I forgot to start the CD, I'm sorry. You started it now. So this is a big problem that we have. And not only is the problem of what do we do with the self, how do we drop the self, but We have this expectation about dropping the self. The hardest thing is to just do what we do for the sake of what we do without an expectation. When we have some expectation, we can't settle on ourself. There's a saying, Zazen is to settle the self on the self.

[01:07]

To settle the self on the self. To settle the self on the self is to let go of the self, is to drop the self. Just drop right on top of the self. Boom. So we fulfill ourselves. Our life is fulfilled by actualizing the self. If you say, I have no self, then we tell you to go out and get a self. If you say, I have a self, we tell you to forget the self. You can't get around it.

[02:11]

Life fills itself through this body-mind. This is the vehicle for which life is expressing itself. So life expresses itself through the activities of this person, and it also expresses itself through the activities of you, your person. So we don't want to stop that activity. We want to let it flow freely. But we have to understand it. So shikantaza, arzazan, is just to be ourselves. That sounds very simple. But then, what does that mean?

[03:15]

What is ourself? That it is just to be. When we do not expect anything, we can be ourselves. So there's something about expectation that creates a problem. You know, when we sit in Zazen, after a while, our legs hurt. And then we have the problem of, well, what do we do now? Now what do I do? Or our back hurts, or we're uncomfortable, or we're restless. What do I do now? So how do I exist on this moment?

[04:28]

to exist on this moment with clarity and attention without expecting anything, without thinking about the past, without clinging to the past or thinking about the future. There is just this moment. And this moment has its pain and its pleasure. or whatever. It has its delusions, its dreams, its feelings. And then this moment becomes the past. And then this moment becomes the present. But the past is part of the present. The future is nothing but the present. There's just this one long moment that's not going anywhere.

[05:41]

It's just called now. If we can live on each moment of now, we can accept whatever is happening. It's only when we have some expectation or when we want something else to happen that we can't be comfortable. So shikantaza is just to be present for each moment with what's there without wanting it to be different. without creating some idea about how it should be. Experienced members know this.

[06:47]

When our hearts go out to all of the new people who have such a difficult time, And that's very encouraging. When you have this difficult time, it means that you're fully engaged, even though you don't know what to do. It's wonderful. So the older people encourage the new people, and the new people encourage the older people. The thing is that the, less experienced people don't realize is how your difficulty is encouraging everyone. Because you're practicing with a beginner's mind. And we've all been through it. So don't be discouraged. You just practice on each moment.

[07:52]

moment by moment without expecting or without bringing up like or dislike. Or you would rather have it some other way. Then you just get into one breath at a time. And just follow each breath, each exhale, each inhale. and just live on that moment, moment by moment. That's Shikantaza. It's also self-fulfilling samadhi, self-joyous samadhi. So you can feel the joy within the difficulty. and the difficulty within the joy. If Sazen were only difficulty, we couldn't be able to do it, but we know that there's something besides that, even though we don't know exactly always what it is.

[09:09]

So you can ask who sits zazen, but there's no end to asking who. So instead of who, we say how. How do I do this? How can I do this? You know, everybody's legs hurt, pretty sure. Sometimes people say, you've been sitting for 40 years, your legs still hurt? I say, yes, my legs still hurt. But the only way that I can maintain my zazen is to just open myself. If you open yourself, to at the beginning and just keep opening yourself to every sensation.

[10:22]

That's Shikantaza. Moment by moment, you open yourself to every sensation without judging it and simply accepting it without any judgment. And then it becomes something else. But you have to be attentive and awake to do that. Otherwise, you wake up with a big surprise. And then it becomes overwhelming. So he says, for a period of time each day, to sit in Shikantaza without moving, without expecting anything, as if you were in your last moment.

[11:39]

Moment after moment, you feel your last instant. In each exhalation and each installation, there are countless instants of time, yet your intention is to live in each instant. So this is difficult to do. We drift off, we forget, we go to sleep, we lose our posture. But to keep waking up over and over again, just keep waking up over and over again and reaffirming, reestablishing ourself moment by moment. So he says, first practice smoothly, inhaling and then exhaling.

[12:42]

Calmness of mind is beyond the end of your exhale. So when you exhale, there's nothing. That's calmness of mind. And then you come back to life. Then you exhale. and you come back to life. So you have to be willing to let go of everything. That's exhaling is the willingness to let go of everything. When we have the problem of not letting go, we keep our breath up here. Letting go has to have some depth. So letting go is to let the breath go all the way out. And then there's really not anything left. So this takes some courage to allow yourself to die easily, like there's nothing, not breathing, and then come back to life.

