Well, good morning again everyone. Thank you for joining us on this day where we can settle into our sitting and enjoy the day. So day sasheen, the meaning of the word translates to something like to touch the mind and it's one of the key elements of our practice, along with the continuous practice of daily zazen. Usually every month we will have at least a one-day sitting. Often there's a half-day sitting as well. A couple of times a year we have longer

[01:00]

sittings, five days and seven days, and these allow us to go more deeply into our practice perhaps than one period of zazen a day might. I think some of you know that my son Alex, for the last year and a half, he's been at a Rinzai Zen Monastery in Japan, and they do a seven-day intensive sasheen every month. And then in between they have a slightly more relaxed schedule, but it's still quite sasheen-like. So they're maintaining this practice and it's kind

[02:06]

of depth that you can experience. They're doing that day in day out. Our approach is a little different. Our approach is that we are shaped by our daily practice, and by sasheen, and also by the usual activities of our life. So if you think of sasheen as kind of the ritualization of Zen practice as life, then you could also think of our life as a kind of ritualization as well, which simply means that we bring mindfulness to each activity. And one of the places

[03:13]

that we learn that is in the sasheen day itself. So you know some places, some traditions have what they might call meditation retreats, where what they're doing is sitting all day, and they'll go to, at mealtime, you know, they'll go to a dining hall, and the cooks will serve them lunch, and then they go back to their meditation. Sometimes they sit together, sometimes they may sit in their rooms, or in more traditional times in caves. But in

[04:18]

our form, sasheen is being enacted by everyone. So, the participants in the sasheen are also the cooks, they're also the servers. The sasheen day includes, in a sense, all the usual things we might do. We have meditation, and walking meditation, we have service, we cook our meals, we serve them, we eat them, we listen to the Dharma. We also have a work period, so we have work. So all of the elements of an ordinary day are included in a day of

[05:19]

sasheen. And so in a way, it's how we model our everyday life. And it's interesting, some of you have been well seasoned in this practice over the years, and some of you are relatively new. I remember my first, my early experiences with sasheen, there was a lot of, it's kind of a build up that I felt, you know, in the days leading up to sasheen. And I, you know, some of it was a kind of excitement. Some of it was definitely anxiety. Because it can be

[06:21]

hard. And I remember, I guess when I first lived here, every night before sasheen, the sasheen director would come by and they would post the positions, the jobs, because there's lots of jobs. That's the other thing about sasheen, which is fantastic, is that it is a very complex mechanism with a lot of moving parts. Because there's cooking, and there's serving, and there's washing dishes, and there's work, and there's a work leader, and there's liturgy, and there's people chanting. So, so all of these positions have to be assigned. And everybody has has something to do. Not just to sit here, but actually to make it happen.

[07:23]

And sasheen were making it happen together. And I would go down, you know, I always wanted to know, what's my job going to be for the next day. And then sometimes we, you know, we talked to Sochin Roshi and say, well, how do you prepare for sasheen? And he would laugh and say, I don't prepare. I set my alarm clock. And when the alarm goes off, and it's sasheen day, then I just go to sasheen. I thought that was, I thought that was disingenuous. But, um, I've come to that point. And you can come to that point like this morning. Last night, I

[08:26]

wasn't really thinking about sasheen. And this morning, I just, you know, I got up and said, Okay, it's time I got to get this set up for sasheen in the zendo and then in the office. And it becomes part of your regular day life. And that's kind of relaxing. Which is not the same as saying that it's easy, sasheen itself. Some of you will doubtless experience painful pain in your legs, or other parts of your body. Some of you or all of us at different times will feel distracted or

[09:32]

restless. Some will find an ease of mind as you sit, and you might may find yourself settling into that in the course of the day. And when you think about it, that's kind of what our lives are like, from moment to moment. So this gives us an opportunity to reflect on our lives in a way that that has a clear focus or has boundaries about it. And we meet sasheen with the principles of determination, of effort, and patience, and love. One of the things that arises in the course, particularly in the course of a long sasheen,

[10:41]

is that you can, one can experience this extraordinary feeling of love and connection with all of those Zunwuns sitting together, and we're all melded into one body. That is, what a great feeling that is. Maybe it's worth the pain. So I remember, I've spoken about this, I remember my first, well it wasn't my first sasheen, the first sasheen I encountered, I think it was in Rohatsu of 1983 or 4. And I was a beginning student then, and I wasn't doing the sasheen, and

