Good morning. It feels a little ironic to say good morning when we've been up for seven hours or something. But more for Daniel than that. But yeah, still still morning. Apparently. That's what we call it anyway. Use this these schemes of uh labels and names and ways in which we uh navigate this experience. I wanted to uh uh thank those who have given the the talk so far in the last couple of days that I've enjoyed certainly uh an encouragement during uh during session to hear hear words or have reminders and and pointers where it can be that. Uh it's difficult to to sit so much for um these long periods of time. Although I'm impressed with everybody because even at the beginning of Dharma talk with the opportunity to stand, everybody just still sits on the ground for cover talk. Just haven't had enough sitting. So well done. Um I wanted to bring up a uh a koan from our tradition. Um it's just occurred to me what what to talk about, and a good place to really perhaps to to look for inspiration is something that's uh currently in one's own mind, in your own experience, something that feels that feels relevant. And then I even went to the trouble of just before I came up, I jotted down some notes which I didn't want to forget, and then I forgot my notes. So see how that goes. But this is a uh a case from the the Mumon Con of the Gateless Gate. Uh even that title uh really sums up uh somewhat the the subtlety of the difficulty of the uh of Zen, the Zen school. Right there, the apparent contradiction uh uh right there where where words don't uh successfully explain in a meaningful way. You know, a gateless gate. And from our collection here, this one is um case case forty-five, who is that one? The case. Ancestor N of Tozan said, even Shakyamuni and Maitreya are servants of that one. Just tell me who is that one? Muman's commentary. If you clearly recognize that one, it will be just like meeting your father at the crossroads. It is not necessary to ask others whether it is he or not. In the verse, don't draw another's bow, don't ride another's horse, don't speak of another's faults, don't try to know about another's affairs. So again there with the main case, Ancestor An of Tosan said, Even Shaky Muni and Maitreya as servants of that one, just tell me who is that one. Just even Shakimuni and Maitreya as servants of that one. Just tell me who is that one. So in our in our tradition, and represented here on the altar in the Buddha Hall is a great exemplar of the lineage is Shakyamuni Buddha, who's the we look to as the as the founder. Although in the uh in the lineage that you've been chanting in the mornings, it's been make the important note there that before the Buddha there were other people, there were other founders. You know, in in the lineage, I think it lists six before the Buddha, might might be one off there. But that doesn't really matter. It could be it could go that lineage could go back as far as it has come from a Buddha. But we use him as a great example and a starting point, and an unusual and inspiring example in the sense of he did something somewhat really unprecedented. You know, I I laughed out loud with uh Mockowin, you know, with his um comment on life is suffering, you know, which I I found a good comment that life was so was brutal and short and full of suffering. So it's uh that has not left us now, but we we we do have a certain uh advantages that have come, of course, with uh a more advanced civilization. Other things which are uh difficulties but a lot of advantages, enough for us to say, well, I don't know if it's suffering. Maybe maybe back then that was more felt more a little more obvious with people you know dying in the street left and right. That's a little more hidden now, even. But uh where he was uh different, Shaky Muni Boda, was being born into a uh high caste and uh high status, power, protected position of the day. And of course, it must take someone of great drive and great capacity to give up uh a life of apparent ease of protection to give that up, particularly in those circumstances of the day. But for him, the drive to confront and to come to understand, to illumine the great matter of this experience, the experience of life and death, the experience of it in permanence, that was um urgent enough for him to leave behind a life of apparent ease. And that is, you know, throughout history, that's a very rare case. You know, if you start with nothing, it's easier to go looking for something. So he's we put him at the beginning here, even Shakyamuni Buddha. And Maitreya is for Buddha to come at the end, it's all in this uh great distant future, the Buddha who comes right at the end and wraps up the whole show. Yeah, I remember reading when I was beginning to study Buddhism, that um my my trayer had said in some text that I read that he's gonna show up, or he, she is gonna show up in uh five point something like five billion years from now. So far, well that's it. But then I found that somewhat interesting because I read uh at the time what got me into Zen practice was the gate of uh coming in through uh reading about cosmology and and quantum mechanics, and really looking to try and find meaning or understanding in this mysterious experience, finding out what it what it means. I read somewhere with the the sun's life, it's about halfway through right now. And we're about halfway through life, and it's it's about five, it's got about five billion years to go. So maybe my tray is gonna come just when uh when the sun becomes a red giant. Yeah, it kind of lines up ballpark anyway. Doesn't really matter. What's important is in this setup that the teacher is is using, even the Shakyamuni Buddha right from the beginning, even that one right from the beginning, if we use them as beginning point to that one, which we're going to use as the end point, and everyone and everything in between is a servant of that one. And then he asks, who is