Well you all sound pretty bright. And I have a cold and I feel pretty watery. So I hope that we will mix well with each other. This is a Sesshin day for many of us. And I want to talk about how we keep space in our lives. we come to Sesshin to enjoy the space in our lives. Last week there was a meeting of elder, we try not to say older, elder students, been practicing together for a long time, and invariably the topic of being so busy comes up.

[01:38]

And Ron reminded us that the first time that we'd ever gotten together as a group to talk, way back in Dwight Way, more than ten years ago, the first topic was the busyness of our lives. So, that stays sort of the same. And somebody else remembered that when the Chinese master... Master Sheng Yin. Sheng Yin. came, who was invited by Ron, Laurie asked him, what's the most important thing? And he said, regulate your life. And so we began to wonder, what does that mean, to regulate your life? So that's what I want to talk about.

[02:40]

This new issue of The Wind Bell came. And there's a very nice piece in the beginning of it by Suzuki Roshi called Using Various Stones. And Dolly says that actually Mel may have edited this article. So as I was thinking about what does it mean to regulate your life, I realized that Suzuki Roshi was answering. So I'm going to read pieces of this article. Tonight, I want to give you what I feel is a correct understanding of Buddhism or Zen. In a word, Zen is the teaching or practice of seeing things as it is. That was a favorite phrase of Suzuki Roshi's. And the grammatical disjunction is very intended, things as it is.

[03:50]

Sometimes we read the unity of the emerging of difference and unity, things as it is. Or accepting things as it is. Or of raising things as they grow. This is the fundamental purpose of our practice in the meaning of Zen. But it is actually difficult to see things as it is. You may say you are seeing things as it is, but actually you do not see things as it is. I don't mean that it is a distortion of sight, such as when something of one shape looks shorter than something of another shape. I mean that as soon as you see something, you already start to intellectualize it. As soon as you intellectualize something, it is not just what you saw. And then he goes on to talk about when he was young, he was very idealistic in his practice.

[04:57]

He wanted to practice very hard and so he'd get up before anybody else was awake and go and clean toilets. But then he began to get worried that someone was going to see him cleaning toilets. And what would they think? And began to go all around, as one does, in one's mind about how does it look, and what am I doing, and to get caught. And one day when he was in a psychology lecture, a teacher said, it is impossible to catch our mind exactly. It is especially impossible to know exactly what we have done. The mind which acted some time ago, the mind which belongs to the past, is impossible to catch. And even the mind which is acting right now is impossible to catch. So we're all, it's pretty hard not to try to catch the mind, to try and figure things out, to get to the bottom of things, to make, to want to make our lives a reasonable activity, but

[06:16]

The mind is, as our six ancestors said, ungraspable and we recognize that. So, our process is not involved with, cannot be satisfied with understanding the mind. It has to be, practice has to be another activity. And so he goes on to describe the activity of practice with a metaphor about a garden. I think that in your everyday life, your root practice may be to raise flowers or to grow things in your garden. That is, I think, the best practice. When you sow a seed, you have to wait for the seed to come up. And if it comes up, you take care of it. That is our practice. Just to sow a seed is not enough. To take care of it day after day is very important for the good gardener.

[07:21]

When you build a house, your work is finished. If someone has written a book, that is enough. But for the gardener, it is necessary to take care of the garden every day. Even though you have finished making that garden, it is necessary to take care of it. So I think our way is nearly the same as making our own garden or raising some vegetables or flowers." And then he goes on to talk about how each element in the garden has its own character and flavor. and needs to be attended to. But that it's not, it's not the collection that matters. You know, it's, we have the idea that our life is like a living room, and if you can get the right sofa the right job, and the right lamp, the right relationship, and the right footstool, the right security.

[08:30]

When you get all these pieces into the room, then, then you'll be set. Then you can practice. Then you can do whatever you want to do. So the garden is a different metaphor. People usually see things one by one, but that is not enough. It is necessary for a gardener to make his garden beautiful. If possible, the garden should express some meaning or some particular beauty according to some order. If someone wants the gardener to build a calm garden, the gardener must make the garden accordingly, and so on. So what's important in this garden is the harmony. And in order to find harmony, you need some rules.

