Good morning. I'd like to introduce our speaker for today, Himo Denkei Raoul Moncayo. Himo Denkei translates as suchness, field of blessings, which was a Dharma name that Sojin Roshi gave him many years ago when he was a lay practitioner and he was later ordained as a priest. So he's now Reverend Himo Denkei. Raoul originally comes from Chile. He's been practicing content for 30 years and is a practicing psychotherapist as well at Mission Mental Health in San Francisco, where he serves primarily the Latino community. And he also has a private practice. He travels and gives presentations of papers he's been working on regarding the practice of psychotherapy and the the synergy or synchronicity between Zen and psychotherapy. He's the father of two young boys who are twenty and eighteen.

[01:07]

Seventeen. Seventeen. Yes, actually. And let's see. No? That's good enough. Nice to see you all here. I have this opportunity to practice together. And that's the main thing of this talk and of Dharma Talks, is to encourage us all to practice and continue practicing. And it is from the practice that these words make or not make any sense. So today I want to talk about the four foundations of mindfulness. And I thought of focusing more on the last two than the first two, although that may have changed since then. What prompted me to want to talk about this is, you know, the factors that we're practicing with are flux.

[02:13]

and they're always changing, and sometimes we're practicing more with one than with another, although all of them are present at the same time. And what prompted me to want to study, to investigate this a little bit, and study it a little bit too, to give this talk, was the last five days, the Sheen, that we did here during a practice period when we had our Koshiso, Andrea, Tash. And it was a five-day Sashi that for me was very sleepy. I was very sleepy, so I was trying to practice with a sleepy Zazen. and sort of practice finding some way to work with sleepiness and to wake up.

[03:16]

And at the same time not create a duality between being awake and being sleepy or being tired. You know, we have a basically at Berkeley Sense Center. Berkeley Sense Center is kind of the middle way in terms of scheduling, with maybe Tassajara being over here at one end, and then the number of practice groups that have sprung forth from many disciples from our family that do one day a week, two day a week kind of practice. But we still have this time schedule. We all kind of practice it together and it's been transmitted to us and we're continuing to transmit it to ourselves first, primarily. And then as we successfully transmit it to ourselves, then we can transmit it to other people and pass it on to the next generation.

[04:23]

But it's not so easy to, you know, how we practice with this schedule. responsibilities. And these traditionally, in the old Buddhism, the ancient Buddhism, which me and the Mahayana School like to call Hinayana, were seen as sort of competing duties and responsibilities, duties of a layperson and duties of a priest, and therefore it was devised that there would be a kind of dual practice, you know, one for the laypeople and one for the priest, and so the standards were different. And what they practiced was different too. So the monks practiced Zazen and meditation and observed a kind of monastic schedule. And the lay people practiced various parameters and practices of giving and generosity and morality.

[05:35]

And also took care of the So all of that is kind of combined and permutated in what we do here. Because we all serve those practices across the line of distinction between monk and layperson. And this is the practice that Suzuki Roshi transmitted to us and that was his vision for Zen himself, Zen in Japan or Zen in America. which was, you know, telling the students here that you were neither monks nor laypeople. So then, what are we? And this, what are we, is the koan, which we are in the process So what we know is what we're practicing.

[06:39]

So we have to practice what we don't understand. And there's another side to that statement. I think it was Tozan, I think, said, practice what you don't understand. And I can't remember the other side of it, but it's not so relevant to what I'm talking about, so it doesn't matter. So the schedule can be challenging, although it fits nicely with the Protestant ethic. It's part of American culture, right? Early to bed, early to rise. That's basically it. But it's not so easy to early to bed and early to rise, because each person is different, every family situation is different, and the responsibilities that people have are different.

[07:47]

Some people are morning people and some people are night people, which means you have your most concentration, your most mindfulness in some ways, although that's a limited definition of mindfulness. energy in the morning or in the evening. So for morning people it sort of comes natural to, not so natural, but it's easier to get up early than for night people. And you know I tend to be a morning person and I My mother would always say, oh, Rahul, he woke up and he was always smiling, you know, and kind of ready, what is it they say, you know, bushy-tailed, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, right? And my sister really had a hard time getting up, and she wasn't in such a good mood. But then, you know, the family stories are that in the evening, you know, I was falling asleep at the dinner table, you know.

