Good morning. Our understanding of the word, the term samadhi, means to become that with which we are involved. When we carry a broom, we become the broom. When we drink a cup of tea, we become teacup and tea, and we disappear as a self within the activity.

[01:20]

It's called being one with the activity, sometimes. But it's also becoming one with yourself, so that there's no gap between the subject and the object, even though there is a subject and an object. It's only from one side, one point of view. from the point of view of myself as a subject, a teacup is an object. But when we step out of our point of view as a subject over against the object, then

[02:27]

There's no self. So this is how we practice. The practice of no self is to see everything as our self. Not just as an idea, but as a fact. So sometimes when we study Buddhist literature, we read that one of the marks of Buddhist understanding is that there's no self, which can sound a little bit scary. No self, then what am I? Where am I? What is me? but you don't have to worry.

[03:38]

When you lose this self, when you realize this no-self, then you have yourself. So when we have formal practice, Formal practice allows us to bring forth the mind of samadhi. Because in formal practice, although there's a purpose in our activity, There is also just pure existence.

[04:41]

Samadhi is being one with pure existence. In pure existence, everything is the same, even though each thing is different. everything we come in contact with receives the same attention. We treat everything with the same kind of respect. So a valuable teacup is not any more valuable than an ordinary teacup. An exquisite dinner is not any more valuable than rice and vegetables, even though they're quite different, and we may like one more than the other. It has nothing to do with what we like or dislike, or our subjective evaluations.

[05:55]

So, in formal practice, we have the opportunity to merge or to be one with So you can say that Zen practice is the practice of entering Samadhi. The Samadhi of oneness with everything.

[07:03]

Being one with the universe. Being one with whatever comes our way. without discriminating. It's easy to be one with things that we like. You know, if you go to a movie, you can be completely absorbed in the movie. You like the movie, I mean, it grabs you and you lose yourself. Or you may be playing a game and you lose yourself in the game. So, this kind of absorption is absorption with pleasant or interesting things. But Samadhi, what makes Samadhi different is that there is no discrimination. When you have pain, you become the pain.

[08:09]

When you have suffering, you become the suffering. When you have joy, you become the joy. When you have a pleasant feeling, you become pleasant feeling. Without choosing, picking and choosing, So, you know, there's an old saying that the foolish person sees oneself as other, whereas the wise person sees other as oneself. This is a...

[09:11]

saying is very important for us. So in formal practice, when we enter the zendo, and we put our hands in gassho and bow, we leave everything behind. We just become one with Bowing. This is the wonderful thing about bowing, is that in a bow, there's nothing to be said about it. It's just a complete activity, one complete act. So it's important to know how to bow. You know, bowing is, you go down and then you come back up. But the bow takes place when you stop at the bottom, just for a moment.

[10:22]

And in that stopping, the whole cosmos stops with you. You reach the point of stillness with everything. The point of stillness with what you're bowing to But when you reach that point in that moment's activity, everything stops. And you become one with the core of all beings, of all being. So when people say, well, why do we bow? What's the point? What are we bowing to? And you can say, we bow to ourself.

[11:32]

When we bow, we bow to ourself. But we're pointing away from ourself when we bow. So that's a good koan. We bow to ourself. But you have to understand that in the context of there is no self. What is myself? What is myself? I bow to myself. What is myself? Big, good koan. It's a koan of bowing. So it's important to stop, just instantaneously, just for a fraction of a second is good enough, and then come back up.

[12:45]

But just to go like this is just some kind of movement, moving the body. There's no spirit in it. I notice when we serve, you know, And we walk in and the servers bow to each other and usually it's four different people doing something alone. And often when we bow to each other after serving the food, it's like two different worlds. There is that feeling of really being there, present and connected. And two people entering stillness together.

[13:50]

So that you can actually taste it. It doesn't have to be anything ostentatious. or prolonged, but just that moment of meeting and becoming one with the other, so that the other is no self or other. Both you and other disappear in that moment of stillness. we say you should treat the pots like your own head when you carry a pot. Those pots get pretty heavy.

