desire, zazen and desire. In one of his discourses on zazen, Master Dogen says, Be it known that for studying the way, the established means of investigation is pursuit of the way in seated meditation. The essential point that marks this investigation is the understanding that there is a practice of a Buddha that does not seek to make a Buddha. So, sitting meditation is the the way to go, and the defining characteristic, the essential point of Dogen's sitting meditation, which he calls Zazen, is that there's a practice of not becoming a Buddha embedded in it.

[01:11]

It's this idea of not seeking. He goes on to say, a seated Buddha does not interfere with making a Buddha. So, Buddhas don't block becoming Buddha. They sit, they don't particularly seek it, but they don't get in the way. And Dogen says in his meditation manuals in many different ways at different times, Zazen is not practicing or not learning meditation. This is quite familiar to us. Meditation, as meant here, is a graded or progressive system of physical and mental discipline, presumably leading to higher and higher levels of insight and skill and perhaps ultimately to complete enlightenment.

[02:16]

Meditation methods are often identified in terms of the specific goals they accomplish. For example, calm-abiding meditation, insight meditation, loving-kindness meditation, and so on. The methods lead to results, and that's why they're practiced. Dogen Zazen. something else. It's immediately, originally sublime. In this view, practice of the perfections, generosity and morality and energy and patience and so on, is based on enlightenment. You don't do these practices in order to wake up. First you wake up and then practice and development later.

[03:19]

That's the feeling of it. So, what is our founding ancestor saying to us 700 years later? According to Buddhism, we humans live in the realm of desire, wanting things. This is in a way a little hard for us to appreciate because we live in that realm, so we take it for granted. But as most of us notice after sitting for a while and reflecting on it, that our lives are riven with desire, that it's actually a pretty good term. Desire, desire, desire, desire. So let's briefly look at desire. We have the well-known excessive desire.

[04:21]

Desire for more than we need. This is generally deemed not to be good. There are desires for practice, for awakening, for oneness, for meaning, to know our place in the universe, to be of service. These are pretty good desires. And there's a Bodhisattva desire to be Buddha and save sentient beings. This is quite good desire. I mean we often use the term vow. instead of desire, right? Bodhisattva vow. And indeed it is somewhat different from these many of these other kinds of desires which tend to be based on a relatively narrow definition of a human being, and the vow of a bodhisattva, in theory anyway, is a much more widely based desire. And there's desire to be one's true self, to find meaningful work, to continue one's lineage through progeny and teaching and so on.

[05:35]

Desire to accumulate wealth, reputation, image. Desire to have food, shelter, clothing, medicine, safety, rest. Desire to have health. Freedom from physical pain, or at least the ability to manage pain. Mental well-being, satisfaction, ease. We have desire for luxuries, for fancy, very refined food. Sex, fancy, very refined sex. Style, adventure. We have a desire to accumulate knowledge, and there's just craven wanting. That's such a large category that we just pass it by. We may construct hierarchies of desire, given that there's so many we might like to arrange them.

[06:46]

We may fall prey to desires about desire. These are called desire desires. Do I have the right desires? Do they set me apart from others? Are they fashionable? Do they reflect positively on my tastes and values? Are my desires politically correct? Am I experiencing a desire gap? So, you know, this is a huge territory, this realm we live in, and this is just, you know, just to touch it lightly. But even beyond the quantity and the intensity and the specific objects of desire is another very important and in some ways frequently overlooked aspect, which is how we respond to desire. So, how do we respond to desire?

[07:55]

With fear. Desire comes up and immediately it's this emotion of fear. I won't get what I need. Someone else is going to get it. Glass is half full, kind of half empty, I mean. Do we respond to desire with craving? I want it. I want it all. Do we respond to desire with bravado? I'm getting mine. Revolution, disdain, I hate my desires, or they're unworthy of me, or I don't deserve what I want. So there's just a huge, huge variety of responses we can have to our own desires and to other desires we see around us. Do we reject, ignore, or suppress desire?

