For some of you this is the usual Saturday morning talk and for some of you it's the beginning of a two-day sasheen and for some of you the beginning of a three-day sasheen. For me it's a great relief to do a session, and it must be for you too. At last, only one thing to do, zazen. so easy to get caught in the activity, the usual activity of our world.

[01:17]

if you know something about zazen you can tell when you're beginning to get caught because it suddenly seems very thin and meaningless and like a dream. I think many people feel this way even if they don't know zazen and so it gets thinner and thinner and finally they commit suicide or something. When you don't lose your calmness of mind, usual activity is just a way of participating in the world and a way of communicating to others about our practice. The important thing in zazen is, and in asasin, is the calmness of your mind.

[02:54]

We talk a lot in Buddhism about going to the mountains or to a cave somewhere or into solitude or into seclusion. But we shouldn't be fooled to think that means actually just a cave or just seclusion. Everything and all these words in Buddhism almost always mean the usual world you see and your own, well we don't say inner and outer but it means both so there's no inner and outer. So when we say solitude we actually mean the calmness of your mind. When you know the calmness of your mind, you're always in solitude. But it's very difficult to reside in the calmness of our mind all the time, in activity and in zazen. Probably the most difficult problem is restlessness.

[04:35]

And probably the easiest way to cut through restlessness initially is to learn to sit with calmness in the midst of difficulty, in the midst of, for a sasheen, for many of you, in the midst of pain. We're always usually in zazen or in our life trying to avoid pain and that avoidance is the real problem. And pain and restlessness and avoidance are all very closely related and if you can have calmness of mind

[05:41]

in assessing moment after moment, day after day, then in whatever situation you find yourself, you can begin to have calmness of mind in the midst of your usual fits of anger or anxiety or distraction or work situations. What we mean by effort in zazen practice

[06:49]

is not an effort which is limited to zazen. It's not as if effort means doing zazen, you know, all the time. Effort should continue into your sleeping and into your work period and into whatever activity you take. If you say, ah, the work period or sleep time is not effort, just zazen is effort, then The end of that is the many stories about, well, he was in a cave for 44 years and he ate nothing but rocks. I met people, I've met people that that has been said about, and they always offered me candy. Oh, won't you have some candy? I had to imagine him eating rocks. Anyway, this kind of story doesn't mean you're to extend your practice indefinitely in all directions for the sake of its hardness.

[08:15]

And we don't mean the usual form of effort, like pushing a box or something like that, but rather some kind of resolve, some kind of resolve that we continually renew. And to renew that resolve is our effort. In this case, your resolve is to sit here, where you are. This is my practice. This is my life now. This is my zendo. This is my sangha. Wherever you are. Now I'm going to practice. If you have that

[09:24]

firm resolve. If you fix your mind on that, now I'm going to practice. This sasheen I'm going to practice. This moment I'm going to practice completely. That's what we mean by effort. So in this sasheen, and every session and each moment, this moment is now. This is my practice now. If pain comes, you practice with the pain. Usually we're dreaming, you know, dreaming about what we'd like things to be like or dreaming about futures or what it should be. But that kind of dreaming is very thin. It's like only seeing the outside of onions, you know, how thin the outside of an onion is, you know. And when you live in that kind of a world,

[11:11]

making effort in that kind of a world, making effort in a dream world, there's no satisfaction in it. It just gets thinner and thinner and dreamier and dreamier until your life feels utterly hopeless. We Buddhists dream too, and dream and imagination are very much a part of our practice, but we dream about what is, not about what should be. I mean, the kind of difference is someone can read a book about Japan, say, or about Tibet or France, And from reading the book, they can tell exactly what France is like. Not exactly, but your imagination can tell from the book exactly what France is like, maybe. But for some people, after they've been to France, they can read a book and say, ah, so, then they can find the book about France very interesting, after they've been there.

[12:43]

then it recalls to them and opens up to them what they saw. But what I mean is, what I'm talking about now is that kind of imagination, which in Buddhism we say, if you pick up one corner, you know three. So our imagination or our dream is about what actually is. And when you really know yourself, you know you're Buddha. When you know the extension of your practice, you are Buddha. When you know the extension of our life right here, dreaming on what actually is, this is a true Sangha, not a Sangha based on what should be. So when you practice Zazen and you know the calmness of your mind,

[14:06]

If I say, you enter into a kind of dream, you won't understand what I mean. It sounds too dreamy, I don't mean that, you know. But normally we look at onions from the outside, you know. And all you take an onion apart, as the famous saying is, inside there's nothing in the onion, you know. But our practice is to start from the inside of the onion, where there's nothing. And then we work out this layer, this layer, you know. So eventually it's like Avalokiteshvara who has 11 heads and 1,000 arms. So Avalokiteshvara, if you're a thief, he may appear as a thief. If you're a soldier in Vietnam, he may appear as a soldier in Vietnam. If you're a capitalist, he may appear as a capitalist. If you're a communist, he may appear as a communist. And so you should practice with others with that spirit. You should practice with them so your life is not critical of their life. But by your practicing with them, they see how dreamy their life is, how thin the dream is.

