Well, Mel called last night after we finished, and he said he still felt really crummy. And so he asked if I would talk again today, and I reminded him that the Suzuki Roshi Memorial is tonight, and I really hope that, I expect he'll be here, and I hope he'll be here. Maybe I should say a little about that. It is tonight, right, Paul? Where's Paul? No, I think it's on Tuesday. I thought it was on the 3rd. It's on the 4th. Oh. Oh. OK. Okay, well, maybe I should call and tell him that.

[01:07]

Save him, what you say, an unnecessary trip to the Zendo? As opposed to us who are having this necessary trip to the Zendo. But let me say a little about that ceremony so you can be thinking about it. I believe that this year marks the 30th anniversary of Suzuki Roshi's death. Is that right? He died on the first day, I think it was the morning of the first day of Rohatsu, 1971, and Mel was there and all of his students were gathered around and I think he was there lying in state with them for the whole session.

[02:11]

until the end, and then they did the cremation. It was very powerful. It's hard to imagine what that must have been like. Were you at that mass machine, Rebecca? Yeah. It must have been very strong. Yeah, and a lot of us got to sit there with the body. They rotated the different people from different groups. So two of us in the same center had to sit for the whole, for one whole day. Right. So that was 30 years ago. Annually we have this ceremony on either the 3rd or 4th of December and what It's kind of a variation on the monthly ceremony that we do where we put that picture of Suzuki Roshi on the altar and we have a food offering and we chant the Sanda Kai and the Heart Sutra and also

[03:29]

On this occasion, Mel makes a statement addressing Suzuki Roshi and offers incense. And we're all invited to offer incense, to come up to the altar, offer incense. Some people are famous for bringing persimmons. And offer words, speak to Suzuki Roshi if we wish. If you would like to do that, please do so. If you don't feel like it, bowing is fine, just paying your respects. So something, it'll be coming up in the evening. I guess it's tomorrow evening. I just wanted you to be prepared for it, thinking about it. And I think it fits in. with what we're experiencing here in Seychelles. So it's pretty straightforward, right?

[04:33]

Great. Well, this is the second day. The first day we're arriving here, and some people are actually arriving today, and they're welcome. We have quite the I think we have critical mass here for this week. I hope not too critical. The mass part is good. I don't know about the critical part. Actually, the critical part is exactly what we should set aside. But the first day we're arriving, and even some of this day we're arriving, putting our bodies and minds in place as we're sitting, as we're facing the wall, as we're walking, as we're eating, as we're working. And talking with people yesterday, I heard something that I think to some degree resonates for me

[05:48]

It's kind of two components. One is just people in their lives feeling that they're up against it, that it's a hard time, that they're up against the conditions We're up against the conditions of our lives, of our work. We're up against the conditions of our bodies as we age or if we're ill. And we don't know what to do about it. Sometimes there's fear. And as we're doing Sachine, sometimes there's fear. just of what we're going to encounter, what we're going to encounter by way of physical pain, what we're going to encounter by way of mental pain and what to do about that.

[06:55]

For some people, it's just a very raw, immediate experience. The pain is rough and usually by the second or third day we're well into it. For some, the fear is rooted in another experience. There's a kind of way that we draw back as we're practicing, as the quiet deepens, as the silence deepens and there's more space between our thoughts and we find that our usual hold on ourself is more tenuous. Sometimes that is unnerving or anxiety producing and we kind of grab on, grab back.

[08:09]

I was talking with someone, I remember I remember Katagiri Roshi talking about it, Sashin. I went to one Sashin in Minnesota at Hokyoji. And I remember one of the nights, sort of, I don't know, fourth or fifth night of Sashin, and he was lecturing about that very experience, about kind of encountering coming up as if it were a wall or a curtain to this experience of where the self let go, where it felt like there was no, not going to be any support. And you would sort of approach it like this, and you'd get right up to it, and then out of fear, draw back from just sort of cutting through. from allowing yourself just to go through that place and trusting that the universe has manifest in your body and mind and in this room would be all the support one would need.

