Well, we've all gotten here to the middle of the sixth day. The guy who, the person who left, he told me that he'd actually come to the session to see me. But forgotten or hadn't thought about, they had to sit all day in order to see me. It wasn't that nice to see me. But maybe what he'd also forgotten is you come to a Sesshin to see yourself. You know, one of my favorite Zen teachers is Yendo, or Ganto in Japanese.

[01:04]

And he was called the ferryman because during the persecutions in 845, like maybe almost everybody lost their temples. When was it? 845. The persecution only lasted three years, and it was partly a confiscation of the wealth of the temples. So three years, 5,000 monasteries were destroyed and 40,000 temples. And when I think of, you know, the effort that we're trying to make just to provide Crestone with a few things, 40,000 temples bells, all gone.

[02:16]

Nowadays, these things that are handmade are impossible to buy. In those days, everything was handmade. And I look at these farmhouses I was staying in in Japan. I mean, just the ordinary beam like that of kayaki, which is extremely stable wood, being tossed away. It's a kind of ash. You know, really, I mean, they're just the ordinary building posts. And a piece of keyaki about this big now costs as much as a Mercedes Benz. They're tearing down in Kyoto now 15,000 wooden buildings a year.

[03:42]

Part of a deal actually between the building unions and the fire department to say the buildings are unsafe. Some people I know they are actually trying to buy up these old building parts and selling them in Seattle and Australia and things like that. And I know a few people who actually try to buy these old buildings. They then disassemble them into individual parts and try to sell them in Seattle and everywhere. Yeah. It's sad.

[04:43]

I mean, this is the first... From the time some of us here in this room were in Japan two and a half or so years ago, Kyoto has more changed in the last two and a half years than it was in the previous 15. Anyway, Yendo was one of the many people, and this period of 845 is what divides Tang Dynasty Buddhism from Sung Dynasty Buddhism. And Zen was the school in Japan that survived the best because it was in the least need of temples and so forth. Anyway, Yendo was one of these guys, and he now was unemployed, so he became a ferryman.

[05:46]

And he would sort of sit, you know, in the, supposedly, this is the lore about him, he'd sit in the bushes with his oar waiting for someone to come. And then when somebody would appear, he'd come out from the bushes and say, which shore do you want to go to? And when Ulrich and I, the other day, we drove through East Germany and between the Koan, the practice seminar, and the Sechin. And we decided to see if there was a little ferry that looked like there might be on the map between the former East German side and Travemunde. And there were no signs to it or anything, but, you know, we found it and it goes every 15 minutes and there was a long line of cars and a guy came window to window.

[07:06]

collecting a few marks. And I really wish he'd leaned in the window and said, which shore do you want to go to? I would have, whoa! I probably would still be there. It's like the question that befuddled Deshan and started him on his journey into Zen. He was rather proud of his knowledge about the Diamond Sutra. And he stopped at a little tea shop on the way to find out about these Zen guys who he was heard about.

[08:30]

And the woman asked what he was carrying. He said, I'm a teacher of the Diamond Sutra. This is the Diamond Sutra, you know. And she said, oh, the Diamond Sutra, it says, doesn't it, that the past mind is ungraspable, the present mind is ungraspable, and the future mind is ungraspable. And she said, with which mind do you want a tea cake? A tea cake means, the word for it in Chinese, I believe, means to refresh the mind.

[09:46]

So she was making a play on that. And he didn't know what to say. He was stopped. He could have said something perhaps like, oh, show me the mind that refreshed, that made the tea cakes. But he didn't know what to say. But he knew he didn't know what to say. So he went to study with Lung Ya. That's another story which I won't tell. Actually, it's in the introduction to Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

[10:48]

I forget. So it's really important that you know and to confront your understanding. So I brought into, I said, you know, you bring into your meditation certain questions. Or you discover the questions that are there. But you also bring into your meditation vows. And the attitudes that come from vows. And I think one thing you are finding out, some of you are finding out in Sushim, that certain truths and the qualities that we call morality sometimes in practice hit us with a physical force.

[12:15]

These aren't ideas anymore, they're physical knowledge. You can see that they're part of the way you function. All form, in a sense, is actually, when you look closely at it, is a kind of precept. Expresses how we exist in this world and function in this world. And Sashin also, as I said, helps open up the channels or means by which you handle your experience.

