Zen Sesshin with Kobun Chino Sensei Forewords In 1974, at Naropa Institute, Kobun accepted me as a disciple. It’s almost like I can’t speak for the person that I was, back then. It feels like I’m speaking for someone else. But at that time, I think, I felt that my sitting was a true spiritual practice, that I was actually doing spiritual work, arriving at reality by my body and mind. I guess I could say that I was more idealistic than I am now. My sitting has become less busy, less focused on trying to arrive somewhere. When you do a sesshin, you have to come home to yourself, as you are. But your sense of your body and your mind is not just your located consciousness, or your particular bag of skin, but something bigger than that. So you could say that, back then, what I considered “spiritual practice“ was endeavoring to come home to things as they are, bhu ta ta ya tha, “as it isness, things as they are.” I’ve become interested in Sanskrit words, because their meaning is broader, bigger, more loaded, than most English words. In my understanding, what Sanskrit words mean and what they convey, compared to English, is like a paragraph, compared to a sentence. For instance, yatham bhutam,isaSanskritword,anoldword.It means “thusness, isness, nowness, unbound and unfabricated reality.” When we are able to sit, and at other times, too, although when we sit we are setting up a deliberate situation, it is to make that experience accessible, or if the experience, itself, is not accessible, to make ourselves more pliable, to be able to be taught, to be able to receive reality, without fabrication. On the other hand, I can’t say that I go into sesshin, or into practice, with an aspiration for that experience. I might say that I don’t think of practice as a project or an assignment, to wake up, or to be a better person. I don’t go into practice like that. I just sit down, to sit down. Sitting is kind of like taking a break, or taking a rest, but not the superficial kind of rest that we want when we are physically tired. When we are existentially tired, just tired of not being complete, of not really being a complete person, then it’s a good time to take a break and be quiet. Sitting is not necessarily about finding happiness, either, although they say that when the Buddha awakened, he was happy, so thoroughly happy, that even his five friends who had rejected him when he renounced his ascetic ways, couldn’t continue to reject him, because he appeared so complete, so happy, so real, that they had to inquire, “What’s going on with you? Why are you so happy?" They became his first disciples. The word “happy” in modern usage can be very superficial. It has to do with getting your immediate needs met, or believing yourself to be satisfied in one way or another, or 1 not being in pain, or having something given to you that gives you pleasure. Happiness in aBuddhistcontextmightbetterbedescribedastheSanskritword,piti,orpithi. Com- monly it gets translated as “bliss." This meaning is often misconstrued because “bliss," in English, means some sort of ecstatic state, but piti means a thorough sense of well being and completeness, composure, and confidence, a feeling of having arrived, being deeply happy, not just superficially happy. With piti there isn’t a question of it lasting a short time or a long time, or that it has any duration. It’s more that it’s a feeling of completion, and being complete, not only is it not superficial, it isn’t transitory. So the Buddha was happy in that way, and it not only affected him, it affected the people whom he encountered. People asked why he was so happy, and in answering, he started to teach. And what he taught, initially, was the reason why people were not happy, laying out four truths: Unhappiness exists, it has a cause, there can be cessation of unhappiness, and there is a path, which he called the Eightfold Path. But, thinking about my own happiness or unhappiness in meditation, I’ve had experiences where I’ve had insight, and where I felt good in meditation. I’ve also had experiences when I struggled, and felt overwhelmed or defeated by the fullness and creativity in my mind, my mental production. At times I’ve had trouble following my breath, when I have a busy mind. I have occasionally made a little scene for myself, in my mind. It goes, “Okay, you’re having trouble following your breath. What if you were breathing for another person, like arespiratorinahospital,andthatpersonneededyoutobeawareofeverybreath,orthey would die." This has helped me to be mindful, although often I don’t quite believe the scenario I have set up, so my mind wanders! Idon’tthinkI’mlookingfor,ornecessarilyreceiving,happiness,intheordinarysense, from meditation. One of many ways to understand the meditation experience is suggested by the meal ritual called “oryoki." Interestingly, the term means, “just enough" in Japanese. One could say, “just enough food, just enough happiness." Related to this idea, “just enough" is the notion of a “complete" person. What does it mean for a person to be complete, to arrive at the totality of themselves, or, rather, to rest in the totality of themselves? What does it take for a meal, or a person, to be complete? One knows there is still plenty of food in the kitchen, lots of work to be done, a great deal of unfinished business to be taken care of, but, in this moment, there is enough. A complete person is one who brings all of himself, or herself, to the moment. For instance, when meeting with another person, it doesn’t mean one may not have other concerns, worries about a partner, for example, at the same time he or she is meeting you. Such a person doesn’t hold back from the present moment, lean to one side or another, cling to this or that view. A complete person is right in the middle of the situation, so that you experience meeting with a real person, a whole person. Further, it’s not just that person meeting me and me meeting him or her, there is a feeling that that person meets everyone, meets a cup of tea, meets troubles, meets the tire pressure in their car, meets everything, with that same willingness to be upright. This is what I saw in Kobun, when I was face to face with Kobun. For the most part, he had no hidden agenda. He was willing to teach me, invited me to sit down with him, and I found it a kind of right place to be. I knew I couldn’t be like him. I didn’t have a personality that was similar to his, but I wanted to be affected by him. In Kobun, I saw a complete person. When talking about sesshin, more than once I heard Kobun say you should settle your life, make arrangements, and go into it, not like jumping off acliff,butwalkingintoashallow 2 incline. In other words, don’t just jump into sesshin from the busyness of your life. Move into it slowly, gradually sloughing off the concerns of your busy daily life. And after sesshin, go slowly back into the world. Don’t jump back into the world. Move slowly, and don’t load yourself with some stimulating activity that you believe you missed while you were gone. A week before and after sesshin, move slowly into and out of it. For my whole life, I’ve had intentions of doing that, and haven’t yet done it! Sesshin is a device arranged to make things very, very simple, minimal, and direct, for sitting. It might be seen as an artificial situation which is set up to invite ourselves to notice that we’re here. We’re just here. The various forms included in sesshin are intended to support this effort. Most of us were brought up to have a goal, something to accomplish, whenever anything involves effort, so the supporting structure in sesshin is designed to let us just be, alone, and with a group of people. Being responsible for helping with the structure, is nothing more nor less than taking care of the whole, the group, and the experience, which has no goal. The Japanese meaning of “sesshin" is “to gather," “to gather as one, to gather as one mind." “Shin" is “mind/heart," “to gather together as one heart, one mind." It includes working together, sitting down and facing the wall together, walking in meditation together. The Buddha is often in the middle, in the traditional zendo. And then around that altar, like a circle, are the backs of all the people. And these backs become more like guardians for the Buddha, for the soft core; we become these strong backs. We also become a mandala around the center of wisdom. Sometimes I feel my back and the back of the next person are like a shield. It must be the way a soldier feels going into battle, supported by the others. I actually have sat next to people and, without saying one word, have felt this bond, this enormous connection, something even beyond love. Sometimes I feel absolute unity with the people I’m sitting with. And then sometimes my knee hurts, and that’s not so good! I was hungry, one time, with a friend.