Over and over again is something like from the beginning there is no surplus or lack and somehow that just rolls all up into one for me. And so in a sense you might think of that as the title of my talk. Although, we'll see. I was going to say that it was nice to have Bodhidharma on my left here and my aunt on my right, but as I was looking I didn't see her name up there anymore. And she died a while back and it was quite a shock for me to have that happen. Some time ago I tried to talk to her about Zen Buddhism and Zazen and what it was like and she just wasn't interested. She grew up in the 30s. She was a student here in Berkeley in the early and mid-30s and someone defined her as a Trotskyite among a sea of Stalinists.

[01:08]

She still had the idea that religion was an opium of the people. So she just didn't pick up on it and I kind of regretted that. I had another friend a few years earlier who died and he was a very close friend and also actually my brother-in-law. And I was talking to him on the phone. He was in the hospital, basically on his last day in the hospital. And he said he was afraid to die. He was afraid of dying. And I had just got through sitting a five-day Sushin where I had realized that it was okay to die. It was a great event in that Sushin for me. It was that realization. And it was the last day, last period of the last day of Sushin, actually right here that Blanche was leading. And I was breathing and I was just letting my breath, I was just letting my breath exhale.

[02:16]

And I suddenly got very scared that I was never going to inhale again. And it really kind of shook me up. And right then the bell rang and that was the end of the Sushin. Saved by the bell. But the next morning I started sitting again and I had the same experience. Except then I realized it was okay to just die. If that was what was going to happen, then that's what was going to happen. And that was a, it was good. So it was very nice that when my friend on the phone said he was afraid to die, I said, you know, it's okay to die. And he asked me how to sit Zazen, how to meditate. Now here he is, you know, laying on, basically in the hospital. So I described him how to count his breaths and a little bit about the attitude of the mind he might have.

[03:23]

He promised to go see him the next night in the hospital. And unfortunately I should have gone that night because he died that night. And I always wondered if he was able to do any meditation, any Zazen or not. So I think we're all very lucky to be here and to be hearing about Zazen and to be doing Zazen. We're far ahead of some other people. We should be very happy about that. And so that's really kind of what I was going to talk about was Zazen and what it's all about, at least for me. But, you know, maybe I'm giving some of you maybe the impression that you sit Zazen so that you won't be afraid to die. And that's not necessarily the case. You don't sit Zazen to become something or to achieve something, to arrive at something or something like that.

[04:28]

You sit Zazen just to be sitting there. Although there are some derivatives that come out of sitting Zazen. You're not really sitting there for those derivatives. You're sitting there for just being there. The Heart Sutra, which we chant a lot here, a lot every day, just about, says there's no old age and death, which is great. But then it goes on to say there's no extinction of no old age and death. So meditation is not going to alleviate the fact that we're going to be dying. So what the Sutra is really saying is it's how we perceive our lives, how we're perceiving our life today, how we're living today. See, every moment that we're living is really the only moment that's here, that's now.

[05:33]

We're living the now and that we're alive now or we're dead now. But there really isn't anything else but the now. The body that we have now is just the body that we have. In some cases it's strong and others it's weak. But whatever it is, that property of the body is just what that property is. And as I'm getting older, I remember being younger and more flexible and stronger. But what I am right now is just this. And I have to learn to live with it. Somewhere in the Wind Bell it was talking about the people in the hospice that they have there. And this one person saying, well what I have right now, this person laying in the hospice dying, what I have right now is the feel of the sheets against my body and how my fingers sort of stroll over the sheets and whatnot.

[06:38]

That's where they were at that particular time and that was their life, that was their now. Just as good as a now as someone who is training for the Olympics. But I didn't understand that when I first started sitting Zazen, I first started practicing Zen Buddhism, I think I had some very unrealistic views about what meditation was. I remember hearing about Suzuki Roshi's death. I think he was pretty young, I'm not sure, maybe somewhere in his late 60s or early 70s, which to me is young. And I was shocked that a Zen teacher, a Zen master would die early. Somehow I assumed that by sitting Zazen you somehow became immune to dying. So in a sense his death is a great teaching for me. But it woke me up and said, well maybe this is wrong to be thinking about Zazen as a way of pushing away this bad stuff. And I still remember that.