[08:57]

Do we pretend we don't have desires or pretend to have only the best sort? Do we exaggerate desire, use desire to manipulate ourselves and others? I must have that new car. Desire gets pushed into need. Must. I need you to take out the trash. You can't have everything, you know, dear. Anyway, there are hundreds of ways to respond to our desires and as we all know from close observation, every type of response has a different set of consequences for ourselves and others. The contraction of fear, the tyranny of suppression, and the endless dissatisfaction that comes with greed.

[10:06]

So the question arises, how should we respond to desire? Do we have any choice? Well, of course, we do have choice regarding how we respond to desire. In fact, we have choice regarding how we respond to anything. It isn't easy. Opening up space for choice requires careful observation and work on ourselves over a long period of time. But since we can, we should exercise choice over how we respond to desire. Strictly speaking, desire in and of itself is not good or bad. But our responses to desire may have good or bad consequences for us or others. That is, they may be skillful responses or unskillful. the 13th century Sufi poet Rumi opines, you must ask for what you really want.

[11:25]

Don't go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep. This suggests several things to me, perhaps more to you. One is that desires are important. They deserve our attention. Secondly, some desires are more important, more essential than others. Thirdly, we must ask. We must request. It isn't just up to the individual, to me. Desire, and particularly the satisfaction of desire, happens in relationship with others, sometimes obviously, sometimes not so obviously. Desires have potency. They're forms of or expressions of energy, and they may be constructive or destructive, depending on how we handle them.

[12:35]

For Zen practitioners, I think it's pretty clear how we should respond to desire. Rather than turning away or clinging or distorting desire, we should meet it with non-judgmental awareness, even curiosity. When desire is present, we should accept it as a fact of the moment. We should tolerate its presence. whether it's comfortable to do that or not. This requires a certain spaciousness of mind and body. So we should respond to desire with dignity, with respect. Respect is an interesting word. You know, it's like respect for another person, of course, respect for our teachers and so on.

[13:38]

But it also has this kind of fundamental meaning. If you take the word apart, respect, you know, spect is the, it's kind of spectacles, has to do with seeing. And re means again. So it's to see and to see again. not to take for granted. You see once, I've seen it, you know, don't need to look again. We all know how we feel when someone looks at us that way. But actually human beings are, of course, amazingly changeable and deep and so we have to look, we have to see, we have to see again. So that's respect. In fact, we should become intimate with desire. We should know it through and through, like a connoisseur. Well, actually this sounds familiar, does it not?

[14:41]

I mean, we've perhaps heard of this kind of practice. As Bodhidharma is said to have said, no sighing or coughing in the mind. I think he means don't get caught in your attractions or your aversions. Don't flinch. Don't meddle. Don't try to do anything about it. Kabir says, forget imaginary things and stand firm in that which you are. After all, what we really need is a measure of freedom from desire, not dictatorial control or domination.

[15:43]

What does this mean? Well, clearly it means we don't need to have primitive manipulation of desire, denial and domination and so on. Desire, passions in general, don't lend themselves to this kind of handling. We all know that. Of course, freedom doesn't mean passive submission to desire either. It's not a matter of resignation, acceptance, right? Acceptance is the fact in the moment. Here is this desire present now, but not resignation. What we can do is learn to control our responses to desire, to see how we hold desire, and to choose freely among the many possible responses. This requires careful painstaking cultivation over an extended period of time. In other words, working for results.

[16:46]

And it all starts with awareness and stability. So how does this tie into Zazen? Well, one obvious connection is that desire brings us to practice. Here are some of the most common desires, forms of desire that bring people to practice. Desire for relief from pain and mental distress. Desire for meaning, balance, stability in one's life. Desire for knowledge, insight. Desire for peace. companionship and love. The other day I was walking to my car from morning Zazen and I met a young man in the street. I've never seen him before and he was a monk and he'd just come back from India

[17:57]

in village India for three years or so and he had just come back you know and was being just his expression was assaulted by the busyness and you know loudness and intrusiveness of our culture and he was very interested in what we were doing and who we were. This man wanted peace and a kind of companionship he needed to I don't know, depressurize or repressurize in a gentle way. We desire recognition. Some people want dates. Anyway, these are all, you know, one way or another valid reasons. And if you look back at your own history, you can probably find a few of those that you can check off for yourself about why you came here in the first place. They're valid reasons to practice, and practice brings results.

