Good morning. This is August 10, 2025 and coming up now are three of Roshi kapleau's sesshin encouragement talks these we're playing in honor of his birthday, which is actually 10 days from now.
These these encouragement talks. We don't know which 1975 sesshin they were in. But just that it was 1975 our our old records, this is 50 years ago now. Our old records say that it was a six day seshin And that may be true. I don't remember any six day seshins In those years, the we had a lot of seven day sesshins And some shorter, some that are shorter than six days. But anyway, it's 1975 seshin in the 50 years that have passed since then, in there's almost nothing that's changed in the sesshin schedule. What we what we do today, is very much the same as we did then. What is different is the location, the encouragement talks that we'll be hearing now were delivered in the Arnold Park. Zen, though it's the only facility we had at the time, was on Arnold Park. It was no Chapin mill, and there was no air conditioning, and the limit of people was 56 that was the maximum number we could accept to sesshin in those years at Chapin mill, we we can accept 60. And even then, it's limited primarily by the rooms, the room occupancy. So without air conditioning, a 1975 sesshin in warm weather would have been terribly hot in the Zen though, I remember seeing as we walked in round in kini, remember seeing the sweat stains, the spots of darkened sweat stains on the mats. We were the conditions. We were much more crowded than at Chapin mill, and there were no chairs. It's a more recent development. If you were going to go to sesshin, you would be have to sit on a mat.
The the first encouragement talk now would have been given, well, all three would would be been given either before Roshi Kapil began a period of dokusan, or possibly during the period of dokusan, he would sometimes interrupt dokusan Because teachers, too need to sometimes stretch their legs. He would interrupt doksan Have everyone in the waiting line Wait, and then he'd come down and he would give a short talk. More commonly, his talks would be before doksan began before the first people went in.
I have to just say that I listened to these recordings, these three encouragement talks, and found myself reminded of why he was my teacher all those years, I found my pulse racing at the sound of his voice with inspiration. So now the first of his encouragement talks is about how to strengthen one's practice, as you'll hear him say, you the dilemma then and now is for householders how to keep up a strong practice in the life of a householder with the demands of family and work. And as you'll hear. Him say, it comes down to setting priorities. What do we really want? He mentions foregoing, foregoing some pleasurable activities and other pursuits that don't directly enhance one's practice. And I just wanted to mention that he himself very, very seldom went to movies. Of course, there was no streaming in those days. He seldom went to movies. He seldom went to restaurants. And of course, he never drank alcohol. I remember too him reminiscing about what brought him to Zen practice and saying that he was just fed up with the joyless pursuit of pleasure. So Roshi Kapleau was a man of extraordinary self discipline. I can hardly remember a single evening sitting in informal evening, sitting where he didn't spend at least half an hour, maybe an hour in the Zen doe. He was usually pretty much alone in the Zen doe because the staff was more more often most of the staff would be out doing pleasurable activities, myself included. But boy, he had his routines, and he stuck to them, and was clear about Yeah, his priorities, as he must have been in Japan, he led a life of simplicity. Said it's that simple. Strip away your daily life so that whatever you're doing somehow contributes to the development of your practice and the experience of ultimately, of some form of awakening. But again, what? What do we really want?
A question that constantly comes up is, how can I strengthen my practice? And of course, closely connected with that is the question in the case of people who were not able to make it to the sesshin, what can I do to strengthen my practice so that I will be accepted for seshin. Perhaps we'll take the second question first, as most of you undoubtedly know, there are always more applications for seshin than there are places. And so those of us who have to select the people, it's always a very painful thing to turn people down. Of course, if there's an obvious medical reason, this is not painful at all, or if there's an obvious person who obviously is in no position to make a strong contribution to the seshin, we do have to turn that person down.