[07:41]

And I started, actually I first started hearing about Zen when I was at the Chevron programming computers and Rev Anderson was also there as a computer programmer and we would sit at lunch and he would talk to me about his Zen practice. This is when he was still pretty young at it, pretty new at it. And he went away, actually went to Tassajara and I continued to do my thing. But always in the back of my mind there were these thoughts about Zen. So I picked up a book and started reading it. I brought my backpacking with me, read it and decided to practice. But my impressions, my feelings after reading that book were that Zazen was this great wonderful thing. You sat it for a while, you had Satori, you had an enlightenment, which was great. The way I understood it was it was better than any drug high you could ever have. And then you go away and do something, whatever it is you were going to do with the rest of your life. That was pretty naive of you. I called up the San Francisco Zen Center and they said we're a Soto temple.

[08:50]

And that disappointed me because of course the book I was reading was all about Rinzai Zen and the aggressive way that Satori is approached there. But now that I have practiced for a while I really think that I'm much better off in a Soto temple than I would have ever been in a Rinzai temple. It sort of fits my personality much more than not. On the other hand maybe I would have done okay in Rinzai too. I hope I would have. There's another thing about meditation. Also there's a book out called The Relaxation Response which some of you may have read by a fellow by the name of Herbert Benson. Actually I read about it even before he wrote the book. And talking about how when a person goes through the processes which are very similar to what Zazen is counting breaths or counting just one and something like that.

[09:52]

Your body after a while goes through a physiological change which he called the relaxation response. And I think probably most of us probably have experienced that when we sit Zazen. But again we're not coming here to experience the relaxation response. Sort of a derivative. Nice to have but that's not why we're here. Let's see. This temple tradition comes from Sojin and from Suzuki Roshi through Dogen and then of course all the way back to Buddha and then beyond Buddha. And we spent a lot of time talking about Dogen and that's what I'm going to do a little bit right now. Dogen is a giant among Zen teachers and Zen writers as probably most of you know. He emphasized that meditation there's nothing to gain with meditation which is of course what I've been saying for the last few minutes. That there's nothing that you don't sit to bring something in from outside yourself into yourself.

[10:59]

Meditation and enlightenment practice are the same. There's no difference between the two of them. I'll read a little bit out of that in here in a minute to sort of describe that. So the way I think of it is that the practice meditation it's really the only activity that there is in life. That there's really nothing to do in life but to practice Zazen. And there's nothing to gain from that practice. That indeed anything that there is to gain was gained long before we were ever born. So we're just being here. We're just sitting. We're just practicing. We're just meditating. We're just living our lives. Now that idea was a big surprise to me when I first came here. And I came with the idea that there was going to be meditation a lot of emphasis on enlightenment and that sort of thing.

[12:06]

And there really isn't. I said well what do you mean? I came here to meditate so I could become enlightened. If that isn't the case then what am I doing here? And that question really went through my mind. But I had made a commitment to stay and to sit. And so that's what I did. And that commitment sort of carried me through any of the kind of questioning that I might have had about that. So Dogen's idea as introduced to me is that enlightenment is not separate. And I will now read out of this book Shikantaza. Is this book still for sale here, Ross? We have a few copies left. A few copies. If you don't have it, get it. It's a good book. I'm going to read something on page 56, 55 and 56 from the excerpt from the Bindoa, which is also a small book like this, which we may have for sale.