[14:04]

Let go, come back to life. So in the letting go is where we can find the calmness of our mind. Inhaling is excitation. So there's calmness within excitation too. But letting go is more absolute Inhaling is more experiential. So it's relief of letting everything go. So he says, if you exhale smoothly, without even trying to exhale, you are entering into the complete perfect calmness of your mind.

[15:17]

You did not exist anymore. You're gone. When you exhale this way, then naturally, your inhalation will start from there. all that fresh blood bringing nourishment from outside will pervade your body and you are completely refreshed. Then you start to exhale to extend that fresh feeling into emptiness. So moment after moment, without trying to do anything, you continue shikantaza. So this is called pure existence. You know, we usually feel that we need to justify our life. I have to do something to justify my life. I have to be successful in some way to justify my life.

[16:19]

But actually, simply existing with pure existence is enough. If you can be successful at purely existing, that's enough. Then you can do anything you want. So, this is life of practice, actually. Although we do engage in all kinds of activities, and we have successes and failures. If we know how to exist, if we experience pure existence and understand what that is, then success and failure are just ornaments of our life.

[17:23]

We can always come back to the confidence of pure existence. Otherwise, why are we practicing? This is how we can always be calm and confident from moment to moment in our life, no matter what's happening. So he says, complete shikantaza may be difficult because of the pain in your legs when you're sitting cross-legged. But even though you have pain in your legs, you can do it. Even though your practice is not good enough, you can do it. Your breathing will gradually vanish. You will gradually vanish, fading into emptiness.

[18:28]

Inhaling without effort, you naturally come back to yourself with some color or form. Exhaling, you gradually fade into emptiness like an empty white paper. That is Shikantaza. The important point is your exhalation. Instead of trying to feel yourself, as you inhale, fade into emptiness as you exhale. So inhaling and exhaling are two expressions of the same thing. It's simply pure existence, and sometimes we call it inhaling, sometimes we call it exhaling, depending on what the activity is. But it's really two sides of one thing. He says, when you practice this in your last moment, you will have nothing to be afraid of.

[19:41]

You are actually aiming at emptiness. You become one with everything after you completely exhale with this feeling. If you are still alive, naturally you will inhale again. Oh, I'm still alive, fortunately or unfortunately. then you start to exhale and fade into emptiness. Maybe you don't know what kind of feeling it is, but some of you know it, and by some chance you must have felt this kind of feeling. There's a saying, especially emphasized by Rinzai Zen, but not necessarily, that one must die the great death. And that sounds very dramatic. Oh God, do I have to die the great death?

[20:44]

But you simply practice Sazen. If you know how to practice Shikantaza, You know, there's a koan. Does the one who practices the great death come back to life again? Does the one who practices, does the one who dies the great death come back to life again? Wonderful koan. That's shikantaza. You can't come back to life unless you let go. You can't come back to life unless you let go. And this is one of the problems we have in our life. Because when we cling to so much, we feel stifled. When we let go, we spring back to life.

[21:55]

So, you know, we actually have an opportunity. We always have an opportunity to come back to life. Sometimes we look around and we say, well, it looks like people are walking around like the living dead. You know, sometimes we look at society and we say, well, people are doing a lot of stuff, but is it really alive? And our karma creates, by creating karma, we often cling to things to so much and stifle our life. but we always have the opportunity to turn, to drop our habitual way of doing things and come back to life. So dropping body and mind is, I think, probably the same thing as dying the great death.

[23:13]

letting go and trusting that you will come back to life or that life will come back to life or that life will fulfill you, life will play itself out. So renunciation means moment by moment not getting caught. moment by moment, letting go. So this is actually shikantaza too, zazen. Zazen is great renunciation. Just letting go moment by moment. Sometimes, you know, it's like throwing up, but it doesn't have to be. Simply letting go moment by moment. And sometimes the waves are big, sometimes the waves are small.

[24:21]

And the waves are big, we just go with the waves. So this is zazen. When the waves are big, we go with the waves. When the waves are small, we go with the waves. But we don't expect anything. We just are aware enough to go with whatever comes. So when the waves arrive, the boat floats up. So just let the boat float. Dogen has a poem, At Midnight. The moon is shining on the water and the boats are, the little boats in the harbor are floating up and down without a problem. When you do this practice, you cannot easily become angry.

