Here. Up. It's up? I'll have to talk later. So this is the seventh day of our seven day rohatsu sesshin. We've been sitting here for seven days. This is rohatsu sesshin. commemoration Sashi. So Buddha, Shakti Muni Buddha was apparently enlightened around 2,500 years ago. Can you hear me? Good. You're the closest one. 2,500 years ago in India and So, because of that, we're doing this.

[01:13]

Isn't that amazing? That somebody did something 2,500 years ago, and it affects us, and not just affects us, but has a big effect on directing our life. So here we've been doing this for seven days Aching legs, hurting back, inquiring mind. We love it. True. Sushita is difficult, but difficult things that we do give us a lot of joy. Easy things maybe make us happy, but it's not the same. I always like to think that you pay for what you get, or you get what you pay for.

[02:25]

And if you want the most valuable thing, you pay the highest price. Which means that if you want something really valuable, you give yourself to it wholeheartedly. The highest price is your life, right? So if you want to express or understand what enlightenment is, you have to pay the highest price, which is to give yourself wholeheartedly to practice. That's what we do in our seven-day Sashin. There's nothing but Zazen. Everything we do is practice. And so, difficult as it may be, it's wonderful. So during Sachine, I've been talking about various subjects, but yesterday we touched on the subject of forgiveness.

[03:45]

And so I want to talk a bit about forgiveness. Because I think it's a very important subject for all of us. It's an important subject for each of us personally, and it's an important subject for the world. If forgiveness actually became dominant in the world, the world would be saved. So, I think that we misunderstand, often we misunderstand what forgiveness really is. And I think most people do. And sometimes people will come to me And they'll talk about their parents or their spouse or their friends or whatever.

[04:53]

How can I deal with my resentments and my anger and so forth? And invariably, I will say, forgiveness. And they'll say, oh. So hard, right? because we have a misunderstanding of what forgiveness means. Forgiveness is not about everything's now hunky-dory. So there's a book that I like to use. It's called Forgive for Good by Dr. Fred Luskin, who co-authored forgiveness project. I picked this book up some years ago at Kaiser and Mr. Luskin gives us a very good understanding of how this all works.

[06:17]

talks about how much space we give to anger and resentment in our mind. Not that our mind can't be very expansive, but we tend to close it off with our thoughts, with our emotions and feelings. Someone asked a question last night about Is emotion independent of thought? And I don't think that emotion is independent of thought. E-motion means to put into motion our feelings. And thought drives the feelings. the wind and the waves. Emotion comes in waves and thought is the force that drives those waves.

[07:25]

So emotion and thought are linked, definitely linked together. And in the Dharma we call that emotion-thought, not two separate things. So when we sit in Zazen, we simply allow emotion-thought to rise, and we are aware of the waves, but we don't swim in them. We don't get caught in the waves. We don't get inundated by big waves of emotion or thought. We simply let them come and go. Isn't that interesting? But because we're not involved with them at that time, we can have a calm mind like the ocean without waves. The thought, the emotion thought is like clouds, always changing. So I'll talk a little bit about that, but I'm going to read to you a little bit of the introduction of this book.

[08:33]

He says, picture the crowded room, picture, I'm sorry, Picture the crowded screen in front of a harried air traffic controller. That's you. Picture the chaos in the room and the jumble of planes on the screen. Now imagine that your unresolved grievances are the planes on that screen that have been circling for days, and weeks on end, and more. Most of the other planes have landed, but your unresolved grievances continue to take up precious airspace, draining resources that may be needed in an emergency. Having them on the screen forces you to work harder and increases the chances for accidents. The grievance planes become a source of stress and burnout, which is often the result.

[09:41]

So how did the planes get up there in the first place? Is there, like, your anger and resentment that fill up the space in your mind and in your emotions? You took something too personally. One. You continued to blame the person who hurt you for how bad you feel. Two. You created a grievance story. Three. the three foundations. Taking something personally, blaming the other person for how bad you feel, and creating a grievance story. When we look at how we blame people for our problem, you should know right away that that creates a problem for you. because you misunderstood what's been going on.

[10:49]

Someone does something, and you feel something. That's all. And then the next step is, you think that this person caused you to feel something. But you can feel various things. But you chose to feel a certain way. And instead of taking responsibility for how you feel, You put the responsibility on the other person. And so, what is forgiveness? Let's just look at that. Forgiveness is the place you learn to feel when you allow these circling planes to land. In other words, your grievances. Letting your grievances land means that You take a deep breath and let go of your grievance for now.

[11:57]

In other words, you're not carrying around a burden. That's really hard because we're so loyal to our feelings. We're loyal to our grievance. If I let go of my grievance, I will be disloyal to myself. So I hang on to that and suffer the consequences rather than finding the freedom in my own mind. Forgiveness is for you and not the offender. So the problem that we have is that we usually think that if I forgive somebody, then I let them go scot-free when they should be punished. But that's not what it's about. It's about freedom for you, because we tie ourselves up with our agreements. This is called reaction. There's reaction and response.