[16:01]

But you can never practice with others in this way until you know the true calmness of your mind. And the power of distraction is so great, of our desire to dream about what should be or could be. our restlessness is so great it's nearly impossible to actually reside in the calmness of your mind. Suzuki Roshi had a very interesting interpretation of materialism. which is, he described being materialistic as not recognizing material as you. If you recognize material as you, then you won't smash it or burn it or distort it or pollute it. You won't do that to it.

[17:41]

I mean, a turtle won't smash its own shell. And this world is like our shell, if we're the turtle. So, he described a materialist as someone who doesn't recognize material. For example, you try to get something repaired, and they say, I'm sorry, the labor cost in repairing this is so great, you should buy a new one. That kind of thinking of, we only treat material as it's convenient to us. The object itself isn't important to repair or not repair. Just what the people feel is important. In that way we misuse material, we just shape it to our dream world of automobiles and etc. And there's no way to escape from this kind of materialism until you recognize

[19:04]

your own immateriality, till you begin with the material, which is you sitting here in sasheen, until you find within that, or until you find that itself calmness of mind. then you find what you are has no limit and includes everything, your fingernails, your turtle shell, whatever. In that kind of solitude of the calmness of your mind, you'll meet no one.

[20:48]

I want each of you to share this calmness of mind with me, this sesshin. If you have that experience, it helps me. We don't have to say anything. It's so clear how calm everything is. To become acquainted with the calmness of your mind, you have to cut through the distractions. especially the distractions of wanting to move, of restlessness, of painful legs. If you can physically cut through those distractions, physically cut through those distractions so you can sit completely still, then in the midst of activity you can be still.

[22:41]

Our practice isn't just to be still in Zazen somewhere, in a cave, you know, but to be still all the time, to not lose our calmness of mind. But the best way to find our calmness of mind is to cut through the distractions of our restlessness, and to renew the resolve to cut through those distractions, no matter what form they take. or the desire to relax when you go to sleep. You should be relaxed all the time. You shouldn't save up and say, now it's effort and later it's relaxation. Actually, you should be relaxed now.

[24:00]

in the midst of the sasheen, throughout the sasheen. It always interests me how in Japan the same flowers look so different because everyone loves flowers so much, you know.

[25:28]

same cherry blossoms or plum blossoms. But part of the difference is in Japan they have such a different feeling for the flowers that they plant them in a way so you notice them. So your pace and where you have to go to see them and how you have to walk They're planted so carefully, you can't hear it like you go past some beautiful flowers in Golden Gate Park, but here it's so easy just to drive by rapidly. And in a practice like this we try to create a situation where you'll notice what you're

[26:32]

each moment. So if you're distracted, it's not so easy to follow a Sashin. And when we eat, the bowls are just complicated enough, the eating bowls, that if you're distracted, you're liable to drop them or drop a chopstick or bang something, you know. The only way you can eat carefully is if you have some calmness about how you eat, how you pick each thing up. So when you eat in the zendo, especially during a sashin, you should not make any noise with your chopsticks or with the bowls. You should have that kind of care with each thing as you pick it up. And each step of the

[27:35]

ritual of eating you should follow, one after another, not trying to take shortcuts. Oh, well, I don't really have to clean my chopsticks this time, so much. Or some of you don't dry it off afterwards. By the way, that's quite important to clean the tsetsu thoroughly. If we don't, we don't wash the bowls, so the tsetsu should be, the water should be hot pretty hot and you should dip it and squeeze it out, dip it and squeeze it out. And one dip is enough actually, but you should squeeze both quite hard and then you should use your cloth on it to dry it as much as possible. Some of you don't dry it, I notice, you know. You shouldn't start cleaning your bowls out until the serving is finished, until the servers have left the zendo, gone past the altar, then you can start cleaning with the cleaning stick. Setsu is the cleaning stick.

[28:51]

There you go.

[29:32]

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