people have become, Zen students have become very interested in mindfulness practice and sometimes there's a feeling that they've Mindfulness practice is something different than zazen practice, people say. Well, there's zazen practice, and then there's mindfulness practice, as if they were two different things. So I want to talk a little bit today about mindfulness practice and zazen. There's a, in the mindfulness sutra, Buddha mentions four ways to practice mindfulness through the body, mindfulness of the body, the actions of the body, mindfulness of feelings, mindfulness of consciousness or mental states,

[01:21]

And consciousness of the dharmas, which means consciousness or awareness of what is Buddhism, what is the dharma, what are the various practices that lead to enlightenment or bring out our enlightened nature. So these are four ways that we practice mindfulness. And in Zen practice, we do them all, constantly. And in Zazen, we do them all. Everything is included, just in sitting. But it's good to, and it's important to understand or to have knowledge of the four foundations. Sometimes people feel that when we say just zazen that we don't include intellectual understanding.

[02:36]

But mindfulness of the dharmas means intellectual understanding. It includes intellectual understanding as mindfulness you can practice zazen, just zazen, up to a certain point. But if you don't have some intellectual understanding, if you don't know what the dharmas are, then it's easy to get confused, mentally confused or lost. it's true that just having intellectual understanding is not enough. And actually we can get very lost in intellectual understanding of the Dharma unless we have some practice like zazen.

[03:41]

But if you only practice zazen without any intellectual understanding your mind can get very confused. So we need to support our mind. We need to pay attention to our intellectual faculty and to that side of our understanding. So, in other words, we need to understand intellectually as well as physically and intuitively. even though intuition or direct understanding is key. Both are necessary, although there's a time to study and a time to leave it alone. But nevertheless, awareness of the dharmas or the various teachings or ways of understanding intellectually is really important.

[04:50]

So that's the fourth foundation. First foundation is awareness of the body. When I first started to practice Zazen, it was quite wonderful because I was just asked to sit down and do something with my body. and I wasn't asked to think about anything except that. Just do this. It was wonderful. That's what really convinced me about Zen practice was that it was about how you move your body, how you take care of your body, what you do with it, what you do with this body. So awareness, body awareness, What is this body doing? How is it taking care of things?

[05:54]

How is it picking something up, putting it down? How do you walk? How do you stand up and sit down? How do you lie down? How do you move? What's the closest thing to you besides this body? So, no fancy ideas. just nothing but this body and its relationship to everything else. So in our Zen practice, in the Zen Do, we're always conscious of our body, what our body is doing. And when you sit down and cross your legs, to maintain that consciousness and awareness constantly is our mindfulness practice.

[07:05]

And when you leave the zendo, to maintain that body consciousness, how your body, how you relate this body to your surroundings wherever you are and how you move in time through the various changes through the world of changing phenomena how you continue to find the balance of your body through every situation, moment after moment. Body consciousness, body awareness, what you do when you're eating. In Zendo, we have Oryoki practice, which is how you take care of every little detail

[08:17]

of just eating. It's like a magnifying glass. It's like putting eating under a telescope. And you focus on each part of that. And your body-mind becomes completely involved in that act. That's samadhi, just one act, which has many parts. We say just to focus on one thing at a time, on one act, activity, or one act at a time. If you can do that, then you can see how life goes from one moves from one moment to the next moment, and how you move from one moment to the next moment.

[09:24]

Even though our life works continuous, on the one hand, each moment is a complete moment in itself. Each action, each thing we do is a complete moment and is a complete lifetime. Each moment's activity is a lifetime in itself, maybe a small lifetime, depending on how you look at it. So in Zazen we have the opportunity to watch that minute flow of action and just enjoy each moment. But out there in the world, things move quickly and we have to be very quick to move with things, which is also a part of mindfulness.

[10:30]

Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that mindfulness is something that you do in slow motion. If all the conditions are right, then you can practice mindfulness. That's the kind of problem. If we only think that practice takes place in zendo, zendo gives us some space. We eliminate the distractions, so-called. They're not really distractions, but we think of them as distractions. Just that in order to, like a scientist, in order to focus on something, you eliminate all of the extra stuff so that you can just pay attention to one thing. That's our practice in the Zen Dojo. We just eliminate the various unnecessary factors so that we can isolate and look.

