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　　Well this is the deepest kind of inner transformation that is going on here. And what kind of introspection do you have. I don”t think there”s much point in those kind of listing of faults that some spiritual traditions do. Maybe we can learn something from it. I”m not sure. I think the greatest kind of introspection is when we just stop, and we look, and we notice what is. If you”re working with a koan, if you put the koan at the center of the whole universe, then you”ll find that everything becomes the koan. And when you notice the koan, you notice what is. You are the koan and you notice what is. And we stop having so many opinions about what is. We are so full of those opinions about what is. And then we notice that those, too, the opinions, too, are just something else that rises in the mind. There is no need to feed them.

　　When we surrender to the truth that we can”t control everything, we need to allow what is within us and without us to arise, there is a kind of relief and you”ll find that your practice can become rather comfortable even in the darkness, even though it is full of mystery and you don”t know what on earth you are doing. It can still be rather sweet at that time. This is one of the deeper levels of the imagery of Kuan Yin as the Bodhisattva of Compassion and Healing. The figure who hears the sounds of the world, hears the suffering of the world. And in hearing that darkness and allowing that darkness in, there is a kind of grace that appears, that is symbolized by the form of Kuan Yin. There is a cabalistic legend that the shekinah (sp

　　), who is the feminine, Kuan Yin aspect of god, follows us in our exile from god, our exile from the pine. We are warmed by that feminine pine force. I think we do experience this when we are willing to just let go and be in our meditation no matter how difficult it is. But sometimes that”s a minute by minute thing. When some people walk in in such pain or it interacts with me in some way, I realize well I have to take this session minute by minute. And just walk through each minute, each second, really. And other times I don”t need that attentional discipline, but it”s good to have it. And when you have that force of attention there is a kind of warmth that will come attend you. I don”t think it”s a great fruit of the practice or anything, but you will notice it then.

　　So while this is going on character is something that is being built, really unconsciously in the darkness. It”s like the temple is being built when we are not attending to building the temple. We”re just attending to what is. We”re just washing the dishes and getting through the next hour sitting quietly loving the world, really.

　　So it”s a kind of initiation, I think, our difficulty in zen. And initiations always come with an ordeal. You know some tribal people have very severe initiations where there bodies are mutilated in various ways. What the ordeal part of an initiation does, I think, is it overwhelms our previous ideas about the world. When you find that you haven”t sat a sesshin for awhile or you”ve gotten far away from the practice and you”ve come back to the practice, you”ll often find that the first day of sesshin can be kind of hard or you”ll have a really hard day there in a retreat. This is just the ordeal part of the initiation. It”s a kind of purifying going on, but also we don”t let go of those ideas and the way we see the world easily. And so it”s sort of extracted from us with dental equipment. And sometimes it”s painful. The great trust and truth of the practice is that it really is worth it. That if you endure that, and if you don”t give up just before the joy comes, the joy really will come. The grace and the light will be all about you and you”ll see it in the faces of your companions. You”ll see it in the gardens. You will see it all around you and you”ll find it in your own heart. And it is the great reason, really, that we sit. And it is the source of all that is creative in us. All that we do that heals and helps each other. It is that great fire in life that appears when we just attend to what is.

　　So this is why a retreat as well as being difficult can also be rather simple and sweet and joyful. And I encourage you to relax into it. To truly be simple and relaxed actually requires more discipline in some ways than struggling. So please enjoy the rest of this retreat. Taste each moment. Don”t sit there waiting for it to pass. If you are just willing to taste each moment, then the sun will rise all on its own without the help of human hands.

　　Thank you very much.

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