we have to understand that that's what it is. Otherwise, we get lost in our emotions and lost in our feelings, and we don't know how to operate. And we think that it's wrong because our feelings are so strong that we don't want the person to die. It's going counter to the way things are. It goes counter.

[56:15]

I don't want this person to die. Of course not. But this person is going to die. Every single person who has ever lived is gone. And we too will be gone. But that doesn't stop us from having our feelings. But our feelings, do you remember Withering Heights? Huh? Yeah, Heathcliff. This man that had the big mansion, you know, and he was so in love with this woman. And she, I remember what their relationship was, but he was obsessed with that. And when she died, he couldn't stand it. How could that possibly be that she would die? And so, and it was just driving him crazy.

[57:16]

And in the middle of the night, he came out with a spade and dug up her grave and embraced her bones, you know. That's like ignoring reality and simply being obsessed with emotion and feelings. Alan? Well, you know, he'd been a gas guard for a long time. Yes, yes. Yeah, but they don't deny that the person died. Yeah, that was in the National Geographic a couple years ago.

[58:17]

Pretty interesting. Okay, James, it's your turn. But this is the end. She's going to hit me with that. Please speak up. You're welcome. Thank you.

[58:41]

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