This is day six of this October, 2024 October, November, because today is November 1, 20, 24/7 day seshin, going to read today again, some selections from the book every day Zen, by Charlotte Joe COBE, edited by Steve Smith. You
I'm going to start with a short section. This is entitled authority. And she says, after years of talking to many, many people, I'm still amazed that we make such a problem of our life and practice. And there is no problem saying that is one thing seeing it is quite another.
The last words of the Buddha were, be a lamp unto yourself. He didn't say, go running to this teacher or that teacher, to this center or to that center. He said, Look, be a lamp unto yourself.
This, this practice of ours, this work that we do, we're in charge of it. It's our experiment. We're the ones learning about who and what we are. No one else can do that for us.
She says, what I want to discuss here is the problem of authority. Usually, we're either an authority to others, telling them what to do, or we're seeking someone to be an authority for us telling us what to do. And yet we would never be looking for an authority if we had any confidence in ourselves and our understanding, particularly when there is something in our life that is unpleasant or baffling or upsetting, we think we need to go to a teacher or an authority who can tell us what to do, not saying not to come to dokan, by the way,
then I'll ask you what you think you should do. I'm always amused that when a new teacher comes to town, everyone goes running to see him or her. I'll tell you how far I'd walk to see a new teacher, maybe across the room, no farther. This isn't because I have no interest in this person. It's just that there is no one who can tell me about my life, except who there is no authority outside of my experience.
We're the ones who know what it is to be in our body. We're the ones who are intimately aware of the particular flavor of thoughts that bombard us. We're the ones that experience the results. We give in to laziness or we give in to fear or it, or when we summon up our courage,
we're right in the middle of it. Now she's not saying you don't need a teacher. She'd be out of a job.
But you need we need to be lamps unto ourselves. It's good to have spiritual friends, to get advice, get encouragement. Roshi is fond of saying that he thinks he could replace himself in the dokan room with a sign that just says this will pass. He.
So we can the teacher can point things out.
Again. She says, There is no authority outside of my experience. But you may say, well, I need a teacher who can free me from my suffering. I'm hurting and I don't understand it. I need someone who can tell me what to do, don't I? No, you may need a guide. You may need to made clear how to practice with your life. What is needed is a guide who will make it clear to you that the authority in your life, your true teacher is you, and we practice to realize this you. There
is only one teacher, life itself. And of course, each one of us is a manifestation of life. Couldn't be anything else. Life happens to be both a severe and an endlessly kind teacher. It's the only authority that you need to trust and this teacher, this authority is everywhere. You don't have to go to some special place to find this incomparable teacher, you don't have to have some especially quiet or ideal situation. In fact, the messier it is, the better. The average office is a great place. The average home is perfect. Such places are pretty messy most of the time. We all know from first hand experience that is where the authority is the teacher I
what we're truly interested in is always right here.
Don't need to wait for anything. Life serves itself up to us on a silver platter. Sometimes it rubs itself in our face. She says, this is a very radical teaching, not for everyone. People often turn away from such a teaching. They don't want to hear it. What do they want to hear until we're ready, which usually means until we've suffered and have been willing to learn from the suffering. We're like baby birds in a nest. They open their mouths upward, and they want to be fed, and we see it, we say, Please stuff your wonderful teaching into my into me. I'll hold my mouth open, but you put it in. What we are saying is, when will mommy and daddy come? When will a great teacher, a supreme authority, come and stuff me with that, with which will end my pain and my suffering? The news is mommy and daddy have already come. They're right here. Our life is always here. But since my life may look to me like discomfort, even dreariness, loneliness, depression, if I actually were to face that, who would want that? Almost no one. But when I can begin to experience this very moment, the true teacher, when I can honestly be each moment in my life, what I think feel, this experiencing, this experiencing, will settle itself into just this, the joyful Samadhi of life, the word of God that is Zen practice. We don't even have to use the word Zen. Don't even have to use the word practice, experiencing this very moment, which is always available, even when we feel confused, feel we don't know what to do. There it is, that's it, that very confusion keep turning away from this moment, looking for something else, something better, something we've seen in the past, something we imagine.
Wonderful thing about being deep into seshin had so much practice with turning the mind back. I.
If we're lucky, we begin to notice that when we're present, when we're not caught up in a story, feelings of lack, things will shift, and
if they don't shift, there's that it's always what it is right now, it's like this.
