I want to try to talk a little bit about sesshin, maybe a little differently from most of you, how most of you, some of you anyway, understand a sesshin. I think instinctively many of you think of sesshin as a time to do a good zazen, or a time to try to reach some concentrated state of zazen, some concentrated state. And I think that kind of definition is not too accurate. or it's misleading. Can you hear me in the back okay? If you can't, please put up your hand.

[01:07]

Sashiness should be very even, and it's more like, what are we going to do with ourselves from tomorrow morning at 2.30 until the end of the seventh day at 10.30 or whatever time we end? So it's not so much a kind of periodic attempt over and over again to have some concentrated zazen and a retreat from that, and again in the next period. That's one way to do zazen, but in sasheen like this, tomorrow morning at 2.30, you're equally in sasheen from beginning to end. And the conditions are that sometimes we're sitting, sometimes we're eating, sometimes there's break time. And within those conditions you just find out what you're doing, or you just are what you're doing.

[03:25]

It's a kind of experiment with time and space. It's more like if we—forgive me for saying so—shackled you, if we shackled ourselves so we couldn't move at all. What would you do in that situation? how do you keep from moving your legs, but how do you put yourself in a place where you can't escape from it? So whatever is there is you. So to go, for instance, during Keen Hind to leave, unless you have to leave, is exactly the same as moving during Zazen. And to sit on a chair may be... If you're sitting on a chair to try to improve your concentration, which you can't do sitting on a cushion, this attitude may be not quite right.

[05:06]

I don't mean you shouldn't take care of your legs, but let me try to give you a feeling for what I'm trying to say. You know, our personality or our zazen doesn't belong to us. Just as, I don't know how to express that, but, you know, the air, what does the air belong to? The air belongs to maybe the leaves of trees, to the wind, to many things. And yet the air still has some purity, as when air is air and not polluted by some ... The way it relates with leaves is different than when it's polluted by other kinds of relationships. But essentially even the air is not even air, maybe emptiness.

[06:15]

So, what is the basic ingredient of air and leaves and you isn't determined by your concentration. It's already, you know, you. So we're not trying to not move. to develop a concentration so much as not to disturb ourselves. So zazen is not something you have to try to get by some posture or some concentration. Sashin gives you an opportunity to maybe have a little different approach to your zazen, to let emptiness itself maybe take care of you.

[08:12]

So, the basic rule of a sesshin is we sit on our cushion for a certain number of periods. Now, some of you... Now, I'm talking about this partly in relationship to people sitting on chairs. I think maybe... How many people may want to sit on chairs? Twelve? Eleven? Twelve? And we've had a number of more... more people have problems with legs now this last six months and year, but especially the last few months than we've ever had in Zen Center. And it may be coincidence, and it... Anyway, it's okay. I mean, I don't mean we shouldn't,

[09:21]

Because, actually, things run in some... sometimes there's one kind of problem, which everyone has, and another. It doesn't mean it's not a real problem, or we should try to eliminate it. But I do want to talk about it in relationship to how we sit, because the feeling is in everyone. Whether we're sitting on a chair or not, the same kind of feeling is there. So the best attitude to come to a sasheen is not to try to have the best zazen you can, but just how are you going to stay on your cushion completely for seven days, and how are you going to follow the schedule in detail, thoroughly, for seven days, without any wavering,

[10:34]

any preference involved, just what the schedule asks. To do this thoroughly is quite difficult. This is the fundamental problem a sasheen poses. It's not to try to get the best zazen you can, but just to follow the schedule in as great detail as possible. If you sacrifice the schedule to do good zazen, That's not the point of a sasheen. That's you trying to do something. That's you trying to have zazen. But zazen doesn't belong to you. Your personality doesn't belong to you. You should find out what doesn't belong to you and belongs to everyone already. So, whatever you do, Can you exactly follow the schedule? Can you just stay on your cushion? Sometimes to move to a chair is to try to improve your zazen. Now, I'm not

[12:02]

Again, I want to assure you that for those of you who need to sit on a chair and think you should sit on a chair, that's okay. But I also want to give you more variety of possibility in your sitting. So if you're sitting, and this is for Miffin too, Miffin should be able to do the Sashin exactly as well as we can, even though she can't enter the zenda. For her problem is to follow the schedule, you know, exactly in bed. She has certain conditions on her, too. Can she meet those conditions identically? So, if you're sitting, you can sit... You don't want to move around much, right? So if you find you can't sit cross-legged, and to sit cross-legged your legs are not able to handle it, you know, and that seems to be true for us Westerners, more than for people who started earlier, you can move to Seiza, you know, with your leg. You all know what Seiza is, right? With your legs back.