[19:06]

For example, Thich Nhat Hanh's guided meditations lead to calming, healing, and insight. He has, you know, tapes and books, and you can read these guided meditations. You can listen to them on tape. And, you know, I just know because I've talked to a lot of people who say they work. They don't work for me, but they work for a lot of people. Jon Kabat-Zinn's mindfulness-based stress reduction results in pain and stress management, emotional intelligence, Daniel Goleman's term, better communication, insight into our habitual ways of feeling and thinking and reacting, The ability to deconstruct ingrained patterns. In traditional terms, this is to abandon afflictions. And finally, this kind of work leads to the ability to accurately appraise situations and take beneficial action, to see clearly what's right in front of you and to act skillfully.

[20:28]

This is upaya, the seventh of the six perfections. These are only a few of the wonderful outcomes of practice. Suzuki Roshi and our own kind teacher emphasized that practice is not Zen practice when it is freighted with a gaining idea. when we try to get something out of it. They reflect Dogen Zenji's fundamental admonition or view. Zazen is not learning meditation. It is not trying to get something. Rather, we practice Zazen for the sake of Zazen, not even to have sentient beings, to save sentient beings, not to lose weight, not for any reason. Master Bokkasan says, however much you hope for Buddhadharma, you cannot get it as long as you have hope.

[21:41]

However much you hope for Buddhadharma, you cannot get it as long as you have hope. You hear the echo? But don't give up hope. You're in there? Don't give up hope. So, these teachers seem to be saying something about desire, that desire, even high-minded desire, is ultimately incompatible with practice. Although desire, hope for something, brings us to practice, we still have to wean ourselves from desire and its limiting consequences. This view seems to separate irrevocably the mundane uses of meditation from the sublime practice of zazen.

[22:46]

Maybe so. Maybe not. One of the things about these teachers, Suzuki, Sojin, Bokasan, you've noticed this I know, is that when they say something categorical like that, probably they mean to include the opposite. Right? How many times has that come up? Paradoxically, from a utilitarian standpoint, It turns out that meditation doesn't work very well for any purpose if one is caught up in outcomes, obsessing about this or that unmet desire. From Thich Nhat Hanh's calming practices to stress reduction to anything else, non-striving is paramount. This is a paradox. So ironically,

[23:50]

Dogen's view of Zazen offers the best way of getting results. So you can just sign up here. Dr. Dogen knows how to cure what ails you. I think Dogen had his own good reasons for distinguishing Zazen from meditation. Fundamentally, of course, he presents a radical non-dual practice. No, a kind of no practice. It's a distinctive practice in which means and ends are the same. The monks under his tutelage included, like Dogen himself, a number of experienced former Tendai monks who had been immersed in that school's high technology of meditation. Perhaps he wanted to wean them from their inflated feelings of accomplishment under that school. to free them from goal-seeking, just like we need to be freed from the tyranny of our desires.

[24:57]

At any rate, it's not enough to say that Dogen Zazen is just sitting meditation without a gaining idea. Dogen is at pains in his meditation manuals and throughout his works to demonstrate that Zazen itself is no less than enlightened activity. the enlightened ancestor's way, transmitted mind-to-mind, the Shovogenzo. So how does a poor, benighted human being, embedded in the realm of desire, pursue desire-free practice? Not surprisingly, it's simple. When desire is present, Meet it with non-judgmental awareness. Let it be. Don't meddle with it. Since we're aware and in a non-judgmental mode in Zazen, what meets desire in Zazen is simple awareness.

