I want to talk about what we call doksa, which means something like facing each other one-on-one. And it refers to a student and a teacher, and their dialogue, private dialogue. In Soto school, this is often referred to as San Shimonpo, which means bringing up the Dharma through questions and answers, examining the Dharma through question and answer.

[01:15]

And it also, sometimes in our modern usage, in our modern way of thinking about this kind of interaction, sometimes we think of it as counseling or therapy in the more broad terms, not so much in the psychological usage, but in a broader sense. Whereas often, I don't want to get into defining, because I know that I'll upset people. So I won't make a comparison. I would just say that the purpose of Sanchi Mopo, or Dokusan, is to orient

[02:30]

the student toward practice, which includes, of course, the world. But more specifically, to help the student become oriented toward the way, toward the Tao, toward enlightenment, and the fundamental... So there are various kinds of counseling, you know, school counselor, psychological counselor, and... Marriage. What? Marriage counselor. And in all of these kinds of counseling, the various ways overlap to some extent.

[03:41]

And within one, you will find the others. But the specific aim of, I would say, of Zen counseling, or Sanchi Monpo, or Doksa, is to orient one toward the path and it may include psychological elements, and it may include family counseling, and it may include orientation to your world, and so forth. So, the two important aspects of practice are Zazen and Dōkasan. In Rinzai usage, Dōkasan has a more specific purpose.

[04:48]

More often it's associated with a specific koan that the teacher and the student are working on. Doksan maybe takes one or two minutes. You either present your answer to the koan, and if it's not the answer that the teacher wants, then you just leave. It's either there, sorry. Which is very nice, actually. You either have it or you don't. But this is, in our practice, we count from the opposite side. Instead of giving the student a koan and then finding, and then having the student come back to give the answer, we work on the circumstances of our life as koan.

[06:01]

We look at the circumstances of our life. to find the koan that is our actual koan in our life. We don't have to think of something extra or something different, but just to see where that koan is in our life. And sometimes it takes a long time or a while to find that, but when you do, it becomes very clear. So, you know, Soto Zen is farmer's Zen and Rinzai Zen is soldier's Zen, roughly speaking. So we take the slow farmer's way and look at our life, try to look at our life very clearly and include our daily life as the way to go.

[07:05]

But we're not fixed on any particular way. Even though we have a certain style, we really are not fixed on any particular way. And to call this Soto Zen, particularly, is not necessarily accurate. But on the other hand, it's not accurate to not call it Soto Zen. So we should be careful. Although, yes, we call this Soto Zen style. It's just a Buddha Dharma. And we're not stuck with any particular method or beholden to any particular method, even though we're very strict about certain things. Suzuki Roshi didn't do very much formal doksan, except in Sashin. And his style of doksan, or Sanshimoto, was more informal.

[08:25]

You just come and talk. If you wanted to see him, you just come and talk. And he'd always give you a big problem. So you have to be very careful. what you said, but it was always quite wonderful, because when you got your problem, you knew you had something to deal with, something that you could work with. So in Doksan, you know, in the beginning, we usually come, and the first Doksan is often, who are you, and what do you do, and it's nice to be here. this kind of thing. And then subsequently we have some questions. Posture, breathing, various things. Things that can be answered. Questions that can be dealt with as questions and answers. And then after a while you run out of questions and answers or the questions that can be answered.

[09:30]

And then you start dealing with questions that are more deep questions. And each question, you know, has a deep root. But often we don't see the deep root of the tiny question. So we think, I don't really have a question. People, they come to us and say, well, you know, I don't really have any big question, you know. This is very I don't know, what do you do here in Dogsan anyway? What kind of a question am I supposed to have? This is very common. So, I say, well, any question is okay. Because any question, every question is a gate to the big question.

[10:33]

The other day I was talking about surface anxiety and basic anxiety, two aspects of our suffering. I don't want to say superficial anxiety, but surface anxiety, which is the anxiety about Well, you know, will my children turn out okay? Well, you know, is my wife, does she like me? You know, will I continue to work? Will I be fired? Although these are very deep questions, they're actually surface anxieties. Deep anxiety is, when will I die? What is my life?

