Good morning. Good morning. So yesterday was day three of Sashin, and our Shuso, Colleen, offered us a beautiful talk, completely appropriate for day three, letting our hearts break open, touching the depth of And today, for day four of Sushin, I have a story from Ed Brown that occurred on day four of Sushin that he was doing with Suzuki Roshi, but that would have been Rohatsu, so it was also the middle day of Sushin. And Suzuki Roshi began by saying, the problems you are now experiencing... And Ed started immediately filling in in his mind, we'll be as mist evaporating in the morning.

[01:07]

You will forget all about them. They will wash away in whatever beautiful Zen image you have. And then Suzuki Roshi went on to say, you will have for the rest of your life. And then he laughed just like we are. And of course, that's not entirely true. We all know they come and go, rise and pass. But they do tend to visit from time to time, sometimes in alarmingly similar ways to the way they've been doing it for a long, long time. And sometimes they come back in softer, more gentle forms. And I think about, you know, I've heard so much about Suzuki Roshi's sense of humor. And I think how that supported him and was probably an example to him.

[02:15]

I don't think from his immediate teachers so much, but somehow he found that. And I think he found it out of kindness, out of his great compassion for people. finding humor in his own life, in his own stubbornness, in his own difficulties. When laughter and pain are not separate, it's not laughing at, it's really a letting go. That old Joni Mitchell line, laughing and crying, you know it's the same release. Once Sojin told me when I was having a particularly hard time, he said, you know, everyone has a crying baby inside them.

[03:25]

He said, you can't You can't smother the baby. You can't throw the baby out. You can't ignore the baby. And you can't let it take over your life." And he was rocking his arms like this as he was telling me this, you know, like he was holding a baby. And then he put his arm up on his shoulder and he said, but you can take the baby with you wherever you go and just go on with your life and take the crying baby with you and eventually it will calm down. So wherever you are in Sashin, in your life, in this moment,

[04:28]

Let's just welcome all of it. That's how we find true peace is by welcoming all of it. So we ended on day two with Fukwan Zazengi with the formal Zazen instructions that are part of that. A quiet room, posture, what you do with your hands, where you put your eyes, your tongue even, the breath, all of it. How we sit down and arrange our clothing. How we begin to sit. zazen and the whole container of sushin is formal.

[05:35]

It has a lot of forms. That's what formal means, just that there are a lot of forms. And formality is both internal and external. It's both a place that we hold inside and it's a a way of expressing ourselves on the outside. Once a student at Tassajara asked Linda Ruth Cutts, who was abbess at the time. It was in a shosan ceremony, so students asking the teacher questions. And the student asked, how can I be more intimate with you? And the teacher said, be more formal because these forms can actually create intimacy because we become closer, we settle, we know the container that we have and we find how to move within it.

[06:49]

There's a Japanese word, mitsu, which means intimate, very close. And there's an expression, mitsu-mitsu-i, which is, I think it's the same as Suzuki Roshi's inmost request. It's not the intimacy of like kind of closing the distance so that we're both more comfortable. It's the intimacy of deep listening and deep response. So this is often formality, I think especially maybe in the West and currently and That is, in this time, formality can seem to get in the way. It can be a barrier, and it can be a barrier.

[08:03]

It can be something, definitely can be something, has often been used to create distance. But the forms can also be used to support intimacy. Intimacy of our self with our deepest self, with our inmost request. and to be deeply intimate and close with others in a different way, in a way that's beyond words. Because so much of the time that we spend in the zendo and around here is in silence. So how do we navigate this space together? How are we aware of each other? Just letting people be in their space, in our shared space. So the balance of speaking and silence, of formality and informality, is continually being negotiated, is continually finding our way with that.

[09:16]

And all of the forms help to create a container, a ritual container of the body in space, our seat, our posture. All of this creates a container which at first is usually constrictive. The image has often been the snake in the tube. It can't wiggle properly, but you know exactly where your edges are. And then gradually starting to relax within that. And I was thinking of a container and maybe a little like a crucible in which, you know, I had to look it up because I was thinking it referred to like the same thing as cross or crucified, but it's a totally different route. I was very happy to find that out. The definition is a container for transformation of materials that can withstand very high heat.

