Fellow travelers. I always have this problem during session. You know, there's nothing to say, and it's hard for me to to get stuff going. Bye, bye, bye, bye.

[01:02]

I like sitting. It hasn't been particularly comfortable for me these past one day. It's kind of achy. I'm at risk here because I actually put my left foot up. And during a long sitting, I never do that because my knees can't take it, and I have to sit and burn knees most of the time. Otherwise, my knees burn. And I injured them when I was at Tazahara, so if they burn too much, I begin to not be able to walk upstairs. I have to be careful. But you know, if you sit and burn knees, then it's not as stable for your back. So if my knees aren't burning, then I have these two places in my back that are just like

[02:13]

these pokers. It's kind of a trade-off. And then usually if my body is okay and not hurting, then some kind of mental problem arises. But you know, this is the beginning of session. It's appropriate. What I've been practicing with these last few days, which actually is only yesterday, is I've had this ancient practice that I've had since 1971. I told you about it once. It's the practice of just putting something down completely. It was that practice where I couldn't put something down completely that I started judging myself very harshly.

[03:15]

I told you about that. So now when I don't put something down completely, I don't judge myself, but I do notice. So it's like I'll put something down, but my head will turn. You know, I just not completely put it down. And the other practice I'm working with is I've been noticing moods lately. I used to believe my moods, that I had a mood. I didn't call it a mood when I was happy, but when I was unhappy I called it a mood, I was in a mood. And yesterday I began having a mood, and I was noticing that what was happening actually was that

[04:18]

I was just physically kind of uncomfortable. So I was sort of spitting, my mind was kind of spitting thoughts out. I wasn't talking to anybody, but just inside. Just a little bit, just like, eh, about like that. And I noticed about lunchtime, I noticed that if I let myself accept that little, it was just little, kind of subtle, just meh, or you know, meh, that actually I was going to go down that path, and I was going to solidify that mind. I decided not to. The biggest problem I am actually having over the last couple of days, though, is I have these flies in my house.

[05:19]

So, they're called Drosophila melanogastra. I don't know if you know them. I have an old, you know, I have an old history with these flies. We go back really far. When I was in junior high, I, my neighbor, Mickey, who is a friend of Judith's sister, Gail, and she lived next door. In junior high, we were both in the same science class, and her project was genetics. And the good things about these flies are they multiply just really fast. And so they, historically, they have lots and lots and lots of things written about them. I think people have even gotten Nobel Prizes working with these flies.

[06:20]

Anyway, the key to this sentence is that they multiply really fast. So, they multiplied in my house. Oh, let me tell you the story of Mickey. So, she had these two bottles, glass bottles, and she was raising one set of Drosophila in one bottle to prove something or another. And then in the other bottle, there was this control set of Drosophila flies. And she worked on this for a long time. And sure enough, the flies in one bottle were mutating in a certain kind of way, and the flies in the other bottle were the control group, so I don't know what they were doing. But anyway, they were really important. It was a really important project. It was a term project for the whole term. And she had them underneath the sink in the kitchen of her house. And the day before she was supposed to present

[07:30]

these flies to the teacher, her mother looked underneath the sink. And, yes, just as you were thinking, she looked under there and she was just aghast that there were these two bottles of flies underneath the sink. And so, of course, she took them outside and un-popped the cork, and they all flew all over the place. And Mickey didn't have a very good relationship with her mother anyway. So they were gone. Well, so at home I have these Drosophila melanogaster flies. They're fruit flies. They're small little flies. And I think what happened was I left the garbage too long next to the sink. And the thing is,

[08:33]

I don't know where they come from. It's kind of like magic. And so anyway, I go home and I go into my kitchen and if I walk in and touch the garbage bag thing, they come out. They all come out. And so this is a confession. So I have this paper towel. Roll. Thank you. And so I pick up the paper towel, roll, and I apologize to the flies both because we have a long history and also because I don't really want to kill them. But they multiply really fast. So I do. So I go home, I'm having break. I went home. And when I walked into the kitchen,

[09:33]

I picked up this roll right away. And there were these flies all over the place and I bopped them with the paper towel roll. I did it easier when I was not in my okasa. When I put on my okasa, it was a lot more difficult. So we're the first couple of days in Tsushima and we have some work to do. Our job is to gather and settle the mind.