[09:33]

But then, of course, if you get some rules and you stick to the rules, then the harmony is damaged. Always. coming up, lapping up again and again to this fundamentally uncertain position. And then people begin asking questions about, you know, the questions we always ask. Well, if there were no rules, how do we act? That kind of thing. And finally, a questioner says, could you please try to summarize again the idea of the true teaching? And Suzuki Roshi says, the true teaching is to accept things as it is and to raise it or let it grow as it goes. I understand the purpose of our practice in this way. We do it by living on each moment in the right position, by giving things some nourishment day by day when they want it.

[10:43]

To understand what people want, you should be able to talk with them. That is Zen. Do you understand? Thank you. I think I understand now. So, that's quite touching. We do get little, oh, yeah, moments of this understanding, and then it gets washed away. living on each moment in the right position. So, to me, this is what Suzuki Roshi is saying about how to regulate your life. And for us to do that, particularly for us here, leading such busy and inevitably in some way ambitious lives, we have to find space.

[11:49]

So we come to Ascension Day and find space. And a week or two ago, a group of us went to Tassajara to find space. The practice period began at Tassajara the first week or so in January, and that practice period will go for three months. And a group of 16 of us went down for the first week. 16 of Mel's elder students went down, and we had one week. So, in our practice, the way we find space is to set ourselves into a very rigorous schedule. So you go to Tassajara, and you get up at four, and the first sitting is at 4.30, and a couple of zazens, and breakfast, and a little work period, and study period,

[12:59]

Zazen's until lunch, and then the breaks are tantalizingly under 45 minutes. So if you think you can get a nap, you probably can't unless you're really desperate. And then a work period, and then bathing, and then service, supper, Zazen's, and at nine, at nine, you go to bed. So, roughly speaking, the days are like that, and you are embraced in this schedule, as in a Sashin today. We're embraced in the schedule, and that embrace gives us space. So, in certain ways, It's a very beautiful embrace. Tassajara is very beautiful.

[14:06]

It's going down into the gorge at the bottom of the valley and the streams, just a full, full roar of the stream all the time. And almost all the time, the drops of rain. and the stillness. So you really feel at the still heart of things. And yet the day revolves and some parts of the day are just beautiful and blissful. And then there's the long work period, slicing onions in the kitchen and weeping with matches stuck in your teeth, hoping that the sulfur from the matches will subtract something of the onion odor from your eyes. And you remind yourself, this is practice.

[15:09]

This too is why I came. And it was quite a different... I'd been to a practice period five years ago and it was quite poignant to be in the same place and look back over five years, you know, you could get quite a clear snapshot. And I could see how in that interval of five years, my suffering was in place, but it clarified that I knew a lot more about the particular issues that I was dealing with and was not so lost as I had been five years ago.

[16:17]

The first Tassajara experience is generally one of being lost. You go and you accept the embrace of the schedule and you do get lost. Who is this anyway? It's pretty disorienting. But the second time you go to a place is quite different. And we had several nice meetings with the 16 of us in Mel's little hut, Mel's little cabin we packed in. And some of us came from here and some from Green Gulch and some from the Zen Center. And we knew each other to different degrees.

[17:19]

So we decided to have check-ins around the theme of what it had meant to us over the years to have Mel as our teacher. And that was quite lovely. It's very different. Mel was the same, but each person being different, the experience had a very different flavor. To see the, to look around and see the diversity of practice I think what we all had in common in that room was that our career, so to speak, was, is the practice of the way. That we were very devoted and had been for some time to that practice. And how it worked out was quite different for each of us.

[18:23]

And you can see, just as you can look back at yourself 3, 5, 10, 20 years and see, notice what has dropped off. So you can look around at your Dharma friends and also see what has dropped off. But of course the basic form of suffering remains. But there is this kind of clarification of it. And one's own suffering is just the shape of a particular rock in the garden. And it's not driving the whole scene. So, become increasingly comfortable with it. Comfortable, you become comfortable while you also know that there's more to do.

[19:41]

All the time, there's more to do and where you are is all right. So, that's quite a compassionate place. And it's nice to feel that in oneself and look around and see that in others. So this practice of living in each moment in the right position making that somehow the center of one's endeavor. All the different pieces and aspects of the garden in their place, enjoying this garden, each moment in a different way.

