Good evening. Good evening. Welcome. This weekend we had a three-day sitting, the first three days sitting at our new temple, where we've been for, how long is it now? Anyway, a few months. There were about three days, not all of them for all the days, but we had a good time. And we kind of soaked the room in some Samadhi. So I want to talk a little bit, first of all, about Sashin. It's a little bit controversial in Zen. Sashin is a word that means gathering the mind or gathering the heart. And it is what happens when we sit for a day or sometimes three or sometimes five or seven days.

[01:05]

And it can be powerful and helpful. And as I said, it's a little controversial. Sesshin is not something that everyone has to do to fully appreciate and benefit from Zazen, from the sitting meditation. For some of us, we find it helpful, but as a storefront, Zen Do, Zen Temple in North Central Chicago, we want to be available for all of the different ways that Satsang can be helpful to people in the world. And my own feeling, having sat every day for many years and also having sat many satsangs, is that the regular rhythm of sitting, daily sitting, sitting in some regular rhythm, just one period a day or whatever,

[02:24]

is much more important. What really is important long term in terms of developing and unfolding our awareness from Zen meditation is this kind of regular sitting and sustaining a practice of regular sitting. And yet this sasheen, sasheen means to gather the heart-mind, to gather the mind and embrace the mind, can be very helpful, and it also can be misused. I want to talk about some of what I talked about this weekend, because what I talked about this weekend, even though it was directed towards people sitting all day or for two days or three days, Also, I believe, applies very much to our practice, just coming here to sit occasionally, sitting sometimes on your own at home, enjoying some regular experience of just being present on your cushion or chair, being present in this body and mind.

[03:42]

So, as the Jewel Meru Samadhi says, the precious Meru Samadhi that was just chanted by the founder of Soto Zen in China, Dongshan, talks about achieving continuity. If you can just do this continuously, if you can find a way to sustain a regular attention to the quality of your life in your experience. That's really the heart. So this weekend I spoke about Zazen as the gateway of repose and bliss, the Dharma gate of joyful ease, as the founder of Soto Zen in Japan, Dogen, says in his basic instructions for Zazen. Maybe this is especially difficult to feel at first, sitting throughout a day or two or three, or maybe even sitting for 40 minutes, or 35 minutes on a Monday night.

[04:57]

Really? Repose in bliss, joyful ease? What about the pain in my knee? What about the... The confusion in my heart, what about our human legacy of greed, anger, and confusion? How is it that this could be this practice of just sitting upright, settling into relaxed attention, to enjoying inhale and exhale, to finding our Inner dignity, how is this the entryway to joyful ease, to repose your bliss? And the focus that I spoke of every day this weekend was to just sit without trying to get anything.

[06:06]

from the investment of time of showing up here on a Monday night or showing up to sit all day on a Friday or Saturday or Sunday. Not to try and get anything. And also not to try and get rid of anything. To actually just be present with this body and mind as it is. not our ideas of who we are, but to actually be present with the physical sensations and the swirling thoughts that are going on on your cushion or chair right now. Not trying to get anything from it, not trying to achieve anything, not trying to get rid of anything either, just to be present with this experience, and also not to hold back at all from just being yourself, from just enjoying, or whether you feel good or bad or negative about it, from just fully engaging this present experience.

[07:29]

This, I believe, is the heart of Zazen practice, at least in our tradition. There are other ways to see Zazen. I'll get to that. This idea of not holding back is expressed in reading this book called Living and Dying in Zazen about the lineage of Sawaki Kodoroshi, Nuchiyama Roshi. That is the lineage of my friend and translation collaborator, Shouhaku Okamura, and various characters in that particular lineage. quoted one of the Soto Yokoyama, a student of Sawaki Kodo, who says, don't spare any effort. People always hold back something when they make any kind of effort. When you hold something back, no matter what you are doing, your effort never amounts to anything. You're holding back when you say, it's no good or I can't do it. Well, I would say you're holding back if you're trying to get something.

