March 27th, 2004, Serial No. 04102

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good morning

i think that we are a little bit of the next idea this morning
and this is because saturday morning is probably the best time of all to come here if you're a beginner
because we have zazen instruction every saturday morning at eight forty five
and we also always have this dharma attack so the saturday morning program is a really good opportunity for somebody who's new to get a feel for the practice here
and in fact this is called beginner's mind temple and it's the entry point for many people who continue to practice for many years
today as a little different than most saturdays in that it's the first day of a southern days a shame that about thirty five of us are participating in
and so every day of this machine there will be a dharma huck and this is the first talk of bias a shame
and i should tell you that i also am a bit of a beginner
i am serving as head student for a practice period that's going on now and that's a training position so one of the things that heads student does is give tux for the first time and so this is the first time i have ever given a tuck
in the buddha hall on saturday and i am really impressed by how many of you there are
so during the next seven days those of us in this session will spend our entire day's alternating sitting and walking meditation beginning at five am and ending at around nine
pm
with some time out for meals and breaks after each meal and stretching period in the afternoon and a talk every day
so we're going to be doing a lot of sitting and i think it's appropriate to use this time to talk about zazen and sixteen practice
and i think that the guidelines for a sitting a seven days a shame i really just the same as the guidelines for sitting one period of sixteen or one period of zazen so i'm hoping that there will be something and they'll stack the
will be meaningful to everybody here
so as i said this scene is the end of a nine we practice period that's been going on here and the theme of the practice period is time and the cohen the one who
is not busy
so i'm sure a lot of you know about collins or cohen is a teaching story about our is an ancestor's that's been handed down to earth
and maybe these stories are a little bit like a dream in that the characters in this story stories might represent different parts of ourselves and also like a dream there a little puzzling and bizarre and then don't quite make logical
sense
so we use them to try to find the meaning in them for our practice and that's what we have been doing with this coin during our practice period

so i would like to redo those colin
as john yang was sweeping the ground dow wu said too busy
john young said
you should know there's one who isn't busy
tao said
if so then there's a second moon
young young held up his broom and said which food is this

thanks
well that was dramatic

i'm so back to her story for this to people in those on our friends or peers or dharma brothers their fellow mike practitioners so genuine is sweeping and he looks very busy and bustling and dow will come
i'm lying and he says oh too busy
so john young replies you should know there's one who isn't busy
and then dow wu says oh then there's a second moon
well we all know that there's really only one moon so what does wu is saying is oh well then how many songs do you have so he's teasing his dorm my brother a little bit
but john young has the last word he holds up as broom and says which moon is this and i want demonstrate your style
so we are studying how to get in touch and stay in touch with the one who is not busy an inch of us
this is an urban zen center and so i think many of the people who practice here have very busy lives
i expect that most of us in the room are working with or a struggling with how to keep our minds clear and calm while we raise our children or do our jobs or fulfill our responsibilities whatever they may be
and i think that most people today feel that they are too busy that there just isn't time to get everything done that needs to be done
so this is a cohen about being in touch with the one who is not busy how defined the one who is not busy and act from that place in the world

one of the practices that we use to try to find the one who is not busy is sashaying which is an extended period of sitting meditation
if you consider all the different kinds of beings known and unknown to us that there are in the universe being born as a human being is rare and miraculous
and it's even more rear that everyone in this room has come into contact with the buddha dharma and the opportunity to practice the boot way in this lifetime
so the opportunity to sit a southern davis so shane is a rare and wondrous gift that is very precious
but even though we understand that it's process i think most of us have some ambivalence about sittings machine
if we have some experience with flying sitting we already know that during the next seven days it's very likely that there are going to be some difficult or painful moments
this is because sitting still for such a line time is not what our bodies or minds naturally liked to do
an image that comes to mind for me is a snake in a tube
now i don't know very much about snakes so i don't know what would really happen but it seems to me like if you put a snake and a tube it would get very unhappy very quickly
even if the tube was lying on earth and wide enough for the snake when it was all stretched out i think it would quickly become miserable and start fighting with the to
because it constricts the way the snake habitually is in the world
so that's a rather extreme example and i don't think you should be discouraged by it
but on the other hand i think were a little bit like that snake
i'm we liked to move we liked to try to find a more comfortable or advantageous position and one thoughts come up we liked to pursue them we like to think about her thoughts and that keeps them alive in our minds now we do have a big advantage over
for that snake and that's that we know why we're here and what we're doing or at least we hope we we think about that some
we're not always so sir
so zazen and sub seen are about getting comfortable with our actual limited position and our minds as they actually are right now
so i think that during session we go from a feeling of
being restricted in that we're trying not to move and we're trying not to follow our thoughts to and a feeling of some new kind of freedom because we're relieved of our habitual thought patterns
and the necessity of doing anything
i think it's a process of stripping away rather than adding anything it's stopping doing which is a very radical thing for human beings
but this doesn't mean that we're just idle or lazy or make no effort
actually we have to be very alert and attentive to stay in the present moment with our body mind as it actually is right now
a hey dogan who is the founder of this particular school of zen wrote an essay called through cancer zheng jie in japanese and in english that means universe
xsl recommendations for us awesome
it includes complete zazen instruction and it's really a passionate exhortation to do zazen wholeheartedly right now
so i would like to read some sentences that i've taken from it this is not the whole thing
wow

