I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Morning. You know, the question always comes up during Sashin, especially all of our doubts come up during Sashin. We have, you know, at other times, but And so the big one always is, why are we sitting? Why am I doing this? What is this? And I hear those doubts a lot. But I never had that doubt. Although I questioned,

[01:01]

Although I had the question of what is it that I'm doing, I never doubted that I was... I guess I said it the first time. It never came up for me as a doubt. And I was waiting for Raoul to come. picked me up and I was thinking about this and kind of ruminating and I thought about before I was practicing Zen, I was a painter and I studied with Clifford Still who was a very well-known abstract expressionist painter. one of the leading so-called abstract expressionist painters. And it was called, we called it non-objective painting.

[02:08]

We didn't call it abstract. Abstract expressionism was a term that the art critics used, coined. But we called it non-objective painting because there were no objects. We were not painting objects. We were just painting. paint. We were not painting something to represent something else. That was the whole trick of the painting, was you were not painting one thing to represent something else. Not that that kind of painting is wrong, but that's not what we were doing. So the whole thrust of our painting was to be the painting, to express, make an expression with paint on canvas.

[03:11]

And there was never any doubt that it was paint on canvas. There was no illusion. We're not creating an illusion. I remember the first time I saw one of Clifford Still's paintings, there was paint and then it was empty canvas. And the empty canvas is part of the painting. And he said, it's just canvas. It's just paint on canvas. Don't get fooled by it. So in creating that kind of painting, the painting is something that the painter... I mean, of course, there's always, you know, there are always images that are kind of veiled, maybe, in the painting. But there's a kind of dynamism that you recognize within the painting, and then the painter is drawn into the painting.

[04:24]

creates an atmosphere or a state of emotional state or a feeling. And then when the viewer sees it, the viewer, the painting evokes the feeling from the viewer. And When I was painting, I always tried to create the feeling that went into the painting. I always wanted the person who saw the painting to have the same feeling as I had when I painted the painting. And people would say, well, you just get whatever you can out of the painting. Because they're looking for something they can recognize. When they're looking at the painting, they're looking for something that the eye can recognize. And there's nothing there. So they keep looking for it. But it's not there. And what's there is the feeling.

[05:28]

If the feeling's not there and the painting doesn't work, right? I remember the first time I saw my teacher's paintings. I was just blown away, you know, because there was nothing, there was no visual image that I could recognize, except the visual images were emotional, or deep feeling. And I was just hit by the feeling. And the feeling got very deep. And deeper than any painting that I'd ever seen. A representational painting. So I was very moved by that. And that's the way I painted for a long time. So the object of the painting was to make the painting for its own sake. It didn't represent something else. And so when I came to Zen, the idea of just sitting for the sake of sitting didn't seem like a strange idea to me at all.

[06:36]

It seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do. I wasn't sitting for some other reason. I was only sitting to sit. And whatever was there was there. So it's not been a problem for me. to just be able to sit for the sake of sitting. That's as far as I got in my thinking. And then, well, OK, I'm going to be over here. But although I had lots of trouble in Zazen, when I first started sitting, it was very difficult. and I couldn't get my knees down. I tell this story once a year, I think. I couldn't get my knees down, and I kind of wondered, you know. I remember the first time I sat on a Saturday morning, and we sat a period of Zazen, and then we did Kinhin, and then people sat down again, and I thought,

[07:49]

So I sat down again, and my legs hurt like crazy, you know. And then we got up, and then we had a work period. And the work periods were really great at Sokoji. Because everybody really worked, you know, and we used to polish the floor. We used to wax the Zendo floor every Saturday morning, and we did it Japanese style. We'd put wax on the floor, and then we'd take the rag and bend down and run across the floor real fast with the rag, moving the rag in front of us, back and forth, back and forth, polishing the floor. And then we sat again. Oh, God. I can remember those excruciating days. For years, actually. For years, I said an excruciating thing.

[09:03]

And my teacher kept encouraging me. Very, very encouraging. But he just kept encouraging me. You know, I bow to people when they go out the door at the end. And he used to do that. And he'd look at you, you know, when you bow. And then sometimes he'd look over your shoulder. And you'd think, why is he looking over my shoulder instead of looking at me? Maybe this has some secret meaning. Maybe she didn't want to look at me. But one day I thought, one day I uncrossed my legs and I thought, I'm a failure. I uncrossed my legs, I'm a failure.