[11:54]

I had no idea what sasheen was. And I came to the zendo for 5.40pm zazen, and there was a completely different feeling in the room. The seats were all filled, there was people's stuff was under the tans, it just had this, and people had been sitting all day so you could feel the energy that had built up in the room. And when I walked in, it was like being struck by a wave, it was like, wow, what is this? And all I can say is that it was clear to me I wanted to be part of that. And I told myself, Oh, I'm never going to miss one of these again. And pretty much

[12:57]

I haven't, in the whole time that I've been here. I've sat almost every Rohatsu here, some in a couple of other places, but it's an important, it just was such an important sensation and realization, and kind of vow that arose mysteriously, without having to push or pull to give birth to it, it just sort of emerged from my sensibility. But Sashin was hard. Been working, Ron and Kika and Raghav have been, were working with Soshin Roshi in the last months of his life, on his memoir. And one point in his memoir, he's talking about his, his early days of

[14:04]

practice, and his first Sashin. And so, you know, they sat up here to Zazen. He signed up for Sashin, he sat up here to Zazen. And then they had Kinhyin. And then the bell rang, everybody sat down. And he said, Oh, God, they're going to do it again. And he did it. And he got through lunch, and just felt I can't do this. He left. And he went out to the marina and walked around. He walked around for a little while and realized his mind was back in Sashin. And there

[15:12]

was no place else to be. That he was just completely out of joint with walking around marina or anything else he could think to do. And so he went back to Zendo on Bush Street after being gone for a couple of hours and Suzuki Roshi said, Oh, look, he's back. And that was it. Some of you might remember your first Sashin, my first Sashin. So one day after that rohatsu, I think, in January, and my legs hurt so much. And also, I was struck with the mind of desire. And it became just absolutely unavoidable. What I desperately wanted was a hamburger.

[16:23]

And I thought about it, I said, No, no, no, you're not going to do this. And finally, on during break after, after before work period, I said, I gave in. And I went over to the Berkeley Bowl. And I don't know if I was in search of a hamburger. Well, I mean, it turns out what I was in search of was something that looked like a hamburger. And in the bakery, I found a bagel. And I just said, Okay, that'll do. And I bought a bagel and I walk home eating it and my desire was gone. Oh, who's that? Nathan? This is Tabitha.

[17:33]

Hi, Tabitha. Good to see you. So I had a bagel. And then I was able to set aside that mind and enter into Sashin. So, you know, the things that we experience in Sashin are, we see all the objects of our mind. And they can be very compelling, and very real. But they're objects of our mind. It's like, we didn't need a hamburger. A bagel that looked like a hamburger would suffice. So, you know, that's just a mental image. So what we confront in Sashin are, is this steady stream of mental images, also physical sensations. And what we're developing is the capacity to include them, not reject them. But to include them. As I was

[18:43]

saying earlier in the Zazen instruction. So I, in the last months as well, it's been, I think, tomorrow, six months since Sojin Roshi died. And we're going to do on Monday, we're going to do our monthly Founders Ceremony. And I think what we're going, what we're doing going forward is combining Suzuki Roshi's Founders Ceremony and Sojin's Founders Ceremony on one occasion in the month. But at any rate, over these months, I have been revisiting teachings that I can remember from Sojin Roshi and also things that he's written.

[19:48]

So as I said, we've been working on this book, which is a combined memoir and collection of lectures, but also coming very soon. All of the lectures that we have collected on cassettes and CDs from 1980 have now been digitized. And we're going to, that's all going to be handed over to us in the next week or so. There are 2000 lectures. And I have discovered, I went back and counted all the lectures that are on the website, which are ones that we recorded directly to digital. There's another 600. So, you know, they average, and most of these, especially for those first 30 years or so,

[21:00]

most of them are by Sojin Roshi, some by other students or teachers who came in, but it's an unbelievable body of work. So it's going to take us a long time to scratch the surface of this or to get it organized. And we'll probably ask your help. But I went back, I was looking at a Sishin lecture of Sojin's, and I want to speak from that for a while. This is a lecture that he gave in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. And you can find the whole lecture. If you Google the Chapel Hill Zen Center website, and look at the talks, you'll find a collection of his talks. And they're really good talks that have been very skillfully edited. Anyway, this was one in

[22:03]

Rohatsu Sishin of 1997, on continuous practice. Dogen uses this term in one of his essays. The essay, it's called Gyoji, which literally translates as continuous practice. And he talks about the circle of the way in continuous practice. So the circle of the way is, the circle is a jewel. It really implies our connection to each other as in that circle. And that's the activity of Sishin. So I'm going to read you a short section from Sojin and maybe comment as we go along. We've been sitting, zazen, doing kinhin, eating meals, cooking meals, and serving each other.