you should cease from practice based on intellectual understanding
pursuing words and following after speech and learn the backwards stuck that turns your life inwardly to illuminate yourself
eat and drink moderately cast aside all involvement and since all affairs do not think good or bad do not administer pros and cons see saw the movements of the conscious mind gauging
ing of all thoughts and views have no thoughts of becoming a buddha
think of not thinking how do you think of not thinking
non thinking in itself as the central art of zone
the zazen i speak of is not learning meditation it is simply the dharma gate of repose and blows
the practice realization of totally culminated enlightenment it is the manifestation of ultimate reality
if you concentrate your efforts single mindedly that in itself is negotiating the way
going forward in practice is a matter of every day knows
the character of this school is simply devotion to sitting
total engagement and a mobile sitting
you have gained the pivotal opportunity of human form do not use your time in vain
so for me
the most essential and hardest of these instructions there is cast aside all in golf minutes and since all affairs
i am so used to being busy and trying to accomplish something that it's very hard for me just start getting busy
i have lots of trouble just getting to the zondo because i'm so busy trying to accomplish struggling
so i am especially grateful for those practice period and says shane
so that i have these seven days to devote entirely to zazen

along with my booting us i spend much time living in the past and the future
and at sunset or always but especially during session were strongly encouraged to live in the present moment
many of us have waited for this machine as an opportunity to go deep and our meditation
some of us have the rare privilege of getting to meditate every morning and i am really grateful that i have the hut but still the periods go quickly and often the period is gone and i'm still not concentrated
so i think oh well pretty soon there will be on wednesday sitting and maybe i can get column and concentrated them
so the one days that incomes and undergoes and it happens very quickly and i have much the same feeling i think oh too bad it's over and i didn't get body blah blah
so but at least there is such a and coming up and i'll be concentrated down
so that then is now so scene is right here right now and this is the opportunity that many of us have been waiting for
so i will be doing my best to really make it happen this time
hope you all too
now i'm going to make some suggestions and i want to say that i'm not mentioning these suggestions from some place on hi i'm when i try to cook up this turk i think my job is to encourage people and so the first person
and i have to encourage his myself and so these are things that i work with to
please do cast aside all other involvements and direct all your resources to you're sitting
please limit your activity to what will help you sir and follow the schedule it completely
take care of your body it is the instrument of your meditation keep it clean use the exercise period in the afternoon to turn your instrument
rest as fully as you can during the breaks
if the food that ciphered in the zendo and be careful about beverages and caffeine consider what helps you desert
if you habitually smoke consider whether that helps or hinders your effort
and also take care of your mind avoid reading avoid conversations as both of these tend to on
increased the number of thoughts that are likely to appear in your mind try to maintain silence
please do whatever you can when you're not in the zendo to keep your mind or stalls possible
one of the meditation practices of our school observe as called chicken taza which means just sitting
i think this is what dogan means when hitchhikes about think of not thinking
not thinking is neither pursuing thoughts nor banishing them
as we sit thoughts will naturally arise
if we just let them come and go on their own without inviting them into t
pretty soon our mind will naturally get quieter and quieter and not so many thoughts will even come up
this instruction is really simple isn't it but it's not easy to follow if it were i think we'd all be enlightened right now
it's very tempting to follow our thoughts i'm there are happy thoughts their imaginations of things that you want to do the rear that you want to follow and there are negative thoughts that
for some reason we tend to follow but anyway all of this stuff just keeps thoughts alive and active in our mind and keeps us from being able to settle down
i know that in my life i got very bogged down in negative mine states
most of these seem to be the result of following a negative train of thought comparing myself with others wondering what people are thinking about me some of these thought progressions are really painful
so the practice of non thinking in zazen can give someone like me a big relief it shuts off that stream of negativity and self doubt so that i can be with what's happening in my body mind right now
and this moment mind is calm and peaceful
i think it's what and means when he talks about the dharma gate of repose and worse
we are freed from are negative thought processes and also from the necessity of doing anything we just said we just don't do anything we don't think which is different from pushing thoughts away or suppressing them
we just don't entertain our thoughts we abide in the present moment which is completely still and at roast

