Good morning. Yesterday, Friday, can you hear me okay? Friday, I gave a talk yesterday afternoon on Zazen, which I do periodically. And one of the questions that came up, I was talking about stillness as being the fundamental nature of our life, and activity the secondary nature of our life. But we usually think the other way around. We're very much wedded to our activities, which of course will end All activities end, but stillness just keeps going on.

[01:06]

So stillness is the bedrock of our life. And all of our activities speak from stillness. So this is the nature of Zazen. Sitting in Zazen is stillness. It's connecting. we stay resuming our nature, resuming our true nature, which is stillness, which doesn't negate activity, of course, because activity is the, you could say activity is the function of stillness. Suzuki Roshi once talked about the movie screen and the movie.

[02:22]

The movie is projected on the screen, but the screen is totally blank. If the screen was not totally blank, the movie would have a double image, myopia or something like that. So the screen has to be totally blank. And I remember there was a saying, this is popping into my head. The food of the stages tastes like nothing at all to ordinary people. There's a wonderful book, one of my favorite books, it's a commentary on the Heart Sutra called The Tiger's Cave.

[03:32]

If you want to get the tiger's cub, you have to go into the tiger's cave. Is this me having a double? No, it's a dog. Oh, it's a dog. So I'm not going to read the whole thing to you. But in the back of this little book, there's a commentary by Abbot Takashima, Rosen Takashima, who was at one time Abbot of Eheji, but I think he's long deceased. But he has a very nice little commentary about what is Zazen. He says, So I'm going to make a commentary on his little commentary. Stillness in the midst of action is the fundamental principle of Zazen, which is called sitting in meditation, for those of you who don't know that.

[04:44]

Some people think of Zazen as a sort of monopoly of the Zen sect. But the sect certainly has no monopoly on it. Zazen is the basis of the universe. Heaven and earth sit in meditation. The whole universe is doing zazen. And we do zazen along with the universe. That's why it's called universal activity. Cosmic activity. Heaven and earth sit in meditation. Every object sits in meditation knowing nothing of this insect. All things are performing their meditation. So Zazen, we always often think of Zazen as some special activity. But it's actually the most natural activity because the whole universe is always sitting in Zazen.

[05:50]

But we don't realize what we're doing. This is a problem. So stillness is the fundamental thing. It's like tasteless. People sit in Zazen and say, but it's boring. It is, yes, it's boring because our mind always is seeking something to attach to. And this is something that you can't be attached to because there's nothing there. But it's the most fundamental thing. Suzuki Roshi talked about the movie and the screen. You go to the movie, and there's a white screen. And when you project a movie onto the screen, then you have a story. And we buy into the story. If it's really interesting, we get emotionally caught by it and mentally caught by it.

[06:57]

And we say, well, this is the most important thing. And it's not that it's not the most important thing, but it's not the most important thing. You know, everything that we're doing we think is the most important thing. Somebody asked Suzuki Roshi, what's the most important thing? He said, the most important thing is to find out what is the most important thing. So stillness in the midst of activity is the fundamental principle. So what is called zazen means to live in peace in the true basis of the universe, which is stillness. Movement is a secondary attribution.

[08:07]

Stillness is the real condition. Out of stillness comes all activity. If you like to garden, you actually realize this without maybe realizing it, or realizing that you're realizing it. The ground is the most important thing. When you really are into gardening, you realize the ground is the most important thing. The ground is dark, underneath dark. You can't see into it. But in the dark, everything is produced. And everything is produced except that it needs the light in order to actuate. So the plants grow a combination of dark and light. Everything is like this. The light side is our activity. which we can see and feel and invent. This is where all the advents take place, the adventures, and what we call our life.