[11:36]

But real life takes place where there's lots of interference. Things that we don't like, things that we do like, things that we're indifferent to. So how we move with things in the world to have that awareness all the time, constantly, awareness of body movement in the world, no matter what's happening. is how we practice mindfulness of the body. And mindfulness of feelings also comes up in zazen. Feelings are divided roughly into three categories. Pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. So pleasant can be good feelings or feelings that we judge as attractive or happy, desirable.

[12:50]

And bad feelings or undesirable feelings, unpleasant feelings, that's the other side. And neutral feelings, is neither here nor there, kind of indifferent. And in zazen we experience all three, and in our daily life we experience all three. And mindfulness is to be aware of what kind of feeling we have at any one time. you may be involved in some activity with your body, with the body, and maybe you're cooking. And so you have awareness of the body, chopping vegetables, you know, closely attended. And then you also have some feeling about it.

[13:53]

Well, this is a pleasant feeling. Or maybe you cut your finger. This is an unpleasant feeling. Or you just working, maybe no special feeling, but to have awareness of what the feeling is. Or maybe you have a pleasant feeling chopping vegetables and little Johnny walks in and has cut his finger or wants to turn on the phonograph or something like that and you have maybe an unpleasant feeling or it disturbs your feeling. So to know, to have awareness of the disturbance, of how you feel when that happens. What kind of feeling is that? Maybe that's pleasant, maybe it's unpleasant. It changes. So our feelings are constantly changing. Body feeling and sensations. And the next one is

[15:01]

mental states, consciousness. Our consciousness, conscious mental states are always changing. Every time we have a thought, it changes. Our mental state changes subtly. We have, you know, broad mental states, which last over a period of time, but even within a broad mental state, we have minute mental states which is going like this. It's very rarely like that, mostly like this. So each one of those little dips and rises is a separate mental state. In Zazen you can watch that process very closely. If you are very attentive, you can see how thoughts arise in your mind and how mental states come and go and modify, and so forth.

[16:08]

And in zazen, sometimes our thinking mind takes over, and so we lose our awareness. And in our daily life, our thinking mind is going all the time. Usually, our thinking mind is going all the time. We're always creating something. In Zazen, we stop the creative process of thinking mind, or we narrow it down. But nevertheless, something's always coming up, and we can watch that process and become very aware of states of mind. But in our daily life, I think the hardest thing is to watch our states of mind, or to be aware of our states of mind. because they're changing so fast and we get into a situation where we have to move very quickly. But to be able to notice or have awareness of our changing states of mind, you need to step back a little bit so that you can not watch, but have awareness.

[17:22]

Not so much detachment, some detachment, but I'll talk about detachment after this. And then the fourth one is awareness of dharmas, awareness of eightfold path or awareness of the six paramitas, some guideline, some way of ... some intellectual guideline that keeps us on a path. You can have all kinds of awareness, but if you don't have awareness of the path, it doesn't make as much sense. So the fourth awareness is awareness of the path, awareness of what you're doing, awareness that this is practice. this is not practice, this is right thinking, this is right attitude, this is right livelihood, this is right meditation, this is right wisdom, that kind of awareness, awareness of dana, energy, all those, the various

[18:50]

factors of the path. But the most important in Zen practice, and in Buddhism in general, awareness of this is attachment, this is non-attachment, this kind of awareness is most important. It's awareness of emptiness. Awareness that all dharmas are empty. You know that every day you chant the Prajnaparamita Sutra. Over and over again, you chant, Ganji, Jnana, Avalokiteshvara, form is emptiness and emptiness is form. This is awareness of emptiness.

[19:54]

all forms are empty, which means awareness allowing everything to change. The awareness of allowing things to be as they are, allowing all things to be and everything to change. and being able to accept things as they are. That's the hardest kind of awareness to have. Awareness of attachment and wanting things to be the way they aren't and not wanting things to be the way they are. This is where we have the hardest time. But mindfulness, that's the most important aspect of mindfulness.

