Warning about isolated practice without communication
Practice is very individual, but if you get lost in it your nature is not developing; you are sealed in with conceit, so you don't hear anything from anybody else. That's what it means to be "lost."
On the value and difficulty of silence in practice
Long, deep silence, which contains everything in each person, is very important, even though it contains a bundle of problems inside.
On the tradition of dharma talk as communal practice
When I talk, if I am very confused, you will know I am very confused. So this way, the way of one person talking, is economy of time and space, practiced for centuries. We call it "ugo-noshu." "Crow find the dead deer."
On the completeness already present in practice
The whole world is waiting and waiting and waiting for you, for your complete, perfect enlightenment. It's been so long, very long. And yet, one flash of the perfect enlightenment at the very beginning of right practice means that all of us are Anuttara-samyaksambodhi.
Redefining sesshin beyond training
I don't have any sense of training you for something. Also, we have lots of friends, brothers, sisters, parents, who are practicers, and their choice to join or not to join sesshin makes very great sense too.
Affirming ordinary life as the way
If there are any misunderstandings about what is called Zen life or Buddhist life, I'd like to clear them up and reassure you that however you are is the way you should be.
Teaching beyond words, natural communication
Even when there are no words, there is teaching, so it is a little awkward to take the opportunity to speak. The whole thing is a little dusty. Without human language, all trees and all grasses know each other completely.
On artistic expression as sensitivity to the medium
Without destroying silence, to speak or play music is a very hard thing. When you paint a picture, whether on canvas or rice paper, it's very hard to feel what the paper wants.
Unity of learning and sitting, dissolving teacher-student hierarchy
Complete manpo and complete zazen, pure listening to the Dharma and pure zazen, are not separate things. They are one thing. In visible form, everyone is teacher and everyone is student.
Vivid animal metaphors for the nature of practice
Your practice should walk along like a rhinoceros which is fleeing the field. Your practice should be like a dragon, or salmon, which leaps upstream in the water, or a bird which is freed from the cage.
On the nature of dharma transmission as transformation, not replication
An amazing thing is that the something which is supposed to move from one to another, doesn't retain the same form. When you teach someone how to cook, giving the recipe, instruction, and practicing together, the result is never the same.
Summarizing the essence of learning
To learn how you are is the most direct teaching.