that one? You know what? Certainly, when I came into beginning practice, um I didn't really have a lot of um feeling about uh doing it for others, you know, or or concern for others, particularly, beyond your, you know, I wasn't a sociopath, hopefully, but it's like most of my concern was with myself and my own mission, my own search, my own search for uh meaning. That's how I came into this. You know, I remember reading, I would read these increasingly complex books, scientific books, and I could keep up for a good chunk of it. Um, but I sort of somewhat, then I kind of reached my limit of what I could hold between my ears. And that's and I came across Zen, which immediately I saw was consistent with these principles. Sorry, there's something there that felt like that I knew was truth, there was some truth there. I remember my my grandfather who's a real positive influence on my life. He he he was a great reader. You know, library was very important in my little uh rundown working class town in Wales. The library was about the best, you know, was the best thing about the town, really. Um I should remember that this has been recorded. There were other good things too. Um the library was uh was a was a great one, and I managed to get some books on on Zen, and I was remembering he came in and he saw what I'd got and then and he and he said, you know what, David? You should stop right here, you know. That's enough. You know, and and I chose to and I ignored that advice for good or for ill. You know, for me it was more important, it was however he meant that. I'm sure he meant that well. You know, it's like too much inquiry along these lines, just uh get on with your life, you know, and there were consequences in what I did for myself, you know. I was involved, I had a a long, uh long relationship, I owned a house, I had family, and uh I ditched everything. And that hurt people in my quest to become enlightened. Very selfish goal, really. But it was something, or or it could be, you know, but it was it was something that I uh felt like I I needed to do. Everyone, all those who come to Sashin have way-seeking mind. Everybody decided not to go on something do with something else for a week, but rather to come here. There is that drive to really to to really to look and to uh make this this great matter, this mysterious life, to make this uh, to find freedom, to find peace. Whatever your your own drive is. Shakyamunis was Shakyamunis. You know, we say that this one here is a Buddha. You know, we're encouraged to realize that, but there's also great difference alongside that intrinsic unity, where you appear as this, I appear as this. And there's also a great difference. But every one of us is here in this place, and it really is a great mystery and an extraordinary thing. And there's still a great yearning in human beings, in many of us, to really come to come to grips with it, to come to grips with his life. For many years human life was just the same pretty much. As in not a lot changed. I saw in the documentary um about the caves of Chauvet in France back in the Neolithic, where they have these amazing paintings, and they have these handprints that people left on the wall. They're beautiful, they're haunting to me. You know, I'm sure to many people. These handprints, like I am, I was here. I was here. You know, each one of us has got that handprint up on the wall right now. I was I'm here. And there's handprints there which were so many, you know, 20,000 years old now. And then there's another handprint to the side, and somebody did the same thing 5,000 years later. And in that period, then in that place, probably not much changed for 5,000 years. Just the life. Living and dying, having children, being torn apart by large by animals, you know. Or all those things, good highs and lows, a lot that's the same as now, but not a lot of change. Of course, now we're living in this time where like our change feels more and more rapid. You know, I heard this uh a while, you know, the like the new iPhones coming out. The one I have is fine. I you know, my son likes to tease me, he goes, Oh, you love that phone, you know, and I I do in one sense, you know, and it's just like, yeah, it's it's it's a cool thing, isn't it? Now there's a new one. Not sure we really need a new one every year, but there's that it's there's that there's that sense of things. We're we're going, we're really going out of clip. On the level of things, on the level of form. You know, becoming more global, more connected. We've got access to more problems if we if we want to look for them. Instant access to a world of problems. So but then we come to we come to this Zazen. We come to practice. We take the radical step and we make the radical shift that turns the light to the basis of life, and we look at that which doesn't change. We look at that which is always the same. That which unites everyone and everything from Shaky Muni to Maitreya and everything in between. You know, often we're so concerned with the change in content. We're really always plugged in in that way. And if we're not we don't have a device, then we're plugged into the device between in our heads, which is also just like churning data, churning the content. And we easily become attached to that, or enamored of that, or so involved in that that we don't really know how to put that down, or really how to step aside or step out of that. That's when you know we say something, look at that which doesn't move. It's well that stops the mind dead. What does that mean? But we find that in our practice of thusness, thisness, the immersion in this oneness doing, which I stole from Aishu's teacher. But this this oneness doing, doing this one thing, this one experience, this one realization, this one, now appearing as some words thrown out and listening and sitting just this, just this sitting. What is there really to to do with that? Where is the where