I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. I want to introduce our speaker today, Lori Sanaki, whom I think most of us know. She's been practicing a long time, began at both City Center and Tassajara, and has been living here at BCC for 15 years, raising her family, and she's been head student here. We're lucky to have her here to talk to us. Thank you. I got my first look at the new patio walking in. It looks really good. There's a new little patio over there. I never make it over to that part of town.

[01:02]

It's good to be here this morning together talking about the Dharma. We had at least one auspicious thing happen. Recently a young girl came home from school and told her mom, I want to be a Buddhist. And they came today. And so I hope you are all on your best behavior. I wanted to talk about something Suzuki Roshi said. He's a Zen master who was the founder of our practice place.

[02:07]

He said that our practice is Hinayana practice with Mahayana spirit. And so I wanted to just unpack that a little bit, remind ourselves about what that means. So Hinayana Hinayana means literal. These terms refer to a split that happened pretty early in Buddhism, in the first few generations after Shakyamuni Buddha died. And one part of the split evolved to call themselves the Mahayana, which means great vehicle. Maha means great and yana means vehicle. And they called the other people Hinayana, small vehicle.

[03:13]

And the other people call themselves, they don't call themselves small vehicle, they call themselves Theravada or way of the elders. So they tend to see themselves as kind of the keepers of the original flame of kind of strict Buddhism. And the Mahayana sees themselves as more the keeper of the real spirit of Buddha. the Mahayana say that the Hinayana people practice to save themselves and they, the Mahayana, practice to save all beings. And there are this Theravada teaching has continued to this day mostly it survived in Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka and there's people like us, Americans, who've gone to those places and studied with those teachers and brought that teaching here.

[04:25]

And you'll notice that they also practice Hinayana practice with Mahayana spirit. So I think that this phrase has something to do with a place that we tend to get stuck, any of us, regardless of what sect of Buddhism we follow. So I wanted to talk about that. The definition I came up with for Theravada, which is, just to review the Hinayana side, is a conservative form of Buddhism that adheres to Pali scriptures and the non-theistic ideal of self-purification to nirvana. So one of the differences historically has to do with what scriptures, what teachings are used.

[05:28]

So the Hinayana teachings also called the Pali Canon. They're in the Pali language and they're sutras and monastic rules and they tend to be very practical, extremely practical about how to practice, how to do the meditation and how to live according to Buddhist teachings. And then the Mahayana scriptures are For example, the perfection of wisdom, which is the heart sutra that we chant here every day, is part of that. And the Prajnaparamita is kind of like the a spiritual deity. So in the Mahayana, there's more like deities and it's more mystical and magical and the sutras tend to be longer and they talk about how there's 84,000 bodhisattvas there and they name them all and talk about their attributes and it's a big, it's like a big canvas that's being painted in these sutras.

[06:35]

So, what is Hinayana practice? I got this idea to talk about this, and then I had a whole bunch, I went to a whole bunch of places with it, and I had all these ideas about ways to talk about this. And then I narrowed them down to three, and I made a little cheat sheet, and I had it down to sort of like something that was a little linear, and then this morning during Zazen I thought, oh, I'm only going to be able to talk about one of these three things.

[07:46]

So Hinayana practice, it seems like the core, the first and foremost, most central thing is meditation. So, Hinayana meditation is set forth in these Pali scriptures very particularly. And the way you do the meditation is you practice calming. You calm the mind and then when the mind is calm you practice insight. to see what's really happening. So it's calming the mind, discerning the real. So you practice calming so that you can see how things really are in the world. And when you do practice calming, you see how things really are in the world.

[08:56]

And then the Buddha gives some little descriptions about what he thinks you're gonna see when you see what's going on in the world. And one version of that is called the Three Marks, and they are impermanence, not-self, and dukkha, unsatisfactoriness. So impermanence is pretty easy for us to understand. It's the way things arise and cease. They come and go. And not-self is a little bit harder to see. It has something to do with the way things appear to exist from their own side, but they don't. Everything that happens is really kind of a nexus of the causes and conditions at that moment in that place.

[10:04]

But things give the appearance, because of the way our minds work, they give the appearance of having some existence and reality on their own, from their own side. And then dukkha, unsatisfactoriness, is really about how we're just wired to misapprehend this. We're wired to see this thing that they exist from their own side. That's the way our minds work. And so we're constantly, we're out of kilter with what's happening all the time because we keep seeing that they keep seeming more real than they actually are. So dukkha means, we see they seem to be things that will make us happy. They seem to be things that will give us satisfaction. Or at least they seem to be things that if we get rid of them, that will make us happy. Certain ones we want to get rid of and other ones we want to get to have happiness. So unsatisfactoriness is really about the way we're always doing that.