[08:31]

If you're thinking about what you're going to get out of this experience, that just is consumerism, or turning your experience into some commodity. And also, if you're trying to get rid of something, that's also kind of holding back from actually just being yourself. This is a practice about learning to radically be yourself, to be completely ordinary, to be a human being. In fact, to be the human being on your cushion or chair right now. So, we have all kinds of delusions about Buddha and Zen masters and achieving some perfect whatever, some great experience. This fellow, Soto San, says, Shakyamuni Buddha was enlightened beyond all doubt to the fact that he was an ordinary person. And so he became a Buddha. Then he began to live the life of a Buddha.

[09:36]

When you realize your ordinariness, you are a Buddha. And when you are a Buddha, no matter how many distracting ideas and irrelevant thoughts appear, they are no match for a Buddha, and hence, no longer remain obstacles. Then he says this very interesting thing, delusions that no longer obstruct us are called fantasies. The Buddha way, the way of peace, is turning delusions into fantasies. So, in our body, in this body, this skin bag here and now, our various sensations, aches and pains, tensions in our muscles, and also in this body here and now, there are the swirling, ongoing swirling of thoughts and feelings. Your whole world is here on your cushion, your chair, right now. Can you just be this ordinary being, not holding back even a tiny bit from being yourself?

[10:38]

So the usual way that we try and hold back is to get some benefit, to think about something good in the future that we're going to get. to think of something we're going to, that we want to get rid of. And of course, if you sit for 15 minutes or 20 minutes or 40 minutes or a day or two or three, there will be, amongst the experience, unless you're forcing yourself fairly hard not to be the body or mind that's on your cushion, unless you do it, you know, there are particular practices you can do to run away from yourself. But if you just sit, and enjoy your breathing. Of course, thoughts and feelings come up. These include, again, our human entitlement of greed, hate, and delusion, of craving, and anger, and frustration, and confusion.

[11:46]

So I say, don't try and get rid of any of that. Just sit and be with this just as this. Be with that just as that. Don't hold back from yourself. Of course, in this practice of upright sitting, it happens that we can have some realization, we can have some insight, or see things in a little different way. We are open to not holding on to our idea of this body and mind. So it's not that there isn't realization in the midst of just sitting and being yourself. It's also not that there isn't letting go. So if we sit, breathing into this being, to these thoughts and sensations, exhaling from them,

[12:52]

being willing to face all of the yucky feelings and the thoughts about ourselves that we don't like, just to be present in those. At some point, there is transformation. There is letting go of some kinds of attachments, but it doesn't happen based on our ideas about them. So, Ruchiyama Roshi, in this lineage I was talking about, Shiroaku's teacher, says as we are sitting naturally, our stomach continues to secrete digestive juices. And of course, other organs as well do their job. Even while we're sitting, we don't freeze our body and mind when we sit. In the same way, our brain continues to secrete thoughts. So, this is pretty challenging.

[13:59]

How is this practice of just being this body and mind on our cushion or chair right now, how is that the gateway to peace and joy? So it happens that people come to Sashin with many ideas about Sashin, about doing some intensive retreat and having some flashy experience. So there were people this weekend who thought they were there to, in a subtle way sometimes, had some thought of, well, I have to get rid of something, or I have to reach some experience, and there are branches of Zen that emphasize what's called in Japanese, Kensho, seeing into Buddha nature, and emphasize, you really gotta get that.

[15:06]

That's the point of this intensive retreat practice. I respectfully would suggest that trying to get some, particular experience is a way of wasting your time in session or in sunset. Those kinds of experiences can happen. They're very nice when they do, but the point is just to settle into a sustainable practice of actually facing ourselves. So our culture, particularly as a consumerist culture, but also I would say our human of discriminating consciousness lead us into thinking we have to get something out of it. And people come to spiritual practice, the consumerist attitude to, I want to get the flashiest, I want the flashiest teacher, or the flashiest experience, or the neatest cousin, or something like that.

