And this is about the time when we start questioning our motive. And how did I get into this? Is this really right for me? What am I doing here? That kind of question comes up. Is this what I should be doing? Is this what I want to be doing? Did I make this choice because I wanted to or because I should do it? So,

[01:07]

Sometimes this question comes up, this kind of question in our mind. Especially when we're having a very hard time. Sometimes you think, well, I'll get through this one, but maybe I'll read the next one. On my first sasheen, it's so touching. 20 years ago, I left in the middle. I thought, this is really crazy. I didn't know how they could continue. But this is really impossible. So I left. And I drove off and I went down to the beach. And I wandered around for a while, but there was nothing I could do. There was nothing that it was just marking time until I realized that I had to go back because there was no way that I could do anything else.

[02:25]

So I went back and I finished. So we get, right away, our first sashimi. This question is very strong. And this question sometimes stays with us for years. And it sometimes stays with us all through our practice. Am I doing this because I have to? Or because I want to? Or simply, why am I doing this? Why are we doing this? And then we think of various reasons, maybe for masochistic. Somewhere in between we have to, or we should, have to or should, and we want to, lies our motivation.

[03:55]

So it's not always clear whether we should do it or we want to do it. We want to have some realization maybe we feel we should have some realization. But actually I think we want to have some realization. But our idea about realization or about enlightenment is the biggest stumbling block to actualizing enlightenment.

[05:13]

our realization, our idea, our imagination, what we think we want, actually. So, sitting sashimi, we always lay everything aside, all ideas aside. Lay down your... Don't try to become Buddha. Don't try to get enlightened. Don't sit for some other reason. Just sit. To sit. Just sit to become sitting. And you say, OK. But we don't always believe that. It's hard for us to really believe that. Usually we have some motive. So when we give up all those ideas and motives, then we say, well, why am I doing this? If it's not to gain enlightenment, it's not to become Buddha, it's not to have realization, it's just to sit with painful legs.

[06:29]

Why do that? If you have some idea or motive, then you can say, well, now I know why. But that idea or motive is misleading. And you can't realize, you won't realize enlightenment or realization as long as you have that idea. So, it's like, kind of like stepping out into space with nothing to support. No support. And finding your way. Suzuki Roshi once described it as a big ocean. So be careful how you, what you do in Seishin. It's like a big ocean. And when you find yourself out there in this big ocean for five days or seven days,

[07:40]

You just float, you know, with the waves. And there you are. Just there you are. What will you do? So, um... Fini. with the pain in our legs is like how things are. That's should be. That's what we should do. What we should do is sit. Just sit with the pain in our legs. And what we want to do is sit with a nice feeling. Why can't we? It's just a painful leg. Why can't we just live with a nice feeling?

[08:48]

Why do that? So that's what we would like to do. That's how we want to be. How we want things to be. We want things to be nice. and pleasant and enjoyable. But here we are, spending all this time on painful legs. Now, is that because I should or because I want to? It's really a koan, a big koan. The koan is sitting here with painful legs, five days, because I should or because I want to.

[09:54]

Now sometimes we think, I'm doing this because I should. And sometimes we feel, oh this is rather nice, I'm doing it because I want to. That's when it feels. And these feel good, you know, sometimes they feel good. Sometimes you feel buoyant, light, painless. And then you say, oh, this is what I really want to do. This is it. But that's just the other side, you know. So we have these two sides. Uh-oh, it's getting really hard. And the other side is, oh, it's feeling much better. And at some point, when we're very well concentrated, and we give up on feeling, I want it to be some way.

[11:17]

then I want you to give over your I want and should be to just this is it. This should be, this is I want to be and they come together and should be and I want to be are completely unseparated and turn into this is the way it is. This is it. No gap between the way it should be and the way I want it to be. It's difficult to get to. Difficult place to get to. That's why Sushumna is so hard. But it's a big strong lesson

[12:22]

then it's pretty hard to have that understanding some other way. You can have it. You can get that understanding some other way. But this is the easy way to get it. Dogen calls on Zazen, the comfortable way, comfortable way to get it. And we laugh and say, oh, comfortable. But when you merge to be and want to be, so there's no gap, then you can sit quite comfortably. That's called the no-gap between heaven and earth.

