While I was walking here with Russell, an airplane went overhead and just now another one. Something that couldn't have been imagined by Shido, for example. And yet what we're doing is I think harder for us to imagine than that airplane. And newer for us. Yet something old, ancient, familiar as well. You know, one way to practice is for you to have an intuitive sense or feeling that this is a good way for you and just do it.

[01:04]

Follow the form and trust the examples of practice in the people here and trust practice itself. With some understanding, of course, of practice. Another way is to really make a practice clear. Really, what are we doing? You know, and I think that for most of us, probably a very close examination of what practice really is, is not necessary for us. One is I don't want to be the kind of teacher who just expects you to trust me.

[02:14]

Or to trust practice. Without some study. Because I really want you to be able to recreate practice yourself. Now you're all very intelligent people so, you know, I think it's not too much of a burden to try to study what we study, what we practice. And also Of course, if you ever are going to teach, the more you understand what practice is, the better you can teach. But you can't teach just by example. For many things come up which...

[03:24]

need understanding as well as experience. And also, of course, in the West we are rethinking Buddhism. And of course I am looking back into the tradition and finding what I want. I'm trying to find, as far as I can tell, I'm finding what's there. But, you know, I can't promise you that it's only what's there. But again, we just did this Dogen seminar, and it's very clear Dogen looked back into the tradition and found what he wanted. And as Sukersi said, Buddhism is 80% application. So we are application here. Anyway, this is the only way. It's a living tradition. But I hope in looking back I can, like as I described Proust yesterday, look forward into this present from the past.

[04:43]

Imagining. Because this is all imagining what kind of human being, what a human being is, what kind of human life we want. And each of you has to answer that question for yourself. What kind of life, what kind of human life do you want? What kind of human life do you want for other and every and each human? And our non-human humans, too. So even though I'm trying to explore with you aspects of practice, still that parallel to that exploration, we do need to practice just with faith, with trust, just doing it.

[05:53]

It's like a different track to study it, but we shouldn't let the study interfere with our just doing it. Now I want to continue a little bit with this idea of naturalness. Although you may think, and you probably do, understand it quite well. I don't understand it quite well. And it's a constant exploration for me. For example, we can describe much of what we do is allowing self-organizing, our own organizing processes to occur. And that sounds like naturalness. Letting things find their own way.

[06:57]

But then we could have static naturalness or own organizing naturalness or something like that. But let's just go, without getting into too much detail, back to walking. Walking seems like one of the most natural things. We walk naturally. But I'm quite sure when I am out in the, I go walking sometimes in Europe and German couples, for instance, elderly my age, walk along a certain way, it's very clear. They're not English. And an English couple would walk somewhat differently. Japanese couple would definitely walk differently. It's interesting. I watch, wow, weren't they... Have you ever seen samurai movies? the Japanese, sometimes they, some of the samurais have rather large tummies, but the tummies look like weapons because they scoot, they don't stride.

[08:06]

They kind of, here and there, they come running at you with their tummy, with their legs going underneath like insect legs. It's quite different, do you understand what I mean? Something different. So, when a baby first walks, How do we do this? I mean I think actually, thinking about my grandson starting to walk, if I hold his hand and I tip it this way, I implicitly teach him to move his center of awareness of walking to the upper part of his body. If I tip his hand forward, I move it more into his stomach. And I'll bet you you could study the way a European versus, say, Japanese, I don't know about Chinese, actually help the baby learn to walk. Whether you just let the baby's hand rest in yours and you don't hold it at all. In such things we teach, you know, everything.

[09:10]

So it's natural, I think it's a natural way to walk. in quotations, to feel that you're walking from your heart. And it's a natural way to walk to feel you're walking from up here somewhere. Yeah, both are fine. And I'm not suggesting we learn some special way to walk in the Zendo, although I know Eda Roshi in New York had a no teacher come and teach people how to walk as they do in no place, which is a kind of scooting, not striding. But if you're going, and of course thongs, these Japanese type Zoris, when Westerners walk in them, they often flap them. That means you're not walking the way they're taught. I mean, you're supposed to, those shoes are meant to teach you to walk, so you kind of, of course, if you have feet, you have to use your heel. Unless you want to be a ballet dancer.