[26:11]

So, back on the ground. Here's some advice for the day. When it's time to sit, sit down with care and attention right from the start. Don't wait. Notice the contact your body makes with the cushion and with the earth. Fold your legs carefully. Bring attention to your posture, the pelvis, balanced on the sit bones. It's upright, not pitched forward, you know, compressing the lower back, not sagging backward, the back curve, the shoulders rounded, upright. The spine grows naturally out of the pelvis. It's like the pelvis is a bowl or a flower pot. And the spine is the stem of a flower growing out of that pot.

[27:20]

And each spine has its own particular curves, just like a flower stem, depending on where the sun was and when the flower got fed and so on and so forth. So our backs are like that. But the point is, if we can relax around the back, it will take its natural posture. The back is wide and strong. The chest and abdomen are open, receptive. Maybe there's a little lift from the breastbone. And if you want, you can just put the fingertips of one hand on the breastbone and just lift about a quarter of an inch. So it's not a military brace, but it's a little lift and then the chest falls away from that lift. Let the spine lengthen as you relax around it, as though the discs between the vertebrae were sponges and absorbed moisture or water.

[28:35]

So this is not horsing yourself upward, it's relaxing, and there's this sense of the spine just lengthening, an impulse that continues right out the top of your head. Your head is just balanced on top of the spine, the muscles at the back of the neck released. So this is one of those kind of delicate balancing matters. This doesn't mean jamming the chin back into your voice box, you know, so the neck is tight. It doesn't mean the head gawking forward, but it means letting the neck lengthen, perhaps letting the chin just drop about a quarter of an inch, so your head's just floating there. Align the nose with the navel. The shoulders are suspended from where they're attached at the spine. The arms are suspended from the shoulders. Arrange your mudra so that it makes contact with the abdomen and perhaps with a foot, if you have a foot up on your thigh.

[29:45]

Makes contact. It's not resting there, taking a nap. It's making contact. So the arms and hands are lively. They're not rigid. They're not limp. and you can let air circulate under your armpits. This is a posture of alert, dignity, and ease. The spine is upright, but not rigid. It's continually falling out of balance, and then coming back upright. I mean, the body just knows how to do this. Once you're satisfied with your posture for the time being, Find your breath. In particular, find the sensations of breathing in the abdomen. And again, you know, advanced students as well as new students can place the palm of one of your hands on your abdomen and just help yourself locate those sensations, the swelling and contraction of the abdomen as you breathe.

[30:54]

Then you put your hand back. then rest your attention on the breath. Sometimes we may think this means riveting your attention to the breath and that may be useful for a short time, but actually I'm suggesting something more like your mind, your awareness rests on the breath like as though it were riding in a boat on an ocean amid gentle swells, the movement of your breath. When you notice that your mind has wandered off somewhere or been swept away by a rogue wave, notice what carried you off, release it, and gently but firmly escort your attention back to the abdomen and the sensations of breathing.

[31:59]

This bodily posture and mental organization reflect one another. Together they're the, we could say, the yoga of awakening, of being awake. Of course, life goes on unplanned. Sensations in the body, sounds, feelings, thoughts, images, emotions, pain, ease, fear, desire. You name it, sooner or later, it all presents itself. Our practice is to meet each event as it presents itself with simple awareness, to refrain from judging the events or ourselves, to refrain from assessing, analyzing, censoring, improving, not clinging, not rejecting, not reacting. When we do inevitably judge and react, we just notice these events as well, returning to your upright posture of body and mind.

[33:03]

There are no problems with desire or anything else. I think this is Sojin Roshi's not moving. I think it's Dogen's Zazen. Thank you for your attention. Do you have any questions or brief comments? Like, if you're not in full lotus, then your feet aren't sticking up so high. Yeah. So, is it important to raise it up higher? You mean when you are in full lotus?