[25:27]

When you are more interested in inhaling than in exhaling, you easily become quite angry. You're always trying to be alive. The other day, my friend had a heart attack, and all he could do was exhale. He couldn't inhale. That was a terrible feeling. He said, at that moment, feeling, he said. At that moment, if he could have practiced exhaling, as we do, aiming for emptiness, then I think he would not have felt so bad. I don't know. Maybe. At that moment, oh yes, The great joy for us is exhaling more than inhaling. That's very interesting. I think it's equal, but I'll give him that.

[26:32]

When my friend kept trying to inhale, he thought he couldn't inhale anymore. If he could have exhaled smoothly and completely, then I think another inhalation would have come more easily. Yes? You have to do one to get the other. So to take care of the exhalation is very important. To die is more important than trying to be alive. That's interesting koan. To die is more important than trying to be alive. So in trying to be alive, we cling. To trust in letting go, This is called, this is faith and trust, faith, that when you let go, life takes care of you. You don't have to try to be alive.

[27:35]

Life itself will fulfill itself. If you allow that to happen, So dying, in a sense, means, I think, letting go. Letting go is more important than trying to gain something. That's the meaning, I'm sure, is what he means. Trying to gain something would just cause you more problems. And letting go will bring you to life. That's how we, you know, when we say mind in Buddhism, in Buddhadharma, big mind, doesn't mean thinking mind. It means universal mind, universal consciousness. Hard to describe, not describable, but it points to something.

[28:42]

So when we always try to be alive, we have trouble. Rather than trying to be alive or active, if we can be calm and die or fade away into emptiness, then naturally we will be okay. Buddha will take care of us. That's interesting. Buddha will take care of us. But don't think that Buddha means something that Don't create a Buddha image in your mind. He says, Buddha will take care of us. That's just something thrown out there to mean something, that things will work, whatever he means by Buddha. He says, Buddha, he means Buddha nature. Our innate nature will take care of us. There's no other way that anything will take care of us. George Bush will not take care of us.

[29:55]

Buddha nature will take care of us, as it has. Because we have lost our mother's bosom, we don't feel like her child anymore. That's interesting too. Yet fading away into emptiness, we can feel like being at our mother's bosom, and we will feel as though she will take care of us. Moment after moment, do not lose this practice of shikantaza." That's an interesting statement. You know, we think, oh, well, it sounds like, you know, insecurity maybe or something. But interesting thing is that when soldiers are on the battlefield, they're always crying out for their mother. And when sailors are drowning in the ocean, they're always crying out for their mother. So, this mother is like,

[31:07]

Prajnaparamita, the mother of all Buddhas. So, mother meaning the source or essence of mind. So various kinds of religious practices are included in this point. When people say Namo Amida Butsu, Namo Amida Butsu, they want to be Amida Buddha's children. That is why they practice repeating Amida Buddha's name. The same is true with our Zazen practice. If we know how to practice Shikantaza, and if they know how to repeat Amida Buddha's name, it cannot be different. So, you know, this kind of practice of calling Buddha's name, or Amida Buddha, faith practice, so-called faith practice.

[32:19]

Zen is called self-practice, but actually it's a mistake. It's simplistic, because in the end, Zen practice is faith practice. And faith practice is self-practice. They're just two sides of the same thing. So he says, so we have enjoyment and we are free. We feel free to express ourselves because we are ready to fade into emptiness. And when we are trying to be active and special and to accomplish something, we cannot express ourselves. Small self will be expressed, but big self will not appear from emptiness. From the emptiness, only great self appears, and that is shikantasa."

[33:23]

So he says, it's not so difficult if you really try to do that. So we're probably at the end of our time, but do you have a question? A word that I didn't hear you use, but I imagine hovering around your lips is surrender. Would you comment on surrender as an aspect or alternative description of shikantaza? Well, surrender, If used in a certain sense, yes. There's an active and passive aspect. I think the passive aspect is surrender, and the active aspect is initiation, and both are important.

[34:30]

So when he talks about Exhaling, that's a kind of surrender, right? Letting go. And inhaling is initiation in a way, creating stuff, right? So we're creating stuff and we're letting go of stuff. So surrender, yes, but also letting go. Surrender means freedom. It doesn't mean subjugation. It means allowing yourself to have total freedom. So it's surrender in that sense. Not becoming a prisoner, but allowing for total freedom. as opposed to faith practice?