[09:30]

So he talked about it and then that evening The weather was kind of like this. It was alternately stormy. And in the Zendo, Zendo had kind of makeshift walls, and then it had a tent roof with tent cords. It was a room about this size, but it had sort of this cloth roof. And the rain was kind of pounding on the canvas, and the wind was flapping. through the tent cords, it felt like you were on a big sailing boat, sailing through the night. And I just felt very peaceful. And I felt that kind of dropping away into just what, for me, is unusual, loose,

[10:34]

engagement with self and it felt really wonderful and then all of a sudden that critical mind that we're talking about popped up and I watched myself veer away in dismay and also in And it was kind of a bittersweet experience, because the moment there in this stormy weather was very poignant, and I just was watching myself do just what Katagiri Roshi was describing in a kind of reflexive way. And I thought, well, this is just my life right now this is my Zazen right now and there was no way to get back to that I did try over the course of the next period and a half of Zazen and it just it wasn't going to happen and so just let it go so we'll have these

[12:05]

kinds of experiences on and off and they'll deepen as the week goes on. And how you hold that, how you hold that experience, how you hold both the nervousness or anxiety and the will to keep going, to stay with it, to turn back to your breath at that very moment. That's kind of the refinement of our zazen. That's the sort of simultaneous refinement of character and realization, as we were discussing a bit yesterday. And I think along with that, along with the apprehensions or the concerns that we have that come up, or the pain that we have that comes up, there's also this nagging question of what is zazen?

[13:21]

Am I doing it right? Am I doing it wrong? What is it anyway? You know, if I'm sitting in Zazen and all of a sudden, you know, a very vivid picture with smells and tastes of Mary's miso soup this morning comes up, is that not Zazen? Or is that wrong, Zazen? How do you include that, the awareness of that thought, the awareness of the wonderful power of it, or even the joy that we may have taken in

[14:28]

drinking the soup or eating the carrots. How do we fold that into our zazen? How do we make it a joy that's beyond conditions? Just being alive. So, The notion that those kinds of thoughts are wrong or wrong zazen is itself a kind of delusion. And, you know, it represents our sort of uncertainty or lack of confidence that we may have at any given moment. And what we have is this whole week to look into that and to develop a certainty that our Zazen is all-inclusive and to really

[15:52]

get that in our bodies, you know, and be confident about our understanding of it. And we should come out of this with a kind of confidence that flows through us and supports us in our daily life. And it seems like it's sort of like doing Sashin is resembles CPR training or Red Cross lifesaving training. We're doing it again and again to just reinforce this experience, reinforce something that's in our body, but that our habits and the pulls of our daily life pull us away from. So I thought I would talk a little bit and then leave some room for discussion about, sort of jointly, the first two steps on the Eightfold Path, which are right understanding

[17:20]

view, and right thought, which is also rendered as right aspiration or right intention. And those two are the, you know, in the Eightfold Path, you have those two, and then there's right speech, right action, right livelihood. which represents the kind of moral or ethical dimension, the Sheila dimension of the Eightfold Path. And then right effort, right awareness, and right concentration or meditation, which is the Samadhi or meditational aspects. And the first two, right understanding and right thought are the wisdom dimension, and they come first, they penetrate all the other steps along the way, and they depend on all the other steps for their actualization.

[18:25]

While we're doing the other steps, we're sitting here doing our practice of meditation, we're maintaining silence, which is our expression of right speech. We're working together. We're developing our awareness and our concentration. And about the only one that's not functioning right now is right livelihood in the Zendo. There's not much money being made here. On the other hand, we're not doing any butchering or selling of wine or drugs. So, you got that right. But these first two aspects, I think to reckon with them, helps frame what we're doing here for this next five or six days.

[19:32]

So this right understanding or view is the real foundation. It's a gut knowledge. It's not something from a book. One aspect of it is the view that One is the owner of one's own karma. That what we experience here in our body, in our minds, is to a large degree, not entirely, but to a large degree, a function of actions that we've done in the past. The fact that we're here, sitting together, you know, pursuing the thought of enlightenment together is, you know, means that in past, in this life, perhaps past and other lives, although

[20:46]

I don't know anything about that. Uh, we've been doing, uh, we've been acting in a way that's wholesome and beneficial to brings us to be able to practice together. But whatever is coming up, uh, if we are ill, uh, you know, if we are, uh, unhappy, you know, if we're bothered by the person sitting next to us, uh, Can you see this? How has it changed by seeing that as the fruit of actions in the past? So how can you turn, at this moment, each moment that it comes up and not blame anyone or any circumstances for any unhappiness that comes up.

