Come to us, demonstrate. It's lovely to see the Zendo full and to see all of you out there in Zoom land. I haven't been in the Zendo for several days, so as many of you know, Lori came back from France with COVID, and so we've been very carefully.

[01:19]

I've been socially distanced in our house and eating separately and sleeping separately and I tested this morning and it was negative so I felt it was okay to come here today. And I feel, I have to collect myself, I feel sort of out of it. It's interesting, I mean, having, I'm not ill, but having Laurie in the household, mostly, you know, staying close to the bed, is somehow like, I absorbed that energy and so it was a, felt peculiar. come down and come into the Zendo here this morning.

[02:25]

But I wanted to talk with you. And just also to say in advance, upcoming, we have Sashin that begins on Wednesday. It's a five-day Sashin from roughly 7... 40 in the morning until 5.30 in the evening, I believe. And while we may be described in terms of in-person registration, you can look at the website if you want to participate online, that's possible. And also all of the Dharma talks. There will be Dharma talks each day at this time at 10.15. I'll be giving most of the talks, so Sue Osher will be giving a talk.

[03:26]

And so, I invite you to attend those if you can. Also, on Monday morning, we have what's called the Shosan ceremony, which is basically a Dharma inquiry ceremony. where students come and they ask the abbot a question, a practice question, something from life and heart. And I will do my best to respond to you as you, not you as from the standpoint of making some doctrinal comment. try to speak to where I hear the question coming from. And it's a beautiful ceremony, very intimate, and it's going to be online, not in person.

[04:34]

And that will be on Monday morning at 7.30. Go to the online center and you can participate there. And please think about, if you're going to come, please think about a question you might like to ask. And I look forward to that exchange with you. So, do you have any questions about that before I come on? Yes. What kind of ceremony will there be online? That's a very interesting question. I think what we'll do is... I will be in... And there'll be Ajisha who will do the ceremonial aspect, which is basically just inviting me to ask a question.

[05:37]

But other than that, I think just be Ajisha, someone to ring the bells with no one. I think that's it. Who's the director for this? Anna, okay. Anyway, that's as best I know. Any other questions? Yeah, Sue. People are welcome to attend your talks online. Right, online. Thank you. Yeah, we're pretty fully subscribed, I think, for the places in the Zendo. And as you know, we've been trying to limit our participation, our presence. 33 people. And gone are the days when we would cram as many people in here as we could. Some Saturdays it would be 70 or 80 people.

[06:38]

But altogether, here right now, between you all and those that we have online, we have about There's about 75 people attending this talk. And I think over the course of the pandemic, we've figured out how to have participation in both modalities, in person and also online, in a hybrid format. Are there any other questions about Shosan? Is Shosan open to everyone who is not participating in the practice period? Yes. Yes, Shosan is open to everyone who shows up. There's another hand someplace. Well, maybe not. Okay, so my talk today is we've been speaking from

[07:46]

I've been teaching from Zen Mind Beginner's Mind and from Suzuki Roshi and I'm going to continue to talk whether from Zen Mind Beginner's Mind or from Suzuki Roshi in the course of this next week. And today I want to read to you from a piece that's in our late teacher Sojin Roshi's fourth as I've said there's a book of Sojin Roshi's teachings of his teachings and also a part memoir that is coming out from Gatterpoint Press in the fall and this was a there's a piece in the book that's that Sojin Roshi wrote, which is just a list, he calls it Suzuki Roshi's key subjects.

[08:54]

So I thought I would read to you and comment from that and give time for discussion. So the first of these key subjects, and these are very brief points that Sojin makes. The first key subject of Suzuki Roshi is that everything changes. Söten writes, according to his understanding, this is the most fundamental, indisputable principle of Buddha Dharma. All the rest could be considered a commentary on this truth. And that makes sense to me. In the traditional exposition of the Dharma, the Buddha spoke of three Dharma seals. So, impermanence, which is the fact that everything changes, non-self, which is in a certain way the manifestation of everything changing, and then the third Dharma seal that

[10:11]

that the Buddha mentions is dukkha, suffering, or that everything is unsatisfactory. And in the Mahayana tradition, in a number of key places, the third Dharma seal is changed. It's instead of being impermanent, it's not dukkha, or suffering, its impermanence, non-self, and nirvana. Which points out to me that whether you are suffering, whether you are in hell, is really dependent upon your attitude towards the fact that everything changes. If we can accept this, then we have some freedom.

[11:18]

Impermanence seems like a bad idea, then we're going to suffer. And, you know, really, all of us, in one moment or another, think this impermanence is . And yet, We come in the course of practice to actualize this, to actualize impermanence. So everything changes. Suzuki Roshi spoke about this another way. He said, the secret of Soto Zen is just two words, not always so. in Japanese it's two words he says three words in English the secret of our practice not always so so not always so is impermanence you know sometimes we want things to be always so the good things and sometimes we can't wait for things to be the things that we want to get rid of

[12:44]

But to be in the flow of everything changing is to be aligned with reality. And that's at the heart of Suzuki Roshi's, at the heart of our practice and the heart of Zazen. We sit here and we maintain a posture and we face the wall. and we sort of create a set of restrictions forms for ourselves and as i spoke of last week we have a formal posture in an informal mind or a mind a formless mind so while we're sitting on the wall anything can happen in our minds.