This problem of trying to get more and more people to seshin is one we've been struggling with for 10 years, and we have increased the number of people who could come to seshin. But fundamentally, it's not a question, particularly for the seven day seshins. It's not a question of just trying to get people into the seshin. Rather, it's a question of getting people who will make a strong contribution to the seshin It's not fair to the people who are accepted to have their effort, so to say, nullified, by people who whose practice has not yet reached the point where they can make A strong contribution, to directly answer the question of, How can, how can I strengthen my practice so that I can be accepted into sesshin? Of course, there are depends what one's practice is, but generally speaking, person who's working. The koan needs to involve himself or herself more in the koan, in the questioning. People, very often in doksan will say, well, sometimes the questioning is very strong, sometimes it's not. Sometimes I feel like asking the question. Sometimes I don't feel like asking it. Well, this is pretty much, this is pretty much par generally speaking. However, the more zazen you do, the more you are aware and alert in your daily life, the more the questioning will come up to you, because the normal kind of static, which is to say the value judgments, the self hatreds, the conclusion jumping, the stating of prejudices, the more that they go For the mind, from the mind, the more one feels closer to oneself. And where there is greater greater love and compassion, then there's also greater questioning, because the more one tastes and feels this kind of thing, the more you naturally want of it, and also the more that the mind becomes cleansed of its defilements and its delusive Thinking. Also the desire to want to know becomes stronger is both what might be called an emotional or an affective, as well as an intellectual kind of thing. And really, ultimately, these can't be separated all the points of discussion. We do separate them to come, to come, for example, regularly, to sit at the at the center here, to engage in ceremonies. This also strengthens one's practice considerably. This is the time when anybody has the opportunity without having to feel any kind of feelings that, well, I'm not making a strong contribution or I need to make. All you need to do when you come to do Zazen is to put yourself wholeheartedly into your Zazen. And the case particularly of people who haven't been doing zazen a long time, they benefit a great deal from having of being able to sit with experienced sitters, and, of course, to to engage in prostrations and chanting. This also helps practice enormously for people who feel a need to read, reading the not about the Buddha teaching, but reading actually the Buddha's sayings and the sayings of the masters. This also strengthens practice considerably, making it a point every day to set aside at least half an hour where you're going to read, perhaps certain sutras or certain of the other the Masters sayings, for example, Zen master Hakuin, his his material of which there are now good English translations, or Zen Master Dogen, or some of the great Chinese Zen masters, Wang Po, or any of the others. This is very helpful, and foregoing some of the other activities that one normally fills one's mind with. It's no different, really. You've heard many times anything that you want to do well that you have a strong desire to want to accomplish, it takes dedication, and the same is true with your practice. If you want to go to sesshin and you want to open your mind's eye, then you must forego a lot of the trivialities, a lot of the so called Simple pleasures, for something much greater. Most people are not willing. They want to do it, but somehow they find it hard to do it. And it is not easy, but one has to discipline oneself this way. And speaking of discipline, this is also a very important ingredient, giving up the things. Well, we just talked about it, but in a more specific sense, certain things that you know interfere with with your questioning, if you're working on a koan, or if you're counting or following the breath or working on shikantaza, things that take you away. You into another, into the mundane world. So to say not it's and actually it's not the taking you way into the mundane world that is bad, but your inability to get back again, this is the thing that's bad. The more you go into your practice, then there is no separation between the so called mundane world and the spiritual world. They're one, and to call them two is an artificiality, really. Until you reach that point, this exists, and one is constantly oscillating between the two. You go very far in one direction, and then you begin to feel guilty, or feel that your your practice, is being neglected. And then you go into the other and then maybe you read books on sutras, or whatever, books on the Masters things, and do Zazen very intensively. And again, depending on what your work is, or if you're on the staff, perhaps you give up. You feel as though you needn't be well doing certain ordinary things that one would do. So it's a very sensitive kind of thing between removing yourself from the so called mundane world removing from necessary things that it is part of your not lifestyle, but whatever your position in life is. If you're married, for example, one of course, has one's family to take care of. If one is a has a particular occupation, well, there are certain needs which that occupation demands. If you're on the staff, you have certain responsibilities. These have to be fulfilled. And they might their fulfilling may be