We're having a one-day sitting today. And so some of you have come in and 30, 35 of you of us are sitting the whole day. We've been studying the ancestors for the last four weeks, our Zen ancestors, some of our biological ancestors. We study that. not necessarily out of some notion that that's just a good thing to do and we ought to be doing it, but we study them and appreciate them because they continue to help us and because we really need their help. We need their help a lot. we need all the help we can get.

[01:01]

I woke up, I took a little nap during the break, and the clock radio woke me up with a current report from Iraq, which I won't necessarily share. You know the details. It's been hitting me for the last couple days that we're really screwed. As Laurie put it, we were just talking briefly, that this country has gone about the world poking a stick into every hole that it can find. And we may have poked our stick into a hole that's got a real snake in it. And it's not gonna be so easy, it's not gonna be easy to get away.

[02:06]

And we may have provoked something that's already terrible. To use the cliche, it's already a quagmire, A land of sand and dust can be such. So, I'm very encouraged to sit here together. This is a deeply peaceful and useful thing to do, I believe. And I'm also downhearted and like many of you, wondering what to do about the world. I really see our sitting together, this Sesshin, as an offering of peace. It's what I've learned to do over the years, it's what all of you have learned to do, and I believe in that function, that unifying function of our sitting.

[03:22]

And today I wanna talk a little about that, how I think we rely on the teachings of the ancestors that bring this practice back home to Zazen. And how that works, how that works in our lives. and also some to talk about how we do it, to talk about what I think is sort of the essence of our ancestral Soto Zen tradition that's gone through the ancestors to Suzuki Roshi and to Sojon Roshi and has been passed to all of us. This practice, of Shikantaza, and I'll say more about it.

[04:26]

But to begin, I want to go back to a class that I gave, I think, at the beginning of this practice period. I offered a class on the sixth ancestor, Wineng. And I want to just make apologies to those of you who were there for the class, because I want to share very briefly some of Wineng's story, his story up to the point of his realization. And that will sort of get us into this practice of shikantaza. So Wineng was a poor, illiterate youth from, I think, from the south of China. In our culture, you might think of him as a kind of hillbilly. And his father had died when he was young and he supported himself and his mother by cutting and selling wood.

[05:40]

And one day after he had sold a load of wood in the city, he came out of the house and he heard a man reciting the Diamond Sutra on the street. I mean, maybe that was a kind of ordinary activity there. If you walked around, you'd hear people reciting sutras on various street corners. It's a nice idea. I don't know if that's the way it was. But the fortuitous thing was he did hear this man reciting the sutra. He was about, I think he was about 21, 22 years old at that point, so not a kid. He had no education, but when he heard the verses, he immediately understood the teaching. And he went up and he spoke to that man and asked him what it was.

[06:46]

He said that, well, this is the platform, this is the Diamond Sutra, which is one of the early texts of Mahayana literature. And he told them that he had studied it at a monastery, a far distant monastery that was on the direction of the, fifth ancestor, Hongren. So Winen decides he's going to set aside all of his affairs and go there to study that because there was such a deep resonance in him. And because his life had certain charmed elements to it, somehow miraculously somebody came forward with a whole bunch of money to support his mother.

[07:52]

Unlike some of our ancestors' mothers that Ross was citing, he did think of his mother and he accumulated this money so that she would be well taken care of. And he went off, he journeyed 30 days to that temple. And when he arrived, he was not a monk. He was a lay person. He arrived and shortly he was introduced to the abbot, who instantly recognized that here was a person of great capacity. and worried about it a little. In this whole large monastery full of monks striving to wake up, here was one who was actually already awake or potentially awake, and so Hongren was concerned for this young man's well-being.

[09:08]

In the, In the text, it says, he says to himself, this barbarian is too bright. Go to the stable and speak no more. He was concerned that just by speaking, he would give away the quality of his understanding and provoke jealousies. Because though he was awake, he was not cooked. He was not refined and didn't know yet how to work with his understanding, work with the qualities that he had. went to the backyard and was told by one of the other lay brothers to split firewood and pound rice.

[10:23]

So if you get the picture, there were lay people supporting the monastery. And it's like he was in the, you know, kind of business end of the temple, just taking care of the monastery. He wasn't participating in monastery activities or prayers or meditation or anything like that. He was cutting wood and pounding rice. And as the story goes, he tied a big, he was not very substantial, so he tied a big rock around his middle so that his rice pounding would be more effective. Okay, so eight months pass. And the fifth ancestor announces a, he realizes he has to pass on the Dharma to a sixth ancestor. And he announces a poetry contest to determine whose understanding was deep enough to receive the robe and bowl that symbolized that position.

