I just came up from Pasahara, where we finished a three-month practice period and a seven-day sasheen just the other day. And today we are starting a two-month practice period here in the city. And this one-day sasheen for the people in the practice period in the city begins this practice period. I'm interested in talking about what is the difference between practice at Pasahara. You can't hear? Just barely? I'm interested in ... maybe I pulled the wire, broke the wire apart when I pulled it. I can just talk louder if it doesn't work.

[01:11]

I'm interested in talking about the difference between practice here in the city and Green Gulch and at Pasahara. Can you hear me now okay? No? Not so good. Now you can talk louder. Already there's one big difference I've mentioned. Pasahara, everyone is there for three months and here, just in this group, some of you are going to be sitting all day long, some of you are beginning a two-month practice period here in the city, and some of you at 11 o'clock are going to go somewhere, I don't know. So how to make sense of our

[02:26]

practice for each of you in your different situations and also for each of you who is in a different situation. What I mean is each of you separately is in a different situation now but actually each of you in your over several months or a lifetime is in a different situation. So each of you shares each other's situation even though here it's much more mixed. At Pasahara it's easier because we're all doing the same thing together but also there's much less distraction at working with our practice. There's a story

[03:38]

I'd like to tell you. As you know maybe our lineage comes from the Sixth Patriarch through Sagan Gyoshi and his disciple is Sekito Kisen who lived born maybe in the year 700 and Sekito Kisen wrote the Sandokai, a poem we chant every morning usually about the true stream of Buddhism flows unseen. Sekito Kisen's disciple was Yaksan Igen. Yaksan Igen you may know is the person who for many months he didn't give a lecture and finally maybe the director of the monastery came and asked him would he give a lecture and he said he would and

[04:45]

he came and climbed up on his high chair and sat there a minute and got back down and went back to his room and the director afterwards went to him and said you know what I for many months you haven't given a lecture and you said you would and you came and you left. He said, Yaksan Igen said, there are teachers who teach about the sutras, there are others who teach about the precepts and there's others who teach various other things but I'm a Zen master. Do

[05:50]

you understand? Anyway the same man who didn't permit anybody else too much to study, he studied a great deal living in a cow shed he found on a hillside in a monastery built up around him. Maybe a cow shed like Green Gulch but that barn is better than a cow shed I think. Anyway this story is about Yaksan Igen. He asked a monk how old are you and the monk said I'm 72 and Yaksan Igen said are you 72 and the monk said yes I am and he hit him. So a monk asked Sozan. Sozan was Tozan Ryokai's disciple. Tozan Ryokai is

[07:00]

Ungandojo's disciple who is Yaksan Igen's disciple. These are all your fathers. Anyway they asked Sozan about this story and Sozan said the first arrow was okay, the second arrow penetrated deeply and so the monk said how can a blow, how can being hit be avoided and Sozan said when an emperor's mandate is set out all the princes try to avoid it.

[08:03]

Already the monk wants to avoid something and so he says the monk says what is the general idea of Buddhism and Sozan says to fill a ditch and a ravine and it's this point I'd like to talk about. As most of us come to Zazen, come to practice Buddhism because we keep tripping over various ditches in our life and so we're trying to fill the ditches but if you can't see, you know, if your practice isn't actually to fill a ravine,

[09:07]

your practice isn't deep enough. He said the second arrow hits deeply. Are you really 72? It's pretty easy to get confused by our practice and even to make our practice another kind of form that you substitute for the forms that are tripping you up.

[10:14]

So, in your practice, whether it's here or at Tassajar or in any situation, we all share the same nature and how to realize that nature is this practice. For those of you sitting in this Sashin, it must be a great relief to have this practice. Nothing to do but just sit all day. You can let go of all your pending plans or all your have-tos and just let everything go. And what you can't let go, what sticks, you know, maybe it's rather interesting. And if you find yourself sticking at the rules,

[11:28]

these minimum rules we have so we can do things together and forget about usual ways of doing things. If you stick at those rules, you can see your ego. So, the best thing to do is just as much as possible, just let everything go. Return to zero. At Tassajar, the first practice period in the fall was a very good practice period, quite deep, steady practice. And several people had some very deep experience.

[12:31]

Some of them noticed it and got quite excited and some of them didn't notice. But they were, most people were interested still in some kind of accomplishment in their practice. And they viewed some special experience or deep experience as progress. And so, immediately they began to try to figure out how to recapture that experience or continue it. And already it's dead, you know. But this practice period, maybe I think it partly spring helps. The winter, the fall practice period,

[13:39]

it's getting colder and colder and colder and everyone tries to develop their strength to keep warm and somehow it seems more forbidding and each day gets colder and the sun is less and less in the valley. And in the spring practice period, it gets warmer and warmer and flowers come out and the streams start going and you get sort of lulled into kind of sleepy. You don't really have to try very hard. And in this case, it helped the practice period because people became rather unconscious about their practice, just sitting. And a few people moved deep into the center of the stream of practice.

[14:43]

Now, if the Sixth Patriarch talks about two samadhis are necessary. One is the samadhi of one form and the other is the samadhi of oneness. And the samadhi of one form means that no matter what form you take, you don't get caught by it. And the samadhi of oneness means that no matter what situation you're in, you stay with your essence of mind. This essence of mind we share whether we're at Green Gulch or the city or in this practice period or at Tassajara. But how do you realize this essence of mind? Well, if you're involved in the world of form, form can't satisfy you.

