This is the fourth day of this March, 2025, seven day seshin, and we're continuing with the book an experience of enlightenment by Flora court, Now, previously, she described how she gradually fell deeper and deeper into questioning, questioning the ground of reality, not having anyone to guide her, Not having not having any reference point.
Her behavior was somewhat alarming to her professors.
Imagine if someone were to walk into this Zen do right now, not knowing a thing about Zen or what we're up to here, they would be Pretty alarmed too.
This practice is so radical, so subversive. It runs so counter to our social conditioning.
There are all these messages telling us that we need to be successful in life. We need to win, not to lose, to make a name for ourselves
and to go to go to college, find a partner, have kids, strike it rich, buy a house. It's all about gain, and somehow, if we don't pursue these things, we're told that we're a failure. But all of that that's not the ground of reality as it is. It's a cluster of thoughts
that we cling to
thoughts about how things should be. And then here we have Flora who, at the time, was a college student who didn't care about achieving all of that? All she could do was absorb herself in this question. What is reality? I
What is this?
And she did have an inkling that it was beyond thoughts and words. She did eventually turn inward, as we were doing, to look at what she was experiencing on the inside. And
and she noticed that it was fleeting, changing from moment to moment.
She noticed that it couldn't be. Pinned down,
picking up from where we left off. She says, sometime in April, Easter vacation arrived, I went home to Detroit to spend a week with my parents. There, about three days later, alone in my room, sitting quietly on the edge of my bed and gazing at a small desk, not thinking of anything at all In a moment too short to measure the universe turned on its axis, and My search was over,
not thinking of anything at all,
out of nowhere, in a flash, she was just sitting on The edge of her bed, looking at her desk, The most ordinary moment,
universe turns on its axis and
any story about awakening should come with a warning label. There should be a warning label on the cover of three pillars of Zen. I remember when I first read it, and it includes a bunch of enlightenment accounts, and I was enthralled by them, definitely motivated me to practice and to go to seshin. And,
of course, we have to understand that text really in time it came out in the mid 60s, at a time when there wasn't really much information available, certainly not in English, to introduce and help people to Understand what practice is and how to do it,
and let's be real, we wouldn't be here. We wouldn't be doing this work day after day into the night, if we didn't have the aspiration To wake up.
It's the elephant in the room. And
to be clear, the only thing one can wake up to is who you already are. You can't wake up to some future. You only this one. So what? What is there to grasp for? Why? Why why strain? Why strategize.
Flora's account shows that it really is just about. Pure intimacy with what one is experiencing, not thoughts, but experience, simple, direct, you.
And in hearing her story, you might find yourself comparing yourself to her. I certainly did the first time I read read the book. This was years ago. Maybe you think you need to replicate her process, what she went through.
But imitation isn't intimacy.
It's a mental construct.
It's also possible that you tell yourself, there's no way I can accomplish what what she did? So I'm just gonna sit back coast along,
ride out the rest of seshin. Stay with what's familiar and comfortable you
I need to drop any comparisons, whether it's something you heard her story or with other people here in seshin, comparisons or thoughts. Oscar Wilde, the playwright, said, be yourself. Everyone else is already taken,
and we need to recognize that when we dwell in thoughts about enlightenment, how to get it? Am I doing my practice right so I can get it? We're turning it into the E, word capital E, making it into a thing, an object.
And so when thoughts about enlightenment come up, and I mean, when, not if, when, all you need to do is treat it like you do any other thought. It's just a thought, nothing special about it. All thoughts are, you know, on a equal level, a thought about enlightenment is no different than a thought about blueberry muffins, equally thoughts,
whatever thoughts arise, whatever the conditions are, one job is to return to Our practice. Stay close to it, intimate.
Flora continues the small, pale green desk at which I'd been so thoughtlessly gazing had radically changed. It appeared now with a clarity, a depth of totality and three. Dimensionality, a freshness I had never imagined possible. At the same time, in a way that is utterly indescribable, all my questions and doubts were gone. I knew everything and all at once, yet not in the sense that I had ever known anything before. All things were the same in my little bedroom, yet totally changed, still sitting in wonder on the edge of my narrow bed, one of the first things I realized was that the focus of my sight seemed to have changed.
It had sharpened to an infinitely small point, which moved ceaselessly in paths totally free of the old accustomed ones, as if flowing from a new source. What on earth had happened?