[11:25]

And there was a very famous, these two sets of famous verses. A verse was offered by the head monk, Shenshu, who knew that his understanding was not complete, but felt that he had to make an offering anyway, and so he made it anonymously. And he said, our body is the Bodhi tree, and our mind a mirror bright. carefully we wipe them hour by hour and let no dust light. I'm sure it rhymed even more gracefully in Chinese. So Huinan hears about this verse and gets a monk to read it to him. And he realizes that, well, this is not right there. not on the point.

[12:28]

And he asks this monk to inscribe his verse. They were writing these on the wall. And the monk was a little dubious, because this guy can't even write. How is he going to compose poetry? But he convinces him to do it. And Wineng offers this verse. There is no Bodhi tree nor stand of mirror bright. Since all is void, where can the dust alight? So to quote the sutra, When he had written this, all disciples and others who were present were greatly surprised. Filled with admiration, they said to one another, how wonderful. No doubt we should not judge people by appearance. How can it be that for so long we have made a Bodhisattva incarnate work for us?

[13:34]

Seeing that the crowd was overwhelmed with amazement, the patriarch, the fifth ancestor, rubbed the stanza with his shoe. he rubs it out, erases it, lest jealous ones should do me, hung winen, should do me injury. The ancestor expressed the opinion which they took for granted that the author of this verse had also not yet realized the essence of mind." And that's kind of where it seemed to stand, at least for public consumption. The next day, the ancestor came secretly to the room where the rice was pounded. Seeing that I was working there with a stone pestle, he said to me, a seeker of the path risks his life for the Dharma. Should he not do so?

[14:37]

Then he asked, is the rice ready? Is the rice ready? Ready long ago, I replied, only waiting for the sieve. He knocked the mortar three times with his stick and left. So he's right. The rice is ready. But it's ready for the sieve. It's ready to be separated from the impurities. It's ready to be refined. It's ready to be worked on so that it can actually function as rice, as food, as nourishment. So the abbot knocks three times. Knowing what his message meant, in the third watch of the night, I went to his room. using his robe as a screen so that none could see us.

[15:44]

So the Hongren takes his robe and spreads it over them, covers them, very intimate, very close. Using the robe as a screen so that none could see us, he expounded the Diamond Sutra to me. So this is the second time the Diamond Sutra comes around. When he came to the sentence, when he came to this particular sentence, I at once became thoroughly enlightened and realized that all things in the universe are the essence of mind itself. So this sentence is a, it's a reprise of the verse or the section that the young man Huineng had heard on the street from the man reciting the Diamond Sutra. Now, of course, as we've been talking about through all these classes, this is all legend, right?

[16:51]

But it's really, it's a juicy one. It's a useful one. In the earlier versions, You know, one or another element of the story weren't there. In the later versions, this is the way it appears. So, what is the sentence? There's different translations. I was able to get together with Eric. earlier this week to look at that section of the Diamond Sutra and there's different ways that you can construe this sentence. It was really fun to look at the Chinese and see what the ambiguities are. But I'll give you a couple different versions. So when he came to this sentence, one should use one's mind in such a way that it will be free from any attachment. That's one translation. Or one that I like a little better, one should give rise to a mind or a thought that has no abode or no support, that's not built on anything.

[18:06]

When he heard that, he became thoroughly enlightened. And just quickly, this is, if you were here for lecture last week, I think, when Sojin Roshi was lecturing, he was saying that all of us embody enlightenment. Each of us is Buddha. Our activities are enlightened activity. but some have realized it and some have yet to realize it. This is the kind of, this realization that Wineng is talking about here is, it's the culmination or the integration of his enlightened understanding. It's both a kind of accident or in other religious terms, a kind of grace, but it's also just the coming together of causes and conditions.

[19:15]

So, one should give rise to a thought that has no abode or no support. The Platform Sutra doesn't really talk about meditation. It reminds me of something that one of my teachers said 30 years ago when I was in college. A writing teacher And I forget what the context for this was. He said, the reason that we know that the Koran is an authentic document is because there are no camels in it. And I think it's the reason that we know that this is an authentic document is it doesn't talk about meditation because it's coming from within.