[13:35]

You know, it is a tenth of an inch's difference and is the same as a mile. So when we bring our mind together, when we bring the two sides of our mind together, the two sides of desire, to have to and want to, together, we can sit quite comfortably, even though we may have a lot of difficulty.

[14:44]

doesn't mean discomfort. Painful legs don't necessarily mean discomfort. How we deal with suffering, both in Zazen and in our daily life, is not different. How do you handle the pain in your life? How do you handle the painful legs of your life? Without ignoring anything. And without escaping. And without trying to make it look great. This is the zazen that we extend into our life.

[16:13]

Handling the painful layers of day-to-day life. Merging with life. When you merge with painful legs, you may have some difficulty, still have some difficulty, but you're not overwhelmed. You can handle it, take care of it, and you have some feeling of basic joyfulness. Basic joyfulness.

[17:19]

When what you should do is exactly the same as what you want to do, then you have some basic joyfulness. It just rises up. we can enjoy painful lives. Not in a masochistic way. Not that you enjoy pain. But enjoyment arises out of the unity of your body and mind. And we can let go. Just let go. I remember when I was sitting Sashim years ago and how I needed to have a strong teacher to keep Sashim going.

[18:47]

I wondered, how can the teacher keep sasheen going without someone else telling him what to do? Because left on my own, I wouldn't do it. So I realized that I'm going to have to work pretty hard to find out how to do that. How is that possible that somebody can find that motivation? It's not an easy way for people to act. It's unusual.

[19:49]

Can you imagine all of us sitting here on our own, taking five days to sit, to show our motivation? Without just giving bread to our likes and dislikes. So, when we sit, we have to make a choice.

[21:26]

Constantly make a choice. Even though the choice is very subtle. And we're constantly choosing to continue. Constantly we're choosing to continue. And when our concentration is very strong, we can make that choice very quickly so that our desire of what we want becomes matches what we're doing. May be you have some questions about what I'm talking about?

[22:46]

If you say, what do you do? You know, you say that what you do when life presents you with something like painful legs, not only painful legs, but something else. But if you sit and you think, if you continue to sit thinking, I'm doing this so I can learn to cope with my painful legs, and my painful life, and sometimes pain in the leg, without running away, isn't that having a motivation for sitting also? That's not the reason why we sit. I understand what you're saying. There are a lot of motivations and reasons why we sit.

[23:49]

A lot of good motivations and reasons why we sit. But when you sit, you don't sit for those reasons. There are a lot of things that bring you to Zazen. and a lot of reasons that are associated with those reasons. But if you use those reasons in the final sense, that's falling short. It's making a... It's a partial understanding. So we have lots of partial understandings. But that's okay, as long as you realize that those are just partial reasons. Reasons which have partiality at their base. But how do you get away from that? A lot of times, when the book gets really rough, I think to myself, well, at least it's built for my character.

[24:53]

We give ourselves lots of reasons for staying in that spot. But how do you get away from giving yourself reasons? Don't try to. You know, if I give myself a reason, you know, I say, I know, I'm giving myself a reason. That's okay. It's just a way of getting through, you know. Don't be hard on yourself. You know, I remember I used to sit there and think, now the sharks are eating my legs. So it's just something that's a way of dealing with it. It's okay. We're all just human. Before I was talking about Dogen's Think not thinking.

[26:05]

What is thinking in Zazen? The koan in Zazen is to think not thinking. That's the kind of koan. Well, you think, you know. You think or you not think. Well, if you cut off all thoughts, the usual way of understanding cutting Non-thinking is to cut off all thoughts. But you can't really cut off all thoughts. Siddhi Zazen is not to cut off all thoughts. It's to not think. But you find that actually you do think. No matter how much you want to cut off all the thoughts, you think. Is there anybody in here who doesn't think during Zazen? Raise your hand. But yet, you know, to think, not thinking.