[11:38]

What's the meaning of my life? This is deep anxiety. And the only reason I say surface and deep is that the surface anxieties, hierarchically, are all related to the deep anxiety. They're not separate from that. But hierarchically, they're just events in our life, whereas the deeper anxiety is something that's always with us and is the root of our life, the root question of our life. So when we start to look at small questions, we can bring up the bigger question, look at the bigger questions.

[12:43]

And that's not always so easy to do right away. So through a process of observation and allowing the question to come up, and some examination of the question, which doesn't necessarily lead to an answer, but leads to a wider questioning. So when you leave Dotson, you may be disappointed that you didn't get an answer to your question, but you should feel good that you have a wider questioning of your question, or a deeper way to look at your question. So this is our kind of koan practice.

[13:46]

Sometimes I'll give a person a koan, one of the standard koans, because it's very appropriate. And often I'll say, well, why don't you work on this koan, which is, what is it? This is a very basic koan. You can't miss on that one for anyone. But because our dialogue gets to this point, this is obviously the koan that this person should be working on. What is it? Which is a form of, who am I? But who am I? It may not be such a good koan. What is it is a better form of the koan of who am I. Somebody once told me that in Korea, the basic koan for most that they use is, what is it?

[15:10]

So anyway, this is our basic koan anyway, for everybody. But So we have a longer doksang than one or two minutes because we're not looking for what is the answer. We're looking for what is the question. And the question, the answer is within the question. The answer is not something outside of the question. So when you find the question, then you have a clue to the answer. And it's easy to find an answer to the question. That's not hard. But understanding the answer to the question, that's difficult.

[16:19]

Because if you want the answer to, what is it? It's very simple. The answer to what is it is, this is it. You just turn the question around. The other side of the question is the answer. But what is it, and this is it? Neither one is the question or the answer. It goes beyond the question and the answer to get to basic anxiety. So what if this is it? This is the koan of Zazen, of course. Zazen itself is the number one koan. Everything that you need to know is in Zazen. So sometimes we love Zazen, sometimes we hate Zazen, sometimes we want to do Zazen, sometimes we don't want to do it,

[17:37]

Sometimes we want to do it when we don't want to do it, and we don't want to do it when we want to do it. We have all these conflicts, which is just exactly like our life. It's all there. That's why Zazen itself is the teacher. And the teacher just helps us to stay on the track. So sometimes a teacher can help to open your mind, sometimes not. And there are various ways of doing that. Tokusan used to use his big stick, and Rinzai used his shout, and Joshu just used ordinary, plain ordinary words.

[18:38]

This is why Joshu is such a considered such a master, because he just used plain ordinary words. Ordinary circumstances, ordinary words, nothing special. Sometimes we like, there are people who like to sit zazen, but who don't like to have dogs on. There are people that like to have dogs on, but don't like to sit zazen. And we have these two sides of our nature, you know, some people are silent types, other people are discursive types. But the thing about practice

[19:46]

you know, is that real practice has to be done, has to go beyond our choosing. And what I mean by choosing is that, not that we don't choose, but once we make a choice, we have to take the consequences of our choosing. You know, if the boat is leaving the dock and you have one foot on the boat and one foot on the dock, you have to make a choice, right? You have to do that. So you make a choice. And whatever choice that is, you have to stick with it because that's it. But we don't always see that. And we think we have lots of choices. And after we've made our initial choice, we still think we have lots of choices.

[20:51]

But we have to keep making, once we've made our initial choice, we have to continue to choose that choice. Because as soon as we run into some difficulty, we want to make the other choice. But you can't do that. You can do it, but you'll always be chasing yourself around. That's the saying goes, wherever I go, I'm always there. And of course, this is what we learned in Zazen. Once you make your choice, you say, this is what I'm going to do now. And you have to follow your intentions. And the only way to be successful is to do that. Otherwise you don't feel good about yourself.

[21:55]

So the main thing in our life that makes us feel good about ourselves is following our intentions. That's why the main thing about practice is our intention. When we get pulled around by our feelings, which are our feelings attuned to our disposition. And when our disposition changes, then our feelings change. And then we say, God, why am I doing this? We forget our initial reasoning, our initial reason for doing something. It's real easy to forget our original reason for doing something. Once doubts start setting in, you know, due to difficulty. As soon as things started getting difficult, why am I doing this?