[13:06]

I don't know. We used to. It's included in the Bindoa, I believe. In that there's a series of questions that are asked at the end of his lecture. People are asking various questions and Dogen is responding to the questions. And I kind of wonder if he also asked the questions and then responded, or quite how it worked. But the questions are really loaded. In this one, the question is something along the lines of, as for the practice of Zazen, those who have not yet realized the Buddhadharma must attain enlightenment through practicing the way of Zazen. When can those who have already clarified the true Buddhadharma expect from doing Zazen? So he's basically saying, why do people who are already enlightened, why do they need to sit Zazen? I can see why people who are not enlightened need to sit, but why do the people who are need? And of course, as I've just got through saying, of course,

[14:09]

that's not the case. So Dogen goes on to say, well, I'll explain it to you, but you probably won't get it. Your view that the practice and enlightenment are not one is heretical. In the teaching of the Buddhadharma, practice and enlightenment are one and equal. Since this is the practice of enlightenment, the beginner's practice of the way itself is the whole of original enlightenment. Therefore, when instruction about the attitude toward practice is given, it is said that you should not expect enlightenment apart from practice. This is because the practice itself is original enlightenment being directly pointed at. Since it is the enlightenment of practice, enlightenment is endless. Since it is the practice of enlightenment, practice is beginningless. So that's a real hard. It's hard for me to... I've read it many times and I'm still reading it many times, trying to extract out of it what's being said there.

[15:11]

Let's see, the teaching of the Buddhadharma, practice and enlightenment are one and equal. He's basically saying there's no difference between practice and enlightenment. When we practice Zazen, we are practicing enlightenment. And enlightenment itself is what practice is. The hard part for me is trying to say, well, enlightenment itself is practice. I can't think of enlightenment as an object or something like that. It seems different from that. So I was thinking Zazen is enlightenment's practice. I was thinking of enlightenment as a kind of an object. You can think of Zazen as what it practices to manifest itself. Since this is the practice of enlightenment, the beginner's practice of the way itself is the whole of original enlightenment. Therefore, when instruction about the attitude toward practice is given,

[16:15]

it is said that you should not expect enlightenment apart from practice. So when people are teaching about practice, you shouldn't expect enlightenment somewhere else besides practice itself. So we're sitting Zazen, we're enlightenment itself. We don't go looking for enlightenment in swimming the English Channel. Oh, they probably can. I'm not sure that I've got that right. We'll work on it. So I was thinking, talking about Zazen. Probably most of us know about what Zazen is, but I would want to refresh you a little bit. Talking about establishing a good upright posture, pushing the lower back up straight.

[17:16]

I actually started doing some exercises to strengthen my lower back, and I think it's helping so that I can sit up straight. And then part of the instruction that we get is that the chest should be raised up and the chin should be a little lower, the eyes going down diagonal toward the floor or the wall. And the shoulders are relaxed. And it kind of reminds me of a joke that I heard you probably heard before about keep your eye on the ball, your shoulder to the wheel, and your nose to the grindstone. Now try to work that way. It's kind of like that. And there's so many instructions about sitting, about what your body should be. It's kind of hard to get it that way. But I think over time, it kind of happens. When I first started sitting, I said, how do I get all this stuff done? And I said, well, I'm just going to ignore it. Okay, my shoulders are going to be tense, and that's just the way it's going to be. And then over time, I started finding that my shoulders were beginning to relax

[18:19]

and there were certain ways that I could move my body around where things could relax. So don't be disheartened if your shoulders feel tight or if something is still going wrong with your meditation. If you keep sitting, pretty soon it'll start coming to you. It'll start happening. And then the breaths. Breathing. The attention for breathing is down here in the hara, described halfway between the belly button and the groin. The belly going in and out. Diaphragm basically going up and down. I sort of think of it as you're really thinking about how the diaphragm muscle is sort of moving in and out and relaxing. Breathing at the chest or even with the chest. Worrying about where the air is coming in from the nose and whatnot is probably not quite as beneficial as just thinking about the belly going up and down or in and out. Put the attention down there and not worry very much about where else the breath is.

[19:20]

I find that the best for me. Maximizes how quickly I can start meditating. So that's sort of the physical aspect of it. Then what's happening to our minds. I do a lot of computer programming, which is a very mental process. And I usually sit in the evenings and I find that I'm still programming computers. I'm sitting there sitting, thinking about all the stuff that's going on. And sometimes I just let that happen. I just sit there and just think about the computer and okay. And I try to maintain my posture. Other times I count my breaths. Sort of in and out. And I find that counting my breaths really dissipates the thoughts about the computer. So if you really want to get into and do Zazen quickly, counting breaths is a really great way to do it. And I think we're instructed from the very beginning.

