Okay. I want to apologize for this morning's miscommunication about acknowledging Rebecca, the late Rebecca Maheno, in our service. I take responsibility for not communicating well enough to the Sistine Director. Nobody knew what was happening except me. The service time for this evening's service, we will have a short memorial service for Rebecca.

[01:07]

So this being the first day of Shushin, I thought it appropriate to give voice to Suzuki Roshi and comment on a talk of his which is about called Resume Big Mind. So he talks about what is the purpose of sashi, why are we sitting sashi, He says the purpose of Sesshin is to be completely one with our practice. We use two Chinese characters for Sesshin. Setsu, which shortens to Sess, in conjunction with Shin, means to treat something the way you treat a guest, or the way a student treats his teacher.

[02:23]

It's called something like respect. Respectful or careful. And another meaning of sense is to control or to arrange things in order. So, and shin means mind or heart. So, seshin means to have proper functioning of mind. In our meal chant, we call it the natural order of mind. It is our five senses and our will, or monkey mind, which should be controlled. So, how do we control our monkey mind? When we control our monkey mind, we resume our true big nature.

[03:29]

When monkey mind is always taking over the activity of big mind, we naturally become monkey. So monkey mind must have us, monkey mind must have its boss, which is big mind. So I get the image of, it brings to mind the image of sitting still and looking out and something keeps going like this. I remember when I had AOL on my computer. You can never get rid of AOL. Once you sign on, you have to go back. And so I would turn on AOL, and there was this guy on the sidelines that I was advertising, and this guy would jump, and I would keep going over here. And I'm trying to concentrate, but my mind would keep going over to this jumping monkey.

[04:36]

Trying to get my attention. And my mind is like that, you know? And when we sit sadhana, we really become aware of monkey mind. Because our mind is always jumping around from one thing to another, and it's very hard to cool down the monkey. And just let big mind appear. Because big mind is always there, but the monkey is always trying to get attention. It's like the poor neglected child. who always wants attention. So there's something, some problem with that. Why is our monkey mind always trying to get attention? Why are all these thoughts trying to get attention? So, interesting. So we have two minds, karmic mind and big mind.

[05:46]

Or way mind. Way mind is the mind which opens up. Way mind is the mind which opens up big mind. And karmic mind is the monkey. So we're always creating something, feeding the monkey. Don't feed the monkey peanuts. And the monkey wants more peanuts. So this is karma. between the monkey and peanut, and then the monkey wants another peanut. And so over and over and over, there's this insatiable need for more and more peanuts. It's very interesting. I've probably told you this story before. In the tiger's cave, which is where Trevor Leggett interviews Abbott O'Borough. He talks about the heart suture.

[06:50]

And Abbott O'Borough talks about monkey minds, actually. There's this play in Japan where the monkeys actually have been trained to act out Shakespeare. I think I told you this story. And what you see at the monkey, you know, each monkey is an actor and they're going off. They actually take the postures and the gestures of the actors and actresses and they're going They've returned to the monkey mind. So you have to watch out for our peanuts.

[07:56]

So monkey mind is ego. Monkey mind is, if you've ever studied eight or nine levels of consciousness in a Buddhist understanding, you know that manas is the monkey. We've located the monkey and it's called manas, or self-centerless ego. So how do we control our manas, our ego, our artistical mind, self-centered mind? Big Mind is called Dharmakaya. Dharmakaya, Vajrajana, Buddha, Big Mind. So how do we center ourselves on Big Mind rather than centering ourselves on Small Mind?

[08:59]

So when we sit with us in We center ourselves on big mind rather than small mind. But the monkey still chops up and down and wants our attention because we're leaving it behind. This is a big problem when we concentrate on big mind, or not concentrate, but allow big mind its freedom. Monkey mind is still karmically expressing itself. So that's why we say, just let the monkey do its thing. You can't really hold it down. If you try to hold the monkey down, as soon as you let go, it springs back up. So we don't want to spend our time trying to control the monkey, actually. Trying to hold it down. We want our freedom, so we just let the monkey go.