[20:57]

And this is exactly the practice of sesshin, living in each moment in the right position. You know, you quickly discover in sesshin that if you are in the moment in the wrong position, you suffer. It's a very immediate equation. So it really behooves you to be in the right position. And one of the Zazen instructions often is, as you sit, find your balance. Be like a sailboat in the wind, with the sails exactly adjusted to how the wind is coming. And the keel and the bow just headed right according to what the conditions are.

[22:08]

When you go to Tassajara for a practice period for the first time, you sit Tangario for five days. And Tangario is sitting from five in the morning until nine at night on your cushion with no kinhin. It's just butt to cushion. and eating on the cushion, and half hour breaks. So, if you are not able to find each moment in the right position, it's mighty suffering. It's an unusual place to be, to have nothing to do for the whole day. except moment to moment be in the right position. You don't wear a watch. You have no idea how long the morning, how long the afternoon, how long the evening.

[23:13]

And of course, each morning, each afternoon, each evening is quite a different length according to what your experience is. So, those of us who had not gone to a practice period sat for five days and most of us had been for a practice period and sat Tangario for one day but it's quite a way of entering the temple and it's a kind of it's a good guideline for sitting Sesshin Sesshin we have all these little You know, you have a pretty good idea that the period is 40 minutes. Might be a trick, but it probably is. But it's very good to just, if you can, just give up at the first moment of the period. And not calculate.

[24:16]

And just really put yourself into being in the present moment in the right way. So what is most important to this endeavor of regulation is where one's attention is. And I came across a little quote from Winnie the Pooh on attention. Christopher Robin asks, What do you like to do best in the world, Pooh?" Well, said Pooh, I like best. And then he had to stop and think, because eating honey was a very good thing to do. There was a moment just before you begin to eat it, which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called.

[25:24]

So, wise bear, he didn't know what it was called, that moment of our freedom. When we are all there, where we're alert, and the honey is nearby, and our feeling is up, but there's no definition, it's just attention. Very wise bear, I'm sure he didn't know about the Dharma law of dependent origination, the 12 links of existence, but a little piece of them are that we have the senses, And then this contact, the honey, comes into the field.

[26:32]

And then this feeling, our feeling about the honey, and then this craving, but this moment, he doesn't know what the name of it is, this moment that comes between the feeling and the craving. That's our great opportunity. So in zazen, we sit, and again and again, this moment arises in our sitting. We're just there with our sensations, body sensations, and our feelings, and we're present. And then, like a pot of honey, if you're very still, you can kind of feel it coming, some kind of juicy thought.

[27:38]

And how can we keep this wonderful attention without falling? And of course we fall. We fall continually, over and over and over again. Fall and come back, fall and come back, fall and come back. And just as there's no rule for how to make a good garden, how to harmonize the aspects of the garden, there's no rule for how to sit Sazen, Sometimes the thought comes and we can just let it go and come back to just sitting, to being in the present. And other times the thought comes, the thought feeling comes and it's a big one.

[28:47]

When I was a child, my father liked to take me fishing and there was once when I was quite little, I managed to catch a pickerel A pickerel is quite a long, it was a large pickerel, a long, thin fish that's not much good for eating. It's so bony and it's very muscular, but it's quite a terrific thing to pull in, especially if you're small. So, sometimes the thought is like a big fish and you get it on the hook and then it needs to play itself out. It needs to go way out and back and way out and back and way out and back until gradually it drowns. And this thing that was so much in the foreground and so insistent just gives way.

[29:55]

And you have to give it that attention. If you say, get out, it comes back in. So you have to let it just play itself out, play itself out, and finally settle and rest. So sometimes in Zazen, we can be very disciplined. Thought comes, let it go. Other times in Zazen, You just have to play the big fish. Other times in Zazen, there's a kind of sleepy background. The day that I sat at Tangario, it was quite lovely. I wasn't exactly asleep, but it was just like being in a dream movie. All these disassociated thoughts lapping against the shore. Actually, Akin Roshi says that that's not a bad way to sit.

[31:00]

Not that we have control over it. But that kind of gentle sleepiness, you know, we're not controlling things. We're just allowing. We're allowing the garden. We're allowing what's in the garden to be there. So, there's no rule about zazen except allowing each moment to be what it is and to cultivate one's attention attention is such a mysterious thing where does it come from? One moment it's there, and the next it's not. And the more you begin to think about attention, and where does it come from, and where do our thoughts come from, and where do our dreams come from, you begin to appreciate that

[32:13]

where you might think that sitting zazen, you're in your own little closed world, but there's no such thing as a little closed world. That where the attention comes from and the thoughts and the dreams, no idea. that what seems like this little world is just a moment by moment stopping off place for these big streams that are going to and fro. And we're just sitting there trying to keep the back straight and a little arch in the lower back. Sitting in this very big space This very big space that we forget about over and over in our lives, that we forget about.