[11:13]

We're always misapprehending and it always feels kind of Ah, hard. So the mini on a meditation is to calm the mind. And when you calm the mind, you will see these three things. You will see how things are impermanent, how they really don't exist the way they appear to exist, and how we're constantly at odds with that. Now, this is pretty easy to see, actually, these things. When people do some, I mean, often in your life, you've noticed them anyway, but certainly when you start to do the meditation, you can see these things.

[12:15]

But then there's another piece that the Buddha taught that's really the really amazing and magical part about it, and this is the part that's hard to get. which is that even when we see that this world is this other way than it appears, we still have the sense that the watcher is kind of permanent and kind of existing from its own side and kind of able to be happy. So then you sort of like drop down in the calmness another notch and you see how the watcher is made of the same stuff that the watched is made of. It's all the same stuff and it's all impermanent and just sort of a nexus of an appearance based on causes and conditions that just came together at that moment. Well, I'm not going to try to get into the dukkha part of that.

[13:23]

But you at least see that. You see those things. Because really what the watcher, when you get this part, that's when you see that the third mark is nirvana. It's really okay. That's when you see that the other mark is that everything is really okay the way it is. So you can see that already when you get to this thing about the watcher, you're really engaging this paradox because if there's no watcher, then who is doing the practice? Who is doing the calming and who is doing the insight and who is benefiting from doing this practice? So you get to a point, it's like this cliff you kind of have to step off of.

[14:30]

you have to let go somehow of the gain that you're gonna get from the practice. And the way we do that is we practice zazen with no gaining idea. That's the kind of motto of our founder, Suzuki Roshi, who I mentioned before. And he, He was a person who came on this earth to make this one point in a way. It's like he was up in heaven, and he was looking around at the world, and looking and watching people, and he thought, oh, I see what I'm supposed to do. And then he came down, and he did that. He taught that. He, his students made books, and if you pick up any one of the books, almost, you can just open it anywhere, and it's all about how you practice without a gaining idea.

[15:35]

And then he said, he looked around after he did that, and he said, okay, my work is done, and he left. So we're very lucky to have these books, and I just wanted to read one little part which It may seem like it's not about what I'm talking about, but we'll see. You should sit with your whole body, your spine, mouth, toes, mudra. And mudra is the word for this, the hand position. Check on your posture during zazen. Each part of your body should practice zazen independently or separately. Your toes should practice Zazen independently. And your mudra should practice Zazen independently. And your spine and your mouth should practice Zazen independently. You should feel each part of your body doing Zazen independently.

[16:41]

Each part of your body should participate completely in Zazen. Check to see that each part of your body is doing Zazen independently. This is also known as Shikantaza. Shikantaza translates as just sitting. To think, I am doing Zazen, or my body is doing Zazen, is a wrong understanding. It is a self-centered idea. The mudra is especially important. You should not feel as if you're resting your mudra on the heel of your foot for your own convenience. Your mudra should be placed in its own position. So what we really need to do is we somehow, we need to engage this paradox. We need to know what are we supposed to do?

[17:49]

If there's no us, if there's no me, what am I supposed to do? And how can I do it? So there's a part of us that just wants to engage this paradox. And I don't think that you ever do any more than just engage the paradox. You don't resolve this. And you can engage this, you're already engaging the paradox just in your everyday life. And that's why we have things like, it's better to give, it's more blessed to give than to receive. And that's why if you're forced to do something really hard that you don't want to do to help somebody else or to help the situation, you feel freed. You feel liberated. So we're always engaging this paradox.

[18:50]

Whenever you get upset, it's because you can bet your bottom dollar that when you get upset, at the bottom of that is emptiness. That's why you're upset. You're upset because emptiness is happening. And I can say that with confidence because emptiness is always happening, but still, I want to say that when you're upset, that's a chance to look, oh, I thought things were different than they were. I thought things were real and that's why I'm upset. So we're just always engaging this paradox. So you might, it's summertime and you might take a vacation. You might think of taking a vacation and you might If you have a family, like you might have two kids and you might take a vacation with your family.

[19:53]

Hypothetically. You have a partner and two kids maybe. So you take a vacation and you haven't come together as a family all summer because let's say, let's pretend that some of you, someone's been away a lot of the time. One or the other person has been away a lot. So you haven't come together as a family. So you're gonna take a vacation and you're gonna come together as a family. But also, part of this vacation was planned last year to come together with your age of mother, your mother's 91, hypothetically, your mother's 91, and you try to come together with the grandchildren together at least once a year, and you all love, let's say you all love the Oregon coast, let's imagine that. You love the Oregon coast, so you're gonna take a vacation, you're gonna come together at the Oregon coast,

[20:58]

And you're, so you have your aged mother, and then you also have your sister who's quit her job two years ago to take care of her, your aged mother. So she, of course, will be there. So you're gonna come together with these people. And then you're also gonna come together with one of the people that helps your sister take care of your aged mother, because you need more people to take care of this group. So, and this person, let's just pretend that she has two kids of her own. And let's pretend that these two kids are some of the, like, the two greatest little girls practically of all time. So it's a pretty good setup. But then, of course, your mom falls about a month before this vacation's planned. She's already pretty frail and she's pretty hard to take care of, but now she's really hard to take care of.