[10:34]

There are two traditional kinds of meditation in Buddhism. One is shamatha, which you know. And the other is vipassana, which you also know. And almost always, for almost everyone, in the beginning of seshin, what we're trying to do is the shamatha part. The translation of shamatha means to calm the mind. So, if you've been watching, which I assume we all have been, we can see very clearly that at our sense doors, eyes, sight, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables, consciousness,

[11:42]

at all the sense doors, we are shaken as if in a storm. Our minds are constantly agitated by what is arising from what we think is outside. Right away, a sound, a sound, and we make some kind of judgment, or we name it even. We don't just receive. We play and push away and grab after. Sights, and we're making judgments about people, tastes of the food, biases, projections, judgments, all coming from and arising from the winds

[12:49]

of sense impression. So our job, in the beginning of seshin, is to gather the mind back, gently, inevitably, training the, Darlene calls it the being-present muscle, building the being-present muscle, bringing the mind back from running hither and yon after sense impressions. So it's not that we leave that is a problem, and nothing that arises either is a problem. The moment of,

[13:56]

the important moment is the moment where we remember our commitment, our vow, to return to silence, return over and over again to the present moment. There are, usually it's said, you know, five hindrance to do this, but we've talked about them before, so I'm not going to go into them. Let me just name them, and then you just take care of them yourself. The five are grabbing after, or greed, aversion, or hate, sloth and torpor. Yesterday afternoon a lot of us were slothing and torporing.

[15:00]

Restlessness, too excited, too much energy trying to get something out of, you know, whatever, doubt. Those are the main ones. So whichever one is your main one, know what it is, and try to get past that this next couple of days. Don't waste time with the hindrances. And then pick one of the practices, and there are many, to help us gather and focus and concentrate the mind. The traditional one, of course, is breath. Not being necessarily aware of the breath, but that's a place to start. It's not like, the instruction is not like

[16:04]

your consciousness is up here, and you're shooting this consciousness down to the breath. That's separation, right? Separation of your consciousness, and breath as an object. Or, you know, you're up here somewhere and the body is down here, apart from you. Or you're up here and the breath is different than you are. We think that. But isn't that, that's amazingly ridiculous. Right? No breath, no you. Right? Simple. There's no separation between you and breath. So we don't send concentration down to the body. We simply allow ourselves to be breath, to come back to being breathing. That's what's meant by concentrating and focusing the mind. And another way to do that, which is a really good way,

[17:10]

are through the forms. So let me remind you, again, the forms are here to help us be present. I was just noticing this morning when the priests go upstairs to the Kaisanda and do our little service upstairs, almost every single time when the priests bow, it's quiet. They don't bang their knees on the floor. But in the Zindo, we're going smash, bang, bam. So listen. Listen to the sound that you make. Not because there's some special way that we need to do this. No. It's because it's an aid to help you to remember, oh yeah, I'm making a vow to be present. Same thing with your utensils

[18:10]

when we eat in the Zindo. Clink, clank, clink, clink, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle. No. Quiet. Not because it's some special thing to do, because it's a reminder. Oh yeah, I'm eating. Oh yeah, I have a ceramic bowl and a metal spoon. Be careful. Let's pay attention. It's about paying attention. The feel of the... Is it cold or is it not cold when you touch the doorknob? Can you feel your arm, the impulse in your arm going out before you even get to the doorknob? Do you make noise when you go up the stairs or come down with your feet? Or is it quiet? Do you touch the wood banister? What does that feel like? How about your posture? If you're concentrating, do you forget to breathe? There are little things all during the day

[19:15]

to remind us be present in the body, as the body. Suzuki Roshi said, everything we need to know in Buddhism is in the body. And the body is always present. There's no difference between the spirituality and the awakening of the mind and the awakening of the body.

[20:16]

No difference. So, as we are committed to being present, we're being present as the body. At first, at a gross level, but more and more as we settle, deeper and deeper, the truth of our existence actually shines through. When we are attentive to the body, we find that there are places that are blocked.

[21:18]

We have tension in the body. The pain of our life is actually stored in the body, so that the more we become present for the body, the more we usually are present as the mind stills and settles, the more we are aware of our pain and suffering. Many people, I don't know if most people, but many people are averting from suffering. I don't think any of us here have that difficulty, and this is a good thing, because wherever it was that we in our lives decided that we didn't want to pay attention to our real pain in our life, at that point our maturity stopped. So, in order for us to continue to develop

[22:31]

as people, but also in order for us to develop awakening in the Buddhist path, we do that through our suffering, through our suffering. You know, as many of you know, I have a foster son, and he is at a juncture right now in his life. He's old enough now to decide for himself whether he wants to go toward his own awakening, maturity, or whether he wants to kind of delay that. And he's afraid with reason. So I called our lawyer.