[23:08]

Moment after moment, we've been dealing with our silent dramas, dealing with our not so silent dramas, with our complaints, and with our doubts. This is continuous practice, a very concentrated time of continuous practice. So what I would say is, well, he said, during this time, two questions come up. One is why? And the other is how? Why, is the question, if you haven't asked yourself that question yet today, I'd be willing to bet you will ask yourself that question at some point later in the day. Why am I doing this?

[24:12]

To me, that is almost invariably a question that arises on the first day of Sishin. Why did I sign up for this? It's almost inevitable, and it might be essentially unanswerable in its own terms. So Sojin goes on, after posing those two questions, he says, Sishin is pretty difficult. It's difficult to stay in our seat, dealing with painful legs, painful mind, listening to the loop of our thoughts continually going round and round. And I'm sure we all know, it's just like, well, it's like, I couldn't get rid of that idea of the hamburger, you know, that was one of those loops.

[25:21]

It's difficult. It's sometimes difficult accepting the various emotions that come up. It's difficult just settling ourself on ourself without getting caught by emotion, thought, or painful legs. And without becoming attached to any of the nice states of mind that might occasionally appear. They do appear. And please notice them as they appear. Don't get stuck on them. But whatever difficulty you're having, that difficulty is not seamless. The state of mind one seeks in Zazen is no special state of mind. When we read about meditation, it's very intriguing.

[26:24]

We're lured into this activity, hoping to reach nirvana. That's a very common, that's the carrot on the stick. So we're lured into this activity, hoping to reach nirvana. We don't understand that nirvana is the pain in our legs. He says, sorry, sorry to give you this, this difficult truth to absorb. So it's natural after Sashin to look for something special to bring home. Here he's talking about sitting Rohatsu Sashin. He says, we sit for a week and say,

[27:26]

what happened? Or we sit for a week and go home and our partner asks us, what happened? Or what was it like? And nothing happened. You can't say what happened and you certainly can't say what it was like because you don't remember. And it's not like anything else. It all went by in a moment. What did I get after seven days? Nothing, just painful legs. This is not actually, I would maybe take issue with that. I think that what happens, and you may find it when you go outside, after lunch is that there's a quickening of your senses and your awareness.

[28:34]

It's easier to perceive that the glow of things or the subtle, but amazing life of everything in terms that you may not be able to define, but you can see it. One of the things I remember from early Sashins is just coming out and lying on the lawn here, which is not something I do a lot. And like lying on the lawn, my face kind of had grass level and just seeing that there was a whole universe there. So I don't know if that's special or not special,

[29:40]

but something about the activity of Sashin enabled me to enter that perception. So it goes on, he says, this is seven days of letting go of allowing whatever state of mind is to be present. It's not chasing away evil thoughts, not coveting good thoughts, not grasping wonderful states of mind, not rejecting painful states of mind. Just being present with whatever is present. That's all. The most difficult thing of all is just to stay in your seat. That's what he found in his first Sashin and that's often what we experience. The hardest thing is to stay in your seat.

[30:48]

So we have these two questions. First, why do we do this? He says, when we start to sit, we instinctively know why. I think that's what I was experiencing when I went into the Zindo that first evening in 1984. It was like, all I knew was I wanted to be part of this. Ah, which is beyond, says it's beyond our reasoning, but somewhere we know. When we start to reason about it, we don't know anymore. We tried to match our reasoning with our knowing, and it brings up this question. Why?

