Sesshin Teisho JOHN TARRANT ROSHI June 28, 1994 - Day Three Camp Meeker, California FINDING THE BUDDHA If you want to find the Buddha, look at your own toes, look at your hands. Whose hands are these? Whose weariness is this? Whose heat is this? Whose sound is this? Who stretches from one side of the world to the other? If you want to find the Buddha, look at your own face, look at your shoulders, your hips, your legs. If you really look at this, you will find that everything is already here. There is no need to go searching around. Everything is clear and everything has always been clear, and you have always known it. From the beginning there is no need for any effort or any struggle. You just have to become one with the Tao right where you stand. Someone asked Matsu, "How do I accord with the Tao?" He said, "I haven't accorded with the Tao since the beginning of my training." Right where you are that's where the Tao is. Right where your heart is that's where it flows from. Please sit comfortably. There's no escape. No one else will come in and do this for us. If someone else came in, we would not want them to do it for us, even if angels and deities came in. One teacher was the cook and was stirring the soup and out jumped Manjusri. The teacher hit Manjusri over the head with a spoon and said, "Get out of here. We don't need you." A good tenso. It's nobody else's hands that will save the world; nobody else's heart will open. It's right here right now. Over and over again we sit still like wooden buddhas by the roadside trying to learn that here we are sitting still. It is Buddha, here, who sits still, completely alive, completely free. This is the time in sesshin to forget about everything that has been holding you back. Sometimes we cling to happiness, but sometimes we cling to resistance and sorrow as well. Whatever it is that snags you, then all you have to do is open your hand and the universe will whirl it away. You don't even have to throw it away yourself. All you have to do is open your heart and all those things that are stuck inside will instantly vanish. It is said that you meet the silver cliffs and the iron mountains in zazen, but those silver cliffs and iron mountains, too, are none other than your own face. The wall that you meet is none other than your own first face. The abyss that you fall into from which you are sure you will never recover is none other than your own first face. Try to see this. Try to get through that wall, become one with it. Fall into that abyss and don't stop falling so that you can see all the way through. Then you'll see that there is no Buddha other than the one in your own skin. But that one is a real Buddha, that one lasts from the beginning of time and goes on long after you die. In sesshin everything is perfect. This is a piece of the Pure Land, really, set up for us so that we can see that everything in life is the Pure Land. We don't have to worry about when you do anything at all. The bell rings. We come along and sit; we eat; we work; we sleep; we do zazen. Sometimes we sleep while we're doing zazen. Whatever occurs is just this moment and this is the place to enter. It's good to sit very still at this time. It's good to let the silence deepen so that the only thing that moves is the shadows gradually walking across the room. It is said that when the shadows move across the floor, no dust is stirred. The mind is like this. It just becomes deeper and lighter so that you can see for the first time. You'll see that your own heart is the same as the heart of the redwoods, the same as the heart of the birds that sing so early and so late. It is the heart of everyone alive and even the dead are here with us holding us up. It is said that if you open your eyes in the morning, if you died that night, your whole life will have been worthwhile. That is something true. Even if you don't open your eyes, your whole life will have been worthwhile. Right here this life is infinitely precious, and the whole point of this is to awaken to that beauty and that virtue so that we can taste it for ourselves. Even if the wisest person we know taught us it were not so, we would just laugh because we know it is so. We know what it tastes like. When our hearts are opened and our eyes are opened, then naturally we carry others along with us. Compassion appears and we realize we are all held in the same seed. The same light blesses each of us and each smallest thing. Please try to be completely relaxed and completely attentive, fiercely attentive. # # #