[10:09]

It was the last period of Zazen. She doesn't like me anymore. I didn't think that. So I went up and I asked him, I said, do you think it's okay if I had a test, you know? People test me, I know this test. Do you think it's okay if I continue? Do you think it's worthwhile for me to continue sitting?" And he looked at me. Isn't it difficult enough for you? Then I understood. What? That difficulty is what practice is. If you can't face the difficulty, you can't practice. If you can't go through it, you can't practice. But I was very determined. And also, you know, I had already gone through a lot of life by the time I started to sit.

[11:18]

So when I started to sit, I was 35 already. I've done a lot of things. And I was very interested in finding some spiritual practice. And we didn't have the smorgasbord of spiritual practices that we have now. There was almost nothing. And so this was very unique. And after the first few excruciating times, time, I actually felt wonderful. So wonderful, I never felt so wonderful in my life as I felt after this period of Zazen. I said, this is it for me. And right then, I decided, this is it. I don't care about all the other stuff in the world. This is the only thing that I really want to do.

[12:21]

And I've been doing that ever since. But I mean, I really had a hard time. And I understand all of your hard times, because I've been through every one of them, actually. I don't think there's any problem that you've had that I haven't had, or I haven't heard of one in my practice. You started with the big problem that some people have and you didn't have. Yeah. That's right. That's the only one I haven't had. But you must have had it because at some point you gave up your painting. You must have thought about I didn't give up my painting.

[13:25]

I was in such excruciating pain in my life that I just couldn't continue painting. I didn't kind of give it up. It just kind of drifted away. I drifted away. And started smoking marijuana and listening to jazz and all that. It's like you went from painting to painting. Painting. Yeah, from painting. Well, actually, I went from painting to painting to more painting. Real painting. But it's always been very joyful. And the thing that

[14:26]

has always convinced me is that within the pain is great joy. Joy always arises out of the pain. And this is the thing that bothers me. People have so much pain, but they don't have the joy. So life is very painful. But within the pain, within our suffering, there has to be some joy that arises, otherwise we just have despair. So what religion is about is how do you find that joy within your suffering that keeps you from falling into despair? Because if we don't have it, we're just born, so to speak, and we live our life in various ways, and then we die.

[15:42]

So what? So I've always had that joy that arises through doing something very difficult. And Zazen, I don't say that, you know, there have been times where there is a certain ease that goes with it after a long time. You know, but my legs always hurt during Sashin, just like everybody else's. They'll say, do your legs hurt too? You know, I hop on and off the time. But yes, they do. But I've had all kinds of problems.

[16:47]

You know, I had sciatic problem for 20 years, 25 years, probably. And my knee is giving me a problem from time to time. I don't sit in full lotus anymore. I used to sit at full lotus 20 years. I didn't do that anymore because this knee bothers me when I do. Sometimes I sneak into it again, but not for long. And I don't go skiing. But my determination has always been The practice is more important than the body. It's more important to do the practice than to worry about my body. I don't think you can practice unless you have that feeling.

[17:50]

But, strangely enough, the body is always healed. The body has always come through. even though there's problems. And that's hard to recommend to people. You know, they say, well, what do you do? Well, I just keep going. But I can't recommend that. I just say, this is what I do. For you, maybe you should rest. Maybe you should lie down. Maybe you should take a break. You know, it's like a doctor. When a doctor tells you, when you come to a doctor with a back problem, the doctor always says, lay down. Lay down on your back. Rest for three months. Because, if the doctor said anything else, you'd come back to the doctor when your back started hurting, and you'd say, you told me blah blah blah.

[18:56]

So the doctor always gives you the most the most safe thing to do, especially with the back. Backs are very delicate, you know. So the doctor said, oh, rest for three months. Don't do anything. Of course, you know, that's very safe for the doctor. But I couldn't do that. That's not what I do. But if I recommend to you to do what I do, then you might come back and say, I did what you said, and my knee is worse. But anyway, I've always just sat through everything, even with my knees falling apart. But I always come out okay. So I have a lot of faith in the zazen itself to heal itself.

[20:00]

And also in the resilience of the body, if you let it if we don't cling to things. What causes us the most physical problems, according to my understanding, is resistance. Most physical problems in Zazen are caused by resistance. If it's enough, then you can damage yourself. So we learn to go with it rather than to resist it. But it's hard because our natural tendency is always to resist something that we don't like.