[31:54]

Especially when we get into a difficult spot. It's like taking a boat ride. We know that we enjoy going out in the boat. No, we don't. That's fun. Then a big storm comes up. Pretty soon, the boat's leaning over, and the sails are starting to rip, and the waves are coming over the side. We say, why did we ever do this? But that doesn't help. The real question is, how do I deal with this? That's true of our whole life, and that's what we're learning. That's what we have the ability to learn in Sahin, is how do I deal with this? How do I deal with

[33:02]

these immediate difficulties that are completely of my own doing? No one forced me to sit here. I thought it was a good idea on some intuitive level, which I may have forgotten. Right now, I may have forgotten why I thought that was a good idea. But the question is, I can leave, or I can figure out how to deal with this. Sojin says, I've spoken of this a lot lately, and he spoke of this always. He said, how is the practice question? Why is valid, but it's secondary to how? Take your life, for example. Why was I born? He says, it doesn't matter. Here you are. The real question is,

[34:11]

how do I live in this life? That was the question that brought me to practice. It was the element of, why am I here? But really, the fundamental question was, accepting the fact that I'm here, how do I live? What do I do? How do I deal with this situation? And so, he says, when we hold this question of how, that is continuous practice. That is the koan of your life. So, continuous practice is just really keeping how, either in the back or the front of your mind.

[35:19]

He says, occasionally someone will ask me, how can I be a good Zen student? Invariably, I say, just keep the question. It's a great question. How do I do what's in front of me? How do I practice moment to moment? That is what we learn in seishin. What's great about seishin is it's not just one period of zazen and we're off to the next activity of our life. But, yes, after the first period of zazen and kinin, the bell rings and we sit down and we do it again. And we carry that mind when we're eating our meals in orioke fashion. We're still sitting. And so, we have the opportunity to practice

[36:31]

moment by moment. And we see, you know, we can see, we can either settle into that moment, which sometimes we do, or we see how compelling the message is, get me out of here. And yet, get me out of here, he said, this is, well, it was in something else he said, you know, is the experience is sometimes one of, I can't stay and I can't go. And you're just pinned to the, you're pinned to the moment by that thought.

[37:34]

So, when we sit, he says, we harmonize body and mind with the universe, without discriminating, without picking and choosing. Without picking and choosing, what's wonderful in seishin is we're just, we don't know what food is going to be offered to us necessarily. We just accept what's offered and are amazed that our friends have cooked this food and served it to us. And we don't pick and choose. We just accept it. And the same thing is true, we're amazed that the universe has selected this moment to offer us. We find a way to accept it. So, how can we keep the mind, the heart and all the other satellites in harmony?

[39:13]

The world is in, he says, the world is in a terrible state, in a state of terrible unrest and getting worse all the time. I'm not sure it's getting worse all the time, but I'm not sure that it's getting better either. In certain respects, it's always been like this. The world, the mind, our mind should be working for the sake of humanity, not for its own satisfaction, or it should be working for the sake of all beings, not just humanity, but animals and plants and rivers and rocks and streams. We sit up straight, harmonizing all this in one act. So, when you pick up a cup of tea,

[40:20]

pick up the cup with both hands, drink the tea with no separation between you, the cup and the tea. The cup is not an object. The tea is not an object. There are no objects. So, this is the message of Seshin, is there are no objects, it's just complete subjectivity. Everything that we see or do is part of us. That includes right now the 14 of you, 14 of us on the screen.

[41:24]

You are objects of my mind. I'm objects of your mind. And even though we're separated by distance, we're working together. So, Seshin says, when we sit sadhana, we bring the whole world into harmony. This is called saving all beings. As long as individuals are out of balance, the world will be out of balance. In order to bring the world into balance, we start with ourselves. This is our way of saving beings. This is what I would say, this is what in the Platform Sutra, the sixth ancestor says,

[42:29]

is his bodhisattva vow, rather than saying, sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them. He says, sentient beings of my mind are numberless. I vow to save them all. Everything, everyone that we see is a sentient being of our mind. It's not just, we're not talking about multiple personality disorder here. We're recognizing that the images of each other inhabit our mind, and so do the images of our past and conceivably of our future. My mind contains me at certain moments that come to memory of

[43:35]

going back to childhood, going back to early childhood. My daughter, Sylvie, is visiting us for a couple days now. She came last night, we had dinner, and she was saying, she was trying to remember the restaurants that we had. Oh, we went out to a restaurant. How many of you have been, have any of you been to a restaurant? What a remarkably ordinary experience. It's like, it's like, I forgot this was really weird to be sitting in a restaurant with people. It was very nice, the waiters wore masks, and we had a really pleasant meal, and she was remembering the places that we used to go during her childhood here in Berkeley. And then, of course, that threw me all the way back, it threw me back 65 years to remembering the particular restaurants that

