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Basic Zen – 9 talks

A series of talks by Zoketsu on practicing Zen in contemporary Western life. Topics covered include meditation practice, koan study, ethical conduct, relationships, working with a teacher.

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1. Zen Koan Practice Introduction: Who Hears this Sound

This is an introduction to Koan Study. Zoketsu discusses the history of Koans and their relationship to Zen practice in the Rinzai and Soto schools of Zen. He recommends Dogen’s Genjo Koan as a guide in making this very life our central koan.

Koan Practice Introduction: Who Hears this SoundKoan study and Everyday Zen By Zoketsu Norman Fischer | March 13, 2001

Abridged and edited by Barbara Byrum and Cynthia Schrager

Last week I talked about concentrating on the breath in meditation practice – following, discriminating, vivifying, and questioning the breath. That last step of sitting with the breath with a questioning spirit begins at first with mechanically asking with each breath, “What is it?” After that, we sit with the breath with a spirit of inquiry, without thinking about it or saying any words. This is an example of koan practice. Since koan practice is, I think, more or less unique to Zen, in all world religious practice, I thought that I would say more about it. The word “koan,” like so many other Zen words, comes from ordinary, Chinese vocabulary, rather than from technical, Buddhist vocabulary. The word koan, meaning “public case,” was a legal term. A koan was a case that could be used as a legal precedent, because it was public and paradigmatic. There is a great irony in the Zen context, not because a koan is being used as a lynchpin in a subtle argument of discrimination of one thing from another, as a legal case would be used, but in exactly the opposite way, as a device to thrust us beyond discrimination to an experience of oneness. No doubt the old Chinese Zen fellows were quite aware of this irony, and they delighted in it. Zen koans were public records of a particular sort. Since the beginning, Zen proclaimed a declaration of independence from Buddhism. The earliest formula for the definition of Zen included phrases like, “Beyond words and letters,” or “It is an existential truth pointing directly to the human heart.” Zen did not have the aid of any normative doctrine, and it was beyond all forms of piety, including Buddhism. Therefore, it made no sense at all to quote scripture as a way to advance or justify religious understanding. Instead, it made sense that the everyday lives of the masters themselves would come to represent – rather than scripture – religious truth and authority. Their sayings and doings began to circulate, at first probably as rumors and wild tales. Later they were written down in the highly literary world of the Chinese Tang dynasty. In the end, they constituted a new, Buddhist literary tradition, done with a pithy, shorthand, and baffling style.There were many, many collected books of these stories. All of them were called Transmission of the Lamp. There were many different ones with similar titles. They were strung together pseudo-biographies and had a fake style of old Chinese histories. These brief biographical texts were always seen, I think, as religious teaching documents, rather than actual biographies. Little anecdotes were lifted and circulated in the monasteries. Eventually these stories found their way into dharma talks and were repeated by teachers.Buddhist in their fundamental thrust, this meditation practice was influenced quite a bit by Daoist thought and practice, which from the beginning, in the earliest texts of Daoism, loved paradox. For example, some random lines from the Tao te Ching: “Therefore, the master acts without doing anything.” “He does without doing.” “She teaches without opening her mouth.” “Things arise, and she lets them come. Things disappear, and she lets them go.” So that kind of paradoxical style became a kind of conditioning factor in the development of Zen meditation practice. Traditional Buddhist meditation is, in effect, a combination of two different practices called “stopping” and “seeing.” Stopping, or calming meditation, focused the mind on a meditation object, so you could calm the mind and enrich it. Once you did that, which is a long process of getting the mind really clear and focused, next the practitioner was supposed to take this developed, concentrated mind and turn it toward introspection, until you could see the impermanence and non-conceptual characteristics of reality. This would take many, many lifetimes to do.In Zen meditation, the whole thing was collapsed into one practice and was highly intensified. The practice called for the powerful focusing of the mind on an object, not for the purpose of calming and enriching, but for the purpose of immediately