I have a memory that I made a request for you to remember and practice and transmit stillness and silence in daily life. Do you remember that request? How's it been going? Nobody knows. Nobody knows? Maybe that's good. Have you been enjoying remembering? Have you been enjoying practicing stillness?

[01:49]

That seems wonderful to me. Thank you very much. Is there anything you wish to bring up? Yes? I would like and I wish your support throughout, at least I can say my life, throughout life, that support of stillness throughout the whole life. I wish that support. Thank you for requesting that support, and it will be given.

[03:18]

Yes, Ms. Anderson? You don't enjoy what? Stillness. I sometimes find it terrifying. I didn't ask if you were enjoying stillness. I asked, are you enjoying remembering it? Are you enjoying remembering it? Yes. But you don't necessarily enjoy it. No. It seems like a tall order. A tall order? Why, thank you. Except it's more like this tall order is actually a tall request. I'm requesting.

[04:35]

It's just a request, it's not an order. It's a tall request. It's a limited request and an unlimited request. May I make limited requests of you? Please, yes. And please understand, they're just requests. I'm just telling you about my requests of you. And may I make unlimited requests of you? Yeah. Oh, thank you. Why not? Well, the reason would be, the why not would be, is you tell, do not make unlimited requests of me. If you said that to me, I would keep them to myself. But if you're saying, okay, then I feel invited to make unlimited requests of you, and I will enjoy making unlimited requests of you.

[05:39]

And maybe I'll check before each time to see if you're still welcome. Because you might say, actually right now I've got a headache, don't say anything to me. And I say, okay, later maybe. Some great teachers have sometimes not been up for the big request. So they pass on the request to their students. So if sometime you're not ready for my request, you can pass me on to one of your students. Yes? I've heard the story a number of times over the years about one who is not busy, and are there two moons? I don't feel like I've got it. You don't feel like you've got it?

[06:43]

Yes. It's not necessary to get it. Matter of fact, if you don't have it, you can eat it. You can eat this story. I've been eating this story for a long time and I probably will continue because I don't have it. I've been eating it, but it hasn't really digested properly. Did you say it hasn't digested properly? Yes. Which one is that? Which moon is that? Yes, Lois? What's the difference between stillness and just suppressing? What's the difference between illness and stillness? What's the difference between illness and stillness? So what's the difference between illness and what?

[07:45]

Stillness and what? Just suppressing what's there. What's the difference between suppressing and stillness? Suppressing is moving. Suppressing is moving. It's moving. And when you move in response to what is being given, then you fall into a pit. That's the difference. When you're still, you don't fall into a pit. And then, when you're still, you're ready for a new presentation. And if you're still with that, you get another one, and another one. You get your life. Get your life, get your life. It's given to you, given to you. And also, when you're still with the life that's given to you, you don't have it. And when you don't have it, which you never did and nobody does, then you get to eat it.

[08:50]

And have digestion problems maybe, maybe not. But if you have digestion problems and you're still with digestive problems, then mind and object enter into realization and go beyond enlightenment. So the difference between illness and stillness is that stillness is a response to illness, which brings freedom from illness, or that liberates illness, makes illness completely alive. Some people who have well trained they're ill, and in their illness they are brilliantly transmitting stillness.

[10:03]

Like Suzuki Roshi was, when he was dying, He was maybe not perfect, but he was quite still with the dying, with the illness. And we got to be with his stillness with his illness. And this was a great transmission of stillness to us. And he also practiced with his illness. And I think he remembered the stillness with his illness. And before we knew how sick he was, I often say, he was giving a talk in Buddha Hall at the San Francisco city center of Zen Center, and he said, things teach best when they're dying.

[11:13]

And I didn't ask other people in the group, how they felt, but I thought he turned right to me and went, looked in my face and said, things teach best when they're dying. But maybe they felt like he was looking at them. I don't know. I didn't ask. I just thought, why is he saying that to me? But if we aren't still with this teaching, we may miss it. So he was dying and he was showing us how to be with his illness, because many of us were young and not aware that we were dying, and not aware of being sick. We thought he was sick, and we were right. But I think we also felt like I felt like his teaching was unhindered by his illness.

[12:20]

It changed. When he first announced that he had liver cancer, he could still go to the Zendo, but he stopped giving talks. in giving talks to the whole group. He didn't give any more talks to the group, but he still went to the Zendo. And then, I don't know if he was still leading the services, but then he taught, because he wasn't going to be able to, he taught another student and me how to lead the services, because he wasn't going to be able to soon. And then after a while, he couldn't go to the Zendo. And after a while, he couldn't go up and down the stairs from his room to the main floor. So we had this hand grip. I would hold my hand like this. You want to come over here? So you put that hand on this hand.

[13:26]

We made a seat for him like this and carried him up and down the stairs. But I didn't feel like, well, how come he's not teaching anymore when we were carrying him up and down the stairs? And I said, also, I said, he was receiving a shiatsu massage and moksa bastion from a Japanese priest who knew how to do those things. And I said, Roshi, can I just watch while you have your treatments? I won't ask any questions. So I just watched him be treated. And I can still see him teaching, this teaching, this transmission of stillness with his illness. I didn't feel like he was suppressing his illness, and I didn't feel like he was trying. I thought he was being quite still with it, and quite cheerful and generous, but he couldn't do the things he used to be able to do.