[20:21]

People who had Zazen instruction this morning were probably instructed to count their breaths. I still have been sitting for 25 years. I still count my breaths. Especially at the beginning of the Zazen period. And then after I counted my breaths for a while, I noticed that I can just sort of let go of the counting of breaths. And just the breathing is in and out. And I can just let go of concentrating on the breathing and I can just be there. And still feeling the breathing, but not really working very hard at breathing. Pushing in and out or something like that. Someone asked Sojin what he did when he meditated. And he says he gives himself Zazen instruction. He's constantly working against gravity, if you will. Gravity is constantly pulling us down. Constantly pulling against gravity. Remembering to keep the lower back pushed out a little bit.

[21:24]

Chest moved up a little bit. Shoulders relaxed. Head describes us from hanging like a puppet. Thinking about those things as you're meditating is really good. I do that a lot too. Because otherwise if the body starts relaxing and whatnot, then your thoughts start coming in and interfering. Let's see. When I first started meditating and counting my breaths, I very quickly discovered that the problems that I thought I was having didn't become problems anymore. I remember one time I had a big conflict with my sister, who's self-admittedly a very difficult person to get along with at times. She has very strong opinions about things.

[22:26]

And I just had an argument with her. And I went in to meditate in my home, in my bedroom. And I was still thinking about this argument I was having with her, and I was also counting my breaths. And then I discovered, hey, all of a sudden I realized that it didn't make any difference what her argument was. It just sort of fell away. And I thought about that a lot, was how quickly the idea of the falling away of body and mind that they talk about with meditation, which I think is the manifestation of enlightenment, how quickly that comes. The idea that a beginner, a person who sits for the very first time, is practicing enlightenment is very real to me. Even though there are a lot of thoughts going on and whatnot, there's still that enlightenment happening.

[23:29]

So I saw it there, and I really believe that that's the case. That after 25 years, and it's quite different for me as a meditator than it is for someone who's meditating for the very first time. But I think the person who's meditating for the very first time is also manifesting that enlightenment. Let's see. So later, when I did more meditating, especially Sushins, some of you who have known me for a while know that I really like Sushins. I left the Zen Center, I came and sat for three years when the Zen Center was at Dwight Way, and then I left to go on to do other things, continuing to meditate at home, but not actively at the Zen Center. And then I came back to the Zen Center about five years, seven years later, with the commitment that I was going to sit every Sushin for five years. And I did that. I actually got very...

[24:35]

I think some of the people around me, especially the people I was working for, got a little PO'd at me. They said, well, we want to do this. I said, well, I can't do that. I'm going to go sit a Sushin. So I'm not quite so strong about it now, but I wanted to have that five years of intensive practice. And I'm glad I did it that way. And during that time, I think Sushin is really great, because for me, I'm really not a very good meditator. It takes me a long time for my mind to quiet down. And during a Sushin, a five or seven day Sushin, that happens. The mind really quiets down. And one of the things I discovered was that after a while, counting breaths kind of got in my way. And I realized that I didn't want to count breaths anymore, so I just basically did it by myself. But the breath counting sort of went away. I didn't try to stop counting breaths. I didn't try to start counting breaths. It just sort of didn't need them anymore or something like that.

[25:37]

Although I still count my breaths today when I sit Zazen. There are times when it's not a practice that I need. That's why I like Sushins. Let's see. So what I'm experiencing then is that I'm just there. I'm just sitting. There's nothing to gain. There's nothing to not gain. There's just being there. Just sitting. And that's what I think of as what Dogen calls and what the title of this book here is, Shikantaza. It's just being there. Just sitting. So then I've asked myself, well, can I just sit and count my breaths? And I don't know the answer to that question, actually. I don't know if I can answer it. Maybe someone else here can.

