I think that that chant is on the sheet that I gave you before for the rope chant, remember? So I would suggest that you keep those, if you don't know the chants, to keep those near at hand and when we do a chant you can just read it off of that sheet and that will help you to get familiar with it. Our practice here seems very formal, lots of bowing and exacting kinds of procedures with the orioke bowls and so forth. I think it's a lot to deal with in a short space of time.

[01:07]

I wouldn't expect that you would remember everything that we've done here so far in detail. But our practice stems from a very formal way of doing things. And actually, this is a very simplified version that we have. Our way is quite simplified. And to keep a balance between the practice that's handed to us and the place where we come from as we meet it. To keep that balance is something that's always being worked out. So we're Americans living in this part of the world, and we have our own ways of doing things.

[02:17]

And when we come to this kind of practice, it seems very strange in many ways, and very foreign to our way of doing things. But there's something to be learned from the formality of practice. And if we can just let go of our preconceptions and resistances and just flow with the way of doing things, I think you'll find that it's not so difficult. And you begin to enjoy it, actually. And when you become familiar with it, it's actually quite easy to do and enjoyable. And you find that eating with the orioke, with the eating bowls, I find that it's the most enjoyable way to eat.

[03:20]

Because there's nothing but eating. No thinking, no talking. Just eating. This tradition comes from The orioke bowls themselves come from the tradition of monks begging with a begging bowl. And in the olden days, and in some places in the world today, it's common for monks to go out and beg for their noon meal. They only eat one meal a day. which is the noon meal. That's traditional. And when Buddhism came to China and Japan, the monks' lives changed. In India, they weren't allowed to eat, to work, or till the soil, or carry money, or have any possessions at all.

[04:31]

And especially the working, they weren't allowed to work. their work was to cultivate themselves. That was their life's work. And so they were supported by the populace because populace thought that was a worthwhile thing for people to do. In India, people felt that if someone was seriously entering a practice of self-cultivation and trying to find the norm, then they were supported by people. And so the monks would go out every day and beg. And people would put food in a bowl and money, not money, usually food. This tradition, when it came to China, the Chinese didn't like the idea of their young men going out begging.

[05:43]

China is a very agricultural kind of country, and family-oriented country. And family is very tight in China, and people objected to the young men going to the monasteries, And coming around to the villages and begging for food. They thought everybody should go to work. So the Zen monks in China worked after a while. And work became a part of practice. And the whole system changed to where they would beg at certain times, but mostly they would have their own kitchens in the monasteries and cook for the monks. So the tradition changed a little bit and took on the form that we have it now, where people would donate food, of course, but

[06:55]

the system of eating became even more elaborated in Japan. And there are different ways that monks use their bowls. But this particular tradition that we have is the Soto school's version of Buddha's eating bowls, eating with Buddha's bowls. And basically that Tradition still exists that it's an offering. We're not, you know, you may feel that you're lay people, you're not monks, right? But nevertheless, when we practice in this way, it's a kind of monk's practice. So we're practicing a kind of monk's practice altogether, even though some people are priests and some people are lay people. And the spirit is that this food that we receive is an offering. So we receive it in the spirit of an offering.

[08:04]

So it's not just eating as you would eat a normal meal, unless you think of normal meals in that way, but we don't usually. So receiving this, in the meal chant, it says receiving this offering, we should consider whether our virtue and practice deserve it. And that attitude comes from the attitude of my whole life is a life of practice and cultivation. And is my practice worthy of this offering? Because for monks to receive offerings means that they have to pay, they have the feelings they have to pay back the people that donate to them in order to justify their existence. if you go out and work someplace, you get paid in money. And that justifies, it seems on the surface that justifies or compensates for your work.

[09:14]

You do some work and you get paid, you know. But for a monk, the monk pays, does work in a little different attitude. The monk works for his own self-cultivation, but also the cultivation of other people. So in the Bodhisattva vow, we vow to save all sentient beings. So that's part of the monk's work, and also the layperson. So what are we doing to justify receiving this offering from people? So nothing is really free. Everything is free in a sense, but in another sense, you have to pay for everything you get. Whatever you get, it has to be paid for in some way. So if you just go around collecting meals and eating, it's not real practice.

[10:25]

So you have to be doing something to compensate for this meal. So the meal is a meal, but it's also something else. It's also how you express gratitude and give something and receive something. So the whole thing takes place within this particular environment. We pay for our meal, you know. Everybody pays. That's what our fee is for, the meals, when we come to Sashim. We're paying for the meals, basically. Maybe a few little extra. And we fix it ourselves and serve it to ourselves. So we do the whole thing ourselves, for ourselves. But some of us serve and some of us eat. But we do it for each other and we change around. And that's our practice. So eating is a practice in the Zindo. And I think if you understand that, it becomes a little more easy to accept.

