Well, thanks for joining us, joining each other for these few days, these 90 days. And practice period is a kind of funny time. We are here with others, and yet we It's often the most alone time in our life. Yeah, and I think it's, yeah, a kind of aloneness, partly because, you know, like if you pull a wagon or drive a car rather quickly or stop rather quickly, the stuff in the back of the wagon slides forward. stuff in the back seat of the car slides forward, and the front seat slides down to the floor.

[01:07]

In a way, I think if we stop, I mean, we're in such a, you know, remote place, and without our usual social space, then not much social space. Yeah, a new kind of social space among us perhaps, but not the usual social space and not with me either. There's a kind of aloneness we discover and a way of being with others' aloneness. Something like that. I think of a My example of you're in the forest lost and you see another human being and you don't think, you know, what kind of human being is this? You're just happy to see this other human being.

[02:11]

And the Diamond Sutra which we chanted this morning says if you practice generosity without any signs To practice generosity without any signs is like just to meet someone. It says that the benefit of practicing generosity without any signs cannot be conceived of or measured. So without any signs is something like no social space. then we also literally have almost no place to go and not that much to do. So in a way we stop.

[03:12]

And usually in the past when we have stopped and found ourselves in the midst of our life, it's when we've been alone. So now we have that experience, but we're here with others. As Dogen says in talking about yesterday's opening ceremony, grateful that we're here alone with each other, supporting each other's practice. And maybe we could say supporting each other's practice of aloneness. And certainly Zen practice has a lot to do with really accepting fundamental aloneness. finding out how to endure it. And again, this morning when I read what I opened to, found myself saying in the Diamond Sutra, was in order to practice the Buddha says, but you can put yourself in there.

[04:20]

I practiced the Buddha says, or I practiced transcendent endurance by practicing without any idea of a self, a person, a living being, or a life span. These four are the most intriguing, challenging, four interrelated items in the Diamond Sutra. I mean, really, and it's meant to be serious. Can you actually find yourself stopped now? In the midst of your karma, which has slid forward into the front of the mind,

[05:24]

without any idea of a self? Yeah, a person, right? Is there some difference between a self and a person? Yes, a self is we think somebody, some agent is doing all this, or we think we're a person in relationship to others, or we think we're an alive, you know, human being, and that we have a particular lifespan. Well, of course, we do have all those things, but can we be free of those ideas? Those ideas are part of how we construct ourselves. And one of the things we're doing in practice, and particularly in a practice period, is to construct a posture which frees us from our mental postures. Which loosens our mental postures. Loosens such fundamental ways in which we organize our vision or experience.

[06:30]

And through the sense of a self, a lifespan, being a person with others, being a living being, who knows, living being, non-living being, some experience there is. That's certainly true. So we stopped for a while. Not completely, but different kind of life, different location. And as I said, our life experience, accumulated experience and anticipated experience, slides forward into the front of the mind. And we have to endure it. I mean, it's stupid not to endure it.

[07:35]

You know, and usually we're staying slightly ahead of it, not noticing it, dragging it along behind us. We slow down and it slides forward. And to look at ourselves not only from our own viewpoint, it is honestly we cannot rationalizing inside this or that area. As if you were explaining it to some accusatory audience. And as others might and do see you. And somehow to bring that together in one mind. Bringing it together is to generate one mind in which the fullness of your life is present. The Sixth Patriarch, so-called Sixth Patriarch, a famous constructed mythic figure in Zen Buddhism.

[08:49]

Yes, supposedly he's a woodcutter. And he hears someone saying a phrase, a kind of wisdom phrase, you know. Let the mind flow freely without relying on anything. You know, I don't know, I don't remember how old he is, supposedly 19 or something, you know, and he's uneducated, supposedly, woodcutter. He just hears these words, let the mind flow freely without relying on anything. And somehow that cut through his mental constructs. You know, sometimes we just hear a phrase and we recognize its truth.

[09:55]

You know, somehow we're at a moment, caught off guard, and we recognize the truth of something and stop. So he stopped and And his karma slid forward and slid away. And it was a quotation again from the Diamond Sutra, which we read this morning again. So he went to find out who'd said this, who'd taught this, so he studied, you know, the story of the Fifth Patriarch. And I said we construct a posture and what do I mean by construct a posture? Let's not throw out the poem that the sixth patriarch threw out because the brightest, supposedly brightest disciple of the fifth patriarch said the mind is like the Bodhi tree.

[11:03]

And we make a stand for the mirror. And then we polish the mirror. And the Sixth Patriarch said, I suppose, there's no stand, there's no mirror, there's no polishing. Well, yeah, but we do experience body and mind separately most of the time. And in a way, when you establish your posture, you're you're constructing a kind of body stand for the mirror of the mind. The mind is often like a piece of glass, maybe. And it reflects things. And if you step on it, it cuts you, perhaps. But if it's in a window frame, you can see through it. So again, we can use this opportunity, ought to use this opportunity, and I know some of you have quite a lot of problem with your posture.