[09:20]

We don't often think about our life really taking place underground, but it is. The fundamental of our life is taking place underground. We're born through the womb. and the meeting together. More and more, I'm beginning to think of the person in the womb as like a worm and a butterfly. It's like a cocoon. Something descends into the womb, some catalytic activity, the egg and the sperm. And the sperm is kind of like a worm. So this combination of something and the formation of the cocoon and then the butterfly comes out and people

[10:34]

Anyway, life takes place in the dark and is activated through the light. So, activity and stillness are the combination. Within activity is stillness, and within stillness is activity. Activity is light, stillness is dark. And within the dark, all kinds of things happen, but we don't see it. It's the matrix of our life. And it's common to everything in the universe. This is our universal life. It's in the dark. It's in stillness. And the stillness is the matrix from which everything grows. You know, when we take care of the ground, we get really good plants.

[11:45]

So cultivating the ground, if you're a good gardener and you're really into it, you make compost. I used to go around, I had very good gardens when I was younger. Our first Zendo and Dwight Way, I spent all my time out there creating wonderful soil and then everything just grew because the ground was cultivated. So, Samhain is kind of like cultivating the ground in a way. We're cultivating the ground of stillness. We don't have to do anything because stillness is just stillness. Also, I used to do that here. before that was taken away. Anyway. So, this is interesting too.

[12:48]

He says, for instance, the water of the ocean, when disturbance of wind ceases, at once goes back to the state of calm. The wind creates the waves. That seems to be the way that happens. And when the wind ceases, the water becomes still. So the grass and trees, when the cause of agitation dies away, becomes, as it were, calm. So these things always return to rest in the stillness of what is their true nature. And this is the principle of Zazem. In nature, there are day and night. When the sun sets gradually, there's a hush until what is called the dead of night, when all is still as if a current of water has ceased to flow.

[13:58]

So this is the nature of Zazem. and the Zazen of nature. That's what he said, this is the Zazen of nature, but it's also the nature of Zazen. And so he also talks about sleep, deep sleep. It's an interesting thing that our life, which is full of adventure, one kind of another, and our life seems to have continuity, but we break the continuity in order to go to sleep. You know, warriors fighting each other.

[14:59]

Time out, let's go to sleep. That's just a kind of, you know, illusoriness about it. Life is illusory. I don't say it's an illusion. I won't say that. But it's illusory in that we think it's what it is, but it's not. It's not what we think it is when we buy into it. When we buy into the drama of our life, we think this is reality, this is real. Sometimes when we talk about Zazen and our activity, we say, well, in the real world, as if there's a real world called activity and an unreal world called stillness. But actually, it's the other way around, mostly. It shows our topsy-turvy kind of understanding of things.

[16:05]

We think that the illusory world is the real world because we buy into it. And the real world is just boring, but we don't even think about what that is. Some people call it God or whatever. I don't have any problem with that, but the stillness is universal. Everything in the world is in the universe, I would say, along with Master Asahina, that the real world is shared by the whole universe. Everything in the universe shares this world of stillness, even though things are going around. Planets are going around, but there's something that keeps them in place. So, he says, as with everything else, so with people.

[17:17]

Working by day, we sleep at night. Falling into deep sleep, people forget the existence of self and are absolutely at rest. I've always liked going to sleep. I don't know about you. But no matter what's going on in my life, I always welcome sleep. I say, good night, goodbye. I don't know if I'm going to wake up or not. doesn't make any difference, I'm just so happy to go to sleep. But strangely enough, I wake up. So it's just a habit I have, waking up after I go to sleep. Yeah, it's kind of a habit. Also, breathing, you know, breathing is, I don't, breathe, it's just universal activity. The universe is breathing me.

[18:19]

The universe is causing the blood to flow through the veins and all of the rest of it. And if I allow nature to do what it needs to do, I'm pretty happy and feel pretty content. if I don't buy too much into the activity. So this is where we have a choice of what activities should we engage in that don't create too much of an illusory life, a harmful life, an illusory life, to be in sync with nature. But we have to know what nature is, other than just the growth above the ground. We have to know what's going on underneath the ground, underneath our feet, our deepest source.

[19:23]

It's called essence of life, essence of mind. So working by, as with everything else, so with people. Working by day, we sleep at night. Falling into deep sleep, we forget the existence of ourself and are absolutely at rest. So this is a state of what is called zazen, body and mind loosened and dropped away. We just let go. In nature, the counterpart of the restless action of day is the absolute stillness of light. at night. To abide in that is the principle of Zazen. In this sense, everything naturally practices Zazen. Everything comes to stillness, comes out of stillness, and comes back to stillness.