is the meaning? Does there need to be a meaning about? Is there something that that that's missing in each in this experience? Which seems to change. It's it changes in terms of impermanence and changing forms. But something doesn't change. There's this, always. Its appearances change. This is where we come up against, where the intellect, uh, our thinking it through doesn't reach. Our self-descript descriptions start to fall apart. Our understandings, attainments, or beliefs and opinions are disrupted, and we realize that they are always incomplete. Whatever we have gathered in the realm of knowledge is always lacking. We realize that there's nothing to hold on to. There's nothing to hold on to, there's nothing to keep. No matter what we do with our life. Some people have great lives, like leave a huge stamp. Shakyamuni Buddha left a huge mark. Right? I read that, you know, I used to like to read about um, you know, like old history, Greek history and Roman history and those kind of things. I read a biography of uh Alexander the Great, who I think died at 34 after conquering most of the world, right? He left a big mark. And uh big like Bruce, that's a problem for a lot of people. Um and it said that when he at one point he was riding into, you know, to go and roll over the next country, and um crossing into India, they came across uh spiritual practitioner, not unlike the Buddha. So he just had a basically just had a loincloth on. And it said we rode past him, he looked up at Alexander Great and said, Mighty as you are, you won't even, you'll never own even the ground under your feet. And um in the second it took, you know, Alexander Great to stop him be somebody running him through with a lance, right? He said, hold. And he he said, let's bring him with us. Let's bring and he was with him for the rest of uh how long he lived. Because he was uh he wasn't in that position for by accident. He recognized wisdom, he recognized truth in that. You won't even own the ground beneath your feet. We have a slave is no ownership or possession in this. In one sense, we're just passing through coming in with nothing and going out with nothing, and the whole way through. So then what to do with the time? What to do with this with this happening? Who do we do it for? Why and why is it done? You know in the Koan. Even Shakimuni and Maitreya are servants of that one. This this business of Zen or this business of Sashin really comes down to the examination of who is that one. You say that one, we can say provisionally if it's not really seen, that one. And as it's realized, it becomes this one. Who is this one? It says servants of that one. Servant can be uh a tricky word because you know perhaps it has somewhat of a negative connotation. To be a servant. It reminds me of you know when I was a kid, I remember my my parents watching uh there's an old British show called Upstairs, Downstairs. Had all the Tofts, all the posh people upstairs. And now well, we got Downton Abbey now. It's like there's something like that. You know, you got your your elevated people and those below who are who are serving them. And that can be the connotation of servant. You know, somebody who's serving somebody else. Well, that sounds doesn't sound great. Is that what I'm supposed to do? Just look after people, you know, work and serve people stuff. But if we if we look at the meaning, you go to the the root, the etymology of the word, you know, serve and serve and van in old French. Just mean serving person. There's no other in it. It's not about serving someone else. Person serving. Person serving. Fulfilling the function of taking care of this experience. How is how do we how do we apply that? We wish to serve, to to take care of this experience. If we apply that, even Chakimuni, we encourage by these great examples, people with like, you know, even one of them is I think mythic in this case, right? But but given great, endowed with great capacities. It may start out in one sense of like a sense of naturally doing this for me. I'm doing this for me. There's nothing wrong with that. There's that motivation to clarify, but it leads us to the question of what is that? Who is that one? Who is this me? With these long periods of Zazen and the opportunity for Dokasan and the teachings, and what we we glean from the experience is sense of me as the identified, separate, you know, described, defined, conditioned one that is shaken up, that is, begins to shift. And you see that this this collection of experiences does not reach the bottom. It only lives in this, it lives in this experience as a story of our life. Nothing wrong with that, but there's no fixed existent truth there that we can really pull out or come up with. Biologically, physically, emotionally, different. So we aggregate so much to this sense of me. And if we sit and then we toy with that, you know, either adding or subtracting to the to the description of me, then that is still that's moving the chairs around, deck chairs around on the Titanic. Which is slowly sinking, irrevocably. May take a long time to go down, and I hope the water's warm. But it's sinking, so it's not a good investment to just consistently try and prop that one up. Much better to let that one, the me sense, that one, let that be disrupted with this practice of Zazen, and this practice of very broadly oneness doing, not just on the cushion, but in the action of whatever the present experience is. You know, no need to continue to uh construct in that way. It's a wonderful part of the schedule, upholding of the schedule. At this point, you know what's an X, don't have to do a lot of thinking or planning about it. Just move seamlessly into the next activity so that we see that this is just one great activity from begin from Shakyamuni to Maitreya. That is the just the function of this. How do we align with this? If it's if again, if we're we're stuck in like how I'm doing in