[10:04]

And the monkey does his stuff while Lisa does it. However, when we practice Zazen, it is not that big mind is actually controlling small mind, but simply that when small mind becomes calm, big mind starts its true activity. So it's just always there. Most of the time in our everyday life we are involved in the activity of small mind. That is why we should practice Zazen and be completely involved in resuming big mind. So a good example of our practice is a turtle, which has four legs.

[11:05]

a head and a tail. Six parts of the body, which are sometimes outside of the shell and sometimes inside. When you want to eat or go somewhere, your legs are out. But if they are always out, you will be caught by something. So in case of danger, you draw in your legs, head and tail. and the mind. This is the sheen. For one week, our head, tail, and legs are inside the shell. In the scriptures it says that even demons cannot destroy us if the six parts of the body are inside the shell. So there's nothing to catch. foot is out, it can be caught by something. If your attention is outside, you can be caught by something.

[12:06]

So, seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting, plus thinking. These are the six senses and the cognizant mind. Manas, which is the ego, is the next level of consciousness, which says, I am doing something. I am this and I am that. It's me, myself, and mine, which becomes the center. So, in Zazen, we're only concerned with The five senses and the discriminating mind. Not the self-centered mind. We let go of the self-centered mind. The self-centered consciousness. In Zazen, we do not try to stop thinking or cut out hearing and seeing.

[13:17]

If something appears in your mind, just leave it be. If you hear something, hear it, and just accept it. Oh, that's all. No second response should appear in your Zazen. Sound is one activity, and the second is response. You hear a sound and then you respond. But in Zazen, there is a sound, but no response. Hearing hears the sound. Seeing sees the sight. Smelling smells the smell. But there is no person, no somebody that hears, sees, or smells. You can say, I am smelling something. I am seeing something. But it's not necessary. Better to just let seeing see, hearing hear.

[14:21]

smelling, smell, tasting, taste, then we let go of self-centeredness. Sometimes there's some practitioners like to name what comes up, but that's different than our practice, where we do not name something, we simply let whatever comes up come up without creating something around it. You can say pain if you want to but actually isn't. If you say pain you're just limiting what it is that you feel. You're not allowing whatever it really is, to be what it is.

[15:26]

It's simply sensation. This sensation. So if you hear a sound, that's all. You hear it, or it's heard. Don't make any judgment. Don't try to ignore, don't try to figure out what it is. Just open your ears and hear something. Just open your eyes and see something. When you are sitting for a pretty long time, watching the same place on the wall, you may see various images. Oh, it looks like a river. Or it looks like a dragon. Then you may think that you should not be thinking. You know, you've seen various things. Dwelling on the images may be a good way to kill time, but it's not the same.

[16:28]

If you're bored, you know, it's interesting to think about these things. Actually, concentration, well, I think he talks about concentration, so I'll wait. To be concentrated on something may be important, but just, just to have a well-concentrated mind is not zazen. So this is a kind of surprise to many people. We think concentration, practice is concentration. It's not not concentration, but concentration is simply one element of practice or zazen. And we also tend to think it's one-pointed. Concentration is real concentration. That you should concentrate with your whole body and mind in a very rigorous way. But actually, that's not our concentration.

[17:32]

Our concentration is relaxed concentration. Total concentration. So, rather than... There are two kinds of concentration. One is pinpointed concentration on one spot. The other is wide open concentration, so that concentration takes in all of our surroundings at the same time, without concentrating on any particular thing. In Zazen, we keep our eyes open. And when we keep our eyes open, sometimes these people say, well, just a little slit or whatever. But eyes are open. Whether they're a little slit or wide open, we keep our eyes open during zazen. But we don't look at the spot on the wall and try to concentrate on it.