[13:31]

But it's preferable to do that at the beginning of a period, not moving in the middle. And if you, after a while, can't sit cross-legged any longer, and you sit Seiza, that's okay. If you can't sit Seiza any longer, then you can sit in rest posture, which is like this. You sit with your back as straight as you can, and you put your feet here, and you put your hands here. It's rather difficult to sit this way, actually, because my back hurts. But sitting like this is preferable to sitting on a chair. Your basic job is, can you stay here, on this place? Not to try to create some better conditions for zazen. Just, can you sit here? What will happen, you let take care of itself. When you can, you come down again closer to the ground. Maybe your legs are like this. Or if you want, you can prop yourself, have extra pillows. Those of you who have difficulty.

[14:51]

Sitting in a chair is... I would say, except for an older person, a person with some chronic leg problem, or you're doing zazen every day, for the kind of practice we're doing, almost any posture I'm talking about, not daily zazen, but almost any posture on the cushion is better. Because we're taking for a number of reasons. It's much more concentrated feeling when you're taking care of your own body. There's nothing supporting you. You are by your own muscles, you know, and posture must support yourself in this position or any position. You don't have any props and you're quite in touch with the adjustments. You know, a chair you can't adjust, but pillows you can take one out or add one, so it puts you in some relationship to your body. And your body heat is more concentrated. When you're stretched out with your legs down and your bottom here and your back up, your body heat is rather dispersed.

[16:27]

and your body energy is rather dispersed. It's very difficult with your body energy dispersed like that. If you think of zazen as a state of mind, you can try to get good zazen in a chair. But that's not exactly what zazen is. What we want is some relationship with our body and with our energy. So we take the most concentrated posture we can, which is a triangle. And our energy is extremely concentrated in this triangle if you can be still. And in fact, if you're relaxed enough, you don't have to exercise. If you just sat zazen all your life and never moved,

[17:28]

you know, which some people have done, you can still be quite healthy and your muscle tone can be quite good if there's no tension in your body. So another question of Zazen is, how can you have everything you need now? If you need exercise, how can you find exercise? How can you find the aliveness in your own tissue? which keeps your tissue alive so you don't atrophy. Everybody at the end of seven days all shriveled up. He'd come up and scoop you up after the session, off the cushion. If anyone was left to do the scooping, But if you're relaxed and your energy is moving, and by energy moving I can't explain exactly what I mean, but I don't mean you're not still, your body is in very fine shape.

[18:49]

It's pretty hard to do that, actually. We tense up in a sashim often, and it's quite difficult. But the point is, how can you have everything you need just sitting here in this cushion? So the closer you can come down to supporting yourself by your own body, and having your body close in together with its parts, you're more likely to be able to be close to that zazen which takes care of itself, which you don't do, which is already there. Let me say something now about

[19:57]

our knee problems and numbness, etc. This is a rather delicate point, you know, and it's really each person's own problem. Nobody can solve the problem for you. Basically, you know, there can be some adjustments, sometimes some operation if it's necessary. But basically it's a problem of the body itself solving its own problem. And some people are on to this and some people are not. It's a pretty difficult thing to teach, but it's not something you can exactly figure out with your head, and medicine doesn't know. You know, we have a difficulty. The more you meditate, the more you'll find it's difficult to relate to the medical profession.

[21:25]

And I don't mean that many of us come to zazen with the idea that only holistic medicine or only such and such or only acupuncture or Western medicine is Bosch or something like that. I'm talking about a different kind of problem than that problem. We know our bodies from inside, and doctors don't know their own bodies usually, and they know their bodies from books and dissection and things. And it's rather difficult to explain to a doctor, you know, if he asks, what is wrong or what do you feel? Well, you can name 173 things that you can feel on such and such at 3 in the afternoon and at 3.05 there are 243 things you can notice. But doctors just think you're completely psychosomatic because they're just not used to that kind of detailed information.

[22:52]

and a lack of emotional involvement in it. But also our basic, for instance, let me try to give you another example. Good athletes, really good athletes, people who are in super health, particularly when they're older, can't use doctors so much because their metabolism and everything is rather as different from the norm as a person who is not so good, in such good shape. And their way of taking care of injuries is different. For instance, runners, if they go to a doctor with an injury, the doctor in their leg or knee or something, which is quite common with runners, Doctors say, oh no, this can only be cured in such and such a way. And also your heartbeat is such and such. And if you follow the doctor's instructions, this is a little complicated, I'm not telling you not to follow the doctor's instructions, but such athletes find that it doesn't work. That there's a way to run and run through the

[24:19]

injury and cure it. Now, I don't mean, again, you're not careful with your leg in zazen, but our care should be a care which cures, not just which takes the pressure off. There's a big difference between having some difficulty and you take care of it to relieve it. I'm talking about taking care of it to cure it. So there's some active curing process involved. And this is not something, you know, if you say this to one person, it's almost something you have to find, you know, you can't really have to find it out for yourself. If you say to one person who's a runner, just run through the injury, and he doesn't really know what that means, he'll run through the injury and he won't be able to use his leg the rest of his life. Another person you can say that to, or he knows already just how to do it and his leg gets better.