[12:13]

I'd like to speak to you about it. But the posture doesn't have to be full lotus or half lotus or even cross-legged, but a posture which will absorb the karma which slides forward into our life. Now when you're young, much of your, you have a sort of anticipated life. When you're older, you have an accumulated life. When you're in your 30s and 40s, there's a kind of collision between your anticipated life and your accumulated life. Tension or sometimes even a dual combat between your anticipated life and accumulated life. But Zazen practice makes you more, when you're young particularly, makes you more real and realistic.

[13:14]

And if you do develop a posture, it allows you to accept, accept where you're starting from. whatever you've accumulated or anticipated. So in constructing a posture, now posture is different from a position. Maybe a position is just like a piece of glass or something. A position is any old. But a posture allows the body to feel complete. Posture is also a kind of gesture, and as I've often pointed out, notice how physical actually everything is. If you say some word or phrase, you know, you can... This room, if I say, if I let my hand

[14:27]

Move with what I say. Move with what I say. And if I don't know what I'm going to say next, somehow my body knows what to say. There's a physicality, really, and there should be more and more physicality with our thinking and emotions and attitudes. And that physicality, yeah, the more the stand and the mind, somehow if you make a stand for the mind, it's almost like a window, then you can see both sides of the mind. many sides of the mind, and it's sometimes like a magnifying glass. You can focus in on how we function, how we exist mentally and physically.

[15:40]

And somehow making a stand for the mind also makes finding a posture in which the body can be stable enough to absorb your life, accept your life, not lie to yourself about your life. The body itself also becomes the mind. The body is the mind. The body and the mind are one mind. And when you can get so you can sit in a pretty stable way, this stability also becomes the basis really for mindfulness practice.

[16:52]

Now there's many, many relationships between zazen, developed zazen and developed mindfulness practice in ordinary daily life. But one of them is that the more stable your body can be, present to the mind, the more mindful you can be. Real true mindfulness almost completely depends on the body which knows stillness. Knows stillness in stillness and knows stillness in the midst of activity. The stillness in the midst of activity allows mindfulness to powerfully function. Without these tools, the idea to know oneself, to know how we exist in Buddhism, which is the main point of Mahayana Buddhism, even more than being free from suffering, it's really only possible in some

[18:10]

full way when you know stillness in stillness and stillness in activity. And the more you know this stillness in activity, this body stand for the mind, the more what appears to you, your accumulated and anticipated life as it appears to you, and it appears, slides into the mind in practice period, you can, yeah, just look at it like it were objects, like objects in a dream or objects in a movie. Yeah, there it is. Rooms. Trucks. people, all kinds of weavings.

[19:15]

There's often so much narrative directionality. You understand what I mean? Narrative directionality. Every object, if you get close to it, it's woven in the mind. It's woven in and around a narrative direction. And you can let yourself be carried by that narrative direction and see where it goes. Sometimes it's interesting. Sometimes you can, and ideally in practice, you can pull away from the narrative direction, not identify with it. It's just an object. It's something. Sometimes it's like in dreams. It's sometimes something familiar, sometimes tied up with your life, and sometimes it's just obscure, like you're in a strange land, people you've never met. And you can see where these people you've never met take you or where this story or this room, every object is like a room. You can enter the object and it becomes a story and so forth.

[20:19]

But part of what you're doing in becoming familiar, letting the mind flow freely, all kinds of things appear. But part of practice just is to get familiar, familiar, like you begin to see pathways, alleys, alleys, narrow little streets between the objects, between your mental formations, your mental objects, your karmic, your accumulated and anticipated life. And if you can free yourself from the narrative directionality, this is a big step. Sometimes letting the narrative, I feel this way, I feel that way, I wanted it to be like this, etc.

[21:25]

Yeah, if you can take that narrative away without any signs, without any lifespan, without any sense of the person itself, Yeah, it's possible to do it. Much of the teaching of Buddhism is about how to do it. First you just get into the territory. So practice period thrusts you into the territory of this our karma which slides forward into these 90 days. Especially the first weeks. So in a way, we practice a kind of non-directionality. I mean, like we do service in the morning. It's best if you do service, just do it non-directionally. You don't know where you're going. You bow with others.

[22:29]

You don't know what the next chant is. After a while, you'll know what the next chant is. But even when you know, it's good. And you're not thinking, when will this end? It might never end. I mean, I'm going to talk to the Eno about doing a service for 24 hours, you know, and just keep one chant after another, you know. What are we doing here? We're practicing non-directionality. But if you get so that you can feel that while it's in your daily life, That's taking signs away, that's taking structure away, that's letting the mind flow freely. Doesn't mean the mind always flows freely, but sometimes to let the mind flow freely. This is our practice. May our intention equally radiously every being have placed.

[23:51]

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