Good morning. It's the third day of Seshin and I hope you're getting settled in now. But it may be that you're wondering what a picture. Well, things change. One moment I'm full of energy, really happy to be here. Another moment I really want to go to bed.

[01:05]

One moment I'm feeling very alert, my posture is settled and at ease. Another moment everything is tight in place. Nothing stays the same. There's a Pali chant which translated as something like, All things are in one place. They arise and they pass away. You'll be in harmony with the tree. Ring-a-ring-a-ding-a-ding. But it was brand new, wasn't it?

[02:12]

But was it or was it out of the drawer? Well, I don't like it. And that's what I love about it. I've been speaking a good deal about birth and death because I'm so aware of it.

[03:18]

Just before Seshin, two young men came to Zen Center and their mother, who has practiced here in the past, is in a nursing home dying. And I went to see her. She seems very at ease with it now. It seems right to her. But it's very hard for them. In this world of birth and death, if we think of this life as my life, this life we think of as my life has a beginning and an ending. This body, if we identify with it, will surely die.

[04:27]

The time is uncertain, but that it will cease to function as we know it is certain. This mind, which is able to like and dislike and enjoy, feel joy and sadness and excitement and boredom and all of these things that we can feel, this mind also will have it soon. And yet life continues. Bodhidharma, in speaking of the first precept, says not to have an idea of extinction. Here's the precept of that thing. And in this realm, as we call it, we speak of no birth and no death.

[05:31]

In this realm of living a life rather than having a life, it's like a spring or a fountain, which is flowing freely, but we can't get hold of it. It flows between our fingers. It is ungraspable. There is an old story in Zen of a man or a woman, someone being chased through the jungle by a tiger. He comes to a precipice. She comes to a precipice and there is a vine. And so she grabs the vine and starts to climb down. Looking down at the bottom of this precipice, there is another tiger.

[06:40]

So she hangs on to the vine for dear life, but looking up she sees that there's a rat gnawing at the vine. Our life is like that. Going from impenetrable and mysterious, what was before birth, to impenetrable and mysterious, what is after death. How shall we live a life like that? In this story, hanging on to this vine that's being gnawed on for dear life, this person sees a perfectly ripe wild strawberry right in front of him. He plucks it and eats it.

[07:47]

It was never so delicious as at that moment. When we don't focus on the rat gnawing on the vine or the tiger at the bottom, and just on whatever arises in front of us in each moment, then we can truly appreciate the wonder, the rareness, the preciousness, of each moment of life. But when we think of impermanence, of how fleeting life is, how uncertain, how unknowable, we sometimes find ourselves afraid.

[08:49]

And so we turn aside from the vividness of the strawberry in front of us and think about what might happen. Let's see, is there some way I could climb up this thing and grab that rat by the tail and throw it over the precipice down to the tiger below? Let's see if there's some way out of this. Oh, we find a little ledge and we make ourself a nest and we try to get really, really comfy right there. I don't want to worry about anything. And we've got a computer and a modem, we'll go on the internet and we just hang out there in cyberspace

[09:55]

and don't worry about a thing. We find some way to keep our mind occupied somewhere else, some other time, some other place. And we miss the vividness of the strawberry in front of our nose. Paul spoke some last night of how we come to know, or not to know, but come to feel, experience, be in our body, be in this living body experiencing each moment,

[10:59]

each breath, each muscle, each pain, each pain, each sound, the breeze on our cheeks. When we realize the preciousness of each moment of this life, and that it's entirely our responsibility, how we manifest it, how we live it, such a person naturally sits down for a while

[12:04]

and we count our breaths, or we follow our breaths. We count our breaths with great effort and great care because it helps us when it's difficult to just sit here and be in the middle of life, seeing things arising and passing away. It gives us some support. When Katagiri Roshi says a monk teaches fearlessness, this is what Suzuki Roshi was teaching us. He was teaching us to fearlessly face the joys and sorrows

[13:15]

of this life, the vitality and uncertainty of this life. Staying with breath is very important, but we don't count breath to count breath. We count breath to help us stay here, in this moment, as we are. If you want to attain suchness, you should practice suchness without delay. What is this suchness? As it isness. It's just this, as it is.

[14:22]

Nothing more. What you see is what you are. You don't get anything. There's nothing to get. There's nothing to hold on to. There is only the possibility to be fully and completely alive as you are, for as long as you are alive. And to be fully and completely present when death comes, to see what that is. As Mary Oliver says, I want to approach it full of curiosity. What is it like, this house of darkness? I don't want to frighten you, speaking of death so much.