[20:22]

the place of meditation. It's expressing the viewpoint of meditation in much the same way that when we read the kind of perplexing texts of Dogon, they're perplexing precisely because they're coming from this non-dualistic place, which is at the heart of our meditation. But it's also true that Wineng's awakening, it turns on a way to live, on a way to be with his mind, to give rise to a mind that has no abode, no support. Support, it's like attachment, but not quite the same. Suzuki Roshi says, basically, don't stick to anything.

[21:32]

Don't stick to your thoughts. So giving rise to that mind, which is the kind of practice that we have in Zazen, that's how we encounter ourselves. That's a description of this kind of elusive approach that we call Shikantaza. There's a quotation from Suzuki Roshi. By the way, speaking of Shikantaza, while I was getting this talk together, I found this terrific book. in our library. It's called The Art of Just Sitting, edited by Daido Lurie Roshi, and it's a collection of perspectives on shikantaza and on silent illumination, sort of the style of our school, but from a bunch of different angles.

[22:35]

So one of the angles is Suzuki Roshi, actually, and Sojin Roshi has a piece in there as well. Suzuki Roshi says, Shikantaza is rather indefinable. How do we practice Shikantaza? It is the very simple practice of lack of selfishness, of lack of self-centeredness, and of just doing. If you put yourself totally into an activity, The universe meets you and confirms you and there's no gap between you and the universe. So it's a little tricky to translate Shikantaza. We tend simply to translate it as just sitting. I think that It means something, the words shikan, you could translate it as just or sort of wholehearted.

[23:40]

And ta, the za in taza, za is like the za in zazen. It means sitting. And ta is interesting, it means hit. So it's like wholeheartedly hit sitting. It's like hit the cushion, you know. But it's sort of, the ta is like emphatic. You know, just really kind of. pushing on that a bit. You know, it's not just sitting there passively like a lump, but it's actively doing something. And as is the shikan, wholeheartedly, or just, without anything extra. This is, Sogen Roshi is often talking about this just.

[24:42]

just as the essence of all of our activities. You know, just sitting, just eating. Everything completely with nothing extra. My understanding of the translation of orioke is bowls that are just enough for us to get our nourishment. So Suzuki Roshi says, we say just sit. Just water is like water. We should just sit or settle ourselves on ourselves. It means to become we, ourselves.

[25:49]

We should not be anything else. We should be just ourselves. And when we become just ourselves, we covers everything. We includes everything. There is nothing else, nothing else but you. That is Shikantaza. Maezumi Roshi, who is also one of our ancestors, speaks to this point of just. And this also begins to illuminate the idea of giving rise to a mind that has no abode. It's very important not to hold on to your ideas, opinions, emotions. all the forms of thinking.

[26:51]

That very unconditioned, unadorned state of mind, that's the state of non-thinking. Sit in that state. Don't even think of becoming Buddha. Trying to become Buddha or trying to become enlightened becomes a hindrance. This kind of preconception is a hindrance because we don't know what enlightenment is until we experience it firsthand. Thus, whatever we think of as enlightenment merely becomes an idea, and enlightenment is not an idea. As soon as we form an idea, right there, a gap opens. By sitting, we empty ourselves of ourselves and of our objects. Thus, the subject-object relationship is eliminated altogether, and you are one. Zazen itself manifests ultimate reality. That's Shikantaza. One of the most powerful things I ever heard Sogen Roshi say, I think it was in answer to a question in a lecture, he said, don't treat anything like an object.

[28:10]

So in this, Zazen. Objects disappear. There is just one subject, which is everything. It emanates from each of us, and each of us is everything. Each of us is the entire universe. And, you know, as Suzuki Roshi said, this is a little hard to get your mind around. There's this quotation, famous quotation from Dogen, which many of you have heard. And this is also a way to frame Shikantaza. Think not thinking, this is what you do in Zazen. Think not thinking. How do you think not thinking? Non-thinking, this is the art of Zazen.

[29:18]

So this non-thinking is hard to think about. Last week in class, I think, or Monday morning talk, Ross was talking about stream enterers. And it made me think of Once I went, once, I wish I could do it more, once I went rafting, have many of you been rafting? Yeah, it's like a totally amazing thing for me. So I got in the raft, and I was ready, you know, okay, I'm gonna sit down in the raft, I'm gonna get myself settled, and then we'll go, and it's like, you get in the raft, they cast off, and you're going down the river. And inside me, I wanted to say, well, wait a minute. Hold it. I haven't settled myself.