She says this, mommy and daddy that we've been waiting for are already here, right here. We can't avoid the authority, even if we want to. When we go to work, it's right there. When we're with our friends, it's right there. And with our family, it's right there to zazen constantly pray constantly. If we understand that each moment of our life is the teacher, we won't avoid doing that if we truly are each moment of our life, there is no room for an outside influence or authority. Where could it be when I am just my own suffering, where is the authority, the attention, the experiencing is the authority, and it is also the clarification of the action to be done you? Reminds
me
of something that Ajahn Chah said,
I said, I'm telling you, it's great fun to observe closely how the mind works. I could happily talk about this one subject the whole day. When you get to know the ways of the mind, you'll see how this process functions and how it's kept going through being brainwashed by the minds impurities. I see the mind as merely a single point. Psychological states are guests who come to visit this spot. Sometimes this person comes to call sometimes that person pays a visit. They come to the visitor center. Train the mind to watch and know them with the eyes of alert awareness. This is how you care for your heart and mind. Whenever a visitor approaches, you wave them away. If you allow them to enter, where are they going to sit down? There's only one seat, and you're sitting in it. Spend the whole day in this one spot. This is the Buddha's firm and unshakable awareness that watches over and protects the mind. You're sitting right here. Since the moment you emerged from the womb, every visitor that's ever come to call has arrived right here. No matter how often they come, they always come to this spot right here, knowing them all the Buddha awareness sits alone, firm and unshakable. Those visitors journey here seeking to exert influence, to condition and sway your mind in various ways, when they succeed in getting the mind entangled in their issues, psychological states arise. Whatever the issue is, whatever it's, wherever it seems to be leading, just forget it. It doesn't matter. Simply know who the guests are as they arrive, once they've dropped by, they'll find that there is only one chair, and as long as you're occupying it, they will have nowhere to sit down. They come, thinking to fill your ear with gossip, but this time, there's no room for them to sit. Next time they come, there will also be no chair for them. No matter how many times these chattering visitors show up, they always meet the same fellow sitting on the same spot you haven't budged from that chair. How long do you think they will continue to put up with this situation? In just speaking to them, you get to know them thoroughly. Everyone and everything you've ever known since you began to experience the world will come for a visit. Simply observing and being aware right here is enough to see the Dharma entirely. You discuss, observe and contemplate by yourself. You.
It's just being present. There's such a it's so easy to spin off from what's right here the minute we get into not liking or hoping or wishing, regretting. We take our eye off of the present moment. We don't have to do that. Life is managed quite well when we're aware of what's going on. Always we can feel it in the body, we start to fly off. It's that a compassionate alarm clock, sudden feeling of dis ease. We know we're caught up and then coming back. It's right here. The practice is right here. Whatever it is,
it's not something that we have to stuff in from the outside. You
Joh adds one more thing here. She says there's one final little illusion that we all tend to play with in the questioning of authority. And it is, well, I'll be my own authority. Thank you. No one is going to tell me what to do. What's the fallacy in this? I'll be my own authority. I'll develop my own concepts about life, my own ideas of what Zen practice is. We're all full of this nonsense. If I attempt to be my own authority in this narrow sense, I'm just as much a slave as if I let someone else be the authority. But if you are not the authority and I am not the authority, then what mm,
we've already talked about this, but if it's not understood clearly, we may be floundering in quicksand.
It's a dicey business being your own authority. And yet the Buddha said, Be lamps unto yourselves. The problem is when we start to get doctrinaire, start to think I know more than I do. What we know is what we directly experience, but our opinions are another matter, and that's why it is important to have a teacher not to tell you exactly how to do your experiment, not to give you a technique, not to fill you full of doctrine, but to point you back to yourself, to encourage you and to tell You This too shall pass. I
I'm going to move to another talk of hers, and it's entitled tragedy. According to the dictionary, a tragedy is a dramatic or literary work depicting a protagonist engaged in a morally significant struggle, ending in ruin or profound disappointment. From the usual point of life of view, life is a tragedy, yet we spend our lives in a hopeless attempt to hide from the tragedy. Each of us is a protagonist, playing our leading role on our little stage. Each of us feels we have engaged. We are engaged in a morally significant struggle, and though we don't want to admit this, this struggle will inevitably end in our ruin. Death follows birth. I. She says, aside from any accident we might encounter in life, there's one accident at the end that none of us can avoid. We're done for from the moment of conception, our life is on its way out, and from a personal point of view, this is a tragedy, so we spend our life in a pointless battle to avoid that end. That misdirected battle is the real tragedy,
not only we, but everyone we know, everyone we love. We're all here for a limited engagement.