[21:06]

And Zazen, the trick of Zazen, is to go against your tendency, actually, because our tendency is to freeze up, or to resist, or to withdraw, or to back off. And instead of doing that, we have to consciously just go into it. So it's like this big fire, and you just have to go in and sit down in the middle of it. be there. And when you can do that, it's not so bad. It's like sitting in the eye of the hurricane. In the middle of the eye of the hurricane, very still. No problem. But on the periphery, if you get caught on the periphery, you get tossed around a lot.

[22:15]

So you have to get in the middle of the eye, so you don't get tossed around like that. You have to enter the eye. Amelia? Despite the fact that my experience rod out pain and difficulty. Still, when you say that practice is more important than your body, I feel disturbed. And we do have injuries. I really wonder how much pain is necessary for the pregnant.

[23:29]

And while I do believe that one has to find the eye of the hurricane, there is usually sufficient internal emotional hurricane so that one can find an eye. But I do think that there's a point in which painful body, it's a real impediment to strong sinning. Well, I would say, you know, you say, how much? I would say the only pain that's necessary is the pain that you have. I don't think there's any quantity that you should have, but you just have what you have. In other words, we don't sit down to cause pain, right? But you knew when to uncross your legs and when to move out of the four lines, when the pain was too much.

[24:31]

Right. Yeah. That's right. It's true, but you have to do that until you find the ease. In other words, you have to push until you find that pushing doesn't work. But there's always the other side. Of course, you should know when to stop doing something. But I still feel that the practice or the zazen is more important than the body.

[25:48]

because I feel that our understanding is the most important thing. I pretty much agree with that. But the point, and this may be similar to what Meili is saying, and I don't mean this in a critical way, Your earlier suffering, in a sense, has been followed by a somewhat charmed life, a very fortunate life. And not everybody to practice is so charming. I'm not just talking about pain in one's legs. Bodies are not always resilient.

[26:59]

Things give out. Bodies decay. And I'm just wary about setting up a standard of faith in Zazen and overcoming all physical barriers, because it won't. No, that's right. It won't. That's true. But What I'm saying is an attitude, not a prescription. Right? So within that attitude, you have to have some judgment as to when not to do something, how far to go, when to take care of yourself. I'm not saying you shouldn't take care of yourself. You should take care of the body because Bonnie is what you have to practice with, right? Well, that's even more extreme.

[28:38]

But I appreciate that. Believe it. I want to say that for me, my body is a tool in practicing zazen, in that it lets me know about ebb and flow in the moment. And so, if you're saying that I should forget about the body, then I need to throw away one of my tools for learning about the other influence. I never said forget about the body. As a matter of fact, I just said we have to take care of the body, because the body is what we have to practice with. And somehow, you know, As I said, I'm talking about an attitude, not a prescription. And what I'm saying, in simple terms, is that when we practice, we come up to a certain point where we think we can't go any further.

[30:03]

And we have to cross the barrier where we can't think we can go any further and go further. We have to get beyond the point where usually we say, I can't go any further. I was going to say that I think one of the reactions that's coming up, maybe just for me, is that in order to be here, I already believe If I want to do something good for my body, I go take a walk, take a nap, be out in the fresh air. So you stress that side of it, you know, it sort of starts to get a little, it feels a little off balance because already to be here it's like I know that. I don't think, I think the zazen is very good for your body. I think so too. Zazen, just a minute, zazen is the harmonizing of all organs and limbs of your body.

[31:10]

It's very good for your body. There are other things that are also good for your body, like running and jumping and stuff like that, playing. They're also good for your body. But to say that this is not good for your body is a little strange. I'm not saying it's... Well, I did say it's not good, but what I mean is hour after hour of sitting, even though you exhaust it, it's not, I think, the optimum. bodily condition, that zazen is good for the body and also moving about is good for the body. So that sometimes, I think for me, at least I accept it's not good for my back, it's not good for my veins. I understand that when I come in and sit here for all these hours that I'm doing physical damage to myself to do it. And I'm also doing some other things that are good. So it feels sometimes a little bit like there's this emphasis on disregarding. Even though I hear what you're saying, you need to take care of yourself. See, I'm not emphasizing that at all. I'm emphasizing, I'm saying that zazen is very good for your body.