[34:04]

When you're not in full lotus. When I'm not in full lotus. Then they drop down farther. Drop down. Yeah. Or does it matter? I think you should have them so that the navel is right where the thumbs are. Just about like that. Okay? Yes? Julia? Are there any non-valid reasons for doing Zazen? No. Yes? Well, yes, or dates. It doesn't say anything about dates, it's true. I stand by what I said. If you come for money or food, it's a self-correcting situation.

[35:15]

If you come and practice Zazen, it'll work itself out. The thing to do is go practice Zazen. Yes, Andrea. Do you think some people have more desire than other people? I don't know if I think that. I don't think it matters too much. We all have, as I see it, we have a huge amount. And it keeps us alive and motivates us to do good and bad things. And we all have the ability to learn how to respond to desire. So I think amount is not so much the, you know, trying to measure. It's not so much the issue.

[36:17]

Do you feel something? Do you have a conviction about that that might help us here? I think that there's maybe, I was wondering, maybe there's different types of people, like maybe some people have, I'm not sure if desire is like the basic thing. Well, it seems that, yeah, that our ability to satisfy ourselves, to be satisfied, is perhaps more important than just the raw material of desire. So we can have huge numbers of desires, many of them, particularly when we're young, driven by hormones. I mean, once you have enough to eat and wear and so on, you immediately get into these hormone-driven kinds of desires.

[37:18]

And they're infinite, it seems. And what would you do about it if you could? There isn't much you can do. But we can learn how to be satisfied. Whether we satisfy all our desires is not so much the issue, I think. It's not like various people have various degrees of desire. And before anybody can be satisfied, they have to have satisfied 90% of their desires. I don't think it works that way. I think when you have some satisfaction, when you learn how to be satisfied in just a few areas really, desire then snaps into relief. We can see it pretty accurately. If you have no satisfaction, it's pretty hard to have that kind of perspective. David, now that we have a new desire, which is, I don't know if it was the desire to not desire or just the desire to meet desire in a different way, do we deal with that the way Dogen has us deal with not thinking?

[38:35]

I mean, is it not thinking? Are we talking about not desiring? Well, I think Dogen's definition non-thinking is a response to desire and it's a response to breath and it's a response to the whole range of possible experience in and out of formal seated meditation. So it's not so much, I mean you could say we might have a new desire around desire now. not to overreact. For example, that as we actually see, we become aware of our reactivity, that kind of response to desire. We can then have a desire not to be reactive. Well, that's fine. That's very helpful and natural.

[39:35]

if we're very primitive about that and we make that desire into yet another accomplishment sort of project for ourselves, probably we're in trouble. Vicky? Yes. Do you have any specific desires you're working with today and could you just There's a very specific desire that I've had quite vivid to me for several days now and which continues to this very present moment, which is the desire to express to all of you in this talk

[40:42]

in a relatively clear way, that's reasonably interesting to you, what I wanted to say. In other words, this talk has been a subject of desire. I want to do a good job, you know, just plain and simple. I mean, there's other stuff too, you know, I don't want to appear to be an idiot. But more than that, I wanted, not to make any ridiculous gaffes, but I wanted to give a good talk. So that's a desire. And I've been quite aware of how can I hold that desire so that it actually fuels the achievement of the results I'd like. How do I do that? Well, I've really got to see that desire really clearly. You know, and not fool with it, not say, oh, I've given talks lots of times.

[41:44]

Or to get, you know, to get terrified or something. So to see this desire and to be energized by it. And I, you know, just to elaborate a little, I noticed when I came in to bow and so on, how there's sort of all, many responses going on at once. I felt really at ease about bowing. You know, bowing and my zhagu and so on, that felt really good. And I noticed as I put the incense in the bowl, you know, my hand was shaking. Like there was a feeling of ease, but the hand was, so I, it's not quite like I said this, but there was the feeling of, okay, Devi, the hand is shaking, the hand is shaking, that's all, you know, the incense might fall on the floor and crumble and so on, I'll pick it up and it'll be all right.

[42:53]

And I also felt pretty good inside, some confidence. Thanks. It's actually, thanks, let's bounce. Time to go. Beans are numberless.

[43:15]

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