[20:25]

And our life is like this as well. When the conditions are favorable, we arise from stillness. And when those Conditions are not integrated. We go back to stillness. This is a simple explanation of how we arise and fall. And people call it birth and death. But in the Dharma, we don't call it birth and death. We call it continuation, like waves on the ocean. The wind blows, wind blowing is the function of our life. And the waves are created by our activity and we're self-creating.

[21:28]

In Buddha Dharma we say a person is self-creating. We decide how we're going to live our life. but, and circumstances decide that for us, but this is our wavicle, our wave, life of waves on the ocean of existence, on the ocean of stillness. So, that's how we characterize it, the waves, this wave and that wave, and we have all kinds of waves that go along with us. the whole world is going in the same direction, even though there are many different directions. The whole world is going in the same direction, which means up and down. The experience you have, everyone has unique experience, but at the same time, our experience is exactly the same.

[22:35]

We arise from causes and conditions and we disappear from causes and because those causes and conditions are no longer working. And we call it person death or we call it life and death, but actually I call it person death. Life includes person death. So he says, I may know nothing of Zazen, and yet if I know what it is to sit in bodily and mental relaxation, then all unconsciously the benefits of Zazen rain down upon me. We like to think that there's no, you know, we always say, you do not practice Zazen in order to get something. Of course, we simply sit Zazen in order to experience our true nature, which is stillness. We take time out from the busy activity in order to soak, I like to say soak, in the huge tub of stillness.

[23:50]

And then we notice that when we sit Sashin, which we're doing today, some of us, When at the end of the day, you walk out the door and everything has a brilliance, which is its natural brilliance. We see it because our mind is clear. We've been taking a big bath, a mind, mental, emotional bath. And so our thoughts and emotions are not so, are very keen, actually, but not blocked. So, one of the benefits of Zazen, I would say, is that we are able to see things more clearly.

[25:01]

Because our mind is not so burdened with desires. And then we go back to our usual life, which is a dualistic life of desires and trials and tribulations. So he says the zazen of this insect is to seek this way of stillness in the midst of activity. The method, if there is such a thing, is to bring to stillness the mental activities based on illusion and conform to the stillness which is the fundamental nature of the mind.

[26:11]

So what is attained in zazen, the result is called satori, or realization, or illumination, or something like that. Zazen is the practice of infinity, conforming to the infinity which is the principle of the universe. So actually, somebody also asked me, is it okay if I sit by myself at home? I can't control what you do. If you want to sit at home by yourself, I don't care, that's fine. Accept that. We urge people to sit together because our activity of zazen is to find our way together.

[27:21]

You know, in Japan, it's characteristic of people to do things together. You know, Japanese tourists, they come, they're a big bunch, and they all have their cameras, and they all do the same thing, sort of. And we say, well, that's kind of like group practice or something. And in a monastery, everybody does the same thing together. And they think of individual practice like that as kind of egotistical. In America, we're all egotists. We promote egotistical activity. So, each side has its virtue and its downside, upside and downside.

[28:21]

It's good for people to practice together, especially Zazen. But they say that's egotistical practice. It could be egotistical practice, but not necessarily. So we're in this state of exchanging, like they need a little bit of what we have, we need a little bit of what they have. We need a little more thoughtfulness about each other and a little less egotistical. They need a little more freedom from the group. And I think it's a good exchange, better than fighting. Much better than fighting. So it's much easier to harmonize when we're back to our fundamental, when we understand and can immerse ourselves in our fundamental nature.

[29:23]

Even though when you go to a Zen center, people say, gee, you know, these people don't look enlightened to me. It's very interesting. When you get a group of people together who are doing the same thing, everybody's personality stands out. And Suzuki Roshi used to say that. He used to say, when you dress everybody the same, then everybody's personality is outstanding. But when you have everybody do what they want, it's more confusing. But when we know how to base ourselves on our fundamental nature, our activity on our fundamental nature, there is harmony.