[35:34]

Say that again? Self-practice. What about it? I've never heard that term before. I was just wondering how it contrasts with faith practice. Zen practice is supposed to be self-practice. By practice, you practice to attain enlightenment or you practice for self-cultivation, right? No, that Zen practice is usually thought of as practicing for, you put yourself into practice because you know that there's such a thing as gaining enlightenment and so forth. That's usual. Soto Zen's a little different. And faith practice is simply turning yourself over to, without having to do any practice at all. That if you simply turn yourself over, you know, to Amida Buddha, you'll be saved.

[36:43]

No need to practice, because in this Dharma-ending age of mapo, practice, nobody can do that. That was the idea. So Shinran and others created the Nebutsu practice of chanting Buddha's name in order to be the name of Amida and Amitabha. And to be, you know, I don't want to go through the whole thing, but they will be saved, right? Just through that. So, but they don't have to do any practice because practice is useless. in the Dharma ending age, won't get you anywhere. But Dogen rejected that idea, you know, as to, and Zen people, you know, don't believe in that, so. So it's called self-practice, self-enlightening practice, rather than self-reliant practice, rather than self-reliance, rather than relying on Amida.

[38:00]

Was it being called that by someone outside of the Zen community, looking at the Zen community? But I mean, it could go, you know, I'm sure the people, the Zen practice is based on self-reliance. But deep self-reliance means depending on Buddha. Because you have no self. Your self is Buddha. So in the end, you know, self-reliance, but it means doing something, doing something, rather than just relying on the faith in Amida. So it's, you know, Zen practice is cooperating with Buddha, rather than just jumping into Buddha's lap. So it's cooperation. It's, assertion, it's like fully functioning as a practitioner.

[39:14]

And at the same time, letting go, renunciation. So renunciation is faith. I mean, it's a superficial kind of designation, actually, but it has that appearance. well, how do I live? Having given myself over to Amida Buddha, then how do I do this life? So there's differences and there's similarities from both sides. All right.

[40:31]

It's not exactly self-power, that's right. But when I think of what got me into this practice was the fact that it was something that I could really engage in every day. I didn't want to have a Sunday practice. I wanted to have a practice that totally engaged my life, totally took over my life. and whatever it was. And that's why I was, felt the affinity with this practice. Did the other power offer this to you? Well, of course. So self and other is really the same thing. It's itself, sometimes we call it self and sometimes it's just one thing. And sometimes we call it self, sometimes we call it other. And, I mean, we have this paradox of our very individual, particular little snowflake.

[42:02]

Yes. And that seems to be that self, the one that is the individual self. But maybe you answered the question with this notion of sort of cooperation here, sort of Yes. Yes. Yes. Destiny is not fate. Yes. Destiny means a place that you're going. Right, right, you know that when a tree starts growing, you know how it's gonna go, right? That's its destiny, to become a tree. Your destiny is to become- That's a very specific kind of tree.

[43:03]

Yeah, an oak tree doesn't turn into a lemon tree. Well, that's karma also, you know, because the seed grows into whatever the, I mean, the seed determines what the outcome is gonna be, right? When it meets with circumstances. So you know when you're practicing that you have a destiny. You may not know what that is, what all of the twists and turns are, but I know this is my destiny already. It's not gonna be something else. But I think of it as destination, because you're going someplace. So is this fulfilling, like sort of growing up? Yeah, self-fulfilling means that you already have whatever you need. And practice is what brings that forth. Practice doesn't give you anything, simply turns

[44:08]

And it churns the bucket so that you turn it into butter. I'm talking about the very individual, one-time experience that walks around in this thing. Well, your practice is all about you, individually, and all of your stuff. So how do I fulfill all of that? Just keep going. Each one of us is the same and each one of us is different. You can be like me and I can be like you in a certain way.

[45:13]

When we're both sitting zazen, we have that realization. But yet, you are you and I'm me. I know. You have your karma and you have all this stuff and I have all mine. So we each live our lives out in that way. The difference between living your life out and fulfilling your life is what I'm interested in. Because if there's fulfillment, there's also non-fulfillment. Right. So fulfilling your life can be various things. You may think, well, if I'm a successful bus driver, you know, and I've been working really hard at it, that that will be fulfillment for me. And that is a kind of fulfillment, you know, if you're a successful writer, you know. But a successful writer doesn't always feel successful some way, right? There's something missing, something missing. So what Shikantaza is, is to be successful

[46:18]

moment by moment, just being yourself. Without having any ambition or expectation. And if you can do that, then everything else is extra. And your destiny is to be a Zen student.

[46:37]

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