[18:37]

We just have eyes are open. That's all. You're not trying to concentrate. You're simply making an effort to keep your eyes The obvious thing is to keep your eyes open when you're doing something. But they close and then we have to open them again. And we simply take in, let the eyes take in whatever is there in a wide range. And we don't say, oh, there's this and there's that. Simply seeing sees. Cognition happens. You don't have to try to cognize. Simply let the eyes be open. And the same goes for the ears. Simply let the ears be open and hear. So sound comes and goes.

[19:40]

Sights come and go. So, to be concentrated on something may be important, but just to have a well-concentrated mind is not Zazen. It is one of the elements of practice. But calmness of mind is also necessary. So, don't intensify the activity of the five sense organs. Just leave them as they are. Intensifying the activity would be to try and see something, try and hear something, try and feel something. There's no special state of mind. This is really important. There's no special state of mind that you're trying to achieve in zazen except being open and receptive. So states of mind are changing all the time.

[20:43]

So without grasping a state of mind or averting a state of mind, just whatever comes, comes, and then it goes, and then the next one comes, and then it goes, and then the next one comes, and then it goes. So just letting everything come as it comes and go as it goes, without grasping or averting and building a thought. A thought will arise and then it goes somewhere. Where does it go? Since it has no absolute reality, it's simply like a bubble. So, this is how to free your mind. This is how to free your true mind.

[21:47]

When you can do so in everyday life, you will have a soft mind. We have to be careful. Soft mind doesn't mean wishy-washy. It means flexible, like grass. You won't have way of thinking will not be overpowering. You will have generous mind and big mind and what you say will help others. So, wide concentration and magnanimous mind. This is the name that I gave to Rebecca, Magnanimous Mind Daixin. free of everything. I remember Bishop Sunni was the bishop in Los Angeles when I first started to practice in the early 60s.

[22:55]

And he used to come up and practice Sashin with us from time to time in San Francisco. And he had a stick. We used to use the stick all the time. But he had a stick And it had these characters on it. I said, what do the characters mean? He said, free of everything. Bam. Bam. For example, in the show against the Zui Monkey, do you know Zui Monkey? Zui Monkey is Dogen's talks in his evening talks to his students, which are more casual than his writings in the Shogun's Up. And people ask him questions and so forth. And recorded by Eijo. So in Zumonki, Dogen Zenji tells a story which was told to him about an influential person, Ichijo Moroe.

[24:09]

Actually, he was a prince or an official or something, a very powerful person. One day, Motoi discovered that his sword was missing, and since no one else could have broken into his house, one of his own men must have stolen it. The sword was found and brought back to him, but Motoi said, this is not my sword, so give it back to the one who owns it. People knew that the man who had the sword was the one who had stolen it, but because Motoi didn't accuse him of it, no one could say anything. So, nothing happened. This is the commonness of mind we should have according to Dohya. This is a mind of non-attachment. The mind of non-attachment and non-blaming and so forth and so on. There's a lot that can be discussed here. or no need to discuss anything.

[25:17]

It goes way beyond our usual sense of justice and righteousness and attachment and so forth. This is an example of the mind that we should have in Zazen. The mind of non-discrimination, no attachment to anything, and total freedom. Whatever it is that we're attached to restricts our freedom. If we have a generous big mind, and if we have a strong spirit of practice, then there is no need to worry. Wow.

[26:18]

Dogen emphasized a sparse, simple life. Without expecting anything, we just practice our way. Many students ask, how would it be possible to support the temple without any plan. And he said, if it becomes difficult to support our temple, we'll think about it. But until then, it's not necessary to think about it. So before something happens, it is not our way to think about it too much. In that way, we have complete calmness of our mind. Because you have something, you worry about losing it. But if you don't have anything, there's no need to worry. This has always been my attitude. And sometimes people find it, feel insecure about it.