[22:04]

And you're not even sure you're gonna pull this vacation off, but then you do, you pull this vacation off. She gets better enough to go to the beach. And it pretty much, it's really good that you have this many adults because it pretty much takes two people to help the mom do anything. So it is a vacation, so you want to have some time. So each person can have some time because if two people are taking care of them, then there's still a person or two can have some time to do something else. So let's just say you're doing this. And let's just say you're the kind of group that you actually do this thing where at the very beginning you go around and you say, what will make this vacation a vacation for you? And let's say that you realize that

[23:06]

just for these eight people to be happy, for these other eight people besides you, just for these eight people to be happy is what will make you happy. And unfortunately, if any one of these eight people is truly unhappy, you will not be able to be happy. So that's an example of how we are always engaging this paradox that we exist, sort of, in a different way than we think. And there's a part of you that really wants to engage this paradox somehow, not just by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but to actually actively put yourself somewhere where you're stepping up to the plate to engage it.

[24:26]

So there's that part of you, and that part of you that's called your quark. So you have your quark and you bring your quark in here and you do, you pay homage, you celebrate, you witness this Hinayana practice of calming, calming the mind, discerning the real. And you're making your quark very happy because you practice without having any idea. You completely, you sit down and then you drop any idea you have of what a calm mind is going to feel like or look like and what an insight is going to feel like or look like. So you do this Hinayana practice of calming and discerning the real

[25:35]

And then you do the Mahayana spirit is to have a big, big, big feeling about it, a big canvas that you're painting it on. And in the big canvas, everything's always okay and amazing and a lot more than you thought it was. There's all these Bodhisattvas in your retinue. They're always supporting you. They're in your corner. They're coaching you, they're giving you good ideas. And everybody else has been your best friend in countless lifetimes, has been your mother, your father, your kid, your worst enemy in countless lifetimes. And any little moment of calm that you have calms this whole thing down. by definition because you are totally connected to everything else.

[26:40]

To the point where there really is no you. So you're so connected that there really is no you. So how do you engage that? You engage that, you bring your quark in here and you make your quark really happy. It doesn't matter whether you're happy or not. It doesn't matter whether your legs hurt or whether you like being here. Ask not what your cork is going to do for you. Ask what you can do for your cork. So one other thing I wanted to say along this same topic is, so the thing about the Hinayana is that you come to relieve your suffering.

[28:00]

You come in here to relieve some of your suffering. And you will relieve your suffering if you calm your mind. That in itself is a big relief. Just calming your mind is a big relief. And then when you see how things are, just even a little bit, just a glimmering, that is a relief, that's a big relief of your suffering. But part of what you see, a big part of what you see is how you're connected to everything else, and you're exactly like everything else. You're made of the same stuff as everything else. it's almost like as soon as you relieve a little bit of your own suffering, then you get the other suffering that's going on in this big thing because you realize that you're totally connected to it. So you, that's the thing, you can't get stuck there. That's the hinayana, that's the point is you, the hinayana practice is where you wanna get stuck, you wanna stop it right there.

[29:05]

Okay, I relieved my suffering and now I'm not gonna go over to there, to that other place where I feel all the other suffering. But you can't do that, you just can't stop it there. So you have to just offer yourself. So don't get stuck. Should we have some discussion? Charlie? Thanks very much, Glory. Well, we practice to have a real vacation, which is to be liberated from the tight little thing, which we mistakenly think is our job or our house or our family or our predicament in some way.

[30:48]

I think there is an idea that somehow you can do this offering or you can please your quark or whatever when you take a vacation and there's truth to that. If you can really take the vacation, if you can really take the vacation, yes. I think maybe what you can have is you can have these sort of temporary gaining ideas that you're always ready to drop, especially when they don't seem to be matching what's happening. I mean, that for sure, that's when you need to drop it for sure, if not before. Anne? Thank you for your talk. That was really delightful. And I really appreciate your understanding the Mahayana aspect and the notion that we offer our calmness to the extent that we can get there and our, whatever work we've done in kind of disengaging our own mind from all the baggage and then we can offer our calmness to the situations we encounter

[32:06]

so that, one, at least we don't make them worse, and two, by our being calm, we can help other people who may be agitated for whatever reason begin to calm down themselves. I mean, I really noticed that working with kids, that, you know, I mean, if I'm agitated with them, you know, it quadruples their agitation, and the calmer I am, the easier it is for other people to be calm. It certainly works with adults, but I really like that aspect of your talk. That reminds me, the real point, the reason why Suzuki Roshi says this is really, it's about pointing us towards the Hinayana. It's really for the Mahayana people because the trap with the Mahayana is that you never do anything because it's all empty anyway and you can't sort of engage it. Where do you start? So it's really for the Mahayana people to keep pointing themselves to the Hinayana side, which is to actually do the practice, to actually calm your mind and actually look around and see if you can see what's happening.