[23:01]

Why did I say I was going to do this? And so forth. So that's why strong intention, the only thing that really carries us through in our life is our strong intention. Because feelings are called the robbers. Sometimes we have to listen to those feelings. That's good too. But only when you're strong enough. Because it's real easy to forget what you're doing. So the purpose of the teacher is to remind you of what you're doing. Remind you of what your original intentions are. But, you know, everyone has to teach themselves.

[24:19]

There's a koan, you know, in all the land of China, there is no Zen teacher. And the guy said, what do you mean there's no Zen teacher? They're all friends. What about blah, blah, blah? He said, I didn't say there was no Zen. I said, there's no Zen teacher. Which doesn't mean that there are no Zen teachers. It means everyone has to be their own teacher and everyone has to find their own way. But that doesn't mean that we have to wander off by ourselves. So Zazen and Doksan are two important aspects of our practice.

[25:26]

Zazen is our actual enlightenment experience, and Doksan is inquiring about the Dharma, bringing forth the Dharma. with someone else in order to reflect. And you become reflected off of the teacher. The student becomes reflected off of the teacher. That's how we verify ourself. A student becomes verified through the teacher, and the teacher becomes verified through the And you bring forth something and that process creates a valuable relationship. So what's important is how we see the Dharma, how we see the truth of our own lives.

[26:41]

So maybe you have some question about it. I want to say one other thing about it. And that is, in a practice place, there are many people, often or usually people who the older members help the younger members. And for each person, wherever we are in the hierarchy of our life, we have someone that knows something up here, and someone that we know something more than they do, or have some ability that they don't have. So there's a kind of ladder. And each one of us is on a certain rung on this ladder. And we look to guidance for someone that's on this rung.

[28:01]

And we help someone that's on this rung. So wherever we find ourselves, we have the capability of doing that. If we are in this rung, and we don't think there's anybody up there, then we have a big problem. Or if we're on this rung, And we don't care about the people down here. We have a big problem. So each one of us is in some position. And so the person in this position can help the person in this position. And the person in this position can look to the person up here. So the teacher The head teacher is the teacher for everyone, even though everyone may not feel that, which is okay.

[29:04]

Everyone doesn't necessarily feel, oh, he's my teacher, or she's my teacher, but you can still practice here. So the teacher, the head teacher does dok-song. And then there are members who have been teachers, who have been members a long time, who have a good sense of practice and can help other people. And those people do what we call Zazen discussion or practice discussion, which is a form of dokasan, but you don't relate to that person as your teacher, but they are a teacher to you, because they can help your practice.

[30:10]

So there's a difference between what we call dokasan and practice discussion. Each person should feel free to go to a person who does practice discussion to discuss your practice. But dok-sang is a deeper relationship that you have with the head teacher. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference, which is okay. But the people who do practice discussion at some point should say, well, you should go see the head teacher.

[31:16]

Sometimes the student is the teacher. Teachers, although the teacher has a position as teacher, the interaction between the student and the teacher is more flexible than that. And the teacher is always being taught by the student, actually. So, as an example, when the teacher gives a talk, it looks like the teacher is teaching the students, but actually the students are teaching the teacher by listening.

[32:40]

Because when the teacher talks, When everyone is listening, the teacher knows whether what they're saying is true or false without anybody having to say anything. So sometimes it's good for the student to come to the teacher and say, how was your practice? What are you doing? How do you feel about yourself? What's your problem? Anyway, do you have some question?

[33:56]

Given that there are positions and one can be at wrong, from another point of view, can't one approach your life and each moment with each person and each circumstance as your teacher. Yeah, that's the way it is. The fact is that everything is preaching the Dharma. That's enlightenment. That's enlightened practice. Everything is preaching the Dharma. Not just inanimate objects. Inanimate objects means everything. So when we listen, then we can hear. So that's our real calling, actually.

[35:11]

Inanimate objects are preaching the Dharma. What do they say? What are they saying? They're calling every voice is the voice of Buddha. But sometimes I feel that I have very clear understanding, but then when I hear two or three in a row, it just becomes koan salad, and I can't translate my understanding of the first one to others.

[36:25]

What would you suggest? How should I approach more than one koan? Well, sometimes the koans are on the same level. Like there are koans which deal with dharmakaya, and there are koans which deal with daily life. So there are various levels of koans. And the koans that I've been talking about in this session are dharmakaya koans. mostly. So that's how you can relate to them. But I sympathize with that, and it's good to maybe just talk about one koan thoroughly. But sometimes one relates to the other.