[27:10]

When, so what should you think about? How do you think, not thinking, how do you think? What will you think about? Well, you think, you don't think about anything. When you sit zazen, your attention is on the body and the breathing. So, attention is completely bound up with the posture and then with the breathing, following the breath. There's nothing to think about. There's absolutely nothing to think about. So, breathing and posture is your thought Your thought is breathing and posture, but you're not thinking about it. You're not standing outside thinking about it. It's not a thought. It's the thinking is the breathing.

[28:12]

The thinking is the posture. The posture is the thinking, is the thought. There's no separation between the thought and the act. There's just one whole... You can... You know, there's thinking too. But ideally, basically, thought and action are exactly the same. So you can't separate the thought from the action. You can't separate the action from the thought, because it's the thought of sitting. And then, of course, many thoughts come in your mind, and come up, you know, and you're sitting and thinking about them. But as long as you're not Thinking about them. The thoughts are just thoughts. They're not your thoughts. They're just thoughts. Whose thoughts are they?

[29:14]

You can ask yourself that. Whose thoughts are these? Whose thoughts are these? Just ask. You can say, they're my thoughts. if you want to say that. But actually, your thoughts are the thoughts that you're directing. The thought that you're directing is your thought. And your thought is this body. Your thought is God's. So these thoughts are coming. Maybe they're yours, maybe they're not. But they're just passing, whatever they are, they're just passing. Just like breathing. Breathing is not yours. Breathing just goes on whether you want it to or not. The body just is born, passes through various stages, dies.

[30:21]

You haven't got much to do with it. You can direct it through its stay, but you can't hold it back. You can't start it, you can't hold it back. It's going on. Some of the thought, I think it's going on. We have some control, some self-control. And with our self-control, we merge with this process. Our intention is to merge with this process called life and death or no life and no death whichever way you want to look at it.

[31:30]

If this body is born so to speak, and goes through various stages. If you say, I don't want it to do that, you'd be in trouble. So whatever stage it's at, that's the stage we want it to be at. And then we deal with that. When we're at five, we deal with that. we become one with being five. And when we're 60, we become one with being 60. That's what our life is about. And our desire is to be where we are. To be right there. So in Zazen, what we want to do is to be

[32:32]

Exactly what we're doing. What we want to have happening is exactly what's happening. It's the other way around. But you can see it either way. Because if we don't become exactly what's happening, then we start suffering. So the way to get out of suffering, in Zazen, is to just, you better be there. Well, we call it desire. Buddha says our condition is, the human condition is suffering.

[33:36]

And the cause of that is excess of desire. And the way to, and if there is a way to deal with it, and the way to deal with it is various practices of Buddha Dharma that we study. May God bless you. I also noticed that when I was fresher, I had a hard time getting used to the technology.

[35:02]

But I mean, is the effort finally just here? Yes. Just give up. Finally, just give up. You have to keep charging ahead, so you just give up. At that point, but you haven't, so you don't know. Don't tell me what it's like. And I think I found it for a lot of reasons. I find it refreshes me at the end of the day. I can drop what I'm doing. I enjoy talking to my friends.

[36:10]

But according to what you said, perhaps that's not the right reason. And I wondered what's so wrong with it and what I can change. It's not that if you don't follow the right reason that the other reasons are wrong. As a matter of fact, we all come to practice for the wrong reasons. Almost without exception, we all come to practice for the wrong reasons. Then after about 15 years, We begin to find out what the right reason is. You know, a long time ago, you thought the sun had two kinds of effects.

[37:12]

Obvious effects and very subtle effects. And I think that that's very true. And it seems like what we're saying is that you can sit for the obvious benefits. And as long as you do that and get the subtle effects, you have a chance to work on it. And gradually, you're going to get wet. That's usually what she said. I wanted to say happy 50th birthday. Anniversary of my ordination day, 15 years ago. I have a question about what you were saying. You talked about who I wanted to be.

[38:14]

I would rather leave it as a poem. And I would like us to think about this poem. Because it's our poem. And let's work with it.

[38:59]

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