[13:19]

We do what? handle what our experience is. In other words, much of the difficulty, the excitability, the restlessness and the pain comes from not being open inside. If you experience yourself from outside, like looking at yourself from other's points of view or from a mirror, from the reflection in a mirror, you will feel a lot more suffering. And you have much less capacity to cope with this world and with others suffering as well as your own. So, as I said yesterday, I tried to give you some, I tried to give a lecture which yesterday, which didn't enter into your meditation, but gave you some information, a kind of break maybe.

[15:00]

I emphasize the process of meditation, the process of Buddha nature. And the distinction between the real power of thinking and the prison of thoughts. Now I want to point out the simplicity of the Zen paradigm. And if it was just a paradigm, it would be pretty dead. You know, there's this big mind or... shiny mirror mind or whatever that you can realize and... Yeah, then so what? Take away everything away what you got, a bare wall.

[16:15]

But the paradigm of consciousness itself is very simple. Of ordinary consciousness. In which we educate and fill with stuff. And give it a certain structure so it can cope with material. But we know our consciousness is actually quite extraordinary. So to this extraordinary consciousness you're adding a spiritual dimension, a whole other dimension. This deep field of mind which has many levels actually out of which the form mind appears. which this form mind appears.

[17:36]

And in relation to that, many of our problems are seen as structural problems, not just psychological problems. In other words, in not recognizing our channels, the way which we actually do relate to this big mind, We have the flow of big mind and small mind or foreground mind and background mind, keeping it simple here in language. It's blocked and then when it's blocked, any psychological problems you have accumulate all the stuff from this blocking.

[18:50]

And it makes your psychological problems much harder to work with. So I say it could be a dead paradigm, but actually when you really feel this and see this, an immense burden is taken away from you. Maybe your basic psychological form doesn't disappear, but all the junk on top of that, much of it goes away. Now I want to emphasize that this enlightenment cannot be anticipated. It does not happen in the future.

[20:06]

You cannot practice fruitfully waiting around for, geez, they say it happens and I've been sitting and, you know, when's it going to happen? And, you know, you check your watch. Ja, man kann also nicht praktizieren, wenn man eigentlich nur herumsitzt und darauf wartet und ab und zu auf die Uhr guckt. It's about time, isn't it? Es wird jetzt langsam Zeit. I've done 14 sesshins. Ich habe 14 sesshins gemacht. I meditate seven days, well, five or six days a week. Und ich meditiere fünf, sechs oder sieben Tage in der Woche. I'm nice to everybody. Ich bin zu allen nett. It only happens in the present. So it means you have to have a present mind set in a single eye.

[21:15]

This is a kind of trick or practice, but you've got to get the feeling of it. You've got to cultivate a mind in the present which doesn't anticipate. And a mind that doesn't feel it lacks anything. If you cultivate a mind where just now is enough, where there's nothing lacking, where there's no anticipation, you will almost surely come to enlightenment.

[22:17]

And if you don't, it doesn't matter because nothing's lacking. And you don't need anything. So, this is the secret of life. Now you've heard it. I can retire to my boat and sail away. I'll come back and check up. Yeah. What shore do you want to go to? Doesn't mean, of course, that you won't have other minds, other habitual minds, conventional minds.

[23:19]

But underneath that, or... As a background mind, you've given this vow to it. I live in the present mind held in a single eye. I am not seeing two things. I'm seeing no anticipation, no lack. And there are three aspects to the basic Buddhist vow. One is you vow to realize yourself. No fooling around. No exceptions.

[24:29]

That's it. You make that decision. I mean, it doesn't mean you might not have status or money and stuff like that. But you do not substitute status, money, or something else for that vow. If you do, then you're in the mind of anticipation, feeling something's lacking, and so forth. You know I'm speaking the truth. This is true, not false. And the second aspect of the vow is you vow to realize the teaching out of which your realization arose and which allows you to share it.

[25:45]

You're capable of being stopped like Deshan. Deshan's birth as one of the great Zen teachers and creators of the inter-network of lineages that we have inherited Was his capacity and courage to say, I don't understand? Not I sort of understand or I will understand or, you know, it doesn't make much difference because no one's noticed I don't understand. Or I hope no one's noticed anyway.

[26:47]

Oder ich hoffe, dass es niemand aufgefallen ist. Or soon I will know, so it doesn't make any difference that I don't know now. Und bald werde ich wissen, insofern macht es keinen Unterschied, dass ich jetzt nichts weiß. No, you're born in the soil I don't know. Ihr seid geboren in der Erde von ich weiß nicht. So this is the vow to realize the teaching without doubt. Und das ist das Gelöbnis, diese Lehre zu verwirklichen, ohne Zweifel. And the third aspect of this vow is that you cannot do it for yourself. You are simply too small a goal. If you are the goal, it will slip away. You have to really feel your engagement with your family, your friends, and really everyone.