[16:06]

If you like pastries, you know, one pastry is good and two is better. In Buddhism, we want to know the pure taste before we eat a pastry. Mostly because of our long habit, we only know the taste of something, the taste of a pastry or the sound of music. It used to interest me that during a few years ago when everybody was taking acid, usually people talked about how wonderful music sounded. It always put something on the record player. But our practice is not to listen to music but to find out what the pure sound of hearing is. Everything is music.

[17:16]

If you get involved in creating some special sound that your ear appreciates, you can't know the pure taste of your senses. This is very much like the samadhi of one form. If you taste something this way, it's wonderful. If it's taken away, some taste is there without tasting. So, Zen practice can be a little confusing if you're half in it in the city, you know, or you start practice, you actually start turning yourself around. And halfway you stop after one or two years, you know, you leave Tassajara or leave your practice in some way, you know. And halfway you have begun giving up,

[18:26]

you know, but still you are looking for this or that taste. Then you'll find you can't do anything very well. So, somehow we have to be quite strict with ourself if you're going to practice Zen. You have to, you can use Zen as a therapy, you know, but if you want to really practice Zen, you have to make a real commitment to do so. So, to see it through, to know, to abide in your essence of mind. So, you know, if you

[19:27]

begin to not see objects of mind, but just see mind itself. And in your practice you begin to cut off your thoughts. First, you know, if you practice regularly enough to begin to sit still, you can begin to see how your mind moves. You can begin to observe it, you know, without constantly being distracted. Concentration is useful because you can't give up something unless you can stay with it. If your mind is always partly in this and partly in that, you know, so to develop the ability to stay with things, to concentrate, to be in your life, you know, then you can begin to give it up. And eventually you'll begin to just see your mind

[20:42]

produces, you know. If you're sitting eating with the orioke, you can be quite still, you know. And then it's time to clean the bowls and you reach your hand out to clean the bowls and immediately thoughts begin to appear about all kinds of things. Is this you? You know, these thoughts that appear when you pick up your cleaning stick. It's you and it's not you. And if you notice your breathing, you'll begin to see. Breathing produces thoughts and thoughts produce breathing. And if you try to sit still and your mind is active, your mind which uses most of your energy, your heart and breathing must keep going because your mind is saying, I want some fuel. So, in a sasheen, you know, we have an opportunity to watch our breathing and our mind.

[21:54]

And though it's easier to observe in a sasheen, you can observe it in whatever situation you're in, wherever you live or however you work. You can see your mind moving. But if you're easily distracted, it's especially difficult to do it when you're in the midst of activity. So, we try in this practice to give you some opportunity, sasheen or life at Tassajara, till you can begin to stay with your essence of mind, till you can begin to see it. So, then you begin, you know, when you can do that, you see that your essence of mind, your mind, excuse me, the nature of your mind is very grabby. And it produces, first of all,

[23:07]

all kinds of thoughts about your past, what kind of person you are, what your nature is, what you really need, what so-and-so said to you. Many aspects of our history it produces. So, you can begin to cut those off, forgetting about who you are. Then you'll find that your mind produces, grabs at the future. And it produces all kinds of plans about what you should do and should become and why you should do it and how it's necessary to fulfill your nature. So, you cut off the future eventually. And this is one of the differences with practice at Tassajara. Here it's very difficult to cut off past and future because you're constantly involved in making decisions, involved in what you think are your past and

[24:09]

future. So, eventually you cut off past and future. But your mind, the grabby nature of your mind is still the same. So, it starts grabbing at the present. Every sound your mind trips out on and figures out all kinds of things, what that sound might be and why it's this and that. Everything that happens around you, your mind begins to be extremely active about. Such a person can be very annoying to live with. After one or two sessions, you know, your mind's, no past or no future, but you're completely destroying the present. So, you try to take your mind out of the present. What's there, you know, when your mind has no object, no object of past or present or future?

[25:15]

If so, if you know this essence of mind, there's no difficulty with the way your mind then will light up by turning the light on maybe this or that situation or form. I'd like to give you an interesting story. The same story I talked about at Tassajara as I did also the story about Yaksan Yigan because I like to have us develop the same vocabulary. We're trying to find some way, together, to talk about, to think about our practice. And we're getting better and better at it.

[26:31]

And it's particularly difficult for us in comparison to the Orient because we already have a vocabulary of reality which conforms everything for us. And we have to find some way to, some kind of antidote to that. So, I think we're really practicing Buddhism here, more so than you realize. It's more obvious at

[27:35]

Tassajara but this practice here in the city is some, maybe it's true practice here in the city, not just preparatory practice. Harder to see, you know. But we're actually practicing Buddhism, you know, we're not different from Yaksan Yigan and Ungan Dojo and his brother Dogo Enchi. And Mumon Yamadaroshi felt that when he was here. He didn't see a bunch of laymen or Americans who are sort of sometimes practicing Zen. He saw a company, a group of monks, whether you're laymen or lay women or monks, and we don't have a word, monkettes.

[28:37]

Something, right. All he saw was the descendants of Buddha practicing, actually practicing. We should have that kind of confidence in our practice and face the fundamental questions in Buddhism, the realization of essence of mind. Not just improving ourselves, not just filling a ditch, you know, we should fill the ravine. So, I think it might be appropriate to tell a story which you all, almost all of you must know, it's in all first grade books on Zen and it's quite a quoted story. I think everyone thinks they understand it.

[29:40]

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