[32:12]

It's good for your back. Even though your back hurts, it's good for it. It strengthens your back and harmonizes all the limbs and organs of your body. And you can damage yourself. But strictly speaking, it's physically very healthy. And yogis, a lot of yoga is done in this posture for that purpose. We don't do it for that purpose. That's the difference. We don't do it in order to make our body strong or something like that. Those are secondary perks. Kathleen?

[33:16]

Well, I think one of the things you said that I know is true for me is sometimes what I think is a limitation of my body is really just my mind saying no, I can't. And for whatever reason, Because I closed down years ago, so in order to open that door back, it's going to hurt. Amen. Thank you very much. In a way, it seems like we're kind of setting up a dualism where on one side you have practice, on the other side you have the body. You know, it's all one thing, taking care of your body is practice. kind of where I kind of draw the line is I try to distinguish between pain, even extreme pain, and harm.

[34:25]

And for me, where I feel harm comes in, that's where I is that if I have encountered this thing where I feel like, oh, it hurts so much, I don't think I can do it anymore. And I feel like when that's going on, I can't, it's like, I think, well, I'm supposed to be sitting quietly. Right. So at that point, how can I sit quietly with all this going on? That's the koan. That's the question. That's the Zen, right there. With all this going on, my legs are hurting, I can hardly stand it, my mind is going on, my body is shaking, how can I be calm right now?

[35:30]

That's the question. That's the point. If you don't get to that point, you don't get it. It's like That's the point. Where is the calm place in this tornado? You've got to find it. And the only way you can find it is to find it. And you just become very still, very still, and more and more still, and more and more still, and more and more still. And then there's just one breath. The only thing you can do is follow one breath after another. But you can. Because you find that at this point, you're living from one moment to moment, moment to moment. The only thing that exists is this moment, and then this moment, and then this moment. And if you can do that, then your sitting is momentous.

[36:33]

Well, you talked about attitude, and the question that comes up for me is, well, a lot of times, Sometimes that's true. Yeah. Does Zazen count if you're in the wrong position? Or, I mean, just sort of when it comes up, you know, if I'm wasting my time, I'm not in the exact right position. It still counts. It's a good thing we took the Tenkin book anyway.

[37:41]

I understand practice being more important than the body in the sense that in a little bit of what you were touching on, Grace, which is, I mean, the pain that brought me here was bigger than any pain I've ever had in my body. So, I mean, I agree with you. What you're saying is quite true in that respect that dealing with that pain is certainly more important and what is going to ever happen to my body, which is naturally decaying and one of the to see that the pain I got here was just part of the trip.

[38:57]

I think there are definitely limits, and so our whole discussion is focused on the limit, where it is, how to draw it, and all of that. And that's great. I sound kind of like an extremist. And I am kind of extreme. But someone has to be extreme. I used to think to myself, how can anybody, you know, it's so hard to sit for seven days. How can anybody lead someone else? How can somebody lead the session for seven days? That means that you have to do everything right. I thought, how can you do that? When will I ever be able to do something like that?

[39:59]

Take the responsibility of sitting through the whole Sashim and doing what I expect other people to do. That was always a very big thing in my mind. I feel kind of guilty actually. Especially during meals. I feel like you were talking about that point. I feel that way about when I finish cleaning up my third bowl. Let me say something. And it's really good to sit through the whole session and move.

[41:02]

Especially for someone who can sit through the whole session without moving. I'd like to go back to, again, the point of departure had to do with doubt. And some of that doubt is rooted in the body, in what one thinks one can do or not. But if you read the stories of many great teachers in all kinds of traditions, there is often, even though we don't have a soul, there's often a dark night of the soul. And there's often a deep kind of questioning which is, maybe it's tantamount to the same kind of burning question about pain. Let me say this. I never doubted the practice.

[42:12]

I always doubted myself. Right. So, you know, that's the difference. Whenever I had a hard time, I never said, this practice is not right, or they're doing something wrong, or they're, you know, it's something like that. I always doubted, how can I, you know, come up to this, is what my question always was. That wasn't clear to me from what you were saying before. Yes, I never doubted the practice, I always doubted myself. Certainly doubted myself. If I could And on a related thing, you know yesterday I told you I felt like a nut in the nutcracker sauce, and you asked me if I thought that the nutcracker was separate from my sound, or other.