[16:15]

And you know, even on subtle levels this happens. But your idea of what you think you want to get and your idea of what you think you want to get rid of is not how we deepen our realization and it's not how we release our attachments. Zazen and the Buddha heart are much deeper than our ideas about them. And really, it's about not running away from yourself. Our society and culture offer many distractions, many very entertaining toys to help us run away from ourselves, to not be present with this body

[17:20]

Our practice is pretty radical, this entryway to true joyful ease, to true peace. Just to sit and be present with this body and mind as it is, to enjoy your breathing, to not try and avoid thoughts and feelings, or physical sensations, just to breathe into them, not to try and do anything with them either. So there is this Buddha nature, and it's there whether or not we have some flashy experience of seeing into it in some particular way. So someone mentioned the saying of one of my teachers that enlightenment is an accident, or enlightenment experience, as we can say, is an accident, but practice makes us accident-prone.

[18:34]

Just being present on your cushion, you're open to being who you really are, beyond your ideas of this body and mind. So this present attention is a way of giving yourself to yourself, presenting this body and mind to yourself. And I talked this weekend about the word repose, so this phrase that Dogen uses about the dharma gate, so I'll say it's the dharma gate of, anraku is the phrase, Norman Waddell translated it as repose and bliss, or I would say joyful ease. But this word repose is interesting, to repose yourself, to settle, to soothe yourself, to pacify yourself. The original Chinese character An also just means peace.

[19:40]

And I really believe if everybody in the world just sat Zazen for half an hour a few times a week, maybe we wouldn't need to have wars. That's also a radical thought. Can we be at peace with ourselves without thinking we need to get something else? Of course, the phenomenal world is constantly changing. We are constantly changing. We develop attachments, we drop attachments, we take on new practices and so forth. we find new ways to give this self to ourself. What I'm suggesting as a practice is not just being passive. This attentive, calm, settled attention to body and mind, without trying to manipulate it, without turning ourselves into yet another commodity that we're trying to

[20:51]

get something out of it. It's so easy to do that, to think, oh, if I can just improve this or if I can just improve that. And if we get caught on that, we become commodities. And we've seen how that kind of culture has many pitfalls. And yet, this is not, again, some passive, just allowing everything to be as it is, because you are there. This is about not running away from yourself. And we have the ability to respond. And we have this responsibility. So the realm of precepts, which I will be talking about more in the coming months, is that there's some guidelines for how we respond. how we take on returning home to Buddha, returning home to reality, returning home to community, to fellowship, to comradery, to friendship.

[22:01]

How do we settle into a way of taking responsibility for how we see the world acting on that, but not based on, or shall I say, based from, coming from, some place where we are settling and are forgiving ourselves for being human beings, and allowing ourselves to be the person, the human being, on your cushion or chair right now. This is true joyful ease. And then from that position, from reposing in that pose, from finding our deep rest, from this place of settling not into our ideas and attachments, but into what we actually experience as we are willing to face our own body and mind. From that place, then, we can

[23:14]

support non-harming. The first precept against hurting or harming life, we can actually take on bringing our life to life. We can take responsibility for that and for speaking truth and for generosity rather than taking what's not given. So I also read a little bit from our ancestor Hongzhe, a Chinese Sutra Zen teacher of the 12th century. And I'd like to read from this during the session, but maybe I should read from it more also when we're just sitting together for a period on a Monday night. So this is from this book, Cultivating the Empty Field, that I translated 20 years ago, and it's still, Hongzhe's words are, they, he's speaking from this place of great rest.

[24:30]

So he talks about it in one of these passages. He says, just resting is like the great ocean accepting hundreds of streams, all absorbed into one flavor. freely going ahead is like the great surging tides riding on the wind, all coming onto this shore together. How could they not reach into the genuine source? How could they not realize the great function that appears before us? A Zen practitioner follows a movement in response to changes in total harmony. Moreover, haven't you yourself established a mind that thinks up all the illusory conditions? So when we settle into being present with this body and mind, we see how we are constantly creating, how we are constantly giving birth to thoughts and feelings and sensations, and we can start to take responsibility for ourselves. We can become friendly with ourselves.

[25:32]

So this is very challenging. Maybe it's easier to do some kind of sashiing where somebody will hit you with a stick if you move a little bit or close your eyes. There are those kinds of approaches to zen. Edge of the seat zazen. But I think just to settle, just to settle, just to find this deep peace. is what transforms the world. And this is available not just in these longer sittings or retreats, but actually is really incorporated more fully when we have some regular practice. Whether, you know, several times a week, I think it helps to have some rhythm of just sitting and whatever happens is okay. Sometimes we need some particular focus, meditation object to help us to settle.