[30:35]

This is how we create harmony. We create harmony because we realize we're all the same, even though we're all different. If we only see that we're all different, then we have conflict. And even though we base ourselves on our fundamental activity, we still have conflict. But at least we understand something about our conflict and about how to create a peaceful situation among us. I think, yeah, I don't want to talk about our good side. I want to look at my notes here. Lately, I've been talking about holy and ordinary.

[31:48]

You know, there's the koan that we're all familiar with. Joshu asks Nansen, his teacher, what is the way? And Nansen says, ordinary mind is the way, is the Tao. And Joshu asked, well, is it okay to run after, to seek it? And Nansen says, if you try to seek it, you stumble past. And if you don't seek it, nothing will happen. So that's the koan. If you run after it, You stumble past it. If you don't do anything, nothing happens. So, what do you do? So, my point here is the Tao is something desirable.

[32:51]

If I seek something desirable, the Tao, the way is desirable. So, should I seek it? Well, if you seek it, you miss it. And if you don't seek it, you miss it. So, seeking kind of means going away, going somewhere, you know, you travel to seek it. But actually, you seek it here. So, it's not a matter of seeking, it's a matter of just letting go, basically. So there's holy and seeking would be the holy part. Holy means etymologically means whole, that's all. It doesn't mean a deity or anything like that. It simply means complete, whole. It's the same word.

[33:53]

So it's a different way of thinking about it. It means universal. Universal activity is what is holy, or whole. And the basis of universal activity that holds everything together is stillness. So, and then Dogen also uses the term, of course it's translated, but it's translated as holy. So, you don't have to think of it as a deity, but it's reality. So, what we have faith in or trust in is reality. That's Buddhism, Buddhadharma, is to have faith in reality. So, what is reality? What is the common denominator? The fundamental of our life is confidence or faith in stillness, which is universal to everything.

[35:13]

Yeah. You know, you could say suchness. That's a term, depending on how you want to express it. But also, ordinary activity and holy activity is the same thing. That's the point. So, when you take time out of your busy life. Busy life is also holy, right? To find the wholeness, wholesomeness. Wholesome is another variant in your life. That's holy life. Complete wholeness.

[36:26]

Isn't that desirable? I think so. That's the Tao. So we have our discriminated life and our holy life. Holy life is the oneness of things. Discriminated life is the the individuality of each thing. Discrimination, as you know, means to separate and partialize. Everything is discriminated from everything else, and at the same time, it's all one. That's the Tao. And everything is totally different and at the same time totally the same.

[37:29]

So we can identify with everything as our self. The sage identifies with everything as his, her self. When we get out of the way, we can see that. And getting out of the way is to do Jantzen. That's basically what Zazen is. It's not to get something, it's simply to get out of the way. So there's no gaining. There's nothing to gain through Zazen or through practice. It's simply to take refuge in the Dharma, which is great stillness within activity and great activity within stillness. that the seeking that we're doing then is seeking with don't-know-mind? Well, yes.

[38:33]

All seeking is with don't-know-mind. Otherwise, it wouldn't be seeking. But yes, of course, don't-know-mind. Don't-know-mind means unassuming mind, just being open, giving your mind a rest. Just being open to whatever comes and responding without reacting. The phrase that has come to me recently is, wait for it. And the space that comes after that is really what I'm talking about. Well, wait without waiting. In other words, just be still and not expecting anything, even if you're expecting something. Yes.

[40:04]

Well, you know, we invent things to make our life easier, which actually makes our life harder. And you notice, like, don't you wish you had your old computer program that you knew exactly what was going on. You didn't have to be more and more, get more and more involved. and the newer, newer things. So, that's called samsara, the undulation of life. We become more and more seduced and looking at a little object that has artificial light So we're always exposed to artificial light. I don't have one of those things.