[08:54]

my face right into the spaghetti and so nuts and and also not prone to such a good mood in the evening because you're tired and so when you're tired you don't want to go to sleep and you there and has her energy and concentration and so on. So in a way, those two types sort of fit also. We have a morning schedule and we have an afternoon schedule. So we also have the afternoon schedule for people who are not so prone to get up so early and not morning people. And they have better energy in the afternoons. morning and in the afternoon.

[09:55]

And there are people who do mostly morning and there are people who do mostly afternoon. And it's all part of the Mahasangha, the big Sangha. And then we all go in the world and all in our different fields of work and activity. And that's even the greatest Sangha. So it's all Sanghas within Sanghas within Sanghas. The Buddha field is always a Buddhist circle, and we're both in the inner circle, in one inner circle, and we're outer to another inner circle. So we're both, you know, inside and outside, interpenetrate. But it's difficult, you know, when you get up early in the morning and then go to work.

[10:57]

Often you get sleepy. And sometimes I'm listening to people, you know, sessions where you really have to pay attention. And it's difficult sometimes to stay up. So what I do is take little catnaps. I go to the room and I'll just take a, you know, I can do that five minutes, ten minutes, and then I'm kind of, my energy is restored and I can keep going. So, it's the sheen, this past the sheen, what I experienced also is that you become very relaxed in this practice of absorption or samadhi practice. You know, you get very relaxed and when you get very relaxed, it's very easy to get sleepy. Because, you know, there's not much difference in the brain waves between sleep, just pure sleep and zazen. It's very similar. The only thing is that in Zazen, your brain is receiving the information from the different muscles that are working.

[12:05]

Right? Because in Zazen, all our postures are working. And our legs are working, our feet are working, our hands are working, everything is working. And that's part of this dynamic working is what tells your brain that you're awake, rather than asleep. But otherwise, you know, there's not much difference. And often, you know, Suzuki Roshi talked about practices, going for your pillow in the middle of the night. But still, a practice is not to be falling asleep. It doesn't. And so I wanted to find a way to wake up. Also, what happens in Sashin is that you have pain, and often the pain wakes you up. So when you have a lot of pain, there's a lot of intensity there, extension and intention, and the intention to practice is also the extension of the muscles.

[13:19]

that wakes you up. And when you don't have so much pain anymore, after you practice for many years, the pain eventually does go away. So then you're very relaxed and joyful, but it's easy to get sleepy. So I wanted to find a way to work with that. So I kept, you know, I tried correcting the posture, and that didn't quite work. And because, you know, in the Satipatthana Sutra, they say that it says that torpor and sloth and torpor you know sleep is not exactly the same as sloth and torpor because sloth and torpor is sort of maybe a more descriptive of oversleeping like if you sleep too much then you're kind of in a slothful state but if you're

[14:48]

the sleep-deprived side of things. I mean, in Sashim you sleep about six hours, five or six hours, and also because it's sort of a circle, because you work through the sleepiness through the day of Sashim, so then you wake up, so by the end of the day you're wide awake, and then you want to go to sleep, but you're wide awake, so often you can't fall asleep until 11, and then we get up again at 4, sleep deprivation. So that kind of sleepiness is different than sloth and torpor. And there is a practice of right sleep in order for the practice of awakening. The practice of awakening requires right sleep. Particularly if you are going to be in the world in the sense of holding a job or having study and so on, for which you need to be alert and you can't take the time to take a nap.

[15:57]

Because if you are a priest and you don't have those activities during the day, you can take some time to take a nap. There are rest periods and you can take a nap. But if you don't have that leisure time, then having the right sleep is important. correcting the posture is one of the ways. And the other one is the practice of light, the mindfulness of light. This is the other recommendation in the Satipatthana Sutra. And so this is what I found that that actually kept me awake was the, and I'm talking about that also in terms of mindfulness of non-thinking.

[16:58]

Because the, and non-thinking, N-O-N, not not thinking, and this is sort of, this goes into the third foundation of mindfulness, which is mindfulness of mind. Mindfulness of mind or mindfulness of consciousness. So there are four, just to name them, put them out there. The first one is mindfulness of body, which includes posture and breath, and I'll say more about that. The second one is mindfulness of feelings. And the third one is mindfulness of mind or consciousness. And here's the mindfulness of mental formations. And of the mindfulness of the different states of consciousness. Both conscious states and unconscious states.