seeing directly into the object and through the object; seeing not only through the object, but through all objective reality; seeing the mind itself and how the mind functions to create an objective world of suffering. You see how easily and naturally Zen meditation would have been applied to the new koan literature that was developing along side of it. The stories grew more and more simple and stripped down as they were used as this meditation object. Meditators would work with the stories, not as literature or articles of doctrinal understanding, but as seeing the stories, rather than understanding them as ideas. So you could see into them and the reality of the mind itself, thus releasing the mind from the compulsions and the sufferings that would be a consequence of grasping and false conceptions.D.T. Suzuki, the Japanese Zen scholar, first introduced this koan literature to the West. He presented koans as puzzles designed to subvert the logical mind, causing the practitioner to flip the mind into a new way of thinking and being. But most people who now work with koans do not emphasize, as Suzuki did, their irrationality. It’s not so much that the stories are meant to short-circuit the rational mind, as they are pointing to a more intuitive kind of experience based on the feeling of being itself, rather than on thinking about being. Koans don’t in and of themselves obviate logic. People can talk about koans that require a high, logical accomplishment, even though it may be a different style than the one we are used to. There were lots of ways of working with this material, depending on what master or lineage you were studying with. It wasn’t until the 18th century in Japan, that the system of koan study that most Westerners are familiar with, was devised by the Japanese Rinzai monk Hakuin. It’s a great system, full of jokes and pantomime. It emphasizes making the stories of the Ancients personal and immediate, almost physically so, giving up all abstraction and focus on doctrine. The system teaches that if it’s not your own, it doesn’t count. If you can’t show it, and you can only explain it, then it isn’t really yours. This makes for some pretty lively religion. These stories have baffled and frustrated Zen students, and we can imagine merry Zen masters ringing their little bells as a Zen student leaves the interview room in abject defeat. The other thing I consider not to be so great about the system is that it systematized the koans into a set curriculum. There are different set curricula, but basically they all had this idea of a whole curriculum of koans. The student would go from one koan to another, in progression over many years study, advancing towards some goal that became more and more, I suppose, enticing. The goal of completion in this very long course of study would apparently mean that the student would be sanctioned as an officially enlightened teacher and then ready to take on students as a master. But, of course, there were then, and still are, people who could, because of their great talents, complete the course of study of koans and still manage to remain totally deficient in the practical, human wisdom that it takes to be a spiritual mentor and guide – not to mention just getting through the day without getting into trouble! So there were then, and still are, brilliant koan practitioners who couldn’t get it together in their lives. This has been the main criticism of the koan system. In other words, to what extent does it really produce wise practitioners, or to what extent is it a highly sophisticated religio-aesthetic game that fosters competition, arrogance, and corruption? To evaluate this question, we have to ask, “What is the experience of enlightenment or satori that seems to be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?” Satori is a spiritual opening, an authentic and personal realization of the oneness of things, the non-difference within difference of self and other. The experience of satori is not something that comes at the end of koan study. Usually it comes toward the beginning with the passing of the first koan. Satori is, no doubt, a major experience. Also, I think it’s a crucial experience. Probably it is the essential religious experience, but also it is a momentary experience, by no means final and decisive. It’s a glimpse, not a steady gaze. It certainly does not exhaust the range of religious experience, which must include things like ethical conduct, wise and accurate expression, kindness, empathy, self-knowledge, personal integrity, and healthy doses of courage, attitude, and common sense. In fact, it is also said by traditional Zen teachers that satori is just a good beginning to spiritual practice. It is the opening of the door. It’s not the end. It’s not the culmination. On the other hand, it is probably true that working systematically with koans over