[21:55]

But try to turn your intention right there. And that's one of the revolutionary aspects of karma in the Buddha system is it's not fatalistic. It's not a mechanical system that this action leads to, you know, to this result, but actually whatever you're experiencing can be turned and changed just by your really attending to it and by applying awareness, wholesome awareness. So that's one aspect of right understanding or right view. Another is that everything is subject to arising and ceasing. I think that's one of the, you know, one of the, must have been such an incredible teaching, to sit with Suzuki Roshi's body.

[23:07]

to sit all sashim that way and take turns actually sitting with him, sitting with that difficult and really painful reality of what one loves going away. And that's part of That's the view, actually, of the Four Noble Truths, that everything is subject to arising and ceasing, everything is impermanent. The other aspect of it is that everything that we see or come across What Mel said, what he's been saying lately is don't treat anything like an object, which I find really useful.

[24:12]

And during Sashin, we really, we have a particular ability to focus on that. So we handle our orioke, we handle our mats, our cushions. We do that all really carefully. We don't do anything offhandedly. But it's also true, we do that because anything that we encounter includes the whole world. There's that wonderful analogy in one of Thich Nhat Hanh's early books where he asks people to meditate on a piece of paper. And as you look into that piece of paper, you see that the tree is there, the sunlight, the rain, the soil, the minerals, the factory,

[25:19]

and the people who run it, that turns the wood into pulp and turns the pulp into paper. There's a whole world of interaction in anything that we might encounter. And that is part of the right view, the deep view, the view that sees to the bottom of things. Durbin talks about this, I think, pretty cogently. I'd like to read you a little of it in fascicle Gakudo Yojinshu, Guidelines for Studying the Way. The thought of enlightenment has many names, but they all refer to one and the same mind. Ancestor Nagarjuna said, the mind that sees into the uncertain world of birth and death is called the thought of enlightenment.

[26:27]

Thus, if we maintain this mind, this mind can become the thought of enlightenment. Indeed, when you understand discontinuity, the notion of self does not come into being. Ideas of name and gain do not arise. Feeling the swift passage of the sunlight, practice the way as though saving your head from fire. Reflecting on this ephemeral life, make endeavor in the manner of the Buddha raising his foot. In a past life, the Buddha raised his foot for seven days and nights to honor an earlier From ancient times, sages have attained the way and realized dharma. Although as an expedient teaching they live ordinary lives, like we do, still they had no distorted thought of fame or profit.

[27:30]

Not even attached to dharma, how could they have worldly attachment? The thought of enlightenment, as was mentioned, is the mind which sees into impermanence. This is most fundamental and not at all the same as the mind pointed to by confused people. The understanding that each thought is unborn or the insight that each thought contains three thousand realms is excellent practice after arousing the thought of enlightenment. This should not be mistaken. Just forget yourself for now and practice inwardly. This is one with the thought of enlightenment. When a notion of self arises, sit quietly and contemplate it. Is there a real basis inside or outside your body now? Your body, with hair and skin, is just inherited from your father and mother. From beginning to end, a drop of blood or lymph is empty.

[28:33]

So none of these are the self. What about mind, thought, awareness, and knowledge? Or the breath going in and out, which ties a lifetime together? What is it, after all? None of these are the self either. How could you be attached to any of them? Deluded people are attached to them. Enlightened people are free of them. I must have been reading this over and over this morning to myself. I think it's important to zero in a little more on what he's talking about. in terms of fame and gain.

[29:35]

You know, it's not just, he's not just talking about in the social world. I think he's using it as a metaphor for wanting something for ourselves. You know, wanting, Wanting a comfort that's going to relieve our pain or suffering right at this moment. Wanting an assurance that we're not going to fade away or just die on the cushion. Wanting something that promises promises that will go, that everything will turn out well.