[43:16]

And I have wondered this week what kind of nuts we are. So what kind of a nut is it that cracks itself open? There must be a good answer to this one. You're really leaving yourself open for the good parts. What's a natural nut? What kind of nut? It's a natural. Natural nut? It's a walnut. A walnut. A walnut. A natural nut? Yeah, that's true. Just naturally.

[44:19]

Oh, naturally spring open. That's right. When the time is right. Yeah. But rotten ones crack faster. That's true. So the ones that are slow to mature do the best. Don't be discouraged. It almost sounds like you're fostering stubbornness. I am. The only way that you can practice is with great stubbornness. Stubbornness is a virtue. In other words, it has two sides. It can be either a stop, an obstacle, or it can be a great help. So stubbornness is a good quality. It just has to be put into the right circumstances and direction.

[45:21]

That's what keeps us there, on the seat, is this great stubbornness. But we call it determination. No, we also... can't we think of it as the vow that we... to taste the truth of the Pythagoras' words? That's the vow that all of us have repeated again and again. If we really mean it, That's right, that's right. So the power is very important. I thought that's why we stayed for lecture. Maybe, you know, what people were having some trouble with was the statement that you made, that practice is more important than the body. Yeah, I know, I realize that. you know, it sounds like, I mean, that's kind of a standard critique, you know, of Zen, that's sort of body-beating, right?

[46:24]

This kind of religious masochism of body-beating, you know, self-flagellation. And actually, it seems that the, I mean, the question of pleasure and pain, you know, that we're looking for this happiness pain constantly, it's more of a question of the mind than of the body. The hindrance of pleasure and pain comes from the mind rather than from the body. Right. And... Well, we make a judgment with our mind about what it is that's happening. And then we decide, this I don't like, or I do like, or it's pleasant, or it's unpleasant. And then we fall into duality. So the purpose of Zazen is to get us out of the dualistic trap.

[47:30]

Until we can get out of the dualistic trap, we call it suffering. The way to escape from suffering is to escape from the dualistic trap. And you can only do that by having the problem. We don't create the problem. We may think, well, we create the problem through Zazen, but the problem is there all the time. It's just that in Zazen, we face it and deal with it. And Zazen is the teacher, which, of course, is you. Because the only way to deal with it is to escape from the duality, to go beyond the duality of like and dislike. It's the only way you can escape, or good and bad.

[48:34]

Then we say, well, this is bad for my body. It's just a kind of problem. So there's a kind of... risk, occupational hazard. Thank you. You know, like if you're doing roofs, you know, you might fall off. But you're very careful. So it's an occupational hazard that something might happen. But, so be very careful. If you have to move, move. That's what I keep saying, you know. I can't tell you to do what I do. I can only tell you to do what you think you should do. Which brings us back to the beginning, is what I meant. I didn't mean that you should beat up your body.

[49:37]

I don't think you should do what I do. You should do what you think is okay. But I encourage you to go beyond your limitation, what you think is your limitation. Because I remember what I felt was my limitations. You know, I cannot go beyond this point. This is impossible. And yet there I was. The next moment I was beyond that point. And then the next moment I was beyond. And you can do it, but you can only do it moment by moment. As soon as you start looking down the track, You can't do it anymore. You can only do it by being where you are. So the whole point is to be right here. Never mind down the track or the next moment. That's not uncommon.

[51:01]

And I think that's good. It shows a lot of determination. This fall, I read a few books about Zen teachers, especially two books, Zen America and How Swans Came to America. About all these teachers. Yes. All the jokes about the teachers. There's something one line about you in there, I think. So this talk has been really wonderful to really know about our teacher, including the one you mentioned, I remember, a while back, about your first session you did and you left. I mean, hearing about all the things you went through, you know, in the right track and the right way,

[52:02]

And I'm wondering, do you still have those paintings? If so, may we see some of them? As a matter of fact, I don't. I just kind of walked away from them. And they just kind of got scattered. You have one. Oh, I have a couple, yeah. But they're not really real characteristic. But to see one or two paintings, I feel, well, but you don't see the rest of them. But I do have a couple. It's if anybody wants to see them. Great fundraiser. In this case, we'll encourage them to take a peek. Anyway, it's time. The evenings are numberless.

[53:06]

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