a long time might help to develop some of these other qualities that I am speaking about. Koan work does take persistence; it does take self-confidence; it does take self-surrender; it does take imagination; it does take courage. But it is clear that working with koans over a long period of time is no guarantee that these qualities will be present in the person in their lives, outside the context of the koan practice, outside the meditation hall. So I personally think that this marvelous system of religious cultivation is useful. It is really a lot of fun – at least that is what I have found in my limited experience of it – but I don’t think it is fundamental or necessary. What about the actual technique of meditating on a koan? In a more down-to-earth way, it would be like this: you would establish your strong meditation practice, calm your mind, still your thoughts, focus yourself, and then hold the koan out in front of you. The best way to do this is to memorize it and then reduce it to something very simple. Case One of Mumonkam is great, because it is already as reduced as you could get: one syllable [mu], which is easy to hold with each breath. So you sit with a very intense focus, breathing into the one word, until it loses all sense and all meaning. You get tired of all speculation and thinking about it. You even lose all sense that the word mu is an object separate from yourself. You try to stay with it and identify with it, all during a retreat, all day and all night long. You give up expecting any results and being clever. You have to burn through your desire for success and your fear of failure. You even have to get rid of the person who might desire and fear, just sitting with “mu, mu, mu,” or whatever koan it is that you are working with until, as Master Mumon says, “it becomes clear to you.” In the classical, Hakuin system, you are doing this practice in the context of lengthy meditation retreats. You are making frequent, intense trips to the teacher’s room with your inevitably feeble answer to the koan. [Laughter] But these many trips are very important, because the teacher – either on purpose or by mistake – gives you hints, and the hints will help a great deal. When you finally do come in, and your answer is accepted, you will be really happy. Master Mumon was not exaggerating when he said, “Joy of the unexpected discovery.”You could see why a lot of the Chinese Zen masters dismissed the whole idea of an elegant, literary, progressive curriculum of koan study, which seemed to present spiritual awakening as if it were a college course. They gave their students, instead, a single, endless koan, which they were to meditate on for the course of a lifetime. Basically, just stay with this one. They would have koans like, “Who is it?” or “What is it?” or the koan I mentioned at the beginning of this talk and last time, “What is it as the breath?” Dogen also devised a kind of koan practice that is particularly useful to contemporary practitioners, who might want to work with koans outside the context of regular retreats or daily, temple life. In other words, people like us. He called this method Genjo Koan of the Present Moment, as I like to translate it. He explains this quite thoroughly in the essay that we all know about by that title. It is a beautiful piece of writing. It is the first Dogen fascicle that was translated into English, and it conditioned the way that Dogen was received in the West for many years afterward. In this essay, Dogen says, in effect, that the experience of being itself, moment after moment, is itself a koan. It ought to be approached that way. In other words, every moment of time is a koan, because it exists at the intersection of time and eternity. To be able to experience time in this way, with all its dimension and inconceivability, is to appreciate the practice of the koan in the present moment. In actual meditation practice, it might mean sitting with a spirit of strong inquiry, without the use of any devices other than just being there. In the case of daily life practice, it might mean taking personal issues or themes that arise within one’s life as koans for contemplation, rather than as objective issues that one is trying to work through for personal ease or advantage. I personally find the idea of Genjo Koan really useful in that it affords us a way to view our lives as deep, spiritual journeys, rather than as mundane distractions to be transcended. Fundamentally, koan practice–and Zen practice in general—is not seeing our lives in that way. It is the recognition that our small lives are only small, because we have made them so, by our conceptualizations of them. In reality, we don’t know what our lives are. We can’t say what they are. They are chimerical containers that hold everything that we could ever wish for or imagine. They are temporal analogues for the infinite.