[37:28]

And when you start looking at the koans, you see how One is reflected in another, and then it becomes very interesting to see how the various koans are related to each other, and how one reflects a facet of the other. I've heard people, and I know historically a lot of people have gone from teacher to teacher and moved around, and now I hear some people who perhaps seem to have a variety of primary teachers at a time. And I'm wondering, in this tradition, what is the traditional way of looking at that? That's a good question. The traditional way is to make your mistake and stay with it. You only get one mistake.

[38:37]

You only get one mistake. Once you make your mistake and establish yourself, then you can go to other teachers. But if you just go to other teachers to fill your basket, you know, with their stuff, all you have is a basket of stuff. So, a teacher, you know, Some teachers are very good in this way, and some teachers are very good in this way. And each teacher has something, some interesting thing. And sometimes you'll be with a teacher for a long time, and then you go to somebody else and say, oh, God, what they said was really good, but it was the same thing that you were saying. But you just hear it in a different way. They say, it was wonderful, I really liked that teacher a lot, but it turns out to be just what you were doing.

[39:37]

But, as I say, you teach yourself. So, you either use this stone to polish your knife on, or you use this stone to polish your knife on. This may be a rough stone, this may be a smooth stone, and maybe after the rough stone you want to use the smooth stone. But the teacher is like a grinding wheel. The teacher will not give you anything. Just something for you to grind your stone on, to grind your ax on. So, the information, some teachers have a lot of information, some teachers have no information. A teacher with no information who can do that is a very good teacher.

[40:39]

Because we really get hooked on information. That's what we really crave, the information, is the knowledge. We think the knowledge is the thing. So a really good teacher keeps his mouth shut and just makes you practice. And you may think, I'm not getting anything out of this at all. Just leave me alone, you know? Jesus, someone else has this rich, you know, variety of teachings and things. Really, you know, we can really get into that in our mind. But somebody up on the Bear Mountain, you know, you have to kind of rock, walk up the, climb up, you know, and there's nothing up there. That kind of teacher has very few students, and most of them leave. Stay here if I say I practiced 20 years.

[42:03]

Anyway, I always try to entertain you. Turn upside down to play. Turn bottom up to play. But you also say, and it's been said of you, that you get to say the same thing for 25 years. I heard a term recently, Sunday School Zen, and I think it meant a kind of description of people who are not, take on the trappings, but are not altogether serious. And how would you describe a person who, a serious student? A serious student, I would say is someone who sits us in and

[43:06]

whether they have a busy life or not, goes by their decision, which is what I said before. I will sit zazen once a year at 5.40 on June 21st, and a person does that. I would say that's a serious practice. It's an exaggeration of what a serious practice is, but that's serious. The person keeps their intention to practice, and the intention is part of their life. It's not whimsical. It's not, oh, I feel good today, so I'm going to go to the zendo, and maybe I'll feel even better. I'm going to go to the Zen Dome, settle down.

[44:10]

Or I feel nervous today, I'm going to go to the Zen Dome. That's not real practice. That's superficial practice. Real practice is, it doesn't matter how I feel. It has nothing to do with how I feel, or what I want. It has nothing to do with how I feel or what I want. My decision is to this, and so when the time comes, I do this. It doesn't have anything to do with how I feel or what I want. That's why choosing a teacher is dangerous if you choose the teacher that you want. Because then you expect some result. This teacher will give me a good result. It's doomed. A good teacher often is a teacher that you don't think you want. But good medicine doesn't always taste good. So anyway, that's why I say, when you make your mistake of choice, stay with it.

[45:17]

It doesn't matter whether you made a good choice or not. It makes a difference, but it doesn't make that much difference, always. Because your practice is your practice. But sometimes I come in here, and I'm sitting, practicing, and something holds back. And maybe I notice it's holding back. And maybe I try and throw myself into it. But then that's sometimes just being stubborn. And it's just another way of holding back. So when something is holding back, what do you do?

[46:21]

If it's holding back, then really will we back real practice? At that point, holding back is nirvana, and stubbornness is nirvana. I'd love to explain that, but I won't.

[46:58]

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