[10:26]

And the heat is needed for transformation. A place or situation in which concentrated forces interact to cause or influence change or development. I thought, yeah, that's not bad. It's not exact. I don't want to take any metaphor too far. But there was something in that that's like, oh yeah. And the heat is just coming back again and again. I'm just sitting, just being present. Body and breath. And part of the traditional container of zazen is that we do it together. And even historically, that's not the only way that zazen has been done by any means, or that it can't be a ritual or ceremony.

[11:28]

But one or many people, it's a ceremony that we create. Reb used to talk about that tension, Reb Anderson. He used to talk about the ceremony of zazen. And at first, he never explained it. He would just say it, which gave me the opportunity to kind of reflect on that and imagine what that might be. And I don't remember what I thought of it at the time, but now studying the Fukan Za Zen Gi, it's like, of course, when you enter the Zendo, because we were practicing at Tassajara at the time, you know, there's the foot you walk in the door with, and then you bow, and the way you move to your seat, and the posture, All of that is part of the ceremony. The zazen doesn't start with the three bells to end the period. Where is the boundary, actually? Like any boundary, where is the boundary? You could say it starts from that first step in or even before you enter.

[12:35]

Even on your way from your cabin at Tassahara to the zendo, you're walking. Practice period, you're walking in robes, you're walking in shashu. All of this is the Dharma gate of repose and bliss, of zazen. So to continue with Fukan Zazengi, the universal instructions for zazen. Once you have adjusted your posture Take a deep breath, inhale and exhale. Rock your body right and left and settle into a steady, immovable sitting position. Then he says, think not thinking. How do you think of not thinking?

[13:38]

Non-thinking. This in itself is the essential art of Zaza. I remember when I first read that, I thought, great, he's going to give me the answer. And then I read, think not thinking. How do you think of not thinking? Non-thinking. Okay. All completely clear. So... So the universal recommendation for Zazen that Dogen is offering has a few aspects. One is this concrete, specific, formal practice. We're making this container, and this is how. This is what you do. And then it's what you do with your mind.

[14:42]

So this is set. Body and mind are now settled. Our body is now settled. Now we settle the mind. And what are we doing? Thinking non-thinking. So, thinking is shiryu. And that's our ordinary, everyday mind. We're very familiar with thinking. Thinking is a function of the mind. It's the inner monologue. It's labeling, judging, planning. It's dualistic because we're pointing to this and not that. Good and bad, past and future, right and wrong. And all of that process creates an I, a separate self. So all of that is thinking.

[15:44]

There is nothing wrong with thinking. I just found this old Suzuki Roshi quote where he was, somebody asked him, like, how can I stop my thinking? And he said, you think there's a problem with thinking? There is no problem with thinking. But it does have a way to take over. It's noisy. And it doesn't really know when to quit. And it doesn't ever have to quit. It can keep going on its own energy pretty indefinitely. So it's not always the time for thinking. And Dogen is saying, if you're going to use the mind, use the mind for, first he said, think not thinking. And that's fu shiryo.

[16:46]

Fu is the negation. Fu or mu. So fu shiryo. Not thinking. But this could be understood as like effortfully trying to stop the mind. Kind of bearing down and like no thoughts, no thoughts, no thoughts. Whoops, that's a thought, that's a thought. No, no. Very hard to stop thinking. the mind because it creates more struggle, maybe more fire than you need. There can be times in sitting when thinking can be quite helpful, particularly when there are ruminative thoughts, thoughts that go in a cycle. And it's hard to interrupt them or harmful thoughts or harmful of self or others.