So released from tension, so light did I feel? I seemed to float down the hall to the bathroom to look at my face in the mottled mirror over the sink, the pupils of my eyes were dark, dilated and brimming with mirth. With wondrous relief, I began to laugh from the soles of my feet upward.
So it was a real shift in her awareness and her perspective that happened
in a fleeing moment, seeing that all there is, is this.
It didn't come out of a book or a TA show didn't come from someone else's experience.
It came out of her own direct experience.
Just seeing I
just hearing
it's not complicated. I
Dogan said, if you cannot find the truth where you are, where do you expect to Find it? I
She says, within a few days, I had returned to Ann Arbor, and over a period of many months, a ripening took place, a deepening and unfolding of this experience, which filled me with wonder and gratitude at every moment. Moment, the foundations of my world had fallen, I plunged into a numinous openness which had obliterated all fixed distinctions, including that of within and without. I a presence had absorbed the universe, including myself, and to this I surrendered in absolute confidence, act. Activity flowed simply and effortlessly, And to my amazement, seemingly without thought,
She also mentions how she found herself running around and dancing as if she were a child,
and She's trying to describe reflecting back more than two decades, the buoyancy that she felt, the lightness that comes with not being burdened by thoughts.
Recall all that struggle she went through, all the straining,
in contrast to what she had experienced,
she goes on instead of following my old sequence of learning, thinking, planning, then acting, action had taken precious precedence, and whatever was learned was surprisingly incidental, yet nothing ever seemed To go out of bounds. There was no alternation between self control and letting go, but rather a perfect rightness and spontaneity to all this flowing activity you
we experience that flowing activity here in seshin, the More zazen that we do has this accumulating effect and
she says, this new kind of knowing was so pure and unadorned, so delicate, that nothing In the language of my past could express it, neither sense nor feeling nor imagination, contained it, yet all were contained in it, in some in definable way. I knew with absolute certainty the universe with its changeless unity and harmony in change and the inseparability of all seeming opposites,
it was if, before all this occurred, I had been a fixed point inside my head looking out at a world out there, a separate and comparatively flat world, the periphery of awareness had now come to light, yet neither fixed periphery nor center existed as such in. No self, no I a paradoxical quality seemed to permeate all existence, feeling myself centered as never, never before. At the same time, I knew the whole universe to be centered at every point, freed from separateness, feeling one with the universe. Everything, including myself, had become at once unique and equal.
You know, reading this really sounds all on the conceptual level,
the level of explanation sense making the
and that's because she's trying to put into words what really cannot be put into words.
Clarity, no separation,
no subject or object.
Whole and complete.
There was a book published in the 1990s that had the title, thoughts without a thinker. Thoughts without a thinker. It was by Marc Epstein, who is a both a psychiatrist and a Buddhist. But that title alone sums it up, thoughts without a thinker.
There are thoughts, and there can be a steady stream of them, we know and
there's no thinker,
no fixed self,
no experiencer either.
Again, we can get caught up in identifying with how flora is describing her experience identifying With concepts and ideas about practice and about awakening. I
But that's not practice, and it's not why you came to seshin.
He didn't come here to tell and replay stories about yourself,
this fictional self and
she goes on, if God was the word for this presence in which I was absorbed, then everything was either holy or nothing i. No distinction was possible. All was meaningful, complete as it was, each bird, bud, mid mole, Atom crystal of total importance in itself, as in the notes of a great symphony, nothing was large or small, nothing of more or less importance to the whole. I now saw that wholeness and holy holiness are one. Passing the campus chapel, I remembered how I had been taught in church to think of myself as here on Earth, and of Gu and of God as above and out there, and to aspire to heaven as some future time and place, and to emulate the lives of others. How tragic it seemed that anyone should be distracted in this way from a first hand encounter of reality, firsthand knowledge of Reality, my entire education had taught me only to stand in the light. Nothing had been added, but only the delusions of this education removed. I knew now that eternity is here, always, and there is no higher, no deeper, no separate, past or future time or place you
How could love be other than this all encompassing oneness, which we can do nothing but open ourselves I felt that I was done forever with all seeking, all philosophic and religious doctrines, all fear of dying or concern for The future, all need for authority other than this. If I could continue in this state of open vision, I felt certain that whatever happened, everything would be right, just as it was. I
nothing added, nothing lacking from the start. I She didn't gain a thing,
but she did lose something.
To despite what the ego wants you to believe, enlightenment has nothing to do with attainment,
but it has everything to Do with lightening our load,
taking off that heavy backpack that we've been lugging around.