[13:46]

Actually, anything can happen in our world at any moment. And to sit there and face it is to come to terms with an acceptance of the fact that everything changes. So that's the first point that Sojin makes. The second point that he makes is Suzuki Roshi's teaching of Zen Mind. And Sojin writes, this became a kind of trademark for him, which was used in the title of his first book, the first book of his talks, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. I see it as expressing the meaning of Shikantaza. So, Shikantaza is his next point, so I'm not sure whether I should talk about it now or then, but maybe I need to fold that in also.

[14:56]

So this is the third point. I can say more about beginner's mind, but I can't talk about it without talking about Shikantaza. So Sojun writes, Shikantaza, this is the term that Dogen used. Dogen is our 13th century, sort of the source of our 13th century Japanese Soto tradition. That's him right up there, not Joe, the guy behind him on the wall in the print. Actually, Joe is Dōun also. You should know that about him. But that's a portrait of him. So, Sotin writes, this is a term that Dogen used, which basically means just sitting, doing. It applies to daily life as well as to Zazen. It means to let go on each moment, or to die and be born in each moment.

[16:06]

So this is, if we had to point to a particular practice that we do, that we've learned, was by Suzuki Roshi and Sojin Roshi. It's this practice of Shikan Taza. And so Shikan means to be solely concerned about, concerned with. And Taza means sitting. So, that is the form that we create that I mentioned a few moments ago. And within that, the practice of Shikandaza is, it takes no particular form. The way I think about it is, you could describe it as

[17:16]

open awareness of reception. So, that is distinct from... There really are a number of... There are many different meditational techniques, as probably many of you have experienced. And they, to my mind, fall into two camps. One camp is meditation practices, which are essentially concentration practices, where your object of your meditation, whether it's a physical object, or it's a visualization, or it's a phrase, you concentrate very solely, very singly on this, brings your mind to a kind of one-pointedness.

[18:18]

And that's a very common meditational approach. The other, again, and I'm speaking broadly, the other approach would be open awareness, which is what I think of as concentrate on everything. have a wide open mind of receptivity. And that is my understanding of Shikantaza. That is what we spoke of last week. Having a formal posture, not a rigid posture, a formal posture, sitting cross-legged or sitting upright and having your hands in a mudra and aligning your body and to have this open mind that is in which all of the senses are receptive so as we're sitting here we open our ears we hear the hum of the air purifiers

[19:44]

We can hear birds outside or a car passing or a dog barking. We can see patterns of light flickering in our eyes. So all of this is the senses being receptive. We're not listening. We're not looking. We're just allowing what comes into the senses and that includes the sense of your mind. So that is how I think about shikantaza, how I feel that we've been taught. And that's what the activity is that we do in taza. Now to go back a step to beginner's mind. Sojun writes, this has become a kind of trademark term for him, for Suzuki Roshi, which was used in the title of the first book of his talks in My Beginner's Mind.

[20:54]

I see it as another way of expressing the meaning of Shikantaza. And Beginner's Mind in Japanese is Sojin. And this was also a principle that was discussed by Dogen Senji, it refers to this attitude of openness. So it refers to this shikantaza, which is why Sochin says, beginner's mind is the way of addressing the meaning of shikantaza. or the way of expressing the practice of shikantaza. So famously, Suzuki Roshi said, in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few.

[21:57]

And so you could also express that as not knowing. so when you have an experience if you can just explore that experience put a name on it before you categorize it and put it in a box and file it where you think in experience you should be filing it explore it further with the spirit of curiosity and manifest beginner's mind then more possibilities arise than if you just immediately put it in a box so beginner's mind is also so it's enough and it's really at the heart of our practice

[23:05]

The next principle that Sochin points out is what he calls no gaining mind. He writes, our practice is to resume our original true nature. Fundamentally, there is nothing to gain or lose. That which is gained is also lost and therefore is not fundamental. This is to let go and trust our Buddha nature. So this No Gaining Mind, which Suzuki Roshi spoke of all the time, and Sojin Roshi spoke of all the time, there's of course a word for it in that appears again and again, particularly in the Soto Zen tradition, and that is musho toku, which is a great, I don't know, there's so many great sounding about that, musho toku.