[17:50]

It's like this is really not a good track. So you can recognize that and you can use other thinking to help you get off of that track and onto something a little more spacious and lighter. And I... There are many times when I actually use thinking to help me get back closer to where I can start to relax and let go. But it's not the heart of what zazen is about. Then he goes on and says, how do you think not thinking? Non-thinking. So non-thinking is hishi-ryo. And it's... It's the unrestricted or boundless mind in zazen. We're neither trying to develop or suppress thoughts. If thoughts are there, the traditional image is it's like you're lying on your back and you're just watching the sky and it's mostly empty, but then periodically clouds go by and you just let them go by.

[19:09]

going off into thinking would be, that's a nice cloud. That looks like an elephant. Or maybe a deer. A deer used to come to our house. But just to let it go past. There's a more modern image that's of standing on a train platform and watching the train go by. And I like that one because it's like really close. And it's like periodically your mind will get, you know, caught by something, you'll get on the train. And then you just get off and it's like, just let the train go by. It's just going by. So when we're just watching thoughts go by, that's fine. There's no problem. They're just, they're not sticky. It's maybe sometimes waking up in the morning, there's a kind of a soft, dreamy edge to things, and you're just kind of watching thoughts go by, but they're not really hanging around.

[20:17]

Actually, the first way that I was able to sort of imagine what that state of mind might be like was remembering what it's like to, you know, when you wake up in the morning and it's like a weekend, you didn't have an alarm, wake up kind of slowly, and it's just sort of comfy, body's relaxed, there's no place you have to be, and it's just easeful. And that was a feeling or a place, because I just really enjoyed that. I could be like, oh, I think something like that. Maybe something in that neighborhood. Rather than, you know, I'm reading these books and thinking, oh, it should be like this or like this. Or I'm confused. What does they mean? So I was thinking, you know, maybe that's my version of the Buddha's rose apple tree.

[21:30]

You know, when the Buddha was struggling so hard to awaken himself. And was doing all these intense ascetic practices and he was on the verge of death and realized this wasn't the way and he had absolutely no idea what to do. And then this memory came up of sitting under a rose apple tree when he was a little boy. And all these activities are going on around him. But what he remembered was not the activities, but just the peacefulness, just the simple being, not needing to do anything or think anything. And he said, I don't know that that's it. I don't think that's it.

[22:33]

but I think it's something more in that direction than what I've been doing. So that was kind of his general orientation, was just being. And that helped guide him as he deepened his practice by thinking non-thinking, or not thinking non-thinking, just by non-thinking, by not trying, by not conceptualizing. And his awareness went deeper and deeper, and he awakened. And I think each of us might have our own somewhat unique

[23:34]

orientation or North Star for what feels like it really helps us orient to what we're doing, what we're sitting with when we sit, when we practice, how we are in our lives. You know, I found the three pure precepts very helpful because they're so broad, they can apply to anything. And feeling like I do when I'm all snuggly and waking up in the morning and don't have anywhere else to go is not always the state of mind that I can just access or that's appropriate in the moment. But the three pure precepts are refrain from evil or refrain from harm, do all good, do what's beneficial, and live and be lived for the benefit of all beings.

[24:38]

It's like, oh, that gives me enough to focus, to orient. And then I can relax a little bit and listen what needs to happen now. Once someone asked Sojin during the Q&A after a talk, they said, what do you think about in zazen? And I thought that was really funny because I thought, well, Sojin never thinks in zazen, of course. Ha ha, of course we all think in zazen. And what Sojin said was, I give myself zazen instruction. And that has really, of all the things he said, I think that was one of the ones that most stayed with me. I give myself zazen instruction. So maybe you know the zazen instruction that you most need. Not generally, not in every situation necessarily, but I think if we listen in the moment, we might be able to know what we really need to hear.

[25:50]

How do we encourage ourselves in practice? How do we meet the one, the being, the self that's arising now. Yeah. So coming back to Genjo Koan that we've been studying this practice period, says to study the Buddha way is to study the self. So this is it. This is what we're doing. We're studying the self. It's like, oh, here you are. To study the self is to forget the self. Or you could say to let go of the self because we see that there's not a fixed self there. It's empty like all things are in the sense that there's no inherent nature to it. It arises and passes and comes and goes. Now I'm flustered and now I'm calm and now I'm...