[14:35]

But he's still teaching us all, all of us who were there to come and see. Stillness is not suppressing movement. That's not stillness. I don't know what that is. That's just an impossibility. You can't suppress movement. You can only be still with it and honor it. And when you honor movement, you have this wonderful movement. And when you honor silence, you have wonderful speech. Yes, Eric? I seem to be exerting my body a lot, like out there raking dust. You're raking dust? Very advanced.

[15:39]

It seems harder for me to practice stillness. It seems harder? I think most people feel like it is. Do you have a sense of why that is? Well, yeah, I have a sense of why it is, and also I have stories about why it is, but I do not know why it is. But I do hear that people have... it's harder for them to understand stillness when they're moving. It's harder for them to understand the stillness in which enlightenment is entering and leaving. It's hard to understand when they're involved in measuring, in particular measuring movement. Most people find it harder to appreciate that.

[16:40]

And when you're moving and you realize stillness, first you may be quite surprised. Like one time I was offering incense and I had the incense in my fingers and I was moving it through the air into the incense bowl and I realized for the first time that I wasn't moving while I was making the offering. And another time I was away from Zen Center for a month or two and I came back to Green Gulch and I went to the Zendo and I offered incense, and I thought, how wonderful to not do anything again. I realized that this considerable effort, in a way I traveled across the country to go to Gringotts to not do anything, and the way I did not do anything was to travel across the country and to go to the Zendo and offer incense.

[17:50]

I somehow didn't realize when I was on the East Coast that I wasn't doing anything there. And I came back and touched the living spring of not moving by offering incense. But I had missed many opportunities on the East Coast of realizing not moving while I was moving there. Anyway, I recovered. You know, I'm in recovery. From what? From forgetting stillness in daily life. And so there are stories about why we forget, like basically we forget because of our habit to see movement, and not be able to see stillness.

[18:55]

So that's why we say, friends, remember it in daily life, because that's where, for most people, it's harder. But even though it's harder, it wasn't that difficult for me to say, friends, remember. And you could say it to yourself, and it won't be that hard to say it to yourself. It will be a little bit hard, even to remember to say, remember. But the reason why we have a Zen center where we practice measurable stillness and measurable silence, like it starts there and it ends there. And then people start moving and talking. The reason why we practice it then is so that we can extend, not the measurable stillness, but the immeasurable stillness. which we're celebrating by our measurable stillness. And then we go and express the immeasurable stillness in our daily life.

[20:02]

But we're not saying that's easy. As a matter of fact, we have a Zen center so people can get a taste for it. And once you have a taste, you might be able to find it while you're offering incense on the bus. Or maybe they won't let you off, for instance, on the bus. So you might be able to realize it when you put your coin into the coin receiver. Do they still have coin receivers on buses? But nobody really knows. the karmic process by which we have a difficult time doing this. Those are just stories. And nobody knows the karmic process by which we hear this teaching and think, I want to practice it. How does that happen? I don't know. I'm just very happy that it has occurred.

[21:09]

You're welcome. Do you suggest that we try not to measure our movement? I do not suggest that. As a matter of fact, I would again say, the Buddha way is perfect and all-pervading. It's immeasurable, unthinkable, unnameable, ungraspable, and so on. Unstoppable, unavoidable, It's immeasurable, and we must take its measure. So, I have faith in the immeasurable teaching of suchness, the immeasurable Holy Communion, and I have faith that I must take its measure. Its measure is not it. Its measure is my body and my mind. That's its measure.

[22:14]

And it's your body and your mind. That's the measure of it. And we must, I must, I want to and I must keep measuring the immeasurable by this little person. And to develop courage to be a little guy, and being a little guy who is not afraid to be a little guy and is willing to say, okay, I'm a little guy. That's the way I measure the immeasurable. But if I shrink back from being my limited person, then I shrink back from that relationship of the intimate communion of this little person and the big person. this biased phenomena of me, a me that's not you, a biased thing that's in an intimate relationship with something that's unbiased, unprejudiced, impartial, all-pervading.

[23:22]

Reality. Reality is not partial. So I encourage us to take the measure of the immeasurable, take the measure of the immeasurable stillness by our measurable stillness, which is this body sitting kind of still in a zendo, in a meditation hall, in a cavern, in a canyon, with you. I want to do that, I do do that, I do do that and I want to do that, and I've been doing that and I do not regret doing it. Taking the measure of the immeasurable by this body and mind. taking the measure of the immeasurable world with the measurable world. And the measurable world is, as Kathy pointed out in the Perfect Wisdom Sutras, the measurable world is your five aggregates.

[24:30]

And the Buddha also said, the measurable world is your body. Measure the world with your body, wholeheartedly, and you will realize the immeasurable world. So make an effort, and please do, because you do. Thank you for those encouraging words. My dad said that when I was a kid, my dad said that Abraham Lincoln was called Honest Abe, but there's one thing he said which wasn't true, which was when he said, the world will little note nor long remember what we say here.

[25:42]

That's not true. The world did note and does remember what he said, but then he also said, but they will never forget what they did here, and that's true. So I won't say that the world will no longer remember what we say here, but I will say, I won't say that, but I will say the world will remember what we did here today, that we practiced Holy Communion together. The world will remember that. That it's changing this world in the direction we want. So may we continue. Until you have to carry me up the stairs. And I say until, but at that time it will continue. When I can't walk anymore, you walk for me. When I can't sit anymore, you sit for me.

[26:54]

There's so much about the Dharma that I wish to share with you, but I think it's time to stop. Thank you for being here today and making this temple alive. May our intention equally extend to every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way. Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable.

[28:18]

I vow to become it. Thank you.

[28:31]

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