during those practice period we have been studying another essay by dorgan called being time and that will be the text for the rest of this machine
thus else the teachers that time itself is being and all being his time i am time and there is no time separate from my existence
since my existence since inherently empty time as also empty
so time as a relative concept that we use to describe our experience of life to ourselves
in my last talk which was about time i brought up the suggestion that the impure the appearance of impermanence change and movement is like a movie with many instance of complete stillness
like frames on a piece of film which arrive in the mind one after another so quickly that we be perceive them as flowing
so time does not move or a fly away or disappear or get lost it as are thinking mind that is always moving our conceptual thinking that creates this experience that we have of change and impermanence
so what does this teaching tell us that will help us during says shane
well for one thing we are always new and fresh each moment
there's a famous phrase that you can't step into the same river twice
and they think it's helpful to realize that our bodies and minds are just like that
every moment a new configuration of the universe arrives
whether we've been sitting for seven days or one our our body mind as fresh and new right now
if you have sat such scenes before you are probably familiar with the experience that pain or difficulty is not necessarily continuous or a cumulative you may have a really difficult or painful period of zazen and then the next
period of zazen will be pleasurable and just fly by so it's completely impossible to predict what's going to happen next
our so she practice than is just to be with what is happening right now without comparing it to what happened in previous period of zazen or what we hope or fear will happen in the next period or what we're planning to do after session is over
another thing i want to talk about before we go is making mistakes
i remember the first time i was ever on a serving crew for his and oh meal it was quite memorable
i got so nervous i think it was if not my first sendo meal than it was close i had not had very many is under meals and i got so nervous that somehow even though i thought i was listening to the serving instructions i must not have been
i think i was probably worrying about spilling soup on my teacher and so i didn't get it when they told me the pattern of walking in the zondo
so i arrived in the zendo with my pot and had no idea where to go and for those of you who don't know about zendo meals their kind of choreographed and ritual and it's a very pleasurable way to eat a meal but
i'm training the serving crew is an important part of it
so i felt like i made a big fool of myself and then i spent a good part of this ashame obsessing about the mistake i made
this a shame many of you will be else to perform various tasks you may be on serving cruise or be dolans or children's or whatever and this activity is usually have some ritual element to them
and i think it's important to know
that the ritual is intended not just to please of
aesthetically but also that it's a mindfulness tour
these things encourages to pay attention and keep our is often mind during activity
so if you drop your chopsticks during an oreo key meal it's a wake-up call
you know oh i wasn't paying attention i was thinking about something else
so because we are human and because of the nature of these activities there are lots of mistakes kind of sitting there waiting to be made
and if you make one of them please don't worry about it
i'm just say oh i made a mistake and go on with what you were doing
i know from experience that it's very hard to make just one dolan mistake
it's a little like eating one potato chip
this is because the dolan who has made the mistake is sitting there thinking about the mistake instead of
being present for whatever as supposed to happen next which is what they're supposed to do so guess what another mistake
and this is kind of how light fills i think so if you make a mistake or even lots of them try it to be grateful for the information that they'd give you and then just go on with what's happening and don't worry about it
you're still a good person and the most important thing as for you to enjoy your session

so in my last talk i bred on
an essay that i found on the internet that was about time and at described our perception of time as who like a movie as i mentioned earlier so it said that on the time it's actually a series of stoves that go by very quickly
and that at sorry conceptual mind that makes them move so today i'd like to read another description of life thousand movie this one comes from our founder suzuki roshi and the focus here is not really so much
much about time that's about zazen and it has a little different slant that i think is interesting so we never did that to tonight

our everyday life is like a movie playing on the wide screen
most people are interested in the picture on the screen without realizing there is a screen
when the movie's stops and you don't see anything anymore
you think i must come again tomorrow evening
i won't come back and see another show
when you are just interested in the movie on the screen and it ends than you expect another show tomorrow
or maybe you are discouraged because there is nothing good on right now
you don't realize the screen as always there
but when you are practicing you realize that your mind as like a screen
if as if the screen as colorful colorful enough to attract people then it will not serve its purpose
so to have a screen which is not colorful to have a pure plain white screen is the most important point
but most people are not interested in the pure white screen
i think it is good to be excited by a movie
to some extent you can enjoy the movie because you know that it is a movie
even though you have no idea of the screen stole your interest is based on an understanding that this is a movie with a screen and there is a projector or something artificial so you can enjoy it that is how we enjoy
your life
if you have no idea of the screen or the projector perhaps you cannot see what else a movie
zazen practice is necessary to know the kind of screen you have and to enjoy your life as you enjoy movies in the theater
you are not afraid of the screen you do not have any particular feeling for the screen which is just a white screen
so you are not afraid of your life at all
you enjoy something that you are afraid of you enjoy something that makes you angry or makes you cry and you enjoy the crying and the anger too
if you have no idea of the screen then you will even be afraid of enlightenment
what is it oh my if someone attains enlightenment you may ask him about the experience that he had
when you hear about the experience you may say oh no that is not for me
but it is just a movie you know something for you to enjoy and if you want to enjoy the movie you should know that it is the combination of film and light and screen and that is the most important thing and that the most import
didn't thing is the plain white screen
that white screen is not something you can actually attain it is something you always have
the reason you don't feel you have it is because your mind us too busy
once in awhile you should stop all your activities and make your screen white that is awesome
so i think it's time to go back to the zendo and work on our white springs thank you very much