[13:04]

Reaction is when an event happens and we have a reaction which ties us to, in this case, the offender. And then myself and the offender are caught in the same act. I remember seeing a movie where two prisoners were handcuffed together, traveling from one prison to another with a guard. And somehow they managed to escape. They jumped off the train, but they were handcuffed together. And so they had to live for some long period of time, handcuffed together. No food, no money, no nothing. That's what we do with ourselves when we hang on to a grievance. Forgiveness is taking back your power. untying yourself from the object of our grievance, having some independence from the grievance, so that we can actually have our own freedom.

[14:23]

We take back our power. When we're tied to the other person through grievance, we're giving away our power to the situation, and we have no freedom to move. Forgiveness is taking responsibility for how you feel rather than you made me feel this way. Nobody makes us feel this way. Something happens and we feel that way. Forgiveness is about your healing and not about the people who hurt you. Forgiveness is a trainable skill, just like learning how to throw a baseball. You can learn how to do it. We need to teach it to the dictators, but... Forgiveness helps you get control over your feelings, because actually, your feelings are controlled by the situation.

[15:31]

So you are no longer free to drive. You're being driven. Forgiveness can improve our mental and physical health. It's true. We hold our grievances, to a large extent, in our upper back. Anger, resentment, and grievance is often held in our upper back. And if you look at postures, burdens, people carrying great burdens in their back. I remember there was a, I sometimes say this, there was a movie by, I think it was Bunuel, many, many years ago. And, you know, he was this kind of surreal movie maker. And there was one image where this man was in his room and he was He had a rope over his shoulder and the rope was attached to two walruses.

[16:41]

He was condemned in his life to hang these two walruses around the room. Sound familiar? instead of a victim. How often have you felt victimized by someone? Forgiveness is a choice and everyone can learn to do it. So what forgiveness is not? Forgiveness is not condoning unkindness. It's not like Oh, it's OK to be unkind. I'll forgive you. You know, Dogen, in his facet called Immo, Suchness, talks about when you fall to the ground, you use the ground to help you back up.

[17:48]

Isn't that wonderful? You use that which caused you to fall to help you come back up. But, as Suzuki Roshi says, but if you do that, over and over again thinking that it's okay to fall because I can use the earth to pick me up. That's just an excuse, right, to fall. So, if you feel that, well, you can just be as unkind as you want and it's okay with me because I'll forgive you every time, that's not correct. So, forgiveness is not condoning unkindness, but you recognize it. Forgiveness is not forgetting that something painful happened. Forgiveness is not excusing that poor behavior. Forgiveness does not have to be an otherworldly or religious experience. Forgiveness is not denying or minimizing your hurt.

[18:54]

I still hurt. As a matter of fact, to forgive when you're really hurting, that's good. You don't forget. It doesn't mean reconciling with the offender. That's a mistake that a lot of us make. We think, well, then I have to reconcile with the person who offended me. That's not what it means. It means you're getting your own freedom, instead of being caught by your own mind. This is enlightenment. an act of enlightenment. It means finding your true freedom and not being caught by anything. Forgiveness does not mean that you give up having feelings. So, it really is deeper than just your relationship with somebody.

[19:58]

It's actually how you conduct your life without being caught by anything. I've cited this story. You remember a few years ago, there was a guy climbing a mountain, and a big boulder came down and hit his arm, and he stuck there. And all he could do was cut off his arm and leave. But he couldn't blame the boulder. He could blame the boulder, but it doesn't do you any good. It's a little different with people because, you know, people have intentions. But forgiveness is beyond the other person's intention. It's your intention. How you act. You have the freedom to cut yourself off from.

[21:02]

Another way is to think about a lover. One says to the other, I don't love you anymore, I'm going to leave, goodbye. And the one that's left feels all this grievance, terrible grievance. As long as there is the longing for the old lover to come back, there's a tie. Even if it's just the slightest thread, it's still a tie. And there's suffering. And so, the person who's left has to be able to cut the tie, which is like committing suicide, in a way. Die, I die. But then you come back to life. That's how you come back to life, actually. Dying is coming back to life. So, to let go of your side, get the freedom to go on and not be caught and tied to this boulder.

[22:14]

So he talks about, he says, if you can view your mind as your house, this is where you live. We all live in our mind, unfortunately. And we have to deal with all the furniture. So we should furnish our house in a way that's kind of nice, that we can allow this to move around. We don't stumble over the furniture and get caught by it with our arm in the refrigerator. If you can view your mind as your house, I can teach you to control how much space you rent to your wounds and grievances. So he talks about our grievances and our views and our wounds.

[23:29]

You are the proprietor and you set the rent. Each of us decides who our tenants are and the conditions of their lease. What kind of accommodations do we want to give to our wounds and grievances? We can rent to our grievances the master bedroom and build them a hot tub out We can give them a great lease with terrific terms that never expire. Or we can grant them only a day-to-day tenancy. We can allow them to put their stuff in all the rooms of the house. Or we can restrict them to a small room in the back. In other words, we need to ask, how much time do we spend thinking about our hurts and disappointments? And when we think about them, how much intensity is there? So the answer to these questions will determine how much of a problem a wound or grievance will cause you.