called, they may need to be fulfilled in what we call the mundane world. And this has to be done after a while, you might we said a minute ago, there's no distinction between the mundane world and the spiritual world. The mundane world becomes a spiritual world. If there are not all of these mind defilements, then one is fully involved in what one is doing. There's a real transcendence and the ordinary feeling of isolation, being separated from things, being unable to flow with things, just becomes less and less so, and the more that that, the more that that becomes less so, the more you find that there's no such thing as distinguishing between practice and no practice. This is, as you know, a very common error that people make. They say, Well, my work interferes with my Zen practice. Anybody who says that is already revealing a complete ignorance of what Zen Zen is all about. You
these are the ways to strengthen practice. And there's one other question, or one other aspect of this, very often, people are turned down for seshin because they don't have a great deal of energy that they're able to summon up into their practice. Often people wonder, Well, I do Zazen. I don't know why my practice should be labeled insufficient. I don't see any insufficiency in it. This ability to to get energy into your sitting. Of course, depends a great deal on the odor, in the case of people who are working on koans with which their questioning is carried on. And of course, it also depends upon how free your mind becomes, how relatively free it is able to become of irrelevant wandering thoughts. Very often, people who are unable to put energy into their into their sitting are people whose minds are filled with all kinds of thoughts they just can't get beyond the thought barrier. Well, this, of course, is connected, can also be connected with a physical condition. This is why we have instituted yoga in the morning, to also strengthen the body. I've noticed several people who've been doing yoga rather intensively. This summer, there's been an enormous improvement in their postures, which doesn't it isn't purely a physical kind of thing. It means that there's been a change at a deeper level, and one is able to put more energy into one sitting. Doesn't necessarily follow that in order to get more. Energy into your sitting you have to do extensive yoga. This isn't the implication, but the implication is that a physical, physical condition can also affect your your practice, not of course, to mention mental states, worries, anxieties, unreasoning fears, which people cling to they say, Well, I can't help this kind of thing, these thoughts, these fears, come up very often. One does deliberately cling to these kind of things. It's a kind of a way of not having to deal with a lot of problems by saying, Well, I'm just afraid. I can't do anything about these fears. I don't know where they came from. They've been with me a long time. I probably inherited them from my parents or somebody else. And so one, one dodges the responsibility. You know, it's like, it's like a person who's got a family, you're married, and, you know, you just don't want to work for some reason or other. And you know, when your wife approaches you and says, What's the matter? How are we going to get money for this to keep going? Is it? Well, you never should have married me. I'm just no good. It's just another way of saying I don't want to do anything about the situation. And it's an easy kind of out, or to say that one, one is in the case of zazen, well, I can't, I can't get more energy into my city. I'm not that type of person. I must work in such a way. Well, this is not completely untrue. There it is. It is so that there are certain people who work their energies work in a different kind of way. And allowance must be made for this kind of thing, but everybody can put more energy. Whether you your energies come in one kind of way, in another, in the ways that have just been talked about, one can strengthen this energy output. And ultimately, everything is energy. Whole pattern of one's life is determined really by the energy that one can liberate within oneself, the energy that is kept back by the delusive thinking, by the mental defilements, emotional, emotional defilements, habits, bad habits, all of which inhibits the flow of this Energy.
In this second of his three encouragement talks, he speaks primarily of giving. That's the first of the six paramitas, the Six Perfections. And I remember hearing him say in this, in this encouragement talk that there's something he said that really stuck with me has stuck with me all these 50 years, which is that talking about responsibility in any situation, what is our responsibility? It is to respond. Responsibility and Zen means responsiveness, which doesn't necessarily mean activity, but it means to be poised to help in any way that's called for, which, again, could be silence. He talks about love, about the purest love, and that it's the outcome of an inner condition. We could say it's the outcome of that which is beyond the conditional. This is different from metta practice, as I understand a metta practice is loving kindness practice where you try to radiate loving kindness toward others and yourself, whereas in Zen, the the basis of love is something that we already carry with us and and it is by letting our thoughts settle that we we find that we can that our innate lovingness can be actualized over time. In other words, it's not, there's not an intention to be loving, but there is the faith that within us all is this lovingness, and we just have to let the thoughts settle so that this lovingness can come forth. I.