[44:50]

we used to patronize when I was a kid, and my parents took me to, and then trying to remember, okay, what, and what were the dishes that I had? What, what, what did I usually eat at those restaurants? And then thinking that I even had some taste memory of some of those foods. And so that that sentient being, that five-year-old or seven-year-old kid, was momentarily alive, momentarily alive again. So it's good to look at the sentient beings of our own mind, but it's also good to recognize that that mind is not limited by this envelope of skin and bone,

[45:55]

that we are creatures of each other's minds as well. And what we're doing in Sesshin is practicing together, we're practicing by ourselves together. This is our way of saving beings, sentient beings. And this is what we're doing here today. So I think I will stop there and leave time for questions and discussion. And you may have particular, if you have particular questions of form or how we do things, please, please ask those. So I'll let Mary Beth call on people who raise their hands digitally or raise their hands in

[46:57]

person. Or you can put a question in the chat box too, and I'll ask it. So please feel free. Penelope. Penelope. Thank you, Osan. So I have a question that I'm working with these days. I have some quite serious back pain that isn't fully diagnosed yet, and we're in the process of that, but it's quite, it's not a muted kind of pain. It can be enormously stabbing. And when it happens, it takes my full concentration. Meditation feels like it goes at that moment out the window. And

[48:01]

I know how to, I've trained myself and been taught how to work with minor pain and tracking it and staying with it. But this feels like it's in a whole other cosmos. And I wondered if you have thoughts about that. What have you been doing? I don't try to meditate at that point because I can't. I simply can't do it. So I take my painkiller medications and I lie down with a heating pad and I apply ointment and hope that it will stop spasming. That's what I've been doing. When it's that bad. Well, what experience I've had, I mean, there's certain kinds of pains. I was saying this the other day, certain kind of pain that just kind of brushes away any kind of technique or concentration

[49:08]

that you might have. Certainly I had that with a kidney stone once. There was just no way to get around this pain. And another example though is I guess about 20, 21 years ago, I had sepsis. I had an infection that became septic. And I went into septic shock. And it was, you know, it was really touch and go. And it was extremely, half of my body was just, it was just like on fire. I can't really remember. But I was in the ICU and I was trying to talk to Lori and said, you know, I don't think I can do

[50:19]

this. And she said, you don't have a choice. And then she said, you should just take it one breath at a time. And that was just breathing. That wasn't meditation. And what I said to her, and I did was, okay, but I'm going to groan. And, you know, if I think of it now, I think in a way that was an attempt to kind of align myself with the pain. But I did that. I did that for hours. And I don't know how, you know, it's like the clock was across the wall and, you know, a minute was an hour. And in that case, they couldn't give me painkillers. That was part of the problem

[51:29]

because it would have suppressed my already suppressed system. But the thing is, we get through this or we don't. We get through it in some way we don't know. Or we become unconscious or we die. I mean, talking with, you know, you, if I have a suggestion for you, if that would be okay, talk to Clay Taylor. Have you met Clay? He comes to the morning on Tuesday morning. Yeah. Talk to Clay. Just see if you can talk to him because he's dealt with intense chronic pain now for 15 or 20 years. You know, from being this incredibly vigorous, athletic

[52:32]

guy, young guy. He had some, he had something happen to his back that is never fully diagnosed, but he has to deal with it every minute. So talk to Clay. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I must say as a result of this, I'm hoping this will reduce him to be diagnosed in other ways, but I bow deeply to people who have chronic pain like Clay because I know that he has that. I bow because when this happens, it's just, it's on another plane of existence almost. So people stay and handle it and don't become homicidal or suicidal is already quite a, I think, miraculous thing.

[53:35]

I think little by little, I think, you know, one thing that one does is wherever there's a space to do some, an investigation of how, you know, take that space, however small it is. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. You're muted, Mary Beth. Thank you. There's a question in the chat box. Is Kinhin our way of walking in the world? Could we strive to make it so? That's an interesting question. Uh, Kinhin is, is kind of a ritualized way of walking.

[54:38]

But, you know, the way we do it is like very slow and methodical and mindful in a, at a microcosmic level, you know, mindful of the, the way your muscles and joints work, et cetera. Uh, but we can be mindful in our everyday walking. Um, the thing about walking in the world is it calls for a different sort of awareness. Uh, in the Zendo, it's a, or, you know, on the grounds of a monastery, it's a safe place. It's a, it's a place with fewer distractions. Um, you know, all we really need to pay attention to is what is right in front of us on the ground.