[14:54]

And it takes all of our whole effort to carry the pots, bow, serve, and it gets the back, your lower back, To be really one with that pot. To carry that pot like your own head. And to serve yourself to yourself. When we serve the food, we're serving ourself to ourself. So it's nice if you feel good about yourself, because then you can serve something nice to yourself.

[16:03]

But even if you're not feeling so good about yourself, you can forget about it and just serve. The nice thing about entering into this activity, this formal activity, is you can let go of everything and just be present and total. You know, you sit through a period of Zazen and you may feel agitated or upset or something when you come in to Zendo and even during Zazen you may feel this stuff coming up. But you make big effort to sit. Even though you feel not so good, you make a big effort to sit.

[17:09]

And this effort to sit, in this effort to sit, you find yourself. And after Zazen, You may still feel not so good about yourself or what's going on, but something's changed. Something's different. And you have the opportunity to start your life at that point in a new way. So Samadhi is the ability to start your life on each moment without being stuck in the last moment. Each moment is a discrete period of time, which is influenced by the last moment.

[18:15]

But it's not the last moment. It's this moment. So even though the mind is going all the time, the feelings are coming up, the emotions are grinding away, it's like clouds floating over the ocean. Satsang is like being in the ocean, being the ocean. Even though the clouds are floating over the ocean, casting their shadow, the ocean is always the ocean.

[19:21]

when we do orioke practice. Orioke practice has evolved to allow us to make each movement a complete movement. Each movement of opening the claw laying out the bowls, receiving the food, pouring water from one to the next, relating to the servers. Each movement is just one movement. That's how it's designed. There's no fussing. There's no extra effort. If you know how to do orioke, then it's one movement, one movement, one complete movement, one complete movement after the other.

[20:52]

And one movement flows into the other without a gap. And there's no crossing over of, you know, and the way we, no shuffling, right? because it's all one continuous movement made up of discrete movements. And then, this complete balance and conservation of energy and with each movement, because each movement is purposeful. And even though we are opening up the bowls in order to eat, each movement is just a complete life in itself.

[21:59]

So we have two purposes in our activity. One is we want to get something done. We have a goal, a purpose. We want to open the bowls in order to eat. Right? That's what most of us think. Open the bowl, let's eat. But the other purpose is to just be completely one with the activity, each moment, each movement's activity, for its own sake, for the sake of being present and losing ourselves in the ocean. Just dropping into the ocean and dissolving.

[23:03]

Dissolving into the activity. So most of our life is spent rushing from one place to another. hurrying up to get this so that we can hurry up to get that and doing this in order to be able to do that and not being able to just settle on each moment's activity for its own sake. So we miss a lot of our life that way. So during this practice period, What I want us to concentrate on is how to lose ourself in our activity. When I say lose ourself, I don't mean to be lost. But to

[24:14]

Be attentive to the quality of our activity. To treat everything as ourself. Not through an idea, but through our actions. when carrying the pots. Carry the pots completely. Be one with the pot. Be one with the serving. Be one with the receiving. And we carry this activity throughout our whole life. So this, having a householder's practice period, there's no other way to practice.

[25:24]

So householder's practice period, but even though it's a householder's practice period, there's householding and zendo practice, so we have both, both aspects. And we have formal practice in the zendo, which, because the atmosphere of the zendo lends itself to this kind of practice, the practice of samadhi, it's not so hard in the zendo. So, when we enter the zendo, we enter the forms, the familiar forms of an atmosphere that help us to practice. And then when we leave the zendo, all the forms that we encounter become the forms of practice through entering into them, not as objects, but as yourself, without discriminating

[26:46]

We have to make choices, of course. We're always making choices. But the choices, in order to be non-discriminating, have to be based on letting go of self-centeredness. So the difference between absorption in something we like and samadhi is that in Samadhi we let go of self-centeredness. We no longer are the center, but we become one with the circle of our surroundings and take our place according to how everything is ordered around us. We have the term a bull in a china shop.

