Today I'd just like to leave you alone to practice azan. In the end that's what we of course do. And though it helps to have all of us practicing alone together, in the end we're just alone. I've been talking the last few days about including everything, but in the end still you're just alone. This is the actual way to transmit Buddhism, is to be alone, to practice alone. We say the highest teaching is what Buddha told to himself. And in many years Buddhism has been existing.

[01:34]

the scholars try to continue Buddhism and each school tries to continue Buddhism with their particular sutra that they emphasize in their particular way. But Buddhism is continued best, actually Buddhism is transmitted by you just talking to yourself, being with yourself. So really our practice is you just be a left alone and talk to yourselves. As I've told you many times I think Suzuki Roshi actually used to do that and leave us for two hours or more with no bell or anything. You know, Buddha himself had no program to follow, tried various things, and then he supposedly just sat down. And that's what our practice is, to do just as Buddha did, just to sit down and, after we've tried everything else maybe, and see. And everything you need is, everything that's Buddhism is in you.

[03:08]

So you have to be willing, though, to let yourself alone. And usually we can't let ourselves alone. We can't even be alone. So before you can talk to yourself in the way I mean, you have to be able to be alone. You have to be able to sit there on your cushion indefinitely. And we can't come to real terms with the suffering that this world is without being willing to let other people alone, to let other people suffer. Some people didn't like that.

[04:26]

Anyway, you have to be willing to let other people suffer, and to let yourself suffer, and let yourself alone. Practice to be complete practice has to contain death and suffering. And you have to practice as if the whole world depended on your practice. Actually it does. If you can't practice, if you can't

[06:02]

do this practice. No one can. And if this practice can't exist in the world, I don't think actually the world can exist. There have to be people who practice in this way. There's a story that I've always liked about two, there's a sick monk and a friend comes to visit him, I guess he must be rather sick, I don't know, anyway, just says he's sick, and his friend says, if you go away and

[07:17]

leave behind a lifeless body. Where will I meet you?" And the sick monk says, we'll meet in a place where nothing is born and nothing dies. And his friend says, oh there's no place to meet. There's no place where nothing is born and nothing dies, and there's no need to meet. Anyway, that's the story. And then a man named Genro comments on it with a poem, which I, of course, don't know what it is in Chinese, but the translation is rather awkward, but goes something like, true friendship transcends alienation or intimacy. Between meeting and not meeting, there is no difference. On the old plum tree, fully blossomed, the southern branch owns the whole spring.

[08:45]

as also does the northern branch. So when each of us owns owns the whole spring and Buddhism will be continued. True friendship it says. The problem there is it says the tree is fully blossomed. I'm not sure we're all fully blossomed, but that's how we start Zen practice. Tsukuroshi always said that he was afraid to say, but he thought that our way started with enlightenment. Then, if there's enlightenment, then because we have a Buddha nature or because there is

[10:12]

we can express something we call Buddha nature. We do zazen, and then if we do zazen, all the precepts are automatically taken care of, followed. So we practice as if we're enlightened. So our practice is something we enjoy for ourselves, or rather by ourselves. Actually, you should enjoy your practice by yourself.

[11:19]

Is there anything we should talk about? Do you want to ask any questions or say anything? Ideally it's when two people each own the whole spring. We can't be... You can't be... You can't talk to yourself until you can talk to someone else, usually. But you should talk to others as if you were talking to yourself.

[12:51]

So in order to have that kind of relationship in which you can talk to yourself, we have doksan. But actually you're practicing completely alone. I think we should go back down to the Zendo and sit. Do you have one question? Yeah? Why do you think so?

[14:09]

She said she understands why suffering and death are part of our practice. Why do we make ourselves suffer? Well, actually what we're doing isn't suffering. You may think it is. I think we need some, you know, something, some wall to face or some extremity, you know, and to practice I mean, this is pretty innocent suffering, you know? You're, for the most part, not doing much physical damage to yourself, and mostly all you're trying to do is stay in one place for seven days. It's not a very serious problem.

[15:44]

There's another kind of suffering we make ourselves do, which is the way we lead our lives, which we often don't feel so good about, but we can't do anything about it. So to find out why we can't do anything about it, we have a practice like this. But just think about it, you know, if we made a practice which was comfortable, what would happen. It's difficult because it's so completely we don't want to be alone, so completely we don't want to realize how transient we are. But when you see that, when you can actually sit, you know, you're neither alive nor dead, there's just something happening, you know, and then you actually know what your life is. Even as the story Koanai just told says, a place beyond anything living or dying.

[17:18]

So there's no way to abide in that place without a practice like this. And there are of course many other reasons why we practice this way. If we could just say, put your arm on the table and leave your arm there a week, You know, it's still the third or fourth day, you say, oh God, I'm going to move that, oh, oh, oh, it would be terrible. You'd be bleeding anyway. But I'm not sure that that would be interesting, you know, but, and you know there are, there sadhus in India who raise one arm, keep it there all their life, and it eventually fuses, and they can never take it down. But we're not recommending that. But the practice we do, though it has the same kind of difficulty of leaving your arm there for one week,

[18:51]

There's some, once you learn how to sit, you're able to be still. Until you learn how to sit, until your body becomes relaxed throughout, you know, fluid throughout, that softness. Suzuki Roshi always talked about rough and smooth, that smoothness I talked about. After your body becomes fluid like that, then you can begin to really sit still and your energy can come alive. And then after your energy comes alive, then your energy can sit still. So actually our practice takes a long time, you know, maybe to get a real Feel for it, usually two or three years, and to have some sense of it as a whole, ten or fifteen years. And of course it lasts a lifetime.

[20:22]

Anyway, I know I'm ending early, but I think we need some more zazen.

[20:59]

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