[55:47]

Whereas when we're walking in the world, uh, we have to, then our mindfulness is of a different sort. Our mindfulness is in the, the mindfulness has to have the capacity of scanning. So think about driving. Can driving be a meditation? You know, driving is, is an amazingly complex activity and your awareness and your muscular, your physical coordination and, uh, sensory awareness is so immediate and integral. Uh, and that's another kind of mindfulness, but we don't want to, we, we want to really be moment by moment present, uh, you know, in driving,

[56:53]

you don't want to make the effort to step back and look at the nature of awareness or look at every muscular move you're going to make. That's like a, not a good approach to driving. And I would say the same thing would be true of walking in the world. So except that the conditions of walking in the world are slightly different than the conditions of, uh, kin. And so you just call it, it's a different, it's a different modality of walking meditation. But the ultimate idea, which is what Sojourner Roshi is talking about in this piece is continuous practice, which means continually bringing yourself to each moment with what is appropriate. Thank you. Yoni, would you like to unmute and ask the question?

[57:57]

I was on, um, sort of more of a comment. Uh, I definitely asked myself why am I doing this with Zazen? Um, but I also asked that with most activities that I do, things that I don't like feel, um, very connected to like work and, um, something I, I don't know, get out of Zazen versus get out of those other activities is that ultimately I find that though those activities I'm kind of doing, cause I'm afraid of something and Zazen, I feel like I'm doing, cause I'm curious about something. I think fear still comes up, but that's not the motivating force for Zazen. And I, yeah, just think it's interesting. So I just wanted to share that. That is interesting. You know, I mean,

[59:02]

a lot of, this is the pivot point of the Heart Sutra. Uh, somewhere towards the middle, it says, uh, after listing all of the different, these different steps, sets of dharmas, uh, he says, no hindrances without any, without hindrances, no fears exist. And so for me, the point of the Heart Sutra is the cultivating of fearlessness. And one of the things that we can, we might experience in Zazen, uh, is at a gross or subtle level to experiencing our fears at a gross or subtle level and learning

[60:03]

bit by bit, learning that these are states of mind that themselves are not substantial, uh, but you can only learn that by, I think the building of trust and part of the practice of Sashin is to build trust, trust in yourself, trust in Zazen, trust in this path of practice that has been laid out for 2,500 years. And sometimes then the things that may appear fearful fall away. We don't have to do something necessarily to transform them. They transform themselves.

[61:08]

Thank you. Evan, would you like to unmute yourself and ask your question? I wanted to ask about two, uh, two aspects of form that we do all the time, but I've never really spoken about, and that is gassho and bowing. Hmm. That's a great question. Um, I should, that's, maybe that'd be a whole lecture actually, uh, on towards the end of the session. But, um, there's so many ways of, of contemplating it. Um, actually maybe say a little more about what your question is.

[62:20]

Um, I guess something about why, why we do it or like, but not, I guess, yeah, I guess so. I guess. Okay. Well, without getting into a long exposition, this is how we meet each other. Uh, you put your hands in gassho and bow. I did the same. We meet at the bottom of that bow. Okay. And it's the mode of, you know, it's just a form for respectful acknowledgement and connection.

[63:31]

Um, it's not so different from shaking hands, but it has, it has a whole range of symbolic, uh, meaning bringing of our hands together. Uh, sometimes this is framed as the meeting of the relative and the absolute. Okay. Uh, and they're very different. There's, there's lots of, they're different manifestations of bow. And I'll give when, when we do service, I'll give some brief instruction. Again, I give the instruction is in the, is in the realm of how, not so much in the realm of why, but why is interesting. Uh, how enables us to enter the bow

[64:37]

with our body and mind. And, you know, I have, I have these bows in my mind, uh, you know, of, of teachers and friends over the years that I can physically see them, uh, how they bow and find myself imitating that with my body. And in a sense, it's, it's like the way you play music. If one plays music, then, uh, one learns from a recording or from a teacher or from observing a person you respect physically how to do something. And then gradually one enters that. And the same thing is true. The same bow is parallel with say,

[65:44]

the way we physically, the way we sit, which as I said, is bowing. Gassho is a mudra. Uh, you know, it's a, uh, a spiritual gesture. And when we create that alignment of bowing, we're enacting it, even though I'm enacting it, even though I can't say exactly what's happening or why, but I do it with considerable mindfulness. So, um, let me think further on that. And maybe that's one of the lectures I'll give during, uh, session at the, uh, in a couple of weeks. Okay. Thank you. Nathan, would you like to ask your question? I see Jack's, I see Dan waving his hand too. So Nathan first.