[27:56]

The bull in the china shop is maybe the symbol of self-centeredness. Because the bull, rather big, doesn't take its surroundings so much into consideration. but just bumps the tables and knocks over the china and tramples the weeds, I mean the flower beds. This is ego-centeredness. So we have to train the bull. It's called ox-herding in Zen. You have to train the ox, the water buffalo, not to trample the flowers, but how to respect everything and to find its place in each moment's configuration of our surroundings.

[29:07]

This is a practice of no-self. And it's an interesting thing, you know, when you can let go of your anxiety about getting things done and producing, we manage to get things done much more easily.

[30:28]

Things seem to take care of themselves much more easily. And it's almost as if we're not doing something, everything is working together with us, which is the way life is. When we let go, it seems like everything is working together with us because everything that's working with us is our self. But fear and anxiety tend to isolate us. we cling to our sense of self. So if we can let go of fear and anxiety and viewing everything as other, the world opens up for us and

[31:39]

we move together with it, and it moves together with us. Because that's the way things want to be. Natural way. So this afternoon we have coordination, lay ordination, confirmation of our practice for seven people who have been sewing their Raksu. When you sew the Raksu, you know, you take one stitch and every time you take the stitch, you return to yourself. Say, Namu Kiye Butsu. which means to take refuge.

[32:46]

But it means to return to my Buddha self. So it's very concentrated activity and there are a lot of little stitches and they have to be just so far apart. And you try to make each one just the right spacing from the others. And so the little knots are not too big and not too small. It takes a lot of concentration and you want to get it done. It takes months to get it done. You can do it actually in a week, but it takes months to get it done. And the only way you can do it is one stitch at a time. If you try to do any more than one stitch at a time, Or if you think ahead at all, or if you think behind, it won't work.

[33:49]

You have to be right there with each stitch. So it's wonderful practice. And if we can use that as an example, of our practice, we'll be okay. We'll know what we're doing. Do you have any back questions? Ah, yes, Bob. What would you carry it up there?

[35:20]

I would carry it about shoulder length. I mean, I've been carrying it two boxes. The other problem I run into, say with goriyoki, And I tend to think at times, well, I must really be deluded. I can't get this walk or this nap in right.

[36:23]

Is there a better attitude to have? Let me talk about the first one. So you would carry the pots. We used to carry the pots. And then somebody came along and said, you're not supposed to breathe into the pots. It's very hygienic. If you're carrying down here, you're going to breathe into the pots. So carry the pots a little higher, maybe up here. Or you wear a face mask. But to carry your pots up here, you can't see where you're going. You should never carry anything higher than this. So when you hold a stick, you know, if you're carrying a kiyosaku, you carry it like this, at eye level. The eye level connects with hara.

[37:24]

And you have feet, hara, eye level, and posture. And you're completely involved. The whole body and mind is completely involved in this one act. And you hold your arms out because it gives you a sense of completeness or a sense of purpose or strength, actually. If you carry it like this, there's no strength in this. It's masculine. way of doing things. Pots are a little harder because they're so heavy, you know. So I don't have any particular idea about how you should carry them. I think you should carry the pots the way that doesn't hurt your back. And sometimes you breathe on them, sometimes you don't.

[38:28]

I don't think it could be helped. You could carry them on your head. Yes. But then when you serve them, you put them down, right? So you're breathing into the pot. So I don't think we should hold it a pot up here. You can hold it at eye level, but you know, you shouldn't hurt your back. Carry it in a way that's comfortable. You should be comfortable. You're not straining to do something. Straining is not so good. So we're always, in all of our activity, we're finding the middle way between too much and not enough. What's just the right amount of effort to do the work you have to do? That's very important.