The first paramita is giving, and then it's called Charity generosity. There are many names for it. Of course, giving can be understood on many ways, on many levels. No, I think it was probably Emerson who said the best gift is a piece of yourself, and this is probably a higher type of giving than simply giving money or some kind of economic or material things. Is also said in Buddhism, for example, that the giving must be key to the needs of the person, and simply to give money made not at all or some kind of economic help may not at all be the best way to give. Sometimes it can be the worst way. But basically, basically in Zen Buddhism, giving means responding to every situation, not simply one of an economic one, the hunger in the world, let's say, or flood victims, which may come up, or war victims, needy, as all of that is, but in every kind of situation, even a smaller social situation, to respond wholeheartedly, to give yourself and of course, eventually one reaches a point where there is a giving without any awareness of giving. This we can say is the is, is the difference between the Buddha and a bodhisattva. A bodhisattva highly developed, though he is, still has in his mind the notion of wanting to help people. This great, compassionate heart of the Bodhisattva cannot be appeased unless he is aware of helping people. Whereas the Buddha has gone beyond even that point, he is no longer aware, but spontaneously, this is his life as one of simply no mindedly serving, you might say. But short of that kind of thing to respond is responsibility. Responsiveness is responsibility. I and so members, who sometimes are are perhaps chided by their Christian or other friends for not regularly giving to charity. For example, need not, need not take a defensive position. This is very much part of, certainly very much part of Zen Buddhism. This kind of compassionate giving. Another question that comes up is in relation to love. People will sometimes say, well, in Christianity, another faith, there is faiths, there is love. And people will tell them, there doesn't seem to be any kind of love in Buddhism at all. At least I never hear you mention love. Don't you have anything like that? And of course, that's always said with a little dig. You know, actually, compassion is of a higher order. At least here we're talking about the ordinary kind of love. This kind of love always has back of it, hate and love. This kind of love can always turn into hate. This is the trouble with it. Whereas compassion is a complete identity, identifying with the other person in his or her sufferings, not from the higher level and not even from the lower level, not looking up and not looking down, just looking as it were straight ahead. Another related question to this one of love, this thing of Love thy neighbor, as I love thyself, members will report to me that, again, does Buddhism have anything to equal that kind of thing? Well, it's not a question of trying to equal anything else, but certainly to understand love cannot be forced. You can't command yourself or anybody else to love. This is not an injunction to do so is to force yourself into a into a situation which will be anything but loving, but rather Love is the outcome of a certain inner equilibrium, certain inner vision. In, and then this love, this compassion, is already within us. We don't have to get it anywhere, or we don't have to get it from anyone. If we remove the barriers to it, it shines out, and it's unmistakable, although it is true, some people can confuse it for lots of things. So to sit down and try to be loving or to be compassionate, this is not the way to do it. Compassionate acts flow from a free heart, an unobstructed heart, then there's real loving and caring. All right, we'll now there's only dokusan in the order in which people were sitting.
In this last encouragement talk of his he addresses something that is, I think, a timeless concern is, is, how do we, how do we find a balance between our work on the mat and our service to others out in the world. How do we? How do we relieve suffering through he specifically says, Through mu, we can broaden in those days, almost everyone who took a first koan, it would be mu. Since, since then, there are more people who take as their first koan. They take, what is this? Who am I? What am I? So just, you can just decode move to mean once, once initial koan, broader than just mu and as he says, either explicitly or implicitly, it's a false distinction to between the so called inner work and the so called outer work. I remember him saying, we go in to better go out. That is, we go in. We do the contemplative practice we do. He can doesn't have to be mu can be any Zen practice, breath practice, or shikantaza, we do the immobile practice of sitting in order to more effectively devote ourselves to others well being. Because we can, we can do the latter. We can help others most by purifying ourself.
Question that comes up in doksan very often is I I don't see the connection between what's going on in the world around me and my practice of mu, for example, somebody who's working on a koan mu. There's
so many people who are suffering, and when I see the suffering around me, I want to do something, and I can't think of mu. Mu things are utterly irrelevant. Is this really so the answer is no, mu is not irrelevant. It's very relevant to all this suffering. Of course, when a person says this, usually they mean they're talking about their own their own suffering. Can I really what they're really asking is, Can I really relieve my own suffering, my own frustration, my own pain through mu and of course, the implication is, I don't really think so. Basically, it's a lack of faith. But again, this lack of faith can very well be grounded in a lack of understanding of how one's practice is really related to mu, and how mu, in turn, is related to the world around one. First of all, we must realize that we can't help anybody until we help ourselves first, really, we can't truly help anybody as long as we're lacking ourselves. Because basically we lack nothing, but at least if we think we lack, and we show in our actions that we lack certain there. That lack must be taken care of. Otherwise, in doing good, one will be doing harm at the same time. We see this all the time. Other people, of course, when they feel a kind of a despair of what's going on around them, they're very weak people. They often they do away with themselves. There's a tremendous amount of despair that they can't get over. And this, this is, of course, a kind of a supreme ego, the face of it, it, it doesn't seem to be that, but when you stop to think about it, people who refuse to want to live a certain kind of life, they want to live rather, let's put it this way, they want to live a certain kind of life when they find they can't well and they don't want any kind of life. Of course, there are many kinds of cases. There are some people who lose all capacity to to handle their own lives. But getting back to this question, the relation of mu to to suffering.