[33:21]

There is a Catholic Zen writer, William Johnson, who's written several books about... He's Catholic, but he's written several books about Zen and Catholicism. And he tells a story about being in a Zen monastery. And the teacher asks him what his experience of the Sesshin that day has been. And Father Johnson said, It is, to put it in Christian terms, I'm just sitting in the presence of God, this big space. And the teacher said, good, just keep sitting there, and before you know it, God will disappear, and only Johnson will be sitting there. Father Johnson said, to me it seems that Johnson would disappear and that only God would remain.

[34:32]

That's right, the teacher said, that's exactly what I said. Please appreciate your space today. And I guess there's about five minutes. Two hands. All right, Lois. Thank you for your watering words. I wonder if you could comment a little bit about the business of expectation, the honey, and the promise of expectation influencing that lovely space. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's such a delicious kind of teeter. Actually, it's the razor edge of the middle way.

[35:34]

That you need the honey. You need the honey to gather you. But if you fall for it, it's already over. But the honey keeps changing. Oh yeah, doesn't it? And what seemed like honey yesterday may taste like ink today, yeah. But it's okay. Yeah, yeah, and to watch the honey change is really important. That's really our growth, I think in a big way, how it changes. Yes, Andrew. Oh, I've got you wrong. All right. Yes. I was trying to correlate your busyness, but I didn't quite. Correlate the what? Correlate your word busyness with schedule.

[36:38]

Are you saying that if you have a schedule, you get the people? The people. Because I know a lot of busy people that have schedules. So I was trying to correlate the meeting. Right. Right, right, that's a good distinction. That usually when we're busy and we make schedules, it's for the purpose of fashioning our lives the way we want them to be. Getting this done and that done and regulating our lives in terms of what we think we want. A session schedule is kind of the opposite of that, because what do you get out of a session schedule? You know, the hours pass that you could have been doing this or that, and you're doing none of it. So, whereas a busy schedule, it may modulate your space somewhat, and it's good to be well organized.

[37:49]

uh... and we certainly need to lead our lives and and uh... lead them in a balanced way uh... but the the uh... session schedule the tangario schedule uh... is simply uh... a devotion to space i was wondering about if you could comment about the apparent to suffer in order to attain something better. In Catholicism there is a lot of penance and suffering, especially if you are from Latin countries where there is crucifixes being carried by people and so forth. And in Zen Buddhism, and perhaps other kinds of Buddhism, there is sitting with pain in your joints and then you stand up and This is where my mind is not working well.

[39:06]

And it's a good question. I think some people carry crosses and some people cross their legs. Thank you. Well, suffering is a form of change. And so all religions have to talk about, religion is about change, about bringing ourself into alignment with something greater. And inevitably, suffering is a part of that change process. And so, I agree with you. There's the crucifixion of the cross and there's the crucifixion of the lotus. And each one is a way of saying, stop, wait. Pay attention to just this.

[40:11]

To what is it that's going on? What's happening? The crucifixion to me is just a radical slowing down to just the sheer moment of pain. What is it? And when you get to the sheer moment of pain, it's open, it's something else. I don't know if that makes any sense. Probably not. One more, yes. I wasn't sure if it was what you were reading or what I was hearing, but it seemed to me that when you were reading from Suzuki's, Roshi's lecture, that you were saying, sitting on the moment in the right position. Yeah, I kept needing to look back. We do it by living on each moment in the right position.

[41:16]

Well, I think my experience is the opposite, but you know, the words are very tricky. No, I wouldn't, no. Things as it is, that's a particular syntax, but the idea is the moment arrives, you are just it. Moment, you, being, time. So that it's not that you are one center and the moment is, but you are multi-centered. As moments arise, you're the moment, and there are all these moments and all these yous. That's sort of the dream experience of Tangario after a while, just fall into it.

[42:38]

You know, it's the last hours often of a session when you're just so tired, there's nothing else to do but moment by moment by moment. Thank you very much.

[42:54]

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