[10:14]

So you do use your heel, but it's more like you lift your foot up and move it forward flat and put it back down. You don't lead with your heel. You kind of lead with the whole of your foot. More of that feeling. And that difference helps you practice hara practice. If you really want to bring your energy into your hara, And I'm not saying we should all walk that way in the Zendo, or feel it out, but if you want to start concentrating on your hara, the way you walk is how you bring your hara into your activity. So that's a little riff on naturalness. What's natural? It's natural for a baby to fall down when it's learning to walk. So probably the most common statement or question I get is, nothing's happening in my zazen.

[11:27]

What do I do? This is not easy to answer, actually. You can look at all of Dogen as trying to answer what you do in zazen or not do. sudden and gradual. You know, the more you study something like sudden and gradual, you find, I mean, you have sudden experiences, but if you study it as a pedagogy, in other words, if you really emphasize sudden, you teach differently than if you emphasize gradual. But actually they're a mixture, you can't sort them out. And anybody who says it's only sudden is, this is some kind of, you know, ideology. or sectarianism, or only gradual. But to sort them out is not easy.

[12:33]

But if we don't sort them out, we don't know how to teach. You don't have to sort them out exactly to practice because there's so much implicit in what we're doing. But again, I want to sort it out with you because I want to share this practice with you in the fullest way I can. So let's just look at the idea of happening. Nothing's happening in my sasana. Well, when you go to sleep, is anything happening? You don't say, nothing's happening in my sleep, I think I'll stop sleeping. You just don't say that. I mean, I don't know anybody who's ever said that to me. I think I'm going to stop sleeping because nothing's happening when I sleep. But boy, do I feel shitty when I don't sleep.

[13:33]

Or, you know, I don't do anything when I sleep, but something happens. I dream or I feel better. So what is the non-doing of sleep? I mean, these are, we can ask these questions. If we're going to ask the questions of Zazen, what is the non-doing of Zazen, we can also ask something that's more familiar to all of us. What is the non-doing of sleep? Oh, when you go outside and you have some fresh air. You feel quite wonderful maybe, but you don't say, what's happening? This kind of question doesn't come up like it does for zazen. So first of all, I think we have to ask, what do we mean when we say nothing's happening? And put it in other contexts like sleeping.

[14:39]

But we might be comparing, if we say nothing's happening in our zazen, we might be comparing our zazen to our usual way of, our usual life experience, and thinking something similar should happen, you know, perhaps. So we're making some sort of comparison. Or perhaps we're waiting for some extraordinary thing to happen, like enlightenment. This is like waiting, you know, the expression waiting by a stump. This is like waiting by a stump that we've only heard about. Waiting by a stump is a Zen story for those of you who don't know it. A farmer goes out and he's walking home and a rabbit comes running. He scares a rabbit that comes running by, hits a tree stump and falls over dead. You think, this is great. Takes it home to his wife. They have a rabbit stew. And the next day he's not farming and his wife can't find him.

[15:45]

And she goes out and he's standing by the stump waiting for another rabbit. So waiting for enlightenment is like standing by a stump that no rabbit ever even hit. You just heard about the stump. Oh, there's a stump somewhere. If you wait by it, a rabbit enlightenment will occur. This is delusion. I mean, it's a delusion, a very fundamental delusion because it's based on an understanding of time in which enlightenment will not happen. In other words, How can I say it? Words don't lend themselves. Let's say a mind of just now is enough. The mind of just now is enough, which is a mind, we could say, that emphasizes timelessness or immediacy rather than sequential time.

[16:49]

That mind that just now is enough is both a precondition for, or condition for and fruit of enlightenment. So one aspect of sudden practice is to enact the fruits of enlightenment. Does that make sense? In other words, what enlightenment is like, koans are based on giving you a phrase, like just now is enough, which is based on enlightenment, and trying to bring it into your own life in contrast to our usual way of thinking that just now is not enough, we want something. But it's clear an enlightened person always feels just this is quite full, adequate. So we practice with that attitude. To practice with an enlightened attitude is a style of sudden practice. Or maybe nothing's happening in your zazen because you don't know how to notice what's happening.

[18:04]

Or maybe nothing's happening in your zazen because nothing's happening. By the way, I notice that some of you are doing your orioke practice the way, some other way, where you've learned somewhere other than here. Which is okay, but I wonder what it's based on. Is it based on you think that the way you're doing it is right, or better, or more natural? Or are you just not observing that it's different? Or are you a contrarian and you like to do things different than other people? Or what else? Or you're beyond noticing how you do it? Or do you rather join people who are not here through how you do it than joining people who are here?