[66:47]

Um, the question is, does, does our experience of Zazen matter? Um, and I asked because I was, I was reading, um, I was rereading Uchiyama's, um, description of Zazen and he talks about posture and, um, aiming the body in a way that you can't know that you're achieving the aim and that that's the point. Um, and that I think says something in there to the effect of we can be doing Zazen without knowing that we're doing it. And that to a certain extent, maybe by implication, our conscious mind's experience of this doesn't matter very much. Um, and I was rereading that because I've struggled a lot with, I don't know, vigilance or, you know, like my own mind's sort of narration of what's happening when

[67:55]

I'm, when I'm sitting and this sort of questioning, am I doing it? Am I, is this, are we doing this properly? Is this, you know, and that, that the thinking ends up being this sort of meta cognition about like, is Zazen happening? And, and, um, anyway, uh, I was curious to your thoughts on does, which, which I find exceedingly tedious, I should say. Um, does it, does that matter? Does my experience of this matter or is the fact that I'm aiming my body towards this ideal and continuing to do it, even though I find it frustrating, um, uh, the most important thing? I'm hearing a different question. Uh, the question of, I think you asked first, does Zazen matter? Does doing Zazen matter? And then later you said, does my experience of Zazen matter? Those are really different questions.

[69:01]

Uh, to me, uh, the first question was, does the experience of Zazen matter? All right. Okay. Um, if you were evaluating it, um, you're going to get caught in that loop. And the question, it comes down to a, how question, how can you set aside the evaluation? Uh, and at the same time, if your intention is the intention of Zazen, Zazen is working kind of in the bowels of reality there. Uh, whether you are,

[70:04]

whether you know that, that it's, you know, that you're having experience or not. So if we have sleepy Zazen, you know, if it's constantly nodding out every second, we try to wake up, but it's still the activity of Zazen because it's the activity of the moment that we are, we are experiencing. Um, and I think that when one is experiencing that evaluating or judging mind, that it's not different from the mind of Zazen. And with any of, with any of these circumstances, we have to admit to impermanence and allow them to move on.

[71:11]

And that's the question. How do, how do I do that? And that may take you another 20 years, but it won't be there all the time. I guarantee that it changes. You know, it's like, uh, I've, again, I, I'm coming to the point where I'm repeating myself a lot. And, you know, it's like, on the one hand, it's like limited imagination and the other hand, well, maybe this kind of core principles for me, uh, in Fugansa Zengi, Dogen says the Dharma, the Zazen I'm speaking of is not learning meditation. It is simply the Dharma gate of repose and bliss. And, uh, you know, I think for the first 10 years of my practice, I felt, okay, I'm ready for this repose and bliss. Where's this repose and bliss?

[72:20]

Uh, even though there were moments that were, that were quite wonderful. Uh, and it's, I just say, it's much easier for me now. Zazen, when I start, when I sit down, it's almost immediately a very restful, clear state of mind. And that just happened. I didn't make it happen. You're not going to make this happen. So just trust, trust in Zazen. It's the most important thing. Thank you. We have time for one more. Maybe, uh, uh, Dan had his hands up. Yes, Dan, please unmute yourself. I'm unmuted. Um, compared with Nathan's very deep question, this is a question of form.

[73:32]

In Sasheen, I've noticed in the first service of this, of the day, we bow nine times. Usually, yeah. And then other times we bow three. Okay. What's the question? Why? The answer of how we know that this one is why. No, there's a why. Um, my understanding is that this is not something that you don't usually find this in Japan. For service, it's usually senpai, uh, three bows. Uh, for certain kinds of services, you might do

[74:33]

more. I think Suzuki Roshi, there are various stories. One is that, uh, people were asking him questions about why we bow three times. And, you know, so he decided to have people bow nine times. And it's another way of meeting, that perhaps he was meeting people's resistance to bowing. Uh, it's another way perhaps to, uh, amplify our humility. The act of bowing is lowering ourselves. Um, so I will try to dig up more concrete evidence on that, but it's definitely,

[75:42]

it was definitely his innovation for us. Nowhere I've been in Japan, do they do nine bows during service. You do it for other rituals. Does that answer your question? Well, I think we need to end and we'll end with the four vows, which are up there. And we'll have time for more, we will have more time for discussion, uh, towards the end of the day, uh, for free discussion. Uh, so thank you very much.

[76:28]

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