[26:35]

But what this is about is settling into this possibility of joyfulness, of repose and peace. So I said much more about all this over the last three days, but maybe I'll just stop now. hear the ancient dragons in the Ancient Dragons Endgame, and the young dragons. So please, comments, questions, responses. Maybe it's hard to believe that There can be a practice of not trying to get anything or not trying to get rid of anything. Still, please consider this. Jim.

[27:46]

I guess Yeah, it is slippery. intervening or forming a response.

[28:56]

It seems to come real close to passivity. It does sound like that. It can sound like that. And yet, there's someone paying attention, and the attention is important. It's not that this is happening if... the body and mind is giving rise to sensations and they're falling away, that's not exactly it. You are there. We need to pay attention. It's paying attention to this experience. judgments, or in the case of many, many judgments coming, that happens too sometimes in Zazen, not making judgments about those judgments, or if you make judgments about those judgments, okay, just make judgments about those judgments about the judgments.

[30:01]

Can you be there and pay attention to it without trying to manipulate reality to get something or to get rid of something, just to become intimate with this experience. This is why this takes a while. And thinking that if you just get some flashy experience, that'll settle it. No, that's a way of running away from our real responsibility. So Kensho is not the end, you know, that's not the end of practice. It's just, you know, some occasionally nice flip on the path. Or, you know, Tsukiyoshi once said you might get enlightened and not like it. The point is, how can we sustain a practice of taking responsibility for this person, becoming friendly with ourselves, forgiving ourselves for the fact that as human beings, of course, we got here because we have cravings and anger and frustration and confusion.

[31:08]

How can we breathe into that and pay attention? without trying to push it around. And of course, our culture and maybe our humanity encourages us to try and push it around. How can we pay attention to that without being fooled? When we're doing that, then we can take responsibility and we can act in the context of expressing something that is underlying this So is our only responsibility to ourselves, or are there problems outside of ourselves as well? thoughts and feelings is that we see how deeply we are interconnected with everything and everyone.

[32:21]

As you're sitting here now, do you remember your third grade teacher? Right away, you shook your head yes. When was the last time you thought of her or him? Yeah, okay, but they're still there on your cushion in some way. Many beings are part, the whole world is on your cushion, your whole world. So if we really take care of ourself and we see that ourself is not separate from the people around us, from our community of the people we see during the week and from our family and co-workers and so forth, people we are involved with, then then our responsibility is not just to ourself because our just ourself isn't really just ourself. This is not, you know, I can preach this as some, you know, moral precept but actually how we take responsibility for precepts and for helping awaken all beings, which is the point of all this and relieving suffering from all beings, including ourselves, is that we see that we're not, you know, we each have our own cushion or chair, and yet we're deeply, deeply connected.

[33:37]

What happens across the world in Iraq or in Africa or South America affects us. We know that now more than maybe people did centuries ago. We have more of a way of seeing how connected we are, how interconnected everything is. So it's an important question. In some ways we start with this body-mind, but also the purpose of this practice is that we see this connection, and we see that if the person next to you is unhappy, you can't really be totally happy yourself. So this weekend there was someone in the session who was weeping a lot, audibly, and I thought it was really wonderful and helpful to everyone else to be reminded of the reality of suffering.

[34:39]

And we all have that. So part of this not turning away from who we are is to be willing to face the sadness that is part of reality. So, thank you for your question. So I don't know, I've been thinking about this a little bit, but not too much. You know, I was thinking about something about practice, that there's some confidence in not grabbing onto things or not pushing things away that sort of maybe happens.

[35:47]

Almost the longer I practice, more quickly I get a ticket from the cop police. I'm trying to grab something. It's almost like the meter expires immediately, and I'm like, I've got a ticket. Because there's something like, and I don't understand that really, but it's almost like, maybe I never noticed it before. But it's almost like the minute something, I'm like, oh yeah, I think I'll, I don't know, like, maybe I was holding on to having this perfect meal situation for sashimi or something as Tenzo. You know? And it was like... It was pretty good. After, of course. But it didn't turn out the way I thought it would. It never does. Yeah. Well, it's true that the more you settle into this practice, the subtler the suffering is.