[19:13]

Anyway, those are the possibilities I can think of. Okay, so let's try to look at what do we do during zazen. If nothing's happening in our zazen, what do we do during zazen? What is the doing of zazen? So let's divide doing up into form, learning, observation, intercession, study, and no more learning.

[20:19]

You don't have to remember those. It's pretty obvious anyway. Form, okay. What do we do during zazen? We learn a particular form. Back, straight, fairly straight, lifting, feeling in the back, So what is the form of zazen? A particular posture and for some length of time. That's the form of zazen. Some length of time and a particular way of sitting. That's one thing we learn. What else do we learn? We learn to sit still. And that takes some time to learn to sit still. And to really let, through learning to sit still, let the stillness of the body pervade us.

[21:25]

It gives you something to do if you're bored. You can concentrate on learning to sit really still. I remember talking to Sukershi about it on the couch in his office one day. And he said, yes, some people, they learn to sit still, but really deep down there's still some movement. So learning to sit still, that's one thing we do. We also learn to keep our attention on our breath. That's something you should learn to do. Maybe nothing's happening, but still, it's good to learn to do that. And you stop being, as in being or golfing,

[22:31]

You stop me-ing the learning process. Me, you know the pronoun, I-N-G. You stop me-ing the learning process. By that I mean you stop saying, well, I didn't learn it very well today, or I'm not very good at this, or I'm very good at this. You stop the me-ing. That's not so easy to do. So that's another thing you can learn is to stop me-ing. And you learn acceptance. You adopt the attitude of acceptance. You learn how to keep accepting, being open to. Keep being open to. As I said this morning, doing a kind of Ryaku Fasat ceremony in the middle of the first period of satsang, When our habit body begins to loosen, involuntary memory begins volunteering.

[23:45]

Because our habit body organizes our memories. What happens in zazen, as you know, many things start coming up that you have no particular interest in thinking about, or you haven't thought about in a long time, or haven't wanted to think about, or kind of jumble stuff. But in any case, some kind of involuntary memory process starts when our habit body begins to loosen its hold on us. So who's there? What's there under the habit body? So this habit body loosens up when we have the, through the practice of acceptance, of being open to, and through learning the attitude, accepting the attitude of patience, patience which is open, which is to create space for

[25:02]

Acceptance creates openness to and patience creates space for. Everything's working for us at each moment. This is a kind of trust or patience. So we're learning in Zazen, you're deepening your practice of acceptance, and you're deepening your practice of patience, and you're deepening your trust and practice of trust. Then there's no end to this practice of patience, trust, and acceptance. In Arsazan, as you're sitting, no harm is done, you know. It may not be so good to accept the government or trust the government, say, but it's okay to trust just how you're alive.

[26:08]

If you can't trust just how you're alive, you're in deep doo-doo. Okay, now, through this process of stopping me-ing and learning to Bring your attention, rest your attention on your breath. You learn two, as I say, the main tools of practice are one-pointedness and a non-interfering observing consciousness. And if you develop these two tools, that's part of what we do in zazen.

[27:11]

And part of learning these tools, like a non-interfering observing consciousness, is to not do this practice of acceptance and patience. And you're also learning to notice what we don't usually notice. I mean, we habitually notice things. And we notice things primarily with our thinking. What you want to do is you start wanting to notice things with your feeling, kind of feeling, and accept word-based, or not verbal because you're not speaking, but word reports. Reports in words, but you don't think about the reports in words. Now, we live in a skein net fabric of words.

[28:29]

And partly we identify with those words as us, and that's the identification of our narrative self. And partly we identify with the words as describing reality. Now I'm using words as well as I can to resonate with your feelings of self and to resonate with your feelings of Buddha nature. And I'm using words to kind of hook into your sense of what reality is and I'm using words also to see if I can precipitate within the fabric of words of you yourself another sense of reality. And again, this is a process that goes on in zazen.

[29:47]

You keep presenting yourself to yourself. Nothing's happening, or something's happening, or I feel this, or I feel painful, or something. You're presenting yourself to yourself. And now with non-interfering observing consciousness, you just study this presentation. Now again, there's nothing written about what I'm talking about. I'm just trying to speak to you from my own experience and my experience with practicing with other people and with Sukhya Rishi. And you, now, now this, but I'm coming back to noticing what we don't usually notice.

[30:59]

For example, you might notice that all the mental contents are bathed in a faint light. You might notice that the mental contents, or mind itself, are bathed in a faint light of different kinds. Or you might notice that among the mental contents that are, which are always presenting yourself to yourself and reality to, what you call reality to yourself, some things are brighter than others. Now I'm not giving you a prescription of what to do, a recipe. I'm just asking you to notice how you present, how the world, how you present yourself to yourself.