[23:33]

You know, we're going to the court on the 12th. I called our lawyer the other day because I think he's not going to go toward his suffering, which is fine for now. And I talked to the lawyer, and I told the lawyer, I said, you know, he's really afraid. And the lawyer said a really interesting thing. He said, yes. Basically what he said was, I don't mean for this to sound harsh, but he said, so what? You know, so yes, we're afraid. And, and so what? At some point, we really do have to pick up our life as it is and go right into the thing that we're afraid of. But, you know,

[24:43]

I told him the other day, Juan, my foster son, if we turn away from our real pain, the pain that we're afraid to face, what we do is is no less painful. It's just as painful. It's just that we think, maybe we think we're in control, or we think that with enough pain on this side, it's kind of legitimate, we don't have to look at the stuff that we're really afraid of. I don't exactly know what the mechanism is, but it doesn't work hiding out that way. So I brought you this story. I've been reading a lot of Sharon Salzberg lately. This is her new book, Faith. And underneath it, it says,

[25:44]

trusting your own deepest experience. In the beginning of her life, when she was, I think, four years old, her father left her family. And when she was nine, she was with her mother. Mother was lying down on the couch, and her mother started hemorrhaging. And her mother was, I think she called an emergency, I think, her mother was taken away very quickly to the hospital. And her mother died. And that was the last time she saw her mother. And then her father came back into her life. And then two years after he came back into her life, he was taken away to go to a mental institution, mental hospital, and didn't come back. So in the early part of her life,

[26:46]

she had three major abandonments, losses. And what she did was she closed herself down, feeling clearly abandoned and alone, and not trusting life. So she says, during one early morning meditation, she was sitting peacefully, watching my breath. Feeling sensations move through my body. Observing the lazy drift of thoughts coming and going in my mind, and suddenly everything shifted. I had never forgotten the circumstances of how my mother died. But with an immediacy that left no escape, I was engulfed in reliving what had happened. This was more

[27:49]

than I can handle sitting in the meditation hall. The swelling of grief that had once closed off my heart grew tightly again. The despair of feeling completely alone, the anguish and desolation of my childhood once again suffused all time and eradicated all space. I had an appointment with my teacher, Upandita, and when I walked into his room he was sitting down. I hesitantly began to describe my experience to him. Embarrassed, I told him I had gone from anguish to a strange kind of constricted numbness. He listened carefully looking at me calmly and simply said, be mindful of the pain. What he suggested was in essence

[28:50]

what I had been practicing for years. Mindfulness is a specific meditation technique based on being aware of what is happening without clinging to it, pushing it away or getting confused about its nature. But over the days of suffering I tried out various tools in a covert effort to make it all go away. I tried reciting the classic Refuges. I tried loving-kindness meditation. But all my relentless strategies to make things better or improve the situation failed. All I had learned of change and possibility and openness was removed, void, unreachable. So,

[30:14]

I thought that such extreme suffering could serve as the proximate cause of faith. Then the suffering of my own despair must also contain a crack of light between shades of darkness. Remembering that the way out of the pain was through it, trembling, I sought the crack. I began to sense a gleam of direction. Sometimes in the darkness, all we can do is keep going, even if the road is rocky, uneven, and confusing. When we see our pain, whether mental or physical, as a single, solid, monolithic entity, unyielding and oppressive, it is almost impossible to bear. But when we can be mindful of exactly what is happening, we begin to see that everything we experience is composed of many ever-changing elements, component parts, physical pain as well as emotional pain.

[31:16]

Over the next few days, alone in my retreat room, I rocked back and forth for hours, and I began to explore the ball of suffering in my stomach. Mindfully taking it apart, I found sadness and resentment and a tremendous amount of guilt. I also found glimpses of space between them. As I let in each state, my body became less rigid, and my armor of despair began to soften. The world grew a little bigger than my suffering. So, wherever we are in our practice... It's workable.

[32:36]

So, I want to suggest two things for you today. We've been studying the Paramitas, and if you want to, you can see your Zazen, work with your Zazen through the Paramitas. When you sit there, it's generosity. Let yourself feel whatever arises, without pushing it away, without grabbing onto it. Just open to it, receive it as a gift. Remember the discipline of coming back, over and over and over again, to what actually is happening. Make sure that you arise effort. Make sure that you keep an alert mind, not a drowsy, everything is okay, I'm present mind.

[33:39]

Not a foggy presence, but an alert mind. And be patient. We're not after anything. We're not in a hurry. We don't have to get anything. We don't have to make ourselves better. Just relax and open to whatever is there. And by doing those four, we're developing Samatha practice, mindfulness practice, the practice of being present, completely committed to whatever activity you're doing. It's through mindfulness practice in the body that wisdom arises. First, the teaching of the insubstantiality of everything,

[34:44]

the effervescence of the body. Everything is changing, everything is passing. Therefore, therefore, we're connected to everything. So, see if that isn't true. Because everything is changing, everything, everything. We are one totally interconnected life. Try to find it, something else. Try to find something else. We can't. And it's out of that deep understanding of interconnectedness

[35:58]

that the heart opens through the suffering into the body, through transiency. Interconnectedness is where we find love. First, to ourselves. And because we know our own suffering, we can then feel the suffering of everybody else. So, we have some work to do.

[37:05]

We have some work to do. In the faith that we are Buddha, [...] Buddha. Buddha, Buddha, Buddha, Buddha. In the faith that we are already enough, let go of everything else. Buddha, Buddha, Buddha, Buddha.

[38:27]

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