[39:31]

Always finding moment by moment, the right amount of effort, the least amount of effort to do the most work. See, if you have a piece of incense, it's very light, or a feather, you know, but a piece of incense is very light, so you wouldn't grab a piece of incense like this, because that's over-working, you know? So you take it in your fingers, because it's so light, you don't need to grab it, you know? You just hold it in your fingertips and it feels very nice. And you feel one with the incense. Nyogen Sensaki talked about this woman who visited him, who was a Zen student. And he was testing her understanding. And he gave her a piece of incense to offer. And he watched the way she offered the incense. And he said, and I passed your understanding.

[40:37]

He didn't say how she did it. He said, but I passed your understanding. So actually, to watch the way we handle it, one of the ways that I kind of assess where students are is to watch the way they handle things. How they handle their clothes, how they handle objects, how they handle incense, how they interact with both people and objects, and animals. The second part of your question was about orioke? Oh, about, oh, I'm so foolish, I do everything wrong.

[41:40]

God, am I stupid? Forget it. It's just, oh, I don't know how to do that, or I did that wrong. That's all. You just don't go any further than that. Everything else is extra. Just to notice how you did something is enough. Otherwise, you're putting judgments on it, and there's no more samadhi. As soon as you start judging it, there's no more samadhi. You can tell, I didn't, oh, this was not right. Okay, well, next time I'll try to do it right. Oh, I still didn't do it right. So you do it over and over again, maybe a thousand times, and then you feel, That was right. But it's not a matter of right and wrong in the area of right and wrong. It's just that this was the way that this is right and this is wrong.

[42:43]

But because it's wrong, it doesn't mean it's bad. And because this is right, it doesn't mean it's good. So sometimes we do it right, and sometimes we do it wrong, and all those wrong ways were in some way correct. And all the right ways were somehow incorrect. That's possible. if we do Zazen, you know, and we think, my mind was racing all the time, you know, and I had all these thoughts. At one moment where I was actually present, a terrible Zazen. Well, to realize that all these thoughts were going blah, blah, blah, you know, that's correct observation, but it doesn't mean that it was bad Zazen.

[43:55]

And if you sit up, you know, in good posture, and feel wonderful and floating, That was really good, Zazen. That was just what it was. So if you judge that it's good and bad on that basis, then you fall into the black hole of the black dragon's hell hole. There is a correct way and an incorrect way, but it's not necessarily good or bad. And realizing how it was is the main thing. Or realizing how it is, is the main thing. But get off of just criticizing yourself, you know. Oh, bent over, you know. Criticism of ourselves. Terrible. Judgment.

[45:00]

Self-judgment and judging others. See, every one of us is incomparable. I have a problem with if I feel attempting to be one or am feeling one with someone or coming toward them, and the person interprets that as submission and tries to take me into their will. And I get, I notice, it's an old problem, but I notice I get very confused about how to respond to that because I, I mean, my habit is to will back or surrender so totally that I've lost something. Right. The main thing is not to take a standpoint anywhere. See, you're always moving.

[46:04]

If you take a standpoint in either trying to make yourself safe or giving yourself over, you get stuck. You have to assess the situation for what it is rather than what you think it is. You know, when we let go of our idea about it, then we can flow with the situation. and we can move out of it or into it. But when we have an idea about it, then we base our attitude on the idea. So, it's really good if we can enter a situation without a preconceived attitude. Less possibility of getting stuck. I know what that situation is. I know what he's like.

[47:06]

I know what's going to happen. And when you act that way, it does happen. But you might try entering a situation without any preconceived notions, which is hard, because you already have them. But you can try. The more you practice that way, the more you can do that. That's the point. Of course, you know, When you enter into the known situation, you're going to fall into the known patterns. But the more you practice not having notions, the more you can do that. I just go unassuming, being unassuming.

[48:15]

No notions, just empty-headed. So when we're empty-headed, we can respond to any situation quickly and without even thinking. Let's practice being empty-headed, which is the opposite of what everyone else wants to practice. But I hope you understand it in the right way. Empty-headed and full-hearted. Empty-headed and full-hearted. Whole-hearted. Whole-hearted. Yes. Cool-headed and warm-feet. These are neverless.

[49:13]

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