[11:37]

And the other aspect of it is that you're doing something very mindfully, very carefully. Just eating. When you bow, you just bow. And when you open your bowls, you just open your bowls. And when you put them out, you just pay attention to that. When you receive food, it's just receiving. So each movement is a way of being totally present. totally present in each movement, which is the whole basis of practice. When you sit zazen, totally present in just the act of sitting. When you bow, just totally present in bowing.

[12:42]

When you chant the sutra, just totally present with the sutra. when you do kinhin, just totally present in kinhin. So, it's a... Sesshin is a continuous day of total presence, moment by moment, act by act, with no other goal. No... The goal of practice is to be totally present, moment by moment, so either you're on or you're off. It's not that if you do this well, then tomorrow you'll feel better or something. You might feel better tomorrow, but maybe you won't.

[13:45]

But it's not about tomorrow. Zazen is not about tomorrow. Sashin is not about tomorrow. It's about right now. So, if we are totally present moment after moment, right now, then tomorrow, if there is one, will take care of itself. I don't mean that we shouldn't think about tomorrow. Every day we have to think about tomorrow. You know, that's in the past. But in Sashin, we can just think about now. This is a time we set aside to just really be present without any encumbrances. So when we sit in Zazen,

[14:49]

Even though we're men and women, we don't think of ourselves as a man or a woman. We're just someone is sitting in this present moment. Something is happening to someone. You don't even have a name at that point. Do you have any question? About anything?

[15:51]

Yes. Well, I could give you a reason. I could say, well, the reason for putting your right hand, your left hand over your right hand is because, but it's better, you know, to just not worry about it. If your friend wants to know, you can say, I don't know why. We just do it that way. And that's okay. So there's no official reason, physiological reason or anything? No, I don't think it's physiological at all. Some people would say, well, the right supports the left.

[16:52]

You can say so. You can say, well, because the right side supports the left. But that's about as far as you can go. One of the things is that we always want to have a reason. Well, what's the reason for this or for that? It's very difficult for us to go into something without knowing the reasons. My teacher would never tell me the reasons for anything. Or if he would tell me the reason, it would be as a kind of joke. And I realized it was a reason for his not giving me a reason. And I could think, well, I should know what I'm doing.

[18:00]

It's reasonable to want to know why we do something. But I went along with his not giving me a reason. He said, just do it. Just do it. And so I just did it. And as I just did what he asked, I learned something that was beyond reasonableness. But it's hard to do, you know. Hard to do. Ultimately, I think for that to work, you have to have real confidence in the teacher or the teaching. If you don't, then have that confidence, then you can have some trust.

[19:05]

Yeah. You have to have some confidence in the teacher and the teaching and some trust. That's right. But another reason is that there's a way of doing things which is harmonious because everybody does it a certain way. And then, for some arbitrary reason, people will want to change it. And say, well, maybe it works better this way or that way. And pretty soon you have everybody doing things different ways. And, you know, we always turn to the right. When you get off your cushion, when you exercise in, everybody turns to the right and gets down. And, you know, you can say, well, why not turn to the left? I mean, turning to the left is just as good as turning to the right.

[20:06]

But if you turn to the... If I turn to the right and you turn to the left, then we bump into each other. Right? So it's not so harmonious. You can put your left hand on top of your... Put your right hand on top of your left hand, if you want to, you know. But then he's sitting with his... doing it one way, and she's doing it another way. Everybody's doing their own thing. So there's not much cohesion. And in order to give the practice some form and to make it easy to deal with, we all do everything the same way. And you can think of other ways of doing it. There are always other ways of doing everything. If you go to another practice place, They do something in a different way and you go there and you say, they're doing everything wrong. It's supposed to be this way.

[21:10]

This is the problem, you get hung up in your own way of doing things. So to be able to do things the way we all do it is good. You go to another place and you hang on to that way, not so good. So you should be flexible enough to do things the way they do it at the place where you're going to. And so to be able to conform and also to be able to be flexible enough to conform to some other way is very important. So if I went to some other place and they held their hands like, you know, left over, right over left, they said, that's the way it sits us in, that's the way we do it. And I was gonna stay there for a while. No, I just do it that way. I wouldn't question it. Say, but we do it this way or you're doing it wrong. Why don't we do it like that or something?

[22:13]

I would just do it the way they suggest, the way they do it. And you see what I mean? They're just different ways of doing things. And if you try and figure out which is right or wrong, It just creates a bigger problem. They're just different ways of doing things. And they're not necessarily right or wrong. Can I say something about the hands? Yeah. Buddha's statue has that either way. This way and that way. He's showing a vision there. Physiological reason. Dogenzen is instruction. Always left feet come on your right side. And hand should rest on.