[26:37]

But counting breaths to me is an active process. There's my mind actively doing something. In a sense, it's kind of like wanting to meditate. And so for me, it's not just sitting. But on the other hand, as I said earlier, counting breaths is still, I think, manifests enlightenment. I found that the case when I was early in my meditating, that the issues and whatnot of my life sort of fell away and things just opened up for me. When I became a lay monk, Mel named me Shinshi Titsunnin. And the last two syllables there, Titsunnin, mean now mind. And Mel pointed out to me a couple of days ago that that's basically the same as Shikantaza.

[27:40]

Now mind and Shikantaza are equivalent. Now mind being what? Here we are right now. This is all there is. This is our mind. And as I was writing this up, I was writing all sorts of wonderful things, which actually I got disgusted with because they sounded too zenny for me. So I don't think I'll read them. I think instead I'll kind of talk about sort of ending up. When I first agreed to give this talk, I was thinking I would want to talk about the Shikantaza of everyday life, which is kind of like, Mel describes, many of you have seen him describe this, he has a wonderful way of talking about a frog sitting on a lily pad, just sitting there and waiting and not necessarily doing anything, but a fly, an insect flies by and out comes a tongue, grabs the insect. That's the end of it. He has a delightful way of doing that.

[28:41]

He gets to see him do that. It's wonderful. And so I think the tongue whips out, it gets that thing. So I was thinking in terms of myself, let's see if I can get this right. I'm sitting at a computer terminal, my programming computer, and my mind and fingers whip out and there's a computer program. Okay. Am I stretching the point? There it is. The idea of what is everyday mind, what is this Shikantaza of everyday life, that's the process. Going grocery shopping, the activity of grocery shopping whips out and suddenly there are the groceries in the basket purchased and you're on your way. You're just shopping,

[29:43]

you're just there doing what's going on. And I was thinking, and you're driving along, and I was driving to Zen Center and I got here. And here I am. You can see how much trouble I had trying to talk about Shikantaza of everyday life. It's just there. So I guess in closing, I'm going to ask for some questions if there's time for questions. I would say come and sit as much as you possibly can. And if you can do five years of Sashim, that's really great. But if you can only sit occasionally, that's great too. Any questions? Yes. You said that just, I mean, you don't need anything. But don't you get more peace? I mean, you get sad, and you always have more peaceful life. But that peaceful life is there already.

[30:45]

That's the... If you sit down and say, I'm going to sit because I'm going to be peaceful or I'm going to have a more peaceful life, and you go out the door and suddenly there's a war, you may say, I'm going to sit because I'll have a peaceful life. Ross. Yes, Richard. Thank you for your talk. In the beginning, you mentioned that we here have a sitting practice and we're kind of ahead of the game of the people who aren't sitting and they're missing something. And I'm wondering, if you end your talk what is qualitatively the difference between people working on a computer who don't have a sitting practice and yourself or going to work or doing the grocery shopping or whatever. What are they missing out on?

[31:51]

Which might put a hint to some of the new people here who are just kind of getting their toe wet and what might be in store later on. Without also encouraging training activity. Zazen. Well, I don't know that there is any difference, really. For me, I guess talking just and really that's the only person I could talk about. My internal voice that I have inside of me that's talking all the time to me is a very kind, a much kinder voice now than it used to be. Because I know that voice so much better and I know what's inside here. And so I'm much more forgiving to myself than I ever was before. That's one of the...

[32:52]

So you were a computer programmer before you started practicing even in the early years. So in the same activity you might find yourself being more forgiving when you blow a bubble or some angry thought comes up. Right. Well, I recognize the angry thought. The angry thought is still there. Oh, there's the angry thought. Which is different from Oh, there's the angry thought. Big difference between the two. Although there are times when I have the angry thought but it doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to for me because the angry thought is just... What I learned at Zazen was those thoughts are just thoughts. Thank you. Alan. When you talk about Shikantaza there's an energy to it as well. There's an effort to put into it. It's not just drifting and these things happen.