[27:02]

angry and now I'm sad and now I'm ridiculously joyful and can hardly contain myself. This is all me. And some of those may also be you or your own variations. And none of those is you and all of them are you. So what is you? That's when we don't know anymore, when we don't have so many ideas about who I am. or who other people are. That's letting go of self. It's getting softer around the edges of it. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the bodies and minds of others, drop away. It's hard to describe this in ways that don't sound kind of mystical or woo-woo or special or different because it can actually feel really ordinary.

[28:14]

It's just that some of what was maybe getting between us and ourselves or us and the world softens and drops away. No trace of realization remains. And this no trace continues endlessly. Self arises, we let it go. Self arises, we let it go. Selfing. Coming, going. Arising, passing. Endlessly. Neither one nor the other is a problem. But to have the space to know both and to navigate both is You know, too many words are coming up because none of them quite feel right, like powerful. At first, yes.

[29:18]

It might just feel more connected, more present, more simple. In the Fukan Zazengi, Dogen goes on Right after the think not, or shortly after the think not thinking part, in this whole description of what to do in Zazen, he says, the Zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. Which, the placement didn't occur to me until I was really sitting with this recently and remembering that there are not paragraphs in Dogen. It's just, you know, Chinese, Japanese writing is just kind of continuous. So it's like zazen instruction, think not thinking, and then the zazen instruction I speak of is not learning meditation.

[30:31]

So clearly it is in one sense exactly that. Like here are, you know, and it says... Like, it's not learning meditation, and yet there are instructions. Universal recommendation, you know, recommending for all beings, seated meditation. Zazen, seated meditation. So, what does he mean by that? The Zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. For a long time, I think because I'm kind of... I have a quietly rebellious nature. It's like, don't tell me what to do with my mind in particular. Don't try to control me. And I stayed quiet enough that few people tried to overtly. You know, we all have enough of whatever we have at home, so... I interpret it as...

[31:33]

It's like, don't cling, don't hold on to that. And don't hold on to any idea. And I think that is what Dogen's saying, in part. But often what he's saying is like, there's so many levels of it. So I think one level is, it's not learning meditation like, okay, now I've got the steps. Okay, I've sat down, and I've gotten in full lotus, and I'm... I'm now silent and still. Okay. If I sit like this, this means that I will get enlightened. Which is, you know, it's not means and. Means and end, that's his big burning question. He completely believed that every person, every human being had Buddha nature. that we're all of the nature of Buddha, that we all have the capacity to awaken. So if that's the case, why do we have to practice?

[32:39]

Why do we have to work so hard? Why do we have to struggle? So this is coming out of his whole history, his whole experience. It's not this thing that we're trying to hold on to. You know, it's like... And it's funny, what's coming up is like, watch the donut, not the hole. And I'm like, no, it's actually watch the hole, not the donut. Also going back, as soon as he goes through the... There's kind of two... pieces of the formal instruction, which comes from an 8th century Chinese Zazen instruction text that's called just Zazengi, you know, meditation, or seated meditation instructions.

[33:52]

And then he added on the universal recommendation. So earlier, he says... after going on with the quiet room is suitable, eat and drink moderately, et cetera, et cetera. Then he says, Zazen has nothing to do whatever with sitting or lying down. Same thing. He's just talking about how to sit. Oh, and then he goes immediately into how to sit. Has nothing to do with sitting or lying down. Here's exactly how to sit. This hand, this hand, these thumbs. Tongue? Okay, yes. Roof of your mouth, behind your teeth, just touching. I'd been practicing in Vipassana tradition and some in the Tibetan tradition before that, so this wasn't all so new to me, and I wasn't in a stage of my practice where I was taking it super literally, but I now realize I didn't take it literally enough.

[34:52]

Because I'm just like, okay, good to know. It's not about sitting or lying down. Great. But it actually gave me the field that I needed to find myself and my posture in. So that as I've gradually been able to come into... I will never do full lotus because my knees can't do that. But as my body has been able to assume the form that Dogen describes, I've seen how it's also transformed my practice and my understanding of practice, which is really interesting. So I... I think maybe what Dogen's talking about here is that the zazen that Dogen is describing is the expression of our, his and our particular and specific form of practice.