[36:58]

We develop a craft for, you know, this is the point of why I say everyday practice or regular rhythm of practice through the week and month is more important than some intensive retreat. The intensive retreat can be helpful for some of us. It's not something that everyone should do. But the point is that in some sustainable way of regularly practicing, without unnecessarily realizing it or trying to arrange it or fix it or manipulate it, we start to become more deeply familiar with our own habits, physical and mental, of holding on, pushing away, trying to rearrange. And reality never happens the way we expect it to. So our fear is about some terrible expectation.

[37:59]

Our attachment is about wanting some other future thing. But nothing ever happens according to our expectation. Reality is not our little meager idea of it. And yet, we can take responsibility for our efforts It's not that it's effortless. There's an effort that the Colorado River made in creating the Grand Canyon over many, many centuries. It's the effort to, you know. The effort that water makes is gentle and yet very strong. How can we see and befriend ourselves and then we start to see more and more subtle ways in which we're trying to grab on, trying to get rid of things. So we have to forgive ourselves for being human beings. This is a practice for human beings, not for some superwoman or superman.

[39:03]

Some people jump off these cliffs, you know, and other people love it, you know, and it's like, yikes! Yeah. So, things happen in the world, you know. The Grand Canyon is created, or a little storefront, Zendo, opens up in North Central Chicago. So we're here to just try and make available to people the possibility of actually just being themselves, of seeing that peace and helping share that in the world. Every time somebody says, just be yourself, I always wanted to say, remember that. Good, yes, yeah. So the great founder of Zen, Bodhidharma, who's on the altar over there, When he went from India to China, the emperor of this kingdom in southern China, who was a great Buddhist and patron of Buddhism and had done many wonderful things and had arranged for translations of sutras and big temples and so forth, said, oh, what's the merit I've created from doing this?

[40:24]

And Bodhidharma said, no merit. And they said, oh, what's it all about? And he said, vast emptiness, nothing sacred. And finally the emperor said, who are you? And Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen said, I don't know. So we should all enjoy that I don't know. It's not about trying to figure out something. And you know, Maybe all of us are intellectual types or something, and have developed minds and understandings. And it's okay if you have some understanding. It's not that you shouldn't use your discriminating consciousness. But what this is about is opening up to some deeper possibility of you and the world, and how we can try and take care of that. So time for one more comment or response if anyone is in the mood.

[41:30]

Yes? I'm Ashley. Hi. I think it's interesting the idea of not giving and not getting. Finding that just kind of as the middle path for that. And I understand the beauty of the middle path. I think it's kind of difficult concept also to sit down and think I'm not going to give or get anything because our mind starts to wander into the future, which eventually I feel like leads us to what we're going to get from it still. So I think it's interesting focusing ourselves on being very present in life and living in each moment and not thinking about the past or the present. I kind of wonder how you Yeah, one thing I want to tweak about what you said, it's not getting rid of things, it's not getting things or getting rid of things, it is giving. It's giving in a deepest way, it's giving ourselves to ourselves, allowing ourselves to be this body and mind.

[42:43]

That's pretty radical, presenting ourselves to the space of this world. But yeah, there is this middle way, not trying to grab a hold of something, not trying to get rid of anything. So most of the trouble in the world comes from people trying to get something that they don't have that they think will make them happy, or trying to get rid of something that they have that they think is preventing them from being happy. Can we just be content with this situation? Can we appreciate and respect? So yeah, the middle way is important, and I would also throw into the middle way the word respect, to respect ourselves enough to allow ourselves to be ourselves, to respect the world enough to be as we are. And then how do we share that? How do we take care of all the suffering beings all over the world and in our own hearts and minds?

[43:47]

So yeah, the Middle Way is this kind of balance. That's also what Repose is about, to return to, to lose our balance constantly, but to return to a kind of upright posture. Suzuki Roshi, my teacher's teacher, also said that our practice is just constantly losing our balance to get some background of perfect balance. And then we realize that, oh, I've been following some train of thought for five minutes or 20 minutes or whatever, and okay.

[44:22]

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