[30:42]

This is the challenge. Our Zazen includes that wish. But if we look into, if we follow his admonition to look into, observe the nature of impermanence, and we see that that's an idle wish, if we really try to hold on to it, we're going to have a lot of trouble in here for the next week. If you can let go of it again and again, each time you see it if you can softly let go of it and recognize that as it arises this is just your human clinging nature arising then you can come to terms with that and it's not it's not a problem it's going to happen and how each of us

[31:48]

reckons with this thought, you know, these patterns coming up, is the work of Arzazan, letting go again and again. So one of the, actually under the second step on the Eightfold Path, the right thought, is first marked by sort of the pair of renunciation and it's paired with generosity. So the right thought, renunciation, renunciation doesn't mean wearing a hair shirt or standing out in the rain and getting soaked and ill. It just means letting go of self-centered views. And in our tradition, it also means engendering that the thought of enlightenment, the thought of enlightenment is bodhicitta.

[33:07]

And the first meaning of bodhicitta is to practice very hard for the sake of the welfare of all others. So this renunciation is letting go of our notion of what's good for us, each of us as individuals, and seeing how we can act for the good of everybody. So when we're serving food or when we're cooking food, it's just an offering that we're making to each of us. And there are countless examples of that. You know, running this session may not be Paul's idea of fun, you know, but he does it for us.

[34:12]

Uh, and you know, each of us has our roles in this session and we do it for this big circle of us, which includes us as in each of us as individuals, but includes everyone else. So letting go of that view, that self centered view, the view that, uh, seeks comfort, the view that, uh, the view that goes, that tries to kind of slip around doing what you came here to do, which is to sit upright and, uh, realize, uh, our true nature, you know, our true nature is just being completely who we are without, uh,

[35:15]

without any shell, without any crust around us, just kind of raw and open, without trying to, without expecting anyone to do what we want them to do, but holding ourselves to a very high standard. And that's the standard of zazen, the standard of upright sitting. That's the view that is actually beyond view, because each time you try to get your mind around it, it can't be done. And yet, it's important to keep trying to do that. So how we see into a permanence is a challenge for us for the next week.

[36:22]

Seeing into it, accepting it, accepting it happily, joyfully, and being willing to make the mistakes that we have to make, being willing to fail and start over and over again. And kind of rejoicing in our failures and not building any mansions on our small successes. So I think that's, I'll leave it there, open up to questions or thoughts. There's all these things, if you haven't done head serving, there's all these things like folding the napkins and having everything laid out.

[37:31]

And I would be really, really uptight. And one morning, I was doing it on a Saturday morning, Lori was the head cook. And I came in there and I was like, Yeah. And also, right, that's the other part, that someone actually voiced, you know, I'll help you. And all of a sudden you guys, ah, I don't have to.

[38:34]

Just do this. This is not like a contest. This is not the labors of the solitary labors of Hercules cleaning out the Aegean stables. You don't have to prove yourself to anyone. Or even the labors of Grace cleaning out her stable. Sue? Or Sisyphus pushing his rock. I get into that one a lot. I thank you for your time. 4.30, I was driving up Shattuck, preparing to go left on Alcatraz, and come over here, and there was a black and white kiddy crouched on the other side of the street, in the middle of the street. And, sort of, I didn't know if he was injured or not, and my first reaction was to go save him, so I made a U-turn, nobody was around, which is pretty deserved.

[39:36]

And I pulled over and I went out to get him, or just to get him off the street. I didn't know what was going to happen. And what happened was a car did come by, and because I was standing there, it pulled over into the cat's lane and would have hit him, except the cat had more sense than I did by meddling and got himself And I almost caused that cat to get run over directly, though I suspect he might on his own without my help. And it certainly got me thinking about what is a benefit. And certainly opened up that question. And I wanted to share that because it seemed to go along with your talking about right, right understanding and wisdom.

[40:51]

Again, my automatic reactions are not so right. Well, this is where it gets difficult. This right is beyond, we're talking about a right that's beyond right and wrong. Yes. And that's, I think, we have to do, you know, we're doomed to do things that are right and wrong, but here the effort is at something that is pointed beyond that. Yeah. That includes right and wrong. You know, if that cat had been killed, which is possible, you would still be here. you know, and you'd have to be working with that. And you're working with it in your own way now, even though actually no harm was caused.