[35:55]

This was the practice that was transmitted to him, the practice where he woke up completely with his teacher, Ru Jin. You know, practice is always manifesting here and now in this moment. The forms of Buddhism have changed quite a bit moving from 2,500 years ago in India through China and Japan and now to the West. And there are through lines and we don't, you know, it's like until you understand deeply the heart of it, It's hard to know what's essential and what's not. I mean... I think Suzuki Roshi suggested that we just hold all the forms that were transmitted to us from Japan for at least 50 years so we get to completely embody them and know what they are for ourselves and know what they have to teach us before we start picking and choosing or letting things go.

[37:08]

He didn't say you have to hold on to them forever. The Buddha on his deathbed said, you know, at that time they were up to 250 some precepts in the Vinaya for monks and roughly a hundred more for the nuns. But he said, you don't have to keep all of them. Just let go of the unimportant ones and just keep the most important ones. So after he died and the monks were meeting, they couldn't agree on what were the most important ones. So they just kept all of them because they're like, we're not the Buddha. We don't know how to make those choices. We don't have his depth of wisdom to know that. I see the striker.

[38:12]

Oh, we have just a little time. He says, intelligence or lack of it does not matter. This is still the Fukan Zazengi. Between the dull and the sharp-witted, there is no distinction. I think it can actually be harder if you're sharp-witted because you're used to using your mind for pretty much everything and it can become a muscle that gets a lot of use and maybe overuse compared to some of the other parts of our being. So either but intelligence or lack of it, does not matter. Between the dull and the sharp-witted, there is no distinction.

[39:15]

If you concentrate your effort single-mindedly, that in itself is negotiating the way. So again, how do you effort? What is the effort? What is the energy? What is the virya? You know, this kind of energetic, joyful, energetic principle And virya has a quality of joy, not of slogging. You concentrate, if you focus, if you direct it single-mindedly. And where do you orient it? You orient it toward letting go again and again, dropping off. the non-thinking, just allowing things to rise and pass, coming back to that again and again, and appreciating again and again, moments of silence, moments of stillness.

[40:24]

And it's like, not that's it, but that's in the right direction. That feels like, okay, I can allow that. And I see that, and I recognize it and I let it be. Allowing it to sink in without trying to hold on to it, allowing those wholesome experiences, those positive states of mind, even if they're like just letting yourself for a moment have the pain wherever it's manifesting in your body and being with it in a gentle way. to notice and appreciate and allow that to be, to cultivate it. That is cultivating. Practice realization is naturally undefiled. Going forward, going forward, making progress, so to speak, in practice is a matter of everydayness.

[41:29]

So it's in how we live our lives, every moment. when we're here, when we're not. It's a matter of everydayness that we can manifest practice realization more and more fully. And then he says, it, the it is zazen, it is simply the Dharma gate of repose and bliss, the practice realization of totally culminated enlightenment. It is the manifestation of ultimate reality. Traps and snares can never reach it. And I used to feel like, oh, this feels so far from where I am that it's just laughable. And now I feel like, oh, it's the Dharma gate. It's not it. It's the Dharma gate of repose and bliss.

[42:34]

And it is also because there's nothing outside of totally culminated enlightenment. The manifestation of ultimate reality is everything that's manifesting. So it's all included. But the Dharma gate of the practice of zazen is our way to being able to open to the experience of it. Once its heart is grasped, you are like a dragon gaining the water, like a tiger taking to the mountains." Which means you're in your true element. Dragons live in water, tigers live in the mountains. It's their true element. It's where they're at home. It's where they're at ease. It's where they're like, yeah, I'm most myself here. So this is where we're most ourself.

[43:35]

once we grasp that heart of it, it's like, oh, yes, I feel more myself now. I don't have to be some other self. This is myself. And Genjo Koan resonates with, when you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point, When you find your way at this moment, practice occurs.

[44:13]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.23