[33:53]

There has to be... You actually have to drive here and you actually have to do something or someone is doing the program. And what I found helpful the way we tend to translate Shikantaza is just sitting. And I think the operative word strictly if you want to expand it into your life is the just part. It's having a kind of single-minded quality where any activity that you're doing is... You see that it's complete. That it's enough. It's just enough to do just that thing at that moment. And then you do another. So you can think of it as when we're here and sitting we're just sitting. And when you're driving

[34:54]

or being with your kids or whatever, it's a very useful word. I think to enter this word just and explore what that means in terms of how your mind and activities go together. Thank you. Yeah. I just heard this talk by Huston Smith you know talking about religions having a separate reality that you know the epiphany seems to be that somebody seems to be transported to another realm or something. And I was wondering that I was wondering how we could connect up the idea of the epiphany. I was thinking of Jacob Needleman's idea that there's a spiritual realm

[35:56]

of potentiality sort of between and maybe like Nietzsche says he calls it the dangerous perhaps. And that maybe could connect up this separate reality of the epiphanies with you know the here and now is here. Where we seem to get some enlightenment from this ordinary. The ordinary is extraordinary and since sorrow and honor are one. But I myself as I do write poetry I seem to be I noticed that today when I was walking down I missed the bus you know because I don't have a real from doing poetry I don't have a real pointed consciousness in other words when I'm walking along I have lateral thoughts metaphorical thoughts so there's more going on it's like a I'm in a thicket of different points of view

[36:57]

that are going back and forth in a metaphorical lateral bonal kind of thinking association. And so I sometimes you know I miss the bus because I if I had been you know like in the here and now I would have been I've been walking I know the bus was coming I would have been looking for the bus pointed to get down to the wild oats at the time that I wanted to but this happens all the time so I'm I'm wondering it seems that people that are very you know pointed in their consciousness can you know do accomplish a lot but I question whether you know people that are doing all these things at once in a kind of metaphorical way and aren't don't have a pointed consciousness maybe and maybe more have a more holistic there's more there's more kind of a holistic pluralism going on in the world rather than just you know doing additions and all you're doing is making additions or all I'm doing here

[37:58]

is just raising my hand and talking to you and pointing my fingers and talking to you here maybe because the you know our nature of our being is much more convangling and stranger than that let me I think the practice the practice that I'm aware of here that we have at the Bruegge Zinn Center is a meditation practice I guess there are lots of other practices out there and I know that I'm really qualified to answer the question that you have fully I do think if you come here and sit Zazen which is I think the major offering that we have maybe you have you get an answer to that yes just responding to what you said there's a famous quote from that Korean teacher you know since Zazen is famous for saying just do just cut carrots just whatever you're doing

[38:59]

somebody caught him reading while eating they said they said ha ha ha you know and what do you say now he said when you read and eat just read and eat of course that's a wonderful funny but it also is related to what you were saying to me that even when everything that's happening seems really complicated and your thought process is really complicated and multi-layered and blah blah when you're having that complicated experience just have that complicated experience something like that you can experience some things I have a complicated one too yeah where we are now is where we are this is it thank last question well a comment and a question the comment being that you're a computer programmer and

[40:00]

I do quality assurance you may type and the program is just there but I'm here to tell you it's probably just an illusion that's what my users say to me how do you approach you talked a bit about this and there's no gaining idea how do you approach the the phrase I've often heard Sojun saying other people here in San Francisco Zen center where they're basically sort of quoting Suzuki Roshi saying Zen is really good for nothing that's great I don't know much about Zen what I really know about

[41:02]

is Zazen meditation and we just got through talking about Zazen as being an activity of its own of itself there's no no reason to sit Zazen no reason not to sit Zazen it's just it's just there and I do it I love to do it I think a person can live a wonderful life without Zen I think there are people out there who are doing that I've chosen to do it this way and I guess there are a lot of other of us who have as well I don't know if that answers your question but that's about as good as I think I can do Thank you Beings are numberless

[41:50]

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