this or what this is doing for me, or when I am with it, we're always got one foot outside it, looking in with preference and commenting on. Much better to just disappear as that, being who we are, each one of us. Often we doubt that that we put Shakimuni on this high, and Maitre may be this high, and and other people, and we have our ranking. Maybe we do it in here. Well, these people know this, that's why they're doing that, and etc. And we put our ourself in in a certain place, either a high place or a or a low place. Better to let that, just let that go. That's always just extra, but just a description. I was talking with my friend Varon, who who went down to see just before Seshin. He was telling me he was at the the temple where he is in in Japan with uh Shogenji with his teacher, and they went into the into the founders' hall, which is over here, is right back there behind the altar, into the Kaisando. And he said at the temple there, you have to kind of go down some steps, and you can't really see, you have to go low and you can't really see what's up there, right? Which says something right there, right? So you have to go down. So he goes in there with with uh with the abbot Viroshi, and they're doing the offerings to uh it's Kanzen Egan, so founder of the Miyasinji Rinzai School, represented there and others, and he said he's doing these things, and there's one point where he hits a bell and he hits the clappers and he hit the clappers and he hit the clappers a little loud. And he said his teacher scolded him. It's like, what are you doing? Hitting them like that. How do you have such confidence in front of you in here? You know, basically, and kind of paraphrase it. You know, and that really struck me. It struck, he said it struck him, you know, in that in that situation. And it's not about you should hit them like, you know, lightly, like, oh I'm not worthy. That's that's the other end, the other side of the spectrum. These people are amazing, Shakimuni, my trayer, and this master, and everything. Well, I'm crap, you know. I'm gonna hit my clappers like this. No, it's not like hitting them like I know, I've I know what's going on, I've reached this kind of enlightenment or into, I'm gonna give them a good. No. You know, it there's when we strike these bells, or strike these clappers, I'm putting a lot of pressure on Daniel for it. You know, we invite you invite the clappers to be struck. You invite, you make the space and invite the bell to ring. And take out the me out of that. It doesn't need to have so much me in it. And that goes right through all of these activities. There's enough me already rather than having to add more. But whatever needs to be done, taking care of that one thing as it is taken care of. Often we struggle again. Well, why do we do it like this? Or why do I do it like that? Maybe we should do it this way, maybe should do it that way. There's so much to be learned or understood in just doing this as it appears. And we can bring that to all of our activities. Very important in CARZEN. We have our instructions for practice from the beginning. We should be pretty clear at this point what we're we're we're doing on the cushion. Is that being done? Or or and it's natural that we have a certain process to go through. A certain process, and we we we tussle, and there's a difficulty that's inherent. That's why we do so much of it. Do so much sitting, that's why it's seven days, not one day. It tends to take a while. We need to have our noses rubbed in reality. That's how stubborn we are. You have to be have your no you have to have our noses rubbed in it. Because we're so wily an expert at avoiding that, avoiding our responsibility, ultimately. To, as it says here, a servant of that one. And he and he asks, tell me, who is that one? It brings us to that question of what is the self? We shouldn't just skip straight over that, you know, but but really that that is the business again of Sashina, his practice, taking a really a really close the practice of intimacy with this self, to really look. How is self and other organized in our mind? Are there people who are not in the club? In this coin, it starts with Shaki Mooney, goes all the way to my trayer, and that can that's a circle. Not from A to B, but in this rather in this great circle. If it's not in every one and all things together, then it's not real. It's not the real thing. There's still people on the outs. But we navigate this world with the appearance of others, or the apparent appearance of others. There's a lot of different looking people in this room. Relatively, there's a lot of difference. But what is it there that is not separate? What is the true nature of this self? Where are the gaps? Where are the joins? You know, you do that in our mind and we put others on the outside. What is that? Are they on the outside? What do we really know? You know, in the verse, don't draw another's bow, don't ride another's horse, don't speak of another's faults. Don't try to know about another's affairs, another. It's the same character. We talked about translation earlier in the week, for how subtle these translations can be. You know, here the translation of the character is another's affairs or another's property, same character as that one. But Yamada Roshi, when he translated this, felt it important not to not to use another as the translation for the Koan. Not to say as servants of another. Because right there it, you know, it leads us into this, like, what is that split? We say another and you just put it out there. You say that one, it's like, who's that? Turns us right back, right back at this to really to look. Sometimes we'll we'll you know we'll kind of rank our practice of how we're doing or how our Zarzen is or how my session's going. You know, and you might be having the experience, well, I'm having a horrible time. And if so, well, thank you for being here. You know, thank you