[25:21]

And this is completely up to the individual to know this kind of relationship to his body. It's something very intimate, and it gives you... Sashin gives you the chance to begin to find your body in that intimacy. So we don't exactly want to relieve ourselves of the problems, but rather stay in touch with them but with some care. And if you just bulldoze it through with willpower, I know several people who've done that who still their legs are not well. So I'm not talking about bulldozing it through with willpower. It's quite important that you take, if you want to do Zazen, that you take good care of your legs. And we've talked about the difficulty, if you lean forward and slide too much weight down onto your knees, or you move them too quickly, or you force them and keep them forced to posture too long, or you don't sit far enough back on your pillow, on your zafu, so that your circulation is cut off and nerves are cut off here on the beginning of your legs.

[26:45]

and ways to become sensitive to the hardness or softness of your pillow, the angle of your pillow, so that you can move back, sit back far enough, and know when the nerves are open and when the vessels are open. If you can find out that consciousness, you can find out the consciousness and care which will cure some injury, will make your whole system a constantly curing system. So the more you meditate, the more your body becomes something that Western medicine has very little experience with, and not so easy for them to diagnose how to help you. So the more you meditate, the more you get healthier, but at the same time, the more your health becomes your own responsibility. There's no medical doctor in the world

[27:54]

for many things you can turn to. You may have experiences which, if you explain, maybe some Indian doctor would understand, but mostly they don't know what you're talking about, and levels of sensitivity which don't seem possible. But that kind of sensitivity begins in a sashim, like this, in which you are taking care in a minute, responsive, flexible way. So if you sit in a chair which takes you out of that flexibility, out of that responsiveness, you are losing the chance to find something else. Now, you yourself know whether sitting on the cushion is too hard on your legs, who've had knee injuries, et cetera. So that's up to you to figure out. But I just want, what I'm trying to do is give you permission to use a larger inventory of positions on your cushion.

[29:19]

to try more ways to sit on your cushion, to see those possibilities. Two pillows, or some extra pillows, or whatever, you know? Or rest posture, or seiza. Or there are other versions. I had one I called the half lily. which I used for about a year. I still don't know how I got into it now, because my right foot appeared out my bottom, from back, and my left foot went somewhere else. But anyway, it allowed me to sit and work with my difficult legs. As for exercise, some of you have different bladders than others, and you may have to go to the toilet fairly often. But ideally, you can limit going to the toilet to break time.

[30:49]

If not, you should keep some limitation. going to the toilet. And that kind of stretching doesn't have to take the whole ten minutes. It could take two or three or four minutes and then come back and join Kinhin. Anything else I should talk about? Oh, yes. Before going to bed, we bow three times to the Buddha. If you have an altar in your room, you bow three times to the altar. If you have no altar in the room,

[32:36]

turn toward this altar from your room, and then full bows to the floor. And then you do three bows to your sleeping bag, to where you're going to sleep. Then please get in your sleeping bag. If you want to sit a little longer in your sleeping bag, okay. But not at the expense of being sleepy all day during Sashin, regular schedule. You should be able to, once you have a real taste of Zazen, be able to continue that concentration even though you're lying down, sleeping. And you can have, as you lie down, some kind of concentration, maybe, after your six bows and lying down, some concentration on the faint light of our consciousness.

[34:00]

helps you go to sleep and continue your sasheen, and also to rest more completely, quickly. I don't... I just again want to say I don't mind at all if it's necessary for you to sit in a chair, but I also don't want you to feel shy about trying various ways to sit on your cushion. I don't want you to be deprived of that practice, too. So please figure out for yourself what's best for you.

[35:16]

Fascine is a chance to completely relax through and through, forgetting mind and body. Realizing and penetrating our strength and realizing and penetrating our weakness. Your strength should find full play in a sasheen, and your weakness should find full play, so you know exactly what your weakness is and your weaknesses are. You know, we try to eliminate in a sasheen our weakness,

[36:57]

but to realize our weakness and work with our weakness, develop a relationship with our weakness, acknowledge our weakness and our strength. And not some monolithic strength, strength of various kinds of strength. until you don't need strength to sit a session. Just a calm decision. I'm going to sit this session. And you have one continuous undisturbed consciousness throughout.

[38:15]

And those disturbances that come, many thoughts or feelings, the more deeply you can just have that, I'm going to sit a sashin, the more those disturbances will rise and fall without any disturbance to you. When you need strength, you use strength. When you find yourself weak, you give yourself your weaknesses, some space, but you continue. until finally you don't need any strength, just effort, just deep acceptance of what we don't possess.

[39:42]

of what already exists everywhere. intimately with each, in each of us, with each of us. Please get, let's stop now, and please get as much sleep as you can tonight. I'll see you in the morning.

[41:00]

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