[30:20]

But there is no wait a minute. You just go. And it was fantastic. I let go of that wait a minute very quickly. But that's like Zazen, we have to let go of, wait a minute. And you can think of it as, I like this image of Stream Enterers, it's really great. You're in the stream, you're going down the river, there's rapids, there's a lot of stuff going on. First of all, there's forests and mountains going by, and you want to see them. But you can't stop on them. You can't stick to them, because they're just going by. There goes one. You're not looking out for what's coming. Plus, you have to pay some awareness to steering or directing. Now, the river is in control, but you have to be guiding.

[31:22]

Gently, but firmly. And also, you're doing it, unless you're doing it solo, you're doing this in cooperation with other beings. And you want to harmonize with them. This is what we do. This is like what we're doing this afternoon, or this morning. It's like we're all in this big wooden raft, going down this river of life. You know, and sometimes it's really smooth. And sometimes there are these really, you know, class 10 rapids. And sometimes we may get thrown out of the boat. And if we're thrown out of the boat, you know, hopefully one of our friends grabs us and throws us back in the boat. You know, or we land on the shore. Or we drown. Anything can happen. So it's neat.

[32:24]

I hadn't thought about that before. It's like, just think of this as a, this is like, it's kind of like Noah's Ark. You can imagine. We should put a mast up, I think, through the ceiling. But that's what the Zendo is. And so we're doing this together, but each of us is completely responsible. This is what, This is what our Zazen is like. It's about functioning, but not functioning in a self-centered way. Functioning in a unified way that just takes into account our human abilities and not getting caught on our thoughts or our feelings or our sensations. This is where we get caught. It's not that they don't arise, it's just let them go by.

[33:29]

They're just like the scenery. When I was in Arcata a couple of months ago, I saw this great bumper sticker and I searched on the internet and I found a copy. It's on my car. It says, don't believe everything you think. And it could also say, don't believe anything you think. Yesterday, I went to a mediation training run by Marshall Rosenberg, who teaches nonviolent communication. And he had this great line. He said, believing your thoughts is like taking a bath with your clothes on. Well, I don't think we're going to go too far with that metaphor. But if you believe in them, you're caught by them.

[34:30]

And this is what Winang awoke to. was to cultivate a mind that doesn't believe in the thoughts or sensations that you're feeling. It's not to make them null or to bring them back to a zero point or to go blank while you're facing the wall, but it's just to let them flow by and not to be caught by them. This is a gift. The passage from the Diamond Sutra goes on. The bodhisattvas should give rise to a mind that has no support. Thus, the Tathagata says that bodhisattvas should practice giving, or dana, without being attached.

[35:36]

They should give gifts without being attached to a sight, a sound, a smell, a taste, a touch, or a dharma. Moreover, subhuti, bodhisattvas should practice giving in this manner for the benefit of all beings. In this manner means having let go. And how so, subhuti? The perception of a being is no perception. Likewise, all the beings of whom the Tathagata speaks are no beings. Now I've gone too far. But they're both beings. This room is full of beings. but nowhere can you point to something that is the essence of that being. And yet we have to take care of it. We have to take care of this being, we have to take care of that being, the whole room, because they're not separate. There is just this functioning life force that is continuing together.

[36:45]

And this is the gift that we give to the world that's embodied in our act of zazen. It is an act of harmonizing. When you set aside your thoughts, your selfish thoughts, our self-centered thoughts, then we're acting from a place that's in unity with all of life. When you act from that place, there is no war. There is no violence. There is a state of peace, which is not something passive, but actually dynamic. When you're going down the river, it's not a battle. It's the river and the raft and the rowers all functioning together.

[37:50]

And that can get really busy and really active. It can even get dramatic and scary, but it is fundamentally peaceful. There is no harm in it. So this is the mind that we cultivate here. And this is the way in which what we cultivate here is a laboratory for what we do when we walk through that door and out the gates. And I can't tell you how to do it. And I don't feel that it's enough. That maybe because I don't, my understanding is not good enough. But it is the place that we go to. It's the place that we can return to. It's like, I may have said this before, this happens when you're getting older, you repeat yourself. There are two books by Kategiri Roshi, also one of our ancestors.

[38:54]

The first book that was published under his name is Returning to Silence. That's the place that we go to. We have to be able to return to silence over and over again and really touch that silence, abide there. Oh, good luck. See, that's the functioning of life. So the first book is Returning to Silence, and his second book was You Have to Say Something. And so this is what we face. Here, today, we're sitting in silence. Here, what we cultivate is sitting in silence. We carry that silence with us all the time. And then we go out in the world and we say something.