We may think that we've taken that in, and then we get the diagnosis, or someone we know loved one dies, and then it's real in another way, isn't it? The Buddha classified practitioners, those who hear of someone dying in a distant village, and they get it turn their mind to practice others. Someone dies in their village, or someone dies in their family, or they themselves are on their deathbed. I it
helps
to see. It makes everything more genuine. I
This life is precious. It doesn't come again. Our days are precious.
Our friends, family and it. But when we're running away, we can't we can't appreciate it. We can't see it. We're caught up in a dream.
Some point, if we're lucky, we understand how important it is not to live in the dream. Take so much work, but it is rewarded. It's a fuller life. It's a richer life. It's not based on evasion now, it's not self centered. It's not as self centered.
She says, suppose we live near the ocean in a warm climate where we can swim all year, but in water where there are sharks. If we're smart, if we're smart, we'll research where the sharks are likely to hang out, and then we'll avoid that area. But sharks, being sharks, sooner or later, one may stray into our swimming area and find us. We can never be certain if a shark doesn't get us the Riptide may we may swim a lifetime and never encounter a shark, yet worry about them can poison all our swimming days. There's a story about a fellow who went out on a research boat into the ocean and he was going to put on scuba gear and go down into the water. And there were sharks there, and his guide was a marine biologist, and he looked to him for advice, and the biologist told him, don't worry. The shark will make all the decisions.
Each of us has figured out where we think the sharks are in our lives, and we spend most of our energy in worrying about them. It's sensible to take precautions against physical injury. We buy insurance, we have our children vaccinated, we try to lower our cholesterol level. Still, an error creeps into our thinking. What is the difference between taking reasonable precautions and ceaseless. Worry and mind spinning. Then she tells a parable. People have probably heard this before, the story of a man being chased by a tiger. So the guy runs away from the tiger, not going to make it, but he comes to a cliff, and he goes over the edge of the cliff and grabs onto a vine. Got the tiger pawing above him. He looks down below, and there's another tiger at the base of the cliff waiting for him to fall. And then in this story, there are two mice gnawing at the vine. Where is this story going? At that moment, he spotted a luscious strawberry, and holding the vine with one hand, he picked it and ate it. It was delicious. And Joh go asks, what finally happened to the man we know, of course, is what happened to him, a tragedy. She says, notice the man being chased by a tiger didn't lie down and say, Oh, you beautiful creature. We are one. Please eat me. Story is not about being foolish, even though, on one level, the man and the tiger are one, the man did his best to protect himself, as we all should. Nevertheless, if we're left hanging on that vine, we can either waste that last moment of knife, or we can appreciate it. And isn't every moment, the last moment, there is no moment other than this.
Terror is not being present and it losing our bearings.
Johco says it's sensible to take care of our own mind and body. The problem is arises with our exclusive identification with them, a few individuals in the history of humankind have been identified as much with other forms of life as with their own. For them, there is no tragedy because for them, no adversary exists. If we're one with life, no matter who it is or what it is or what it does. There is no protagonist, no adversary, no tragedy, and the strawberry can be appreciated
when our identification with mind and body is loosened and to some degree seen for what it is. We become more open to the concerns of others, even when we don't agree with them, even when we have to oppose them. Increasingly, our attitude can include the other side of the picture, the point of view of the other person. When that happens, there is no longer a protagonist opposing an adversary. Practice is more and more to see through the fiction of this exclusive identification, the conceptual disease which rules our actions
as we do Zazen, we have a precious opportunity to face ourselves, to see the nature of the false thinking which creates the illusion of a separate Self that is our problem, our sense of separation and
when you're when you're trying desperately to find your way into your practice. What is it that's standing in your way? It's that separate self, the one that has opinions. The one that's measuring, how am I doing? The one that's discouraged, one that would like someone to comment fix things i
You can't become present when you don't want to be present. You can't really want to be present when you're not willing to go smooth through the tough stuff. You. To be bored, to be blocked, and just to be that there's a shift. It's a slight shift between feeling like you're stuck and just being stuck.
So the reason why that sign in the dokan room would be so effective This too will change right now, I'm stuck. It's okay. Everyone has been stuck. You.