[33:21]

So it's for us to remember the Hinayana side too. Yes. I just wanted to sort of make that into a thing for a minute in some way that wouldn't, like, last. But I wanted to be able to talk about that side. So I just, that was just the name that popped into my mind. It didn't have any more significance than that. Sorry. Yes? When you feel the suffering of others, and it gets to the point where it feels overwhelming, What to do? Calming. You've gone too far. Because it's become real. It's become too real. You've got to keep it right in the middle where it's real enough so that you care, but not so real that you despair.

[34:29]

And get help. Get a lot of help. You're not doing it by yourself. How do you know you have a quirk? I don't. I just made that up. So I thought it might be funny. My first talk, my first, my three-point talk, the whole thing, I thought, this is a really good talk, but this is incredibly boring. This is gonna be incredibly boring. I need a story. I need a joke. And then this morning during Zazen, once I was able to jettison the three things, you know, I got the juice kind of flowing a little bit. Anybody else?

[35:33]

Yes. Maybe, but it's like a thirst, I think. But it's not like an insatiable thirst. It's a thirst that's always kind of being satisfied anyway, but yet it wants to do something special about it. That really didn't make sense, did it? Sorry. It's really, really hard to say anything at all about this. Yes? Well, I think it's a sign that you really understand when you realize you can't talk about it in the first place. So, thank you. But I wanted to say how insightful it was that you mentioned the third mark of existence, I've been turning this over in my monkey mind for a long time, about Dukkha as the third mark of existence, because it's not inherent in a thing that it suffers.

[36:45]

That's our perception of something versus impermanence and non-self. So I love that Edlong, along the way in your talk, you said, oh, but let's not talk about Dukkha, because truly, it's samsara and nirvana are the same. So if you look at it from the standpoint of there are no obstacles, when there are no obstacles, it is nirvana. Right, and that's almost like the Hinayana thing is to have the third mark be dukkha and the Mahayana thing is to have the third mark be nirvana. Welcome. Yes? You mentioned the watcher, that is, or thinking. And I wondered if you could talk, I understood you to mean the self-awareness, objectively people say the consciousness of your own consciousness, that human beings have.

[37:56]

But maybe you were referring to the witness as it's thought of, No, I was talking about how we do the split into subject and object, and we can sort of see the three marks in the objects, but it's hard. You've got to take that backwards step. You've got to turn it around and look at, because really most of our suffering is because we think this thing is permanent and in our control somehow. mention this, in some way, everything's alright, I think that's pretty hard to get to. But it seems to me that this this non-suffering to me.

[39:22]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to remember that it's not like there's a self that you get rid of or something. I mean, thought appears, awareness appears, and then the thought the idea, it's like a hologram or something that just, it appears as the thing, you appear, the thought appears that there's some reality to this. And that's just another thought that appears. But we are here. I mean, we are, it's a vehicle. Right. I mean, we don't, I mean, that's the paradox. That we are really here. Right, but we're just not here the way we think we are. It's fine the way we are here, it's okay, it's just not the way we think we are. Yes, hi.

[40:25]

When you said core, in my mind I was thinking the self that wants to be expressed, like sort of what we think of as the small self, like whatever makes us And I was talking with a friend recently about what is a life? What is that? So it kind of goes to that question. But as far as the Hinayana and Ramayana, when I think about Hinayana or the Theravada tradition, I think about monks that go sit off in caves for years or whatever. go very deep, and are very silent, and live alone, and just get really, really honed down. But then the trap could be that there's this self-centeredness, or that you think that maybe it's like, oh, I'm doing something special, that I'm special somehow, or I'm doing something special, or whatever. And so it's more like the challenge is, how can we sit with all beings and go really deep as if we're sitting in a cave?

[41:32]

bring that really deep Theravada practice of really being deep, but be with all beings without thinking it was something special. Yeah, I think strictly speaking you would get to that because you couldn't get past that point in your meditation if you didn't. See what I mean? I mean, that would be the idea that you were doing something special would be something that you would have to unpack. Would be a block. You mean in the Theravada tradition? In any tradition, yeah. Are we done?

[42:16]

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