 

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Student/Teacher Relationship

Zoketsu describes his path as a Dharma student and discusses a variety of ways to work with Buddhist teachers.

Student / Teacher Relationship
On working with Buddhist teachers

Talk given: Karuna Retreat, November 4, 2000, Vancouver,(Transcribed and edited by Barbara Byrum)What is a spiritual teacher? Do you need to “have” a spiritual teacher if you are going to practice the dharma? And if you do have a spiritual teacher, what does it mean to have a spiritual teacher, and how are you supposed to relate to that teacher? So these are the things that I want to consider together this afternoon. In my little bit of study of Western spiritual traditions, I am getting the impression that in the Western traditions there has been, as in the East, an intimate tradition of spiritual mentorship. I know that in Catholicism and Judaism there have been such traditions, but it seems that whatever those traditions may have been, they don’t really exist anymore, and the thread has been broken. Of course, in Asia there are still lively traditions of spiritual mentorship. I was in Ireland for a Buddhist – Christian dialogue, and one person said, “How come the Catholic Church is in such trouble, and Buddhism is doing so well? I told this to a friend of mine, a Westerner who is monk in Thailand, and he burst out laughing, because Buddhism is not doing so well in Asia. Not that its doing so great here, but it’s on the upward swing in the West. Nevertheless, these traditions of spiritual mentorship do live in Asia and have been transmitted to the West. The problem is that the translation may not be as easy as it would seem. The West and the East are vastly different psychologically and culturally, and the modern period and the post modern period are vastly different from the feudal periods in Asia when these traditions were established. So as we rush blindly, literally to transpose these things to our own context, we find many problems, and we probably need to think more deeply about it. Now to speak quite personally, I have to admit that I am a stubborn and independent type person. This was something that my father pointed out to me many times. Now I don’t necessarily recommend this, and I am personally not necessarily proud of it., and the consequences in my life have not always been positive, but still, like you, I am more or less stuck with my karmic tendencies, and I have to make use of them. So I was never in my lifetime ever interested in being the disciple of a spiritual teacher, and I never sought one out. I wanted to do practice, but I was never interested in seeking out a teacher at all. it is very odd that given all that, I still enjoy a number of warm and respectful student – teacher relationships in the dharma, and despite my karmic tendencies, I never had difficult relationships with my teachers. I never struggled with them, had battles, conflicts, or hassles. I did the best that I could do to be honest with my teachers, to be forthcoming with what was going in my life and practice, and I tried my best within my limitations to put into practice the suggestions they gave me directly or indirectly through dharma talks.I always felt, though, that the connections that I had with my teachers were fundamentally without content. It wasn’t about the content. Content was just an excuse. Also I felt, and still feel, that the relationships were fundamentally not personal relationships, that we were meeting one another on another ground. Anyway, that’s how I understood it at the time, and that’s how I still understand it. In the end I would say that I have a tremendous love for my teachers. That’s the word that I would use. I don’t know if they necessarily love me, but I love them! And I think of my teachers fairly often, and almost always with strong feelings of gratitude. I can tell you that my own teachers have had serious problems in many ways. They, as people, had various flaws, some of which I was painfully and clearly aware of. But again, oddly enough, for some reason, this has never been a problem to me. In fact, sometimes the discovery of the spectacular human flaws of my teachers has only served to cheer me up! Because I felt that if they are like that, there is hope for me. Also I always had the goal in my spiritual practice of being a human being rather than some kind of superhuman. I could see how someone might have the goal of being a superhuman. I think that’s great, but that’s not my goal. So when I saw that my teachers were quite human, which means flawed, I thought, “That’s great. That gives me hope.” So I didn’t have a problem with it. I was able at the same time to appreciate them as Buddha, really to see them as Buddha and to recognize all the gifts that they gave me. And again, I never saw any of this as something personal, because to see it as personal would limit it, to make it much smaller than I think it really is, and therefore to make myself much smaller than I think I really am. The reason that I was thinking about this topic of teachers is because I am reading a book by Alexander Berzin called, Relating to a Spiritual Teacher: Building a Healthy Relationship. Alex is scholar of Tibetan Buddhism and has spent the last twenty-nine years living mostly in India and traveling all over the world teaching and orienting people to Buddhism The title