[20:58]

And that's really what mindfulness is pointing to. Mindfulness practice. And if we cultivate that kind of awareness, then no matter what happens to us, we can We know where we are within that. Getting caught in the gears of life is called suffering. And so I practice. is to avoid getting caught in the gears of life. In the Volkswagen do-it-yourself book, the author says,

[22:04]

He's talking to hippies. He says, if you have long hair, he says, when you're working on your engines, put it up, do something with it to get it out of the way so it doesn't get caught in the fan belt when you're starting your car from the engine side. Don't leave anything hanging out that's going to get caught. And the same way in Zen practice. Zen looks like a repair. Don't leave anything hanging out that's going to get caught in a fan belt. So we get caught emotionally, physically, mentally. Those are the three ways that we get caught. We leave our body hanging out in some way, and then we leave our feelings hanging out in some way, and we leave our mind hanging out in some way.

[23:15]

And constantly getting caught. Now one solution, the Hinayana solution, is just don't do anything that's going to cause a problem. And that's very good advice, but it's hard because it narrows our life down. It's a kind of reductionist attitude. I learned a little bit about reductionism when I was talking to some scientists. There's always this I think in most disciplines, one side of a discipline is always to reduce everything down to make it simple. You know, in politics, you have reductionist politics. Just reduce everything down to the simplest kind of way of taking care of it, and everything will be alright. In science, the same way.

[24:18]

And in Buddhism, the same way. If you just, you know, reduce everything down to where you don't do anything, don't move, you'll be okay. But you have to move, you know, and life is more complex than our reductionist, simplistic attitudes will allow. So we have Mahayana Buddhism, which is much more liberal and allows for us to live our life in a more complex way. But both sides have their problem. The problem with Hinayana is that it's too restrictive. doesn't allow for enough life. And the problem with Mahayana is that it's too loose. It causes a lot of problem because of its looseness and so somewhere in between, you know. Suzuki Roshi used to, not his idea, but he used to say that our practice is Hinayana practice with a Mahayana mind.

[25:27]

Four foundations of mindfulness are Hinayana practice, basically. Mindfulness practice, very precise kind of practice. Mahayana practice is to live your life in the world. So how you live your life in the world with the basis of mindfulness practice. And the catalyst is zazen. Zazen includes both. The problem for us is how we use that precise kind of understanding and practice within the loose multi-dimensional world and make it work.

[26:44]

That's our problem. So you can practice these practices by yourself and you can practice them wherever you are and you don't have to practice them in a zendo I mean you don't have to have a zendo to practice them Wherever you are is your zendo, if you practice them. So, these four walls is not the limitation of the zendo. When you walk out of the zendo, wherever you are, it extends to as far as you go. So, I would like us to stop bowing when we leave the zendo.

[27:50]

You don't have to bow when you leave the zendo. Just maybe a shashi bow, you know, like that. And then walk out of the zendo. Don't bow. Just at the doorway, just make a little shashi bow. And continue to practice mindfulness. The main thing is, when you become attached, when you become attached to your feelings, or your mental state, to know that that's what's happening.

[28:58]

And it's just like in drugging, when you have some difficulty, painfulness, or whatever, even though you have some feeling, you know what the feeling is, but you don't become attached to it. So you know it really hurts. you can walk away from it when it's over when you change your position and you can deal with that feeling that you have deal with the mental state that you have because even though it's there and you're completely one with it because you're completely one with it you can enter into the next change with that same whole mind. If you enter into the next change with that same whole mind, you can leave this situation and just enter that situation.

[30:08]

But if we hang on to this moment's feeling or position, We don't have any freedom. We lose our freedom. Not knowing is the highest. Not knowing is the highest kind of knowing. And it's necessary in order to really penetrate, in order to really practice. And It's what I was talking about when I said beginners have that blindness. Even though your eyes are open, you don't know what you're doing. So practice means having a lot of faith, some strong faith, even in not knowing.

[31:12]

If we have to know everything. It's like the fish, Dogen says, the fish swimming in the water. If the fish has to know the limits of the ocean before it can swim in the water, it can't, it doesn't work. Or if the bird has to know the limit of the sky before flying in the sky, they can't fly. So just to for the fish to enter the ocean, and just for the bird to enter the sky, and just for you and I to enter practice. So a bird has faith, and the fish has faith, and a Zen student must have faith in the same way. Just to enter the ocean of practice without knowing its length of breath,

[32:17]

But just this is the part of the ocean that I'm in and the whole ocean is there. Whether I swim in this part of the ocean or that part of the ocean, it's the ocean. So That's a kind of blindness. Blindness which is actually seeing. Sometimes they're called vision or seeing. True seeing, blindness. It's a kind of way of talking about something. And also the blind meeting the blind. That is the same feeling. He said the making making the eye on the forehead blind, we cling to the mark on the scale.