[27:21]

So, but we've always, because we never really worried about anything. That's always been very secure. So, I'm going to go again here. I think if our practice is sincere and strong, whatever happens, things will work out in the way they should. One night, Dogen said, even if you think a teaching is complete and right, when someone tells you a better way, you should change your understanding. Buddhism should always be tested, all the time.

[28:26]

There are standards and so forth, But, you know, standards change, practices change, everything will change. We have to be aware of how practice transforms in this evanescent world. In this way, we improve our understanding of the teaching forever, because you think it is right, At that time you follow the theory or rules, but you also have some space in your mind to change your idea, and that is soft mind. So rigid mind leads to disaster. So we have to find our way with soft mind through this always changing, ever-changing world.

[29:34]

so that we don't get rigid or stuck somewhere. People think that our formal practice is rigid sometimes, but when you actually approach our formal practice with a soft mind, it's just very wonderful and easy. When I go around to correct posture, half the people that I His posture, I correct, are like, I told you this before, like stone. Because the mind is rigid, the body is rigid. You should have a very flexible body. That's how you preserve your life. Flexible body and flexible mind. Soft body and soft mind. So nothing rigid about Zazen looks like. But we're not. We're just sitting there, being as soft-minded as possible, so that the body has a wonderful form to practice without any rigidity at all.

[30:52]

That's what you should be thinking about in Zazen all the time. How is this body not being rigid? How is this body being having perfect form without rigidity? Where is the body rigid? People talk about body scan. Well, that's what we do. We do body scan all the time. Where is the body? We go over by scanning the body piece by bit by bit. in order to let go of rigidity so that all the body, mind, and breath are all working harmoniously as one piece without rigidity. No. I can't get people to play. So if I move your arm, it should just move.

[32:02]

If I push your back, it's just like that. But if I push somebody's back, it's... I don't have a baseball bat. So it's really, really hard. But we should think about this. Think about, when you say, how to be loose, how to sit in a very loose way, so that when intrusion comes, called pain, you think of pain as intrusion, so we counter-intuit it. And instead of, the reaction is to confront it. And that makes us rigid. But the way you deal with it is counterintuitive to open up and just let it pass. Just let it... whatever it is.

[33:06]

We're not calling it pain. It's just this sensation. And just open and open and open and open. So they're continually opening and opening. So pain has an advantage for us. What we call pain. The advantage is that it helps us to open up and be loose and flexible. So when I feel pain in my legs, I just keep opening up. restriction, that's a problem. So we have to just keep opening all the time, rather than just sitting there like a lump.

[34:07]

You know, we have to actually work, we have something to do all the time. Just, and if the body's here, if the posture, every part of the posture has to be assessed over and over again. We just do this over and over again. Because the body is always changing. Posture is always changing. And we have to continue to keep reasserting it, readjusting all the time. People say, well, you shouldn't move. You think you're moving. Nothing's... everything's moving. No matter how still you're sitting, everything's moving. Your whole body's moving all the time. But it's imperceptible. to somebody watching it. So we have to continually be reasserting our posture, readjusting our posture, readjusting our balance, finding the right balance all the time.

[35:13]

So there's no set posture. Posture is always changing and we're always readjusting continuously. There's no place where you can rest except in the movement. You have to be able to rest within the movement. That's called sitting still. So, I'm going to finish the rest of this tomorrow, or later, or something. So, the main thing is to remind ourselves, always, of what it is that we're doing.

[36:22]

Don't decide what we're doing. When we find ourselves being caught by the flotsam and jetsam of our thinking mind, because there's nothing to think about except Zazen, and you find yourself being carried off, our consciousness is continually being carried off by the flotsam and jetsam of our thinking mind, sometimes just enjoy it. Criticize yourself. Don't make a judgment. Every time you criticize or make a judgment, you create some egocentricity, some self-centeredness. It's the self-centered mind that is judging good and bad, right and wrong. Just come back to where you promised yourself you would be when you signed your name.

[37:28]

Thank you.

[37:29]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