for being here and having the courage to continue to go through that because whatever is going on in this one here in this in this lens, whether it's good or bad, it's holding everybody else. You could come here and have a worse session compared to what, you know, having a terrible time, but you thank you for supporting me and the people next to you and the person across the room. You know, it serves. It serves to have everyone come together to allow the container to form, you know, to really create or help create this place where you can really look, yeah, where the transformation can really occur, where old patterns and descriptions and ways which have kept us bound, that those knots can be loosened, and you we find the freedom which all of these cases and this great tradition talks of. And you taste it and you know it. You know, in Mumon's commentary, he says, if you clearly recognize that one, it's just like meeting your father at the crossroads. It's not necessary to ask whether it's it's him or not. You know, or in another place we have the uh Zen saying, um, when you drink water, you know for yourself whether it is uh cool or warm. Zar Zen is practice, is that way, the realization is that way. You know, we can hear all the descriptions in the world and all the explanations, and it doesn't really do much for us. When you really understand and you look at your we look at our our the nature of this self, what you realize then not you can it cannot be disputed. You realize you know it, you know yourself, you know truth recognizes truth. It's a nice analogy, you know. Some glimpse I was reading about how they have these trying to get autonomous cars going and realizing that it's maybe a lot a bit more difficult than you know, the timeline's a bit longer to get this done. It's just apparently we're the way that we're able to organize this information flow as these smart human beings that we are, it's incredibly subtle. You know, you can glimpse somebody driving past in a car and in a in a in a tight like in a millisecond, if it's a relative or somebody that you know, and you just see their ear over the back of the head and you know it's them. And anything programmed is just a million miles from that kind of detection. You know, you know. So you see an old photograph and recognize a relative, or you spot some you spot that. You can have real trust in this practice or this this inquiry, that it has worked, it would not have been maintained to this day. We can avail ourselves of this vehicle in order to rediscover or find our intrinsic freedom and peace. And when we find that, you know it. It's not something you have to remember, it's not a piece of information to remember in the mind. And although we don't own the ground under our feet, we're satisfied and at home on that patch of ground. And we don't have to compare it as good, bad, or better than another place. The trust of a life is in this patch of ground. Whatever that experience, what however that is showing up. It's a good thing about sitting so much is that you sit when you don't want to. I was talking to a friend who's a teacher in a different tradition, and he was telling me, I love meditation. And I'm like, really? And he goes, Yeah, why don't you? And I'm like, not really. I mean, for most of my meditation career, it's just a bit, it's a it seemed an expedient vehicle for awakening. It's like much of the time, it's just like grinding through glass or something, you know, like long sessions in pain and the difficulty of the practice. I don't love it much of the time. But that that's that's not a that's not a bad thing. We don't start here to like fall in love with sitting in stillness, right? But rather, through sitting in stillness, we find our home regardless of the circumstances of good or bad. So that when it's difficult, it's difficult. Boring, it's boring, confusing it's confusing, and you know, and so on and so forth. But that is no longer shaking us from our seat so that we fall into doubt and comparison with other. But you know the one you are. That one. And you know, as like as I brought up at the beginning, we live in this age where the all of the world's problems are like flashing up on the screen, and we we could see, you know, we become aware of these like global issues and national issues, and uh what are we gonna do about this and that? You know, but let's let's not overlook taking care of this, whatever this is, not meaning that we can't become involved in those things, in in you know, wider activities. But our living experience is always in whatever is is right now, whatever is at hand. And if we really find ourselves here, and you see that there's a lot to take care of in every direction, you find the function of this moment now, what's required. Not in a martyrdom sense of like I've got to clean the whole world up, but like it's whatever your life, whatever my life is, whatever your life is, what is the business of your life? Taking care and matching that. But with the trust that we're in always the right place, the right time, the right ingredients. So, you know, as we're advancing through the through the days, whatever that means, um but we have had this time of settling and gone through a lot of the the difficulty of the you know the physicality of sitting and keeping ourselves you know developing that focus, and now is the time to really to to deepen. It's a time, you don't slack off at the end, but rather it's a like a doubling down. You know, it's like le leave leave everything on the field in Session. Leave the you leave everything on the field.
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SPEAKER_00But we don't have to take it on as a big difficult how do I work this out project. You only have to take care of whatever is at hand now. What is what is what is this? Who is that one? How do I take care of this? Thank you for your for your strong efforts so far. And we'll finish