[41:08]

I do have a computer, but I don't have any of those handheld things. Because if I'm doing that, that's where my attention is. And you can get a lot of interesting things. It's called seduction on a grand scale. And we said, well, it's useful, the world, you know. I think it was better, in a way, before the world was won. Because you didn't know what was going on in Africa. I mean, you knew a little bit, but you didn't get the everyday stuff. You didn't get the everyday stuff from all over the world, you know, in some way. You can be content in your environment, but now it's, you know, the world is one piece.

[42:12]

And the borders, you know, are just, the borders will be disappearing. Because it will be corporate world. It's already corporate world. And 1984 is still coming. Those of us that are still in the generation of work and sort of mandatory engagement. Yes. Because of our corporate employers or non-corporate employers. Yes. It sounds like you're advocating the mindful reduction of engagement with technology to come back to stillness. The advanced, harder, easier practice, in some way, is to, you know, because this is the way the world is going, the samsaric world, you have to be engaged with it.

[43:32]

So you should take time out to do something. Yes, time out to come back to your true nature, because if you're only involved in that, you get seduced by it, and you think, I have to have this. So it's good to say, this is okay for me to do, but I don't have to have it, therefore I can do it well. Like what? Well, yes, it's worse than nicotine. So if you have your own freedom, when you sit zazen, you have your own freedom. You are totally free of everything. And when you have your total freedom, then you can engage in that world. with your freedom, because you carry the stillness with you.

[44:39]

That's the idea. The stillness that you experience in Zazen is the stillness that you take with you, but it's always with you in your activity, so you can tell one thing from another. You know, when you're being manipulated and when you're not, hopefully it helps. That's the perk. I don't think you're advocating putting your head in the sand. No, we don't. Right.

[45:49]

Yes, yes. Yes, I didn't mean that. I didn't mean we should ignore. As a matter of fact, it's pretty hard to ignore. So, it's awareness on a totally different scale. And I think there are two things we have to keep in mind. One is the immediacy of the problems that we have. And the other is the bigger view that the problems that we have are enormous. It may be that they get solved, but then other problems come up that are just as enormous, and that's the way the world works, that it's always going to be this way. So you have to have some calmness of mind in order to be able to accept everything the way it is and to do what you can

[47:03]

to deal with it in a so-called humanitarian way. But it's just, it's still one thing after another. You solve this problem or not, and then something even bigger comes. The problems are getting bigger and bigger all the time. The waves are getting bigger and bigger all the time. And we have to face that, we have to acknowledge that, and we have to do what we can. But at the same time, there's a kind of realizing that it's a sophistical thing. You get the boulder up the mountain and it comes back down again. That's the way it is. That symbol expresses a lot. But that has to be okay.

[48:07]

You get nervous or anxious when you don't realize that it has to be okay, even though it's not okay. At the same time, it's not okay, and it is okay at the same time. Otherwise, you can't survive. What do you do? All this terrible stuff is happening, and you can't stand it, and you think it has to go away. But it's not going to go away, even though it may go away temporarily. It just comes roaring back. And that's the way it's always been. It's always been that way. Civilizations come and they go. Everybody is born and they die. And even though it's not okay, it's okay.

[49:11]

So that you can actually operate. Otherwise you can't operate with any kind of efficiency or thought. Well, it's like this. Right. Yes. Right. So, there's the immediate view. And then there's the larger view.

[50:22]

If you only have the immediate view, then you get crazy. When you have the larger view, and you see how the way it actually works, it gives you some way to deal with the immediate view. If you don't have the larger view, you don't know how to deal with the immediate view. So yeah, we shouldn't put our head in the sand. I didn't mean that. In a way, I guess I meant that in some way, maybe. Like there was a time when we could actually not have to worry about a lot of the things that we worry about now. Like somebody, you know, here we are. in our environment right here, two blocks away, all kinds of things would be happening, but we don't know about them. If we didn't know about what's happening in everybody's house on this block and the next block, you'd go nuts. So there are a lot of dramas going on all over the world, and we can't take care of all of them.

[51:29]

They have to take care of, you know, dramas spring up for various reasons, and we cannot save everything. In that sense, that's kind of what I meant. Yes, that's what I meant. Yeah. Thanks for asking your question. I can see you were having a problem there with that. And I was wondering what that was about.

[51:55]

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