[23:14]

What happens if your right foot is on your left? You can't do that. Easy to... Easy to hold your right hand on your left... So the other way, when you fold, maybe you fold the other way around, naturally comes. Left hand below. But this school doesn't mention that part. But the refined tradition, Vajrayana, they stitch that. So Buddha's statue is usually the other way around. And Dogen's school is the opposite. So people have different reasons for doing things, different ways.

[24:17]

So when you're in Rome, see the way the Romans do it. Don't be too attached to your own way. Except when you're in your own place, then do it in your own way, in the way we do it. About the legs, it's better to switch the legs if you would like to practice sitting a long time. You only just mentioned one side, one leg. But if the teacher mentions If sitting goes wrong, you can switch the legs. Change over? Change over. My teacher, Manasaki Roshi, followed Dogen Genji's instructions precisely. Then he got into trouble. His pelvis and back became misaligned.

[25:23]

It was very difficult. He finally realized I was too stubborn. I think Guy was next. I was just going to say that once I decided to accept helpful to stop judging the form, which was difficult for me. Because I evaluate everything I do, and I like to have reasons for everything I do so I can explain it to myself and other people. And so the friends don't think I'm into some weird... weirdism. So I don't think that either.

[26:27]

But once it was See what it is. Allow yourself to. Just see what happens. That was difficult. And it still comes up. Every so often. Yeah. E.G.? Well, having been told not to ask why, I'd like to ask why... Nobody said you couldn't ask. But when Eckhart was speaking, I was... picture on the wall, sitting in that strange chair. I never understood that chair part. That's a Chinese chair.

[27:28]

Chinese, from China. The chair is Chinese style. And they used to sit in chairs like that. Some places, maybe the teacher has a chair that's Chinese style. that comes from that, from China. Sometimes the teacher will sit in a chair like that. It's a big chair that you sit Zazen in. So we're used to sitting on Zafus and so forth. Isn't that so, Akai? Maybe you know more about that. Yeah. So the Chinese, You know, this is a kind of platform. This is one kind of setup. And sitting on the floor is another way. Sitting on a big chair is another way. So various seats.

[28:31]

Yeah, formal way is the chair. Abbott's seat. Right, and Japanese have a chair which is, you don't, I don't think you can sit cross-legged in it, but you sit for ceremonies. It's a very elaborate, nice chair, Chinese style, where the abbot sits during ceremonies. But we don't have one of those chairs. I was told in Chinese or Japanese. No, he's Japanese. He wasn't trying to study when he came back? Yeah. Teresa? I can't hear you very well. I was visiting some friends back in Harvard and I sat in meditation with them and one friend asked me, why do we face the wall?

[29:37]

Well, there are two styles. One is facing the wall and one is facing inside. And facing the wall is Soto Zen style, but I believe that at one time it was also Rinzai style. I think the Rinzai changed to facing in. But some people say it's because Bodhidharma sat facing the wall. But there's some question as to whether that's so or not. Bhikvan means wall gazing. But there's some questions about the meaning of that too. But you can, you know, if you have a fire in the middle, are something, some, a part of it. Say you have a altar, or in a zendo, usually the altar is in the middle.

[30:52]

This zendo is zendo, buddha hall, dharma hall, you know, everything. So we have this altar up against the wall. But if it was only a zendo, we'd have it in the middle. So everybody's sitting around the altar. And so you're facing outward. That's the center, you know, the central part. And when you face out, then energy's going out into the universe. You face in, energy's coming in to the center. I don't know if that's the reason or not, but that's my feeling. When we sit facing out, all the energy is going. We're facing that way, facing out. And our backs are all together.

[31:57]

And there's some power in the center. But facing in is fine, too. We do both, actually, in the morning. The reason we sit facing in the morning is because we don't, you know, we only come together at certain times. And in order to become more familiar with each other, you know, be more, warmer feeling toward each other, we sit facing in one period. I really don't know all the reasons why people originally did those things. Do you know? Longer than in time. Early morning sitting. They're facing in.

[33:00]

In the nendo, they slept. They sat. Facing in. They get up in the morning, they sit facing in. Everyone goes, one by one, goes to the bathroom, wash, wash in, and comes back. Then they face out. Face out. Beginning, they face in. And K-1 then, later on, first period, morning, first, earlier part of the sitting, they face, face in. Then, Agat comes in, Receive the abode with the facing in. Then, after that... Facing out. Facing out. Change. Nowadays, from the beginning... It's facing out. Yeah, it changes back and forth. So, all the practices that we have are not always... I mean, the way we do things is not always the way it's always been done.

[34:02]

And from time to time it changes. And so we should also be flexible in, I think, in being open to changing things around a little bit, according to reason. Okay, it's time for service, but do you have a... Okay, not a significant question. Okay, thank you. Thank you.

[35:07]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