implies that there’s a way to relate to a spiritual teacher, but of course there isn’t a way. Like all human relationships, relationship with spiritual teachers is something that flows along with its own sort of logic and its own life. Relating to a spiritual teacher, I think, has some of life’s deepest joys. Also, I have not seen greater tragedies than those that I have witnessed in the case of people relating to their spiritual teachers in the midst of great suffering. I suppose that it would be naí»ve and foolish to think that one could relate to spiritual teachers and avoid the suffering that appears to be all too common, but I feel sure that it doesn’t have to be that bad. A lot of that can be avoided fairly easily if we could only lighten up a little bit and keep foremost in our minds that spiritual practice really is about freedom from suffering and the establishment in our lives of a kind of quiet and lasting happiness. So first, there is no template. There are various levels of spiritual teachings and spiritual teachers. They are not all teaching on the same level. And likewise, there are various levels of spiritual students, various motivations, and various capacities. And there are some teachers who are students themselves, and some students who are teachers. And even the most profound of all teachers is only just as profound as the student in front of him or her. With another student that great teacher might be someone quite ordinary and superficial, and still with another person that person might not even be a Buddhist teacher at all. So it is a rich, complex, and ever changing situation. In his book, Alex mentions a number of kinds of different Buddhist teachers. One kind is what he calls a Buddhism professor. I think he means that literally: somebody who is a professor of Buddhism, who knows many things about Buddhism, and who is capable of having a class in Buddhist teaching. Such a person doesn’t necessarily practice, or if they do practice, they are not bringing their practice to bear in their teachings. The next kind of teacher is called a dharma instructor. That’s someone who does practice and is able to teach you about how these teachings work in our actual lives. He or she teaches Buddhism not in the abstract, but Buddhism as practically applied. Then, there are meditation or ritual instructors. These are people who are empowered and to some extent have mastery in meditation practices and various ritual practices. They can instruct you in these practices and guide you through them. The next one he mentions is a spiritual mentor, or what we would usually call a spiritual teacher. That is someone we would relate to over a period of time in a personal, face to face, ongoing relationship. He or she would help us to grow in our practice and to stabilize in it, so that our practice is no longer a matter of learning some skills or ideas that are external to ourselves. Our practice would be nurtured through our relationship with this spiritual teacher into something that becomes our lives, transforms our lives, and stabilizes our lives in the teachings.So, in order to be able to do that, spiritual teachers, in addition to knowing the teachings and the meditation practices, have to be people who follow moral conduct. They have a moral code, but more importantly, it is very clear and explicit that they live it. There is nothing else in their lives but living the teachings on a moment to moment basis, and you can see that. You need to see that if you are going to have confidence in them. But in addition to that, they also have to be people who are emotionally available to us, because there can be people who have all of these great qualities, but they’re really not available to us. So a spiritual mentor for us has to be someone who is willing to meet us anytime, where we are, without pushing us away, or getting too close. There are also levels and types of students, and that is important to recognize as well. Now when I say levels and types, I don’t mean better or worse, higher grade students, you know like teas. This tea costs $50 a pound, and this one costs $30 a pound. It is not about being more or less advanced than it is simply standing in another place according to one’s karma. The basic Mahayana Buddhist vision is that all sentient beings are on the path, and everyone is walking the path exactly in the place where he or she needs to be, and it will take all of us together, continuing where we are, and doing our best, to enable each one of us to become awakened. So students differ in their establishment in the dharma, knowledge of the dharma, appreciation of the dharma, and commitment to the dharma.In order to take on this transformative relationship with a spiritual mentor, the student needs to have the capacity to do this and really understand what’s involved. He or she needs to have done enough practice that they’ve developed a certain amount of discipline, and a certain amount of stability in the dharma, so that their practice doesn’t disappear all of a sudden when something difficult comes up. And that student needs to have come to a point when they see that in order to go on in their path, they need is to make a serious commitment. When a person comes to that, not as some wild idea in their mind, but as a step by step approach, then that person is ready to approach a spiritual mentor and try to make such a commitment.