[33:22]

Clinging to the mark on the scale means thinking this is it. This is the true mark. This is the place. In the Lotus Sutra, there's a story of when Shakyamuni Buddha was talking to the assembly and he was talking about how when you get to a certain place in practice, that's not it, even though you think it's it. And he said, people may not like what I say, but it's true. And 500 arhats walked out of the assembly because They thought they'd reached Nirvana. He said, that's not it. What you think is Nirvana is not really it. And they walked out of the assembly.

[34:26]

That's a kind of famous story from the Lotus Sutra. That's kind of making the eye on the forehead blind by thinking that you have the right mark. Thinking that where you are is it. Of course, where you are is it, but it's at the same time not it. Where you are is it, but it's also not it. If you make a mark on the side of the boat, you know, to mark your spot, you'll have the mark on the boat, and for that moment, that's it. But the boat moves, the water moves, everything moves.

[35:28]

And if you try to come back to that mark, to mark the spot in the ocean, the spot will be on the boat, but you'll no longer find it in the ocean, your place in the ocean. So it's very dangerous to mark a spot on the side of the boat and feel that that's it, that's the place. And that's what we're doing a lot of the time, putting our mark on the boat to keep our place there in the ocean. So we have to allow ourselves to change, and we have to allow ourselves to grow, and we also have to allow ourselves to do something that we don't think we can do, or didn't think we could do, or didn't necessarily want to do, and be open to various possibilities and ways of changing.

[36:46]

And we may feel, well, I'm a certain kind of person. I may be slow and careful. But you may have to change into a person that's fast and speedy, you know. You may have to change your style. You may be a person who's very quick. You may have to change into a person who's very slow. we have to be ready to expand and contract. Otherwise, we get caught, you know, start suffering because of our idea of ourself. So he says, throwing away body and life, one blind person leads many blind people.

[37:56]

throwing away body and life. Usually that means the interpretation is even though you practice hard and have opened your eye, you can see with the third eye, unless you can step off the pole, It's like the blind meeting the blind. And that's one interpretation of the blind meeting the blind. It has several meanings. The other is that we move step by step, not knowing. not knowing anything for sure. That's also very important.

[38:59]

We want to have some security, so we set up our lives in a very secure way, but we never know how things are or will be. So to be open and ready with a kind of blind mind is important. You can see, but maybe you can't see. If we can't see too far, we won't be able to move when the unforeseen comes in front of us. So the characteristic of a good Zen student is to not see too far, not look too far, but to be patient and open-eyed and alert.

[40:22]

and ready to deal with whatever comes. More like a deer in the forest than like an animal in the zoo. Is the right move that you spoke of, the method of art, the way of living, of any way?

[41:51]

Yeah. There is no special way, you know. no special way of life. The main thing is not to form attachments, too strong attachments. to anything, and at the same time to appreciate everything. To appreciate everything and whatever comes, and not to form too strong an attachment to things.

[42:55]

But that doesn't mean not to have attachments either. how to live in the realm of attachment without being bound by attachment. Is that prajna? Prajna is wisdom which is universal wisdom. We have our individual wisdom, accumulated wisdom, but prajna is universal wisdom.

[44:07]

And through zazen we get in touch with that It's just kind of a comment, but I wondered if using a different stick today is an illustration of your lecture. I didn't think of it that way. But this stick, it's kind of nice, isn't it? I found it at Yosemite. Last time we were at Yosemite, I found it in the river, on the bank of the river. I thought, that's a really nice stick. So I brought it home. It's kind of gnarly. It's kind of like the way we grow, isn't it? Kind of like our life. It illustrates our life. It cuts at this point.

[45:11]

And then I had to do something, so I went this way. And then I had a big struggle right here. I had to move around like this. Hard times. Okay.

[45:45]

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