[18:07]

And the fourth foundation is mindfulness of Usually it's referred to as mindfulness of mind objects. I don't like that so much, so I like to call it mindfulness of dharma. Mindfulness of dharmas, small d dharmas, which is phenomena, as dharma. And this is part of the mindfulness of light, of the practice of giving and receiving light. giving light to ourselves, transmitting light to ourselves and receiving light from the source of light and from each other. And so mindfulness of mind objects also refers to how you practice with the different sleepiness could be a hindrance, one of the five hindrances.

[19:17]

And so each hindrance has a factor of enlightenment that works with it. So this is part of the practice of mindfulness, is how you practice with the hindrances and the factors of enlightenment that interact with them. So this sleepiness was sort of the hindrance that I practiced with in terms of what I'm calling the practice of giving and receiving light, which is also the fourth foundation, but it's also related to the third, because it's how we work with the thinking mind. And Dogen, in his Fubensa Seng-yi, which is his Recommendations for the Fundamental Arts of Zazen, where he gives us the instructions on how to practice Zazen, he says, he advises us to think, not thinking,

[20:33]

And then, how do you think, not thinking? He says, non-thinking. So this is how we practice with thinking, which is neither thinking nor trying to repress our thoughts, because that doesn't work either. So this practice of Non-thinking, we could also say, is the practice of not seeing. So, the practice of not seeing, which is like in the Heart Sutra, which is the Heart Sutra of wisdom beyond wisdom. So this wisdom that's beyond wisdom is the wisdom of non-thinking. Right? It's not knowledge. It's not thinking knowledge. So it's the wisdom of non-thinking, or wisdom beyond thinking.

[21:39]

And it also says that it's, you know, it has all these, among all the no's, it's no seeing. And it says, no seeing until no realm of my consciousness. Actually, that's what it says. So in Sahajan, we're practicing this Prajnaparamita, which is the practice of not seeing. So what is it that we're seeing? And this goes to the question of mindfulness of Dharma, of mindfulness of light. What is it that we're seeing? We're not seeing objects, we're staring at this, we're wall gazing. So what is this wall that we're easing? Is it a wall? And actually we realize that it's not a wall.

[22:45]

So I'm going to come back to that. That's the third foundation of mindfulness. So the non-thinking, non-seeing, And what is it? Because thinking also puts you to sleep. Puts you to dream. Thinking puts you to dream. And when you're sleepy, you realize that point of where you go from thinking to dreaming, which is what happens when you fall asleep, right? You go from thinking, and then the thoughts transform into dreams. And so, these dreams are like our thoughts. That's how we construct the world. is through this thought, and then the thought becomes a dream, and then all of a sudden we're in the middle of a dream, and the dream is the reality that we're in. So when we're actually awake, we're thinking and we're dreaming.

[23:52]

We're walking dreamers. This is daydreaming, called daydreaming, but that's like the ordinary function of thinking. So before I go further on this question of the two last foundations of mindfulness, if I'm going to have 15 minutes? We have 15 minutes left. Okay. So, the first two are very important for Satsang because they are the foundation of the foundation.

[24:58]

Like the mindfulness of the body is the first foundation, and therefore is the foundation of the four foundations. So in Sāsden, we take this posture, which is the foundation of mindfulness. So we keep adjusting our posture. This is part of mindfulness. And then, in Zazen or in Sachine, we don't uncross our legs. Unless we have to. Because, you know, not uncrossing your legs, it sort of becomes a difficulty. But that's the way we were all trained initially, you know, by Mel.

[26:01]

No matter what happens, don't uncross your legs. And then he sort of became much more understanding of students uncrossing their legs. But initially, he was really strict about that. And that's one of the things that I took to heart. No matter what happens, don't uncross your legs during the period of Zazen. Now sometimes you have to uncross them, and when you have to uncross them, you uncross them. That's no big deal. Because sometimes you get stuck in saying, you know, oh, I'm not supposed to, and then what about when it goes on for hours? Or when we have ceremonies? So at some point, And then there's the question of the mudra.

[27:08]

And the mudra is... It seems like something small is very small. I mean, the mudra is small, but we say we're holding the whole earth in it. So the mudra is sort of a pivotal point of the posture, because it's like the third step of the posture. And I've noticed, you know, I started doing this sitting group for clients at the clinic where I work. And I focus on posture. Because, you know, there is this practice of mindfulness where people practice just being mindful of their thoughts and their feelings and, you know, and also of breathing. But don't focus on the posture. And so this is sort of But our school of Buddhism, we focus on posture a lot.