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Suffering and the End of Suffering

In his introductory remarks as a weekend sesshin, Zoketsu suggests that we respect the forms of our practice during a retreat period. If we do not, we may not end our suffering before we are dead.In Zen, formal talks given by teachers are called "Taisho", which actually doesn't mean "dharma talk," it means "presenting a shout." In Zen we're not really concerned so much about the dharma and the teachings, as we are about getting down to cases with our own experience, and seeing things in our lives as they really are. So my job in a formal talk isn't so much to give you Buddhist teachings as it is to indicate that.

There's a sutra from the old Pali canon that I really like called the Malunkyaputta Sutta. It's about a monk named Malunkyaputta who one day was meditating, and in the midst of his meditation he got really mad. He started thinking, "Gee, you know, the Buddha never said anything about who made the world. And the Buddha never said anything about whether the world is eternal or not. And the Buddha never said anything about what happens to Buddhas after they die." And a whole bunch of other things like that that the Buddha never said anything about. He said, "I want to know about those things, and I'm really pissed that the Buddha didn't say anything about that. Now if the Buddha didn't know anything about that, that's one thing, then he could just admit it, and that would be fine. But he didn't say that either, so I'm really angry about this , and I don't feel like I can go on with this meditation period until I get to the bottom of it."

So he got up from his meditation seat and went right to the Buddha. He said to the Buddha, "You never said anything about whether the world is eternal or not. You haven't mentioned anything about how the world was created. You didn't tell me anything about what happens to a Buddha after he dies, if she dies. I think that if you don't know any of these things you should be man enough to say you don't know, and I'll be happy. But if you do know, I think it's really not right for you not to say, because I'm really interested. I think you should tell me, it's pretty important." So he said this to the Buddha, it says in the sutra.

Well, the Buddha said, "Malunkyaputta, did I ever promise you when you came that I was going to tell you about these things?" Malunkyaputta said, "No, actually, you didn't." The Buddha said, "You know, it really doesn't have anything to do with whether I know the answer to these things, or I don't know the answer to these things. Imaging someone who gets shot with an arrow, and who is lying there mortally wounded, with the last moments of life ebbing away. A surgeon comes along to pull the arrow out, and the man weakly looks up at the surgeon and says: 'Before you pull the arrow out can you tell me to what clan belongs the person who shot this arrow? Would you find out for me, please, before you pull the arrow out, whether the person who shot me was a tall person or a short person? Would you mind inquiring, before you pull this arrow out, the colour of skin of this person: was it light skin, dark skin, medium skin? What was the profession of the person who shot this arrow? Could you tell me, please, was it an artisan, or a physician, or a scholar? And furthermore, what sort of arrow is this anyway? Was it made from a cherry tree, or an oak tree, or a pine tree? And what about the feathers on the end of this arrow? Were they made from goose feathers, or are they eagle feathers, or vulture feathers? And what about the tip of the arrow, how is that made?'"

The Buddha said, "If the person who was shot were to seek the answers to all these questions, definitely, he would be dead before he found the answers to these questions. So Malunkyaputta, it's not that I know the answers to these questions and I'm not telling you, or that I don't know the answers to these questions. It's just that I know for sure that speculating on these questions does not help to live the life that we want for practice. Malunkyaputta, I have not been silent. There is something that I have told you. I have spoken of suffering, and the cause of suffering, and the end of suffering, and the path. Suffering and the end of suffering, that is what's important. About that I have spoken."

This is why we're here for this weekend, because we are concerned with suffering and the end of suffering. This is the whole point of the Buddhist path. We can't help but notice, and our sitting practice makes it ever more clear, that we are in a condition that is suffering and that continues suffering. Impermanence is suffering, not getting what you want is suffering, being close to what you don't want is suffering, seeing others in pain is suffering. There is no way to be human in this world without encountering suffering. But suffering is not enough. There is a way to end suffering, and that's why we're here. That's the purpose of this weekend retreat.

What's the cause of suffering and how can we overcome suffering? There are many explanations and many ways of looking at this in Buddhist understanding. But maybe we can say that the fundamental cause of suffering is an unwise relationship to our self, to our very self. Some people think that the Buddha taught that there is no self, but I don't really think that the Buddha taught that there is no self or that there is self. It was one of those questions that he thought was useless, and which we could spend lots of time on, and waste the precious moment for practice. I think that the Buddha was only concerned that we see that it's not a question of what the self is, or whether there is a self or not a self. It's a question of how we relate to our self, how we stand in relation to our self.