[24:39]

When you have rendered too much space in your mind, then you have grievance. And then he has a lot of case histories here which are too much to go into. But you all have your own case history. We all have our own case history. So, you know, we live in a very close, this Zen community is a pretty close community. And those of us who sit all the time, or sit in daily and interact with each other, and when you're in that close, interactive community, we bump up against each other. And we create resentments. It's inevitable.

[25:40]

I remember a few people coming once in a while to practice and they said, gee, I thought Zen students never had these kinds of problems that other people have. people that have ordinary problems with each other. But I have to say that we are all willing, the Zen students I know, are all willing to deal with this. It may take years. I know of Zen students who have had grievances with each other and with me for years. But we stay with problem. And sometimes, you know, we leave, but we have to learn how to forgive each other so that we can find our freedom.

[26:50]

That's what our practice is all about, is being able to really relate to each other without the interference of bad feelings. Feelings will not always be good. People are different. We think differently. Somebody's the opposite of me. But how can I appreciate those people who are the opposite of me, who are not like me, who don't think like me? But yet, everyone has a legitimate way to think about things. So my answer to that kind of problem is that we should always practice forgiveness all the time. Don't let it get very far. Don't let the grievances get very far.

[27:52]

And always be willing to let go of the grievance. It doesn't mean you let go of the problems. There's a difference between the problems between dealing with the problems and dealing with them without resentment. Without resentment, you can actually look at the problem objectively. Otherwise, we always bring our subjective views to the problem. And when we bring our subjective views to the problem, we can't solve anything. besides sitting Zazen, is to put our hands together. When we put our hands together, everything is reconciled. When I meet somebody and we bow to each other,

[29:04]

To me, that's starting on a new footing every time. We have to be able to start on a new footing every moment. That's called practice. We don't carry the last moment into the next moment. It looks like we do. It looks like a continuous moving, but it's one frame at a time. And we die on this frame, and we come to life on this frame. Birth and death are happening all the time, moment by moment, action by action. So this moment is gone, and this moment is arising. And we bring this moment to life with empty mind. That's practice, that's enlightening, that's acting in an enlightened way. We don't carry anything from the past into the present.

[30:05]

It gets past anyway. We have our karma and so forth, but we're awakening to a new possibility on every moment. We're not stuck with anything, even though it seems like it. Every moment, every action can be a brand new action, a new birth. You don't have to carry your stuff into the next moment. That's how you can have a serene mind. This is called Zazen. So you're always in a state of forgiveness. It's just your natural mode of freeing yourself from greed, ill-will, and delusion, anger.

[31:11]

We say in our precepts, don't harbor ill-will. It doesn't say don't be angry. It says don't harbor ill-will. Harbor means this, right? What I have has me. That's the law of being caught. Whatever it is that I have, has me. Because if I have a pot of soup, the pot of soup has me. For sure. It's telling me what to do. So whatever we pick up, it's telling us what to do. It's informing us of what to do, not necessarily telling us. So I have the opportunity of saying, well, what are you going to do with me? You're going to put me down? You're going to walk with me? So I have to be careful and let it tell me what to do. When I'm driving my car, it's the same thing.

[32:12]

All the people in the road are telling me what to do. And if we're just in our own space, we get into a wreck. So everything is telling everything else what to do. When I meet you, and we're talking together, you're giving me a message about how to act with you unbeknownst to you. You're telling me that. You're training me in how to act toward you. Someone who will always be giving you an argument about something will be telling you telling me how to act toward them, because I don't want to be careful. I have to be careful not to upset them. Or they'll give me something. So they're teaching me something. This is how you act toward me. Everybody's teaching everybody else how to do that all the time.

[33:13]

So my teachers, Zuki Roshi, disarmed everybody. That was why everybody loved him, because he disarmed everyone. There was nothing to fight with, because there was nothing there. There was nothing there that you could contend with, because he wasn't caught by anything. You could spit on him, and he wouldn't like it. you can disturb his mind. So today, that's my talk for today. And I hope that you can... I just wanted to remind us of this subject, because it's important.

[34:21]

And I just want to read one... nothing. almost nothing, but it's a great thing. It's the opening of the Dhammapada, the oldest Buddhist book. All experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind. Speak or act with a corrupted mind and suffering follows. as the wagon wheel follows the hoof of the ox. All experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind. Speak or act with a peaceful mind and happiness follows like a never departing shadow. abused me, attacked me, defeated me, robbed me.

[35:26]

For those not carrying on like this, hatred ends. Hatred never ends through hatred. By non-hate alone does it end. And this is the ancient truth. Many do not realize that we hear quarrels end. This is why when people are on their deathbed, they forgive, so they go peacefully.

[36:21]

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