[39:58]

It could be right, it could be wrong. But if it's rooted in that silence, then I do believe it's about peace. So I think I'm going to stop there. I've gone on long, but I'd like to take maybe five minutes for questions or so. Thank you. Dean. Thank you, Alan. The first part of the talk, you know, the dice and that stuff, usually I get lost on that. But I felt like the talk was very concise, very clean, and very, very simple. and every once in a while we'd get talking about something and people wouldn't know why I didn't get upset about this when that's my reputation, or it has been. And it's sort of like that's the next thing. What happened is my camera is history.

[41:02]

My camera went in the Caribbean. And I got out of the water and someone said, beam. And my camera's in like two different pieces. And I looked at it and my first hit is, oh my God, I've got to grab it. And the thing was, but this is what happened. It's just. It's gone. It's gone. And what was so interesting about it is that's just what it was. I didn't, the first time I plotted a camera years ago, I cried for two or three days. I probably spent $100 calling my insurance company from some island. And it completely was such an absolutely different experience. And one of the things you said is someone asked me, how do you let go of your thoughts? And you were talking about that.

[42:04]

You just let them pass. And I said, what do you do? I don't, how do you not catch them? And I said, I just don't do anything with them. I have them. I said, I'm a little distressed. I'm going to go have a beer when I get back to the beach. But it's not going to stop me from going out to dinner. It's not going to stop me from having a good time. And basically, that's what I felt like you just said, is that don't catch them is to You keep doing what you would do anyway. You still go have dinner and all that stuff. I just really appreciate it, especially the last part. I thought I understood what you said. I really appreciate the simplicity of it so, so very much. Thank you. Thank you. Well, that's it. That's exactly it. So is she in labor? Is she in labor? No, it was false alarm.

[43:06]

False alarm. I'm sorry about that. It's OK. No, leave it on. That's cool. We'll be done soon. Anyone else? Sue. Well, I really thank you for your talk. I think being here at five in the morning, I'm a little bit emotionally vulnerable, so I apologize. I really appreciate the opportunity to open up a different way of letting go of a belief about politics, about disappointment with some global health legislation that I'm pretty attached to that's going to be even more underfunded than I thought.

[44:06]

you know, I really appreciate that. Just lighten up about it and watch it go by. That I don't need to be, that I can actually just let go of it. It's really a gift. And I thank you for that. Thank you. It's really hard. It's both hard and easy to do. And sometimes it's like we open and close like clams. You know, sometimes you can do it and sometimes you can't. And if you can't, then you have to watch that go by. You have to live with that. Maybe one more. Susan. I was thinking about something Mel said when we were talking about the election the other night. And he was saying how angry he got at hearing some of the things that we hear through the media. And so I was trying to compute

[45:14]

An enlightened being being so angry and that's part of it too. It comes and it goes. And I had some time with a lot of people who are recovering and they use the serenity prayer to help sort out I think that's right. All beings have emotions. If they don't have emotions, they're dead. And it's how we live with those emotions, how we communicate with each other, how we're, you know, are we controlled by them? Are we used by them? Or do we use them in ineffective ways?

[46:18]

And that's a challenge because we have to live in this place of not knowing always what the right response is. Very difficult. And that's why we're here together. Okay, last one. In this context of thinking about what's been going on politically, the election and the aftermath, A lot of people trying to sort out what one should come to terms with or whatever. I think another angle on it is on the not grasping is we don't have to decide whether we have to just accept what's happened or try to change it, keep abiding it, etc. A metaphor that, from my farm background, is just keep throwing mud at the wall, some of it sticks.

[47:20]

You don't know what's going to stick. So to prematurely decide we should stop throwing mud at the wall, I think is also to over-concretize, or to convince oneself one knows more about it or even that it has some character. I'm thinking about the training that I went to yesterday. I think we have to proceed from a perception of what our human needs are. And that tells us whether to keep throwing mud at the wall or not. And there's no Our human needs are completely shared by everybody. But what one's own needs might be, we really have to investigate.

[48:23]

And even though we're not thinking during Zazen, it's like we're letting this refining and clarifying process happen. We're letting things settle so that we will have a clearer idea. And we're doing it together. So let's keep sitting together today and in all the days to come. Thank you.

[48:53]

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