[28:10]

And in posture, something's not so easy for everybody. So I find that a lot of the clients in the clinic really have a difficult time with the posture. And not many people can sit in the floor and cross their legs. So it's important that we understand you know, in the floor, you sit in a chair, whether you sit, you know, in the Burmese position or the half lotus or the full lotus, each posture has the totality of the Buddha Dharma in it. And the mudra is sort of what continues across all of them. So the mudra is really important. So I noticed that with this group it was really important to teach people how to hold the mudra. And so hold the mudra and keep the back straight. Those are the two basic ingredients.

[29:12]

But the mudra is also a way for them to monitor their mental state. So it's interesting, you know, because people are told that they have a chemical dysfunction nowadays, right? because we're in the era of the brain and brainiatry. I like to call it psychiatry. So people are told that people are taking different medications and they're being told, well, this disorder of your thoughts or your feelings have to do with biochemical disorder and transmission of impulses from neuron to neuron and that kind of thing. But in the transmission of neurons, it's either too much, so it's like being flooded by thinking, or not enough. Or being too excited, like in mania, having too much energy, or not having enough energy, like in depression.

[30:24]

So it's that kind of duality. It's either too much or not enough. So it's the middle way. So the mudra is kind of the way of the barometer of the thermostat of the middle way. It's how to keep the energy in the brain or in the mind at just right, at the right tension. Not too much and not too little. So it's become interesting for people to they're up like that, then you can see that they're thinking too much and they're getting into sort of very paranoid thinking, or anxious thinking, or manic thinking, or whatever it may be, and the thumbs are up like this. Thumbs up! And when they're sort of getting discouraged, and this is not helping, and you know, so on and so forth, So that was something that we hear all the time, but it was kind of a discovery for me to see how important just how you hold the hands in the mudra can be.

[31:38]

Seems like a minor thing, but it's sort of like the little that holds the great. And then there's the mindfulness of breathing. and which is in the Satipatthana Sutra is the factor that counters anxiety and worry of the hindrance of anxiety and worry and worry and flurry and so when we're feeling anxious Even though we have mindfulness of mind and consciousness, and the light may be there as well, there's also this feeling of anxiety that arises. So that's the mindfulness of feeling. And the factor that is most effective

[32:39]

the awareness of light or mindfulness of non-thinking. For anxiety is breathing. And counting the breaths. Not just breathing, but counting the breaths. Because it's the counting that interrupts the usual kind of thinking that leads people to become anxious. So I was a little anxious this morning about giving this talk. I was really practicing mindfulness of breathing. I was really focusing on breathing and counting my breaths. I don't always count my breaths. But at critical points, you really count your breaths and focus on breathing. And it's the right practice for that particular dharma or hindrance. And then there's the mindfulness of feeling, which is there already, I was talking about that, but I want to mention another aspect of it, which is what I'm calling the awareness of the semblance.

[34:00]

And the awareness of the semblance is sort of how we hold our feelings in our face. because often the heart is really on the face and how we hold our feelings in the jaw so it's important to keep the face open and the jaw relaxed without shutting down the face sometimes a lot of the buddhist statues particularly in Japan, the Chinese statues often, the face is kind of more open and relaxed. Or there's a more, that's also an important part of the awareness, because part of the awareness of feelings is the antidote to deal with anger. Just like breathing is the antidote to deal with anxiety, awareness of feelings is particularly an antidote for working with anger.

[35:11]

and angry states of mind and so the angry states of mind is reflected in the face in this kind of, you know, stern serious face which sometimes, you know, you have a stern serious face and that's it, it's just that that's what it is, a stern serious face but often it means that you're practicing with anger and you're holding the anger in the jaw so if you open up the face It's a way of letting go of the anger and letting go of the tension in the jaw. And then having the intention of having good wishes or the practice of compassion, of offering compassion for all beings. And just going around the world practicing that. and letting go of the anger you can't you know the anger will arise it will be there will be triggered by different things but we don't hold on to it and often when we're holding on to it it's reflected in the face you have this kind of angry you know zen anguish zen style you know

[36:30]

Whereas the Bodhisattva figures, they have a kind of open face. It's more the feminine principle also. This kind of inner gracefulness. This kind of inner gratitude and inner gracefulness as a kind of fundamental prestigition towards the world. How many minutes? Three minutes. Three minutes. So, let me just say a few things. Didn't get to talk about the mindfulness of non-thinking, this practice of perceiving light. It's the mindfulness of looking at what's right in front of your nose.