In any moment we can wake up and
drop the dream,
drop our ideas of the projected outcome. Stop looking into the future and as
we
do Zazen, we have a precious opportunity to face ourselves, to see the nature of the false thinking which creates the illusion of the separate self. The immense cunning of the human mind can operate very well when not challenged but under the assault of seshin Sitting motionless for long hours, the dishonesty and evasions of the mind become crystal clear, and the tension created by the connive the cunning mind also begins to be felt. It may take us aback to realize that nothing outside us is attacking us, nothing outside of ourselves we're only assaulted by our thoughts, our needs, our attachments, all born from our identification with our false thinking, which in turn creates a closed in separate, miserable life in daily sitting. We can sometimes avoid this realization, but it's hard to avoid it when we sit eight hours a day or 10 hours a day, and the more days we sit, the harder it is, harder it is to avoid
as we patiently practice experiencing our breath, whatever the practice is, a realization is born not intellectually, but in the very cells of our body. False thinking evaporates as clouds in the heat of the sun, and we find in the midst of our suffering an openness, spaciousness and joy we've never known before. It's not something we have to think our way to. It's the joy of being settled, the joy of having abandoned expectations and
my daughter has a dog that got loose and was dragging its its tie out behind it and went off into the woods and didn't come back. You looked everywhere for her calling. And it was it was cold. It was like 40 degrees that night, raining a little bit, no dog. And the next day, I took my dog, Archie, and we went out looking, and I called, but still no answer. But all of a sudden we heard a bark. Apparently, Archie was interesting enough that she barked, and I found her in the woods, not that far from a house, with her tie out, stuck in a fence. And she was as happy as could be. She was it was like, Oh, I guess I live here now. I.
Dogs.
Yeah, I walked her back. Daughter was so happy to see her on the way back, squirrel ran up a tree and she went nuts, barking. Not my daughter, the dog. No
problem. I'm stuck here. Yeah,
someone once insisted to me, johco says that still doesn't handle the problem of death. We still die, and we do, but if in the second before death, we can say, Oh, what a delicious strawberry, then there's no problem. If the shark eats us, then the shark has had a good meal, and perhaps in time, a fisherman will catch the shark. From the shark's point of view, it's a tragedy from life's viewpoint. No, I'm not suggesting a new ideal for us to chase after. The man running away from the tiger shaking with fear, is the Dharma. Whatever you are, is the Dharma. So as you sit and as you struggle and feel miserable or confused, just be that. If you are blissful, just be that, but don't cling to it, then each moment is just what each moment is. With such patient practice, we see the error of our exclusive identification with our mind and body. We begin to understand tragedy always involves a protagonist engaged in a struggle. But we don't have to be a protagonist engaged in an endless struggle with forces external to ourselves. The struggle is our own interpretation, ending in ruin only if we see it that way, as the Heart Sutra says, no age and death, no end to old. Age and death, no suffering and no end to suffering. The man being chased by the tiger is finally eaten. Okay? No problem. You
it took me so long to be able to understand a little bit that parable. Just couldn't get over the fact The guy is going to die. I
a guy is going to die. It's a phenomenon that johco talks about a lot, that when people are know they're going to die, that something changes. All of a sudden, they see their life in a different way. And for many of them, they're happy.
They finally know what it's about.
I've had a couple people in my life who were able, when they were close to death, to say, I've had a good life. Had no regrets. Had one good friend who had a form of leukemia and taking a really brutal course of of chemo. And one day, a new doctor rotated onto the shift covering him and came in and said, we've had some amazing test results. It looks like you've gone into remission. Then a day later, he came back, and it turns out he read the wrong test. And he said he apologized, of course, and said. This must be so hard for you. This must be devastating. And my friend Ernie said, No, had a wonderful life. I
a lot of a lot of the fruit of practice is that we no longer torture ourselves. I
We have a sense of distance from our struggles and a sense of proportion. Realize we're not perfect. We realize that we make mistakes. We're normal, we're human beings. The French philosopher Montaigne said, I am just like the average man, except that I know I am just like the average man.
And Anthony de Mello says, I'm an ass. You're an ass. It just it just takes a pointless and hopeless struggle off the table, struggle to be perfect, to be better. Don't need to be perfect. Need to be ourselves. You else that takes a lot of work, doesn't it have to be willing keep coming back again and again. Have to notice when we're running off. Last thing we want to do is face ourselves, but that's where the refuge is. Can't run away to a refuge. We are the refuge. Be lamps unto yourself. You
as this begins to soak in this refuge we bring a sense of equanimity. Guo, Gu the Chinese teacher, Zen teacher, says contentment. We're able to practice out of a sense of contentment, because we're okay with things as they are, from that base, we can work so hard, we can be so thorough. It's not a jagged, frantic practice, steady, joyful practice, even amidst the difficulties, even when we're not happy, there's something there.
There's joy and just forgetting about results and
here it is. Only one day of seshin pretty much left little over 24 hours.
These last rounds of sitting are precious. Whatever comes to take it in, open to it,
let it work, follow this path. Follow like a stream, thin trickle of water, slowly working its way, meeting with obstacles, finding its way around them, and.
Headed to the sea. Time is up. Stop now and recite the four vows. Do.