Our deeply ingrained habit, our natural human tendency, is to define ourselves, almost reflexively, almost before thinking a single thought, in a narrow way; then to defend ourselves, and attach ourselves, and avert and run away from anything that seems to attack this self that we have created. Actually, if we really watch our experience, we know that self is one meeting point after another. We meet something, and it goes away, and we meet something again. So our life, really, if we live it most intimately, is meeting-meeting- meeting, warmth-warmth-warmth, love-love-love, moment after moment. This moment of meeting our experience, without anything standing in the way. But we don't see it that way. We put things, and ideas, and notions in between ourselves and our experience, and we're removed, or narrowed down every minute. Because of that many things seem threatening, many things seem difficult, and we suffer, and we see a world in which others suffer as well. To be truly intimate with our experience, whatever it may be, is our job in Zen practice, and definitely the job for these few days coming up.

Once a monk asked Master Tozan, "What is Buddha?" Master Tozan said, "Three pounds of flax." In saying this, Master Tozan was not talking about flax, he wasn't talking about Buddha, he was talking about intimacy. He was talking about being present with nothing between ourselves and our experience. If one can enter into these words of Master Tozan, without projecting ideas of enlightenment or ideas of Buddha, but just completely entering the words, one can see beyond suffering. If we can just be with a single sound, a single sensation of the body, even a single thought, or a single breath, we can be intimate with our experience and understand that that which we interpose in the midst of our lives, that distances us from our real self and from each other is only something added from the outside.

Most of you, I think, are experienced hands at retreats and sesshins so I don't have to say much about it, other than to remind you that all of our routines here, our forms, our little rules, are all to create a container for the intensity of our experience. Usually, our experience is fairly distracted experience – many ways to not pay attention. We create a very intense environment by all of us cooperating with these rules, so that each one of us can have a very intense experience, and the possibility of really becoming intimate with our self. So I would encourage you all to exactly honour the spirit that Liona was expressing in the beginning: to keep silence, not make eye contact with each other, try to follow the forms as best you can, bowing to the cushion, the form of kinhin, and so on and so forth. All of these things are ways of creating more intense space in which we can experience ourselves in a different way. Hopefully, not to hold all this with a sense of uptightness or rule-bound feeling, but with some understanding of its purpose, and some good spirit and kindness for each other, I think we can keep these rules and forms.

In sitting practice, I like to emphasise paying attention to the breath, because I think it's good for us. I think that we are very much given to lots of thinking. Western people, I think, or modern people (everybody's a Westerner – Eastern/Western, anymore, what's the difference?), are full of information and thought, about ourselves, about our world. We're really good, we can figure out a lot of things. The antidote to this, which can be quite distancing, is: just be with the breath. Following the breath in the belly, being aware of each breath as you breathe in ("This is breathing in."), being aware of each breath as you breathe out ("This is breathing out."). Trying your best to sit up straight, and sitting up straight means: lengthening your spine, so that the lower back has a little arch; your chest is lifted up; the top of the head is pressed up toward the ceiling, the chin tucked in; the shoulders are back. The upper body is open, and this will free up breathing, and make it more vivid. Paying attention to posture, paying attention to mudra: thumbtips just touching; holding the mudra, if it's at all possible, up against the belly; the arms making an oval and the palms of the hands making an oval.

Paying attention to the posture, and each breath, in and out, and using those things to anchor our attention, so that if something other than breath and posture should arise one sotices it clearly. In other words, we're not trying to eliminate other phenomena. If there's a thought in the mind, or a sound, or a bodily sensation, one clearly comprehends it. If you find it helpful, you can note what it is, like "Thinking about the future," "Worrying about money," whatever happens to arise. It doesn't matter so much what the label is, but it might help you, or not. You can try – label the thought. As soon as you label it, though, not to speculate or follow it, but this is a way of acknowledging: "Yes, there is a thought of the future; there is fear; there is discomfort in the mind," whatever it is. Then coming back to the breath, and the posture. The same thing if there should be a physical sensation in the body, of discomfort or painfulness, noticing: "Yes, this is a painful sensation in the knee (or in the back)," and then coming back to the breath and the posture. Sometimes a physical sensation becomes persistent. You can notice it persistently, but then keep coming back to the breath, don't let go of the breath.