[27:56]

And there's no alternative but to do this for this larger Buddha nature, this larger being, this larger being we are. Or simply for others, even if they're not us. Not us is also us. So these three aspects present in your practice Make your meditation real. Becomes real experience and accessible experience.

[29:01]

Now the meal chant is such a kind of a little program for this question, who are you? What are we? It starts out with, you know, where was daddy born at Lumbini? Where was the founder? Where did we get started? And he had an ordinary life, not a Lotus Sutra life, an ordinary life. Born, enlightened, actually enlightened, taught, and entered Nirvana and died at Kusinagara. And now, that being the case, we now open the eating bowls, which are similar to the eating bowls he used.

[30:29]

Because we also have a life that is not different from the Buddha's. And partly it's thought that your feet are on the same level and your hands are on the same level in sitting. And that's understood to mean we're on the same level with the world. There's no high, no low. And calling the Buddha Tathagata means we emphasize Buddha as thusness. And that thusness is not just our life, but reality. Thusness is also the Buddha, and it's always teaching us. And so we have a sense of the thusness and of the Buddha and our life and Buddha's life in these eating bowls.

[32:19]

And we can recognize this really only if we're free from self-clinging. And even all of us free from self-clinging. And so in this sense we take refuge in now a more subtle sense of Buddhism, Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. The Buddha as his teaching or her teaching, the Dharma. and the Sangha, all of us who practice together. So now let's recite all the ways in which this Buddha is present to us.

[33:25]

As this woman in meditation, in absorption, was sitting next to the Buddha. So as you become more subtle in your meditation, you actually find there's wisdom consciousnesses and compassionate consciousnesses and so forth. And the consciousness which doesn't go anywhere, Samantabhadra. So then this physical, personal life you have, like the Buddha, now is described in this world of, you realize through meditation, of the Dharmakaya, the Sambhogakaya, and so forth.

[34:26]

And then in the morning and lunch we recognize that this food we're about to eat comes also from the horizontal lineage everyone working to bring us the food, to sell us the food, to cook the food, to grow the food, etc. And then we, receiving the food, we think about whether we deserve it, And we want our mind to be free from the thought coverings of greed, hate and delusion.

[35:28]

And our vow to realize this practice in ourself and with others comes in and we eat in order to do that. And then we actually have the first bite for the precepts and the second for samadhi and so forth. And finally, we want to exist both in the muddy water of ordinary life and also with the clarity of the lotus which grows up above the water. So even this little meal chant that we do without you paying much attention to it, Has built into it a prescription for realizing, answering this question, who and what are we and what is our relationship to the world and to others?

[36:47]

And how do we discover this? Now, I wanted to discuss with you the meditation practices, the next steps from what I've told you so far. The meditation practices through which we realize and explore the mystery of the weave. The coherent mystery of being itself. I think of the... This sound is good in German.

[37:48]

Oh, well, everyone heard it in English. I used to, when I was a kid, go to the serial movies they used to have in small towns in America. What is that serial movie? There'd be an episode every week. I don't think they have them anymore at all. One of my favorite was the mark of Zorro.

[38:49]

And every Sunday afternoons, Zorro. I've always liked things starting with Z. Zorro. And every episode would end with something like, there would be Zorro in his hooded mask going off a cliff on a horse. And then it would say, episode three. So I think the coherent mystery and weave of being has to be weighted until... Who knows?

[39:50]

I know that I will come into the Zendo later in the day and I'll see all of your subtle bodies poised in the air, leaping. Looking for a not yet bloomed lotus to land on. But if I'm still here tomorrow, I will try to hold up the not yet bloomed lotus so you can land. But I make no promises. As you know now, Sashins are emotionally, psychologically, physically, and spiritually unpredictable. I asked the guy who left if he'd done much meditation before he came here. He said, oh, once in a while.

[40:53]

You really have to do a little more than once in a while to get ready for a sashin. But you can't practice for a sashin like you can practice, say, for a piano recital. You have to really have the vow and courage to plunge into the mystery of your self. and our larger life. So I make no promises in this unpredictable world. But if I can, I will continue tomorrow. And we will discover which shore we want to go to.

[42:12]

I hope. Thank you very much. May our intention equally penetrate every being and place.

[42:33]

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