[32:02]

So you do this all the time. You look at things. You look at things in the Zendo here. We look at things while we're cooking and all that stuff. But now you want a kind of inner... seeing, inner observation, which requires that you have learned one-pointedness and a non-interfering observing consciousness. Because you can't really study, the skandhas for instance, are a study of how the mind arises. You can't really study the arising of the mind unless you have one-pointedness and an observing mind that doesn't interfere. So you become more subtle in what you learn to observe. So you're learning to observe other things. Like you might observe a feeling, some kind of feeling between your brows or some feeling at the top of your head.

[33:09]

Now you don't grasp onto these feelings or you might feel a kind of silky feeling all over your body. You just notice. Because this kind of feeling isn't, these kind of things aren't under the control of the self. If you, soon as you try to do something, the self comes in and we're trying to stop being, stop selfing. So really you have to observe and accept And all this time, you're developing, you're exercising the muscle of attention. You are beginning to feel, observe, feel awareness, accept verbal reports about it, but not think about the verbal reports, word reports.

[34:16]

Or you might notice again in the field of mentation, some things are brighter than others. Or some things gather awareness and some things don't. So this is, and I'm only mentioning a few, you begin to notice differently than we notice. Because of course if you're alive, and you're this totally extraordinary creature each of us is, there's always something happening. But how do we let it happen? Do we interfere? What do we do, etc. ? So you learn to notice and you learn to stay with what you notice to the extent that you can stay with it without interfering with it.

[35:38]

That's a kind of rule. You don't try to do things. You try to stay with things. That's an action. But it's the staying with that doesn't interfere. If it starts interfering, then you let whatever happens, happen. Okay, now these are kind of the skills of zazen which are developed by just sitting. Shikantaza. Just sitting. observing, learning certain skills, posture, patience, so forth. Now, this is based on a certain conception of the mind. The conception of the mind is that the mind is something like a fluid or a liquid and that it tends to settle.

[36:47]

Now, as you develop physical stillness, again, that physical stillness allows you to observe the arising of mind, of meditation. And that physical stillness, as I've said many times, draws out the stillness of the mind itself. So you have stillness meeting stillness. And there's an alchemy in our sitting together because we each are joining our stillness to each other. So even in your agitated sitting, even sitting has underneath it a kind of stillness, a yogic fact of stillness. And we become very powerful through the stillness of our joined stillness.

[37:55]

It would be very hard to do a sashino by yourself. Okay, now what happens when you get to the point where you can be still? and you can observe the stillness, you see that some things don't settle. So we have a situation, again the simple example is there's mud in a glass. In this case the water settles and the mud settles. But when you are still, you can see that the water itself wants to settle, but some things are holding it from settling. Now you need intercession. You have to break up that which prevents the settling from occurring. So now we need a different kind of practice.

[39:01]

Of course these practices are happening all at once. But For the practices to be powerful, there's a kind of sequence. Stillness is developed first, patience, habits of acceptance, and so forth, trust, and then we can really work much more powerfully on what doesn't settle, even though we work on what doesn't settle from the very beginning. But I can describe it more clearly from the basis of the sequence, although it happens simultaneously. So then we observe what doesn't settle, and there are particular practices to break up or change or intercede with what doesn't settle.

[40:04]

our views, our habits of mind, and so forth. Maybe I'll come back to that, or that'll be part two. But let me just say something about this stillness, the stillness that allows awareness, allows a kind of awareness to arise. That's this stillness or this awareness, awareness, a kind of, and what you'll notice is if you keep practicing, you become much more precise in what you can notice.

[41:10]

Not only do you notice different things, you become more precise in what you do notice. And this awareness opens us to our interdependent body. Awareness sort of spreads out from our, extends beyond our habit body or our mental body. And this awareness, it's almost like, maybe like car lights or something. It's the awareness that lights up the physical passage. Now, physical passage, I don't know if this phrase made sense yesterday, but I'm trying to find some words that give you a sense of the way as a physical path. I once said that each moment is a precise physical act.

[42:14]

So I'm using the phrase physical passage to speak like the air and water is in physical passage all the time and so are we. And it's a kind of the body of the way, the embodiment of the way as physical passage. Now this physical passage is lit by awareness and lights up immediacy. I think that's enough for now. Thank you very much.

[43:13]

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