3 Things Shinzen got from Joshu Sasaki Roshi

I've heard you speak of enlightened Masters.

An you spoke of Roshi is being a Masters master when you met him.

And I've heard you tell stories of other teachers that you lived with in your encounters I've never heard you when you've talked about your influences of what's influenced your teaching. I've heard you talk about a new book, en linea. Dura has he say it all. Lenny it in terms of what they rotten, noting or body sensation or but the only teacher. I've heard you really speak a venue shift totaly when you talk about him is Roshi meeting Sasaki Grocery.

Bro. She is a general title in Japanese for any mass any Zen Masters called of Roshi. But yes, Jones Shoes Sasaki ******** Yes, if there are other light and Masters that might come into this conversation. We've that too. But my interest here would be to have you talk about what it's like to?

Be in his presents and work with him and what having this man's.

I don't know energy input into your life, but that is for you is a teacher because I don't know who else you go to?

For your support.

When I came back to the United States I.

Realized I still needed a teacher, but I didn't have anybody that I could go to within the tradition. I wanted to work in which is the mindfulness tradition after I've been back here for a few years I was drawn to mindfulness because it could be extracted from the cultural million ready and the religious matrix of Buddhism and presented as a fully secular practice. And so that appealed to me and I like the systematic nature of mindfulness.

But by the time that had happened that.

I was probably the senior mindfulness teacher in my part of the world, but I needed somebody vastly senior to myself to kick my ***

And the only place I could find it was in the Zen tradition.

Which is not the tradition? I really wanted to work in although I was familiar with it because I have lived in Japan and so forth so Sasaki Roshi was certainly the seniors and master in the United States. At that time and he's now argu arguably the senior living Buddhist master in the world at 102.

I love having started his practice monastic practice at the age of 13 do the math. How long is This guy been practicing.

I had to study with someone so it wasn't really in the tradition. I was drawn to do all teachers. Think I need someone to kick me in the *** to do I mean, most? No. Some People a lot do. But some People go off on that's one of the ways that teachers. But the wheels sort of come off if a teacher doesn't put themselves under some other teacher.

They get a certain degree of experience and then there's sort of often but then now they don't have feedback loops and their students won't give him feedback as they are in all of them and problems can develop so I wanted to make sure I see very healthy of you to send I need somebody.

I think it's just a safety was like a safety net, you know that even though at that time I had practiced for a long time I still wanted someone else, I've gotten 3 things from him one is I learned.

Not to suppress my sense of self.

In my initial years of practice. I thought other but does says Enlightenment is no self. If I have any sense of self. Then then I'm not making progress and suddenly I was suppressing self preferential body sensations, mental image is an internal talk, the stuff that self preferential that gives you the sense of self moment by moment I was suppressing that I was trying to get rid of that and Sasaki Roshi is a very balanced teacher, so he teaches that.

Yes, there's no self.

And then there's full self and those are both know self experiences.

OK, there's self has nothing whatsoever.

Uh as TS Eliot said this still point between 2 waves of the sea.

And then there is The Wave, which is the personality arising not as a thing. But as a doing and I've been suppressing the doing of self.

And so he disabused me of that imbalance in my practice that was the first thing that example or did he still bias. Direct teachings like all he constantly emphasized that always cycling between experiences of of 0 self?

And the re arising of the feeling thinking Self, and then it goes back to 0 and this is a natural process. Everybody participates in it. Enlightenment People realize their participating in it, and really enlightened People participated. It wholeheartedly without preference. One side versus the other so I got you disabuse me of my notion of preferring no self to fullness of tuun fixate itself.

OK then he gave me the paradigm of impermanence in terms of expansion and contraction, which represents a vast generalization of the early Buddhist concept of a Nietzsche or impermanence.

An and it's a far more flexible an encompassing model and puts a whole positive spin on what in early Buddhism was sort of looked at as part of suffering and added negative spin. So I got that expansion contraction paradigm, which very nicely Maps on to mathematics and physics and it's just a very, very useful way of guiding People into the experience of improvements. I got that from him. The other thing I got from him was sort of the direct vibe.

When does when you're with him. He is space, expanding and contracting and that tends to reach out and sort of pull you into his world and then but then you have to go back to the meditation Hall and you have to internalize that sample of enerji see some People they get shut the part. They get a ZAP of energy from a teacher, but then what do they? Do immediately after that? Well, the thing bajans to the teacher and they talk about how great the teacher is and.

Etc, etc. So it becomes a whole devotional thing, and then they're just a leaky capacitor that loses that shot be and then they need another recharging what I like about Zen is they never talk about it, but when you go in for the Zen interview. You get ZAP of the flow of nothingness from that teacher, but then what do you do you sit around and then sing the praises of that teacher and get into a whole cult no they send you?

Back to the meditation Hall, where it's cold in the winter or there's bugs. Biting you in the summer. You're sleepy you're getting beat up you're getting yelled at all of this **** is happening now? Can you apply that flow that you got from the teacher to this situation, meaning you internalize it and true they make it yours. So you become like that feature not a devotee.

Of that teacher that's the difference between the gurus app in one tradition and in the Zen tradition and that's I got that from him within that context. So those 3 things dis abusing me of my subtle tendency to suppress the self.

Giving me this incredibly powerful paradigm that Maps nicely under science with regards to impermanence as the fundamental insight.

And then a sort of direct transfer of that.

Flow of impermanence from him, but within the context of making me strong and independent of him because I would immediately have to go and actually apply and internalize it and make it my own.