[37:41]

The nose. And the nose is the only part of the face that we can actually see. So usually, in languages referred to, look at what's in front of you. That's part of mindfulness. Pinpoint this one dot, this one thing, that's in front of you. But what is this one thing, this one point, this needle that is in front of you? Is it an object? It's not an object. Well, what is it then? And so it's turning the question more on the subject than in the object. What is the subject of the subject? Of the nose. What is the subject of the subject of the nose? And what does nose mean anyway? Nose sounds like no, the nose, Buddha's nose, the nose of the Prajnaparamita.

[38:43]

and the no's of wisdom beyond wisdom. So it's the no-no's. This no's is not a no's. So in the Bible it says, you know, if your hand bothers you, cut it off. So if the no's bothers you, so we don't say if the no's bothers you, cut it off. We say if the no's bothers you, realize that this is not a no's. No nose. That's what the Heart Sutra says. No eyes, no nose, etc, etc. So actually, if you look at the point of your nose, you will see the source of light. Try that sometime in Zazen. If you look at the point of your nose, it's the point where the two eyes meet, and there you find the essence of We think the light is out there, but actually the light is in here, is the subject of the subject.

[39:52]

And this is the thinking, non-thinking, or seeing with the eye of not seeing, or true seeing is no seeing, as Suzuki Roshi said. So this is the same as mindfulness of Mu. This is the Co-Entractus. Each thing is the whole universe. The light of the universe is in each moment, in each thing. And so this is mindfulness of Dharma, mindfulness of Mu. What is it? So we're not just mindful of objects, that's concentration. Each thing is happening in time, and at the same time, there's no time. And this no time of time is Moo.

[40:55]

So mindful of everyday activities, it's not just being mindful of all the things that we're doing, it's mindful of everything that we're doing, each thing is this Moo, is this life. So that's the fourth. And that's the final. So the first foundation, posture, and the final one is of Dharma. They come together as the same thing. Thank you very much. And can we have a few minutes for questions? Yes. Thank you, Alan. Yes. So Bodhidharma sat for many years facing the wall, and I guess to deal with this problem of sleepiness, maybe, I guess this is the question, why did he cut off his eyelids? Despite his face?

[41:59]

That's kind of extreme. So there's a question there. Do you read it literally? It's a myth. Do we read it literally, or do we read it symbolically? If you read it literally, it's yajñāna practice, because it creates a duality between being awake and being asleep. Being awake and being asleep do not do. Our teacher is falling asleep all the time. We're going to stay that way. It's numerous, but it also speaks to our condition. Actually, if you don't like your nose in this society, then you get a nose job. Which says something about our relationship to our body and our relationship to the realm of desire.

[43:08]

Yes, so the beauty comes from this light. And that's why, you know, in Sachine everybody looks so beautiful. Despite whatever, you know, nose or whatever face or body we may have, everybody's beautiful because that's the source of light. So we try to change it at the objective level, right? So have a nicer nose or nicer value, whatever it may be, instead of we're looking for new landscapes rather than changing the eyes by which we see. Yes, Richard. I want to take on the other side. But there is a—the fable talks about, or the way I interpret it, talks about making Yeah, so that's a good point.

[44:23]

So cutting the eyebrows may be symbolic for the effort that we put in Zazen and in the posture. Eyebrows are essential to a Zen master. Eyelids. Yeah. Yeah, so the idea is, it's symbolic for the practice, the fundamental practice of satsang and holding the posture and sitting for long periods of time. And sitting through being tired and sleepy and angry and all those things, all the dharmas that are continuously arising and ceasing to exist. So that's the aesthetic. I mean, there is an aesthetic core to zazen. And Suzuki Roshi said, aestheticism is more important than monasticism.

[45:28]

Because the aestheticism of the posture is the fundamental practice in that sense. more than because what about, you know, a student cutting his arm off? Are we going to, you know, recommend that people cut their limbs off? That's Zen fundamentalism. It's sort of misapprehending the teaching and sort of in this kind of fundamentalism.

[46:06]

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