[15:38]

I want you to become familiar with it, as an old friend. It's always with you. But you don't pay attention to it, and so it frightens you. When you know that in each moment you are dying, it's not something that will happen later. Each moment you are arising and passing away. Each moment. You are dying and being reborn. Someone spoke to me about the name Plum Mountain, thinking of a mountain covered with blooming plum trees. And then thinking of, well, actually how it is, is there is a season when there are blossoms on the tree, and then the blossoms fall,

[16:38]

and then there are leaves, and then perhaps there's fruit, and then the leaves fall, and it's winter, and the tree is dormant, and looks dead. And then the buds begin to swell, and there is another season of flowers, and it goes on endlessly. When we choose one season over another, and are loath to let the world turn, then we feel hopeless, then we feel afraid. But when we let the seasons come and go as they will,

[17:46]

and find our joy in each season, then we can truly live this life fearlessly. In this letter, which I read to you from yesterday, that Suzuki Roshi wrote to his student, he says, To follow your breathing is to follow the reality. Let me go back and reiterate a part of this. Your question of who is you, this question will be answered when you recognize that there is no self besides the temporal union of various factors, objective and subjective, physical and mental, etc.

[18:49]

Moreover, body or brain are just temporal existence. Although they are temporal, they exist in the smallest particle of time, but strictly speaking, they are constantly changing to one being to another. If so, our body and mind is the non-graspable. Only way to have full experience of it is to follow the being, as the two hands of a watch follow the reality. To follow your breathing is to follow the reality. This is how to have the direct experience of being, the absolute being, which is more than objective or subjective, mental or physical. It is wonderful that you have been following your breath successfully. It means that you are completely free from intellectual problems, the result of thinking what is body and brain, or emotional loneliness.

[19:52]

Do it with more conviction until you find composure within yourself. All the experience you have had and you will have will be absorbed in your practice, no matter how difficult they may look like. Because when you are completely concentrated on breath, you are not just emotional or intellectual being. The more you practice this practice, as many people did, the more you are able to free yourself from various problems. In another lecture he says, counting breath is just the handle to the cup, it's not the whole cup.

[20:55]

He says, you may think then, well, it's not so important, it's only the handle to the cup. But that's not so. We still count our breath with our whole body and mind. We do each thing we do with our whole body and mind. Our practice is to be alive with our whole body and mind, all together in this moment. Breathing is a handle to this cup, but if we think the handle is not important, we can drop the whole cup. And he says, I've been talking about this, concerning ourselves with my life, my body, my mind, this self-centeredness. He says, but it's not so easy to be free from selfish practice.

[21:59]

So even if for only one hour a day you should try to sit Shikantaza without moving, without expecting anything, as if you are in your last minute, moment after moment you feel your last minute. In each inhaling and in each exhaling, there are countless units of time, and you should live in each unit of time. And you should breathe smoothly, exhaling first and then inhaling. Calmness of your mind is beyond the end of your exhalation. If you exhale in that way smoothly, without even trying to exhale, you are entering into the complete perfect calmness of your mind. Then naturally your inhaling will start from there. All your blood will be cleaned,

[23:02]

and that fresh blood will carry everything from outside to pervade and refresh your body. You are completely refreshed. Then you start to exhale, to extend that fresh feeling to the emptiness. In this way, moment after moment, without trying to do anything, you continue Shikantaza. Complete Shikantaza may be difficult because of the pain in your legs. But even though you have pain in your legs, you can do it. Even though your practice is not good enough, you can do it. So with your exhaling, you will gradually vanish, gradually fade into emptiness. And inhaling will naturally bring you back to yourself with some color or form. And again, with your exhaling, you gradually fade into emptiness, empty.

[24:03]

That is Shikantaza. I'm just explaining the feeling of Shikantaza. The important point of Shikantaza is in your exhaling. Instead of trying to feel yourself, try to fade in emptiness when you exhale. When you have this practice in your last moment, you have nothing to be afraid of. You are actually aiming at emptiness, the empty area. There is no other way for you to have a feeling of immortality. You become one with everything after you completely exhale with this feeling. If you are still alive, naturally you will inhale again. Oh, I'm still alive. Fortunately or unfortunately.

[25:07]

Depends on how bad your leg is. So then you start to exhale again and try to fade into emptiness. So practice tending to your exhale with particular care. Letting it go as far as it will go. And then you can let it go. And letting the inhale return of itself if you are still alive. In this way, we learn to trust ourselves.

[26:08]

We learn to trust living this life as it is. Just what is. Not wishing for something more or something less. If legs hurt, breathe gently and carefully to the pain in the leg. Give your energy, your attention, your complete care to this sitting. With any luck at all, you may die on your cushion this week.

[27:10]

Thank you. Namaste.

[27:49]

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