You will find, of course, that as you are sitting you will forget about the breath and be dragged off by a train of thought, or something like that. When you notice that, just come back anyway, at that point, to the breath. There's no blaming about it, or anything like that. In fact, zazen includes all of this: it includes the time when you are paying attention to the breath, and the time when you are not paying attention to the breath. Although, it also includes the intention always to pay attention to the breath.

This is how we practice in our weekend retreat, and it's very important that we have a serious intention to make an effort in this way, very important, even though it's counter-productive to have any plans of getting anywhere with it. If you are not sure whether you have that intention to make that kind of effort, I would say: think about it this evening, and find the intention, even if you have to excavate fairly deep to find it. Do find it. Because otherwise, it would kind of be a waste of a pretty nice weekend. There are a lot of things to do, and why hang around here? This is a nice room, it has clouds and everything, but it's not that nice a room. It's really important, I think, to find that intention, that you do, because it's very happy to do zazen. It's very happy to make an effort to be present, intimately, with your experience, and to actually be present. If that could be the case, this room would be all one would ever need for one's whole life, actually. It's true, if one could just be intimate with one's own experience, and pay attention. On the other hand, if one doesn't make that effort, then, like I say, there are a lot of nicer places to be.

Reflect on this tonight, and if you are a little bit wobbly, and you're not sure, then please remember: soon you'll be dead. It's true, death comes pretty fast, and maybe many of you in this room have friends, loved ones, who are facing death now, or who have died. Think of them. Remember that, really, it's important, and find that intention, and bring it here tomorrow morning, and sit with it for two days.

Once, a monk asked the Zen master Zhaozhou, "I've just come to the temple. How shall I practice?" And Zhaozhou said, "Have you had your breakfast?" The monk said, "Yes, I have." Zhaozhou said, "Then please wash your bowls."

This is a wonderful teaching of Zhaozhou, and it reminds me of what I am trying to say to you now. We've already had breakfast. Whatever spiritual goals you have, whatever you would like to gain from your practice, to become calmer, or wiser, or to let go of this or that that is in your life and you wish wasn't in your life, or to get this or that that isn't in your life and you wish was, it's already there. It's truly already in you. There really isn't anything that you need to acquire, or anything that you need to get rid of. Just wash your bowls. Just move on to the next moment. Just be intimate with what's happening now, and let go, and be surprised at what's going to happen…now.

Really and truly, the surest way to misery and frustration is to make plans about how it's going to be, and what you're looking for. Abandon all hope, like it says over Dante's Hell, abandon all hope and just resolve to pay attention to each and every breath, for this weekend, and when you forget that, remember again. Try it again, and do it over again. With that spirit, it's pretty much guaranteed that you will find what you need to find in this weekend.

It's a non-residential retreat so that means that this evening and also Saturday evening we will be going home and joining the everyday, regular world, and maybe some of us have to talk or engage in activity. If possible, be as quiet as you can, and do as little of that as possible. Even if you do have to be with activity, if you can do it in a subdued way, that's nice, so that you feel as if the weekend is continuous, not that we take a break at five o'clock and then start up again the next morning.

I think one of the things that becomes quite obvious when you do let go of all of your confusions and notions and do really find a way to just be present with your life as it actually is, and you experience your life as moment after moment of meeting-meeting-meeting warmly, it becomes very obvious that nothing is separate from your life. You really can't do this practice for your own benefit. This becomes obvious. It's not like a moment of altruism or something like that, it's just an obvious fact that what you are is connection. You actually are that, and nothing but that. To practice the Way, and to see the mind and the heart in the way that I am urging you to do, is to see how it is that you and our world are mutually created, and are one and the same. When you have the eye of practice you have the eye of love and you can be with others in a new way, a way that doesn't include jockeying for position and fearful flight. Truly, I always feel when I attend a retreat like this, if there are fifty people in the room there are two thousand and fifty, or twenty thousand and fifty, because each person touches the lives of many other people. If you can realise the Way on your cushion, it will have benefit widely, not just in your life. This is really true, especially for the ones closest to you, but also in mysterious ways that we can't exactly reckon.