But first, first we got to loosen the straps. I
Flora goes on. Years before, I had sought a rule that would apply to everything I did, even to washing dishes. Now I simply washed the dishes, in the most simple of bodily feelings and the most ordinary of daily tasks, living was transformed. I had never felt so completely whole and in one piece, or enjoyed my bodily feeling so much, breathing had changed. Had become deeper, more rhythmical. Hands, eyes, voice, all seemed quieter, more relaxed and uh, with seemingly boundless energy, every task became effortless and light, running exuberantly home from classes or work, bounding up two flights of stairs to my third floor room, I would fall soundly asleep for a quick daytime cat nap, then waken shortly feeling wonderfully refreshed with spontaneous gusto, I found myself eating lightly whenever Hungry, gaining 10 much needed pounds in a few months, even my handwriting changed, as for my relations with others, another person now filled my Shoes. Laughter and delight seemed to fill my life. Somehow I had become more human, more ordinary, more friendly and at ease with all kinds of people. Apparently, I appeared, appeared happy and smiling too for strangers often came up and spoke to me. I had no idea what I could have done to have deserved these miraculous changes, but I felt the most inexpressible gratitude for them. They had enriched my life beyond compare. Literally, everything had become interesting. As for my schoolwork, it improved in some areas and declined in others. I was less concerned with meeting conventional demands. I
A she mentions a couple of times how she was filled with gratitude,
and gratitude arises out of awareness.
If we don't see what's right in front of us, the most simplest of things,
we're Not going to appreciate it.
It's hiding in plain sight,
just sitting, just walking, Just breathing, just eating, just drinking, just sleeping. You
we're all verbs, not nouns. I.
Then she says, But of all the changes that had occurred, the one that seemed to me, in some mysterious way, to be the key to everything else was the change in vision. It was if some inner eye, some ancient center of awareness, which extended equally and at once in all directions without limit, and which had been there all along, had been restored. This inner vision seemed to be anchored in infinity in a way that was detached from immediate sight, and yet, at the same time, had a profound effect on sight. Walking along the street, I was aware of the street flowing past and beneath me, the trees or buildings moving past all around and the sky moving above, as if I were immersed In one flowing hole, a child like unknowing pervaded perception the immediate world had acquired a new depth and clarity of color and form and unalloyed freshness and unexpectedness rooted in the present every moment opened to eternity. Along with this, there was a sharp, single, pointed ness to the focus of attention, which caused me to feel that I was looking straight and deeply into whatever entered my attention. Yet paradoxically, I felt blind. This is difficult to describe. It was this. It was this, as if my attention were now rooted in some deeper center, so that my everyday sight, my eyes were released from their former tension and were now free.
Put more simply, we can say that she experienced balance, equilibrium equal mind. And for her, it was heightened through her sense of vision, seeing made this awareness most clear to her.
Our senses do come alive. Our senses wake up during seshin. Somebody commented yesterday how amazing yaza Apples taste. Why don't apples taste like that outside of seshin. So it's not just our sense of sight, not just Seeing all the senses, tasting, touching, smelling, hearing
directly. It's
right now, there's a bird chirping.
We hear the sound. We know it's a bird and
but when we hear it directly, purely,
without the words, without the explanation and.
There's no bird, no sound. It's
just, I,
she goes on. Another incidental change I noticed was that no matter in what direction I looked, no shadow of my nose or face ever appeared in the clear field of sight, as apparently, it had occasionally done before. I also found other people's eyes fascinating, as well as those of animals looking into them as if into my own. This change of vision was so impressive that I went to the University, medical school library and searched in the card files under the headings of vision, sight and eyes, trying to find some reference to this new kind of vision. There was nothing, not a clue. Still, I remained convinced that this change in vision was somehow basic to all the other transforming changes, what I called open vision not only awakened appreciation for the inexhaustible delights of everyday living, the smell of burning leaves, the taste of a fresh Michigan Apple, not those New York ones, the song of the thrush in the early morning. It had also made me more aware of the sufferings of others, so much of it self inflicted, knowing that it was perhaps impossible. I still longed to tell others something that would help open their vision as mine had been, in referring to self inflicted suffering. Of course, she's talking about clinging to thoughts and feelings.
At this point in seshin, they no longer have a hold on you, even if you think they do, because that too is a thought.
It's all on the surface. Don't trust appearances.
No matter the conditions, no matter what kinds of thoughts come up, what kinds of feelings just keep returning, steadily, calmly, persistently, vigilantly and