[41:53]

But, yes, and what was opened up was the clinging to doing right in the dualistic sense. Well, that's a good place for you to look out. You like to do things that are right. And many of us do. Some of us do more than others. Or we have our own versions of it. But that's a good thing to watch out. And that's your lesson for you. And as it gets shared, we can look at it. I don't know if you said let's, but it was rejoicing our failures. You said rejoice in our failures. And I've been thinking about that, and I can see accepting them, having patience with them, letting them go, but I'm having a hard time visualizing rejoicing in them.

[42:59]

So I thought maybe you could give me an example. Should I give you an example? Yeah, an example. Well, I was doing... So how would Peter rejoice in that? I don't know. That's it. That's perfect. I left. When he did that, it cracked me up, particularly when he did it the second time. I was doing what I advised yesterday you don't do, but I felt it's sort of my role. I was looking around a bit during breakfast to see how it was going. I noticed that Mary was sitting, I think, where Eric was sitting, or where Dolly was sitting.

[44:06]

So she was sitting right across from me. And she got served her first bowl. I think this is what happened. She got served her first bowl, and then she had forgotten to put out her utensils, because she had to hurry as a cook to sit down. You know, you're terrible. There's a flap for a priest. And she just smiled to herself and put out the utensils. These are small things. It's tougher when they're larger or when there's more at stake. But that's the challenge. But see, the humor in a mistake is different from rejoicing. Rejoicing is more active, it's stronger. You know, to use Peter, I hope this is OK. My laughter was not laughing at Peter, it was actually joy.

[45:12]

It was joy at... the humanness of our practice. You know, the joy that something slips somebody's mind and, you know, oh, this is not our form, you know, but in, at that moment, who cares? It was just, perfect Peter-human-ness rising. So that's what, it wasn't laughing in that sense. Let us not build a mention on our mistakes. Okay, so don't do that again. Grace? Well, I think there's a very specific lesson, at least for me, in rejoicing. We can't see our cleaning till we make a mistake. And then we see the self that doesn't want to make a mistake. And when we see how much energy is building this self that doesn't make mistakes, this is what we have to rejoice.

[46:14]

Because otherwise we don't see it. And we just walk around doing it. Yeah. There's a great story. As I was reading, studying for this, there's a great story in a magazine I read about, oh, I think it was in Pema Chodron's new book, was the place to discuss where she talked about this Tibetan monk, Geshe Ben, who rejoiced at his mistakes. He found himself, he did the things that we do over and over again. So he found himself, he was in the storeroom before dinner, And there were these open sacks of flour, and he was about to go off back to his monastery, and they were short of flour. And he found himself sort of digging into these sacks of flour and, you know, finding another sack to put him in. And all of a sudden, he started what he was doing, and he said, he yelled, stop!

[47:16]

And everybody came running to find him with his, you know, hands up to his elbows in the flour. So that's rejoicing in, you know, he saw his human nature and he pushed it that one step further. This is something, I mean, I just encourage that spirit much more than the, you know, dour, tough it out spirit. It should be loose and flexible. Not, you know, not trying to make mistakes, but reckoning with them as they come. Maybe one more. Andrea? Well, about building mansions on our success, I think you said something. Yeah. This has been a year for me of, you know, I usually, and I can't always do it, but usually I try to be pretty nice to people,

[48:24]

give as much as I can and do all this stuff. And I think that it works, that if you do that, then everybody's going to be nice to you and everything's going to go your way. But you know what? It doesn't. And it really bugs me. So I just... I was doing it this morning too. Well, you know, I did this and now they're doing that and they're not supposed to do that because I did this. It's so funny how I get stuck in that place of accumulating merit. I've, you know, I think this is pretty common. I've been, I won't go into the details, but I've been dealing with an aspect of that around my job also. You know, like trying to be a good boy and, you know, then saying, well, why aren't they, they're not treating me as, much as a good boy as I think I am, or I should, you know, I should be treated.

[49:30]

And that's, it's not easy. I mean, that's the place where, in fact, the work of engaging with one's views, with one's self-view, and building character comes up. I mean, really, we do these things just because we do them, because it's a naturally arising way to do it. And I guess I think in some way in the long run it has a good effect in the sort of karmic cloud of the world, but in an immediate sense it may not. As you know, and I know, things are not always seen. And Yet, there are always others who see us.

[50:31]

And there's always one who sees us accurately, who walks around with us, I think. So, thank you.

[50:45]

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