Most people, of course, as we know in the world, are suffering because of their ignorance. They don't see things as they really are, and the basic ignorance is the ignorance of duality of self and other. This inner this inner vision, is out of focus. It's as though we were cross eyed, and so long as one is in this position, one can't help oneself, and one can't help anybody else through mu, one is gradually bringing this inner double vision, inner double vision into a single vision into an accurate focus. And of course, if one has confidence that mu through mu, one can come to realization at least, at least a small realization, and see things as they really are, not see them through the prism of duality. Then one begins to come into this position to help oneself and to help others. You very often, people will will ask another aspect of this same question. Let's say somebody very close to me suddenly dies, and this upsets me a great deal. At such a time I don't feel like working on mu. The whole meaning of death, this person's death and so on, overcomes one. And it seems rather futile, if not irrelevant, to think about mu at such a time. Well, there's no need to it's all quite all right to pursue, whether you're working on mu or any other practice, to use the occasion which naturally comes to the mind to question the whole thing of the whole subject of death. Well, this is certainly very helpful. And then when you come to the to the end of your questioning, you come up against a kind of a stone wall, and at that point, one can, very naturally, almost inevitably, make the transition to mu. And all the energy that has been released for this questioning in the same way the energy that is released by asking about the meaning of suffering and how one can help it, to put that, to eventually into the mu, and to know that through the mu, which is a kind of a short way of coming to which, of course, it is a direct way of achieving some kind of Awakening, one can eventually begin to understand death, suffering and so on, one has established the basis for transforming one's life so that one isn't himself in the dark. So to say, so there's a real connection between mu and the world around us. It isn't as though one is retreating into mu. One does what one needs to do if one is in a position to help somebody who's in great suffering. Well, you do it, but you can do it the same time that you are in mu, and whatever you do will be so much more meaningful, because there is a certain strength which comes from this practice, a certain real strength. There are many people who, because they allow themselves to get worried. Uh about what's going on. They read in the newspapers, or they hear on TV, or they see around them a lot of suffering. And if they have a tendency to do so, they worry very much about this. And usually people of that disposition worry about all manner of little things. And they drain so much energy from themselves with these petty little worries, if one can have the confidence in mu that what needs to be done will be done if you fully live in mu, which means in your true nature. And it's not really hard to establish this confidence, because you will find that if you, if you consistently, or at least for a long enough period of time, when you are not sitting on the outside, if you are truly involved in the questioning of mu you find that your life will go better. There will be fewer worries and concerns and fears, and the world around you won't seem like such a terrible place. After all, people that have guilt feelings because they feel that they're working on mu instead of helping the world are not the kind of people who can help the world. In any case, it's much more important to build up one's emotional, physical, mental, psychic, spiritual, strength, all of which comes through Zazen. And here we're not speaking only of sitting zazen, and this is also a kind of a kind of a rock, a solid rock foundation where the petty, the petty fears and concerns will break up and they won't take over one's life. And it's really a matter of of giving faith and credence to what you see in your own life. That is to say, in what you see in the way your practice, in tou or Hu, or whatever it happens to be, how it establishes a certain equilibrium. Many people refuse to to believe the evidence of their own eyes. They prefer. And this, of course, is a kind of an ego thing, to look the other way and and if you do long enough, then you get separated, the far you get separated, more and more from mu, and the farther you get separated from mu, the more irrelevant mu seems to your life. So it's essential to return to the mu with real confidence. If you get through mu, you're establishing a real basis for getting through a great deal that now kind of plagues one so.