[24:18]

Somehow, no gaining mind, everything is mushed together. But this is also a challenge to some of the ideas that we may have about Buddhism, you know, if you read the early Buddhist texts, and even through many of the Zen texts, it feels like there's an aim, your aim towards enlightenment. And that's the goal. that enlightenment or nirvana is a way to be free from suffering, which sounds pretty good. Particularly with the elucidation of Zen that comes from Dogen Zenji, Dogen Zenji, as he often did, he

[25:35]

would use words to turn things on so he had a principle that he taught over and over again which he called practice realization or practice enlightenment which means you know usually when we come to there's at least a part of our brain that you know, is aware of our suffering and wants to get rid of it, wants to gain this release, if you will. And that's natural. What Dobin does by flipping things up is to say, it's our already enlightened nature that brings us to practice. and that the practice is not to gain enlightenment because you can't gain something that you already have.

[26:42]

The practice of Zen or the practice of Buddhism is to express our enlightenment. And so our zazen practice is a manifestation of our enlightenment. And this is very important because this gaining mind is so pervasive, it's so slippery, and we're so conditioned to experience. And this practice is an antidote to that, but sometimes Admittedly, sometimes it takes a long time for that remedy to . But please be patient.

[27:44]

And if you have a gaining idea, okay. Notice it's a gaining idea and just set it aside. Whether that's a gaining idea in your zazen practice or a gaining idea in your life. But it's not that there isn't something to realize or accomplish. One of our colleagues called Oswaki Roshi wrote, Zazen is good for nothing. And then he says, Unless you fully understand that, it really is good for nothing. So there's a, you know, embedded in that, right? I think one of the main things that I get from this instruction towards no-cleaning mind

[28:59]

Just do your best to enjoy your life, to appreciate your life. Rather than thinking about gaining something, appreciate what's already there for you. And this deep appreciation is also, I think, at the heart of our practice. The next point that Sochen makes about Suzuki Roshi is, nothing fancy. Suzuki Roshi is an opportunity to lose to get lost in or confused by complicated theories or dazzling or seductive explanations or excessive or ostentatious practices or distracting mystical beliefs. The practice that Suzuki Roshi And this was confirmed sometime when there were some Japanese teachers who were visiting after Suzuki Roshi had set up a practice in San Francisco on Tassara, who really affirmed that Suzuki Roshi gave us the most simple and straightforward practice.

[30:28]

And that was appropriate for people at that time. He didn't teach a lot of ceremonies. He did sazen and service, very simple service, every day. And when it came time to set up real monastic forms at Tassahara, Tatsugami Roshi, who was also one of Sojin's teachers, brought him in from Eheiji in Japan to set up the monastic forms because there needed to be some forms. But what Suzuki Roshi gave us was nothing fancy. And I think you'll see when you practice in other places, even in our lineage, that the practice that we have here is nothing fancy.

[31:37]

There's a respectfulness. It may feel when you come in new, but there's a respectful simplicity and elegance to the forms that we have here that suit our circumstances, that suit both our lives and that also it suits our physical circumstances. And I think that Sojourn really adhered to this nothing fancy principle. He wanted us to be, he was very particular about how we did various, how we did our forms, how we did our activities, how we sound the bell, how we bow. all of that. But he was giving us a very straightforward, simple teaching, and so he was usually ewing to the line of his teacher.

[32:46]

The next point is, do one thing thoroughly. Suzuki Roshi, like Doki, To do one thing and totally penetrate that one thing. To practice one Dharma and penetrate one Dharma. So just do that, that one thing to the end. Sojan writes, I once asked Suzuki Roshi, what is nirvana? He said, to see one thing through to the end. And actually that's what we used, the title for Sochen's upcoming book is... And he did that, he did that from the time he met Suzuki Roshi to his last days.

[33:53]

He just did, it was just the continuity of practice. and to see one thing through. This is, you know, and Suzuki Roshi did the same thing. This is really deeply inspiring to me. Sojin writes, instead of accumulating many things to put into our basket, we strike in the same place over and over to reveal our treasure store. Suzuki Roshi liked to say that we are protected from within. When we have this kind of confidence, we can let go of our crutches and external support. And without trying, we'll give confidence to others. So seeing one thing through, this is a really good way to live our life. And we see how challenging it is in these very strange but ways.

[35:02]

We find ourselves sitting at our desk, we're doing something. And mysteriously, all of a sudden, we turn our attention and do something else. You've all had this experience, right? Or, I think. Why? Why do we turn our attention away? When we're doing the dishes, you know, we may wander off to to do something else in the kitchen. It's like to take up a task and to complete it and move to the next task. To see one thing through. And that's really great practice. That's really useful. See if you can use that yourself in your life. Notice. Just notice that moment when there's the urge to move away. and change direction. It can be very subtle.

[36:05]

And in that moment, recommit yourself to the activity that you're doing and continue. And when you're complete with that, then do something else. Nothing special. Suzuki didn't want us to think of zazen as some special practice for some special people. Our practice on the cushion should harmonize with the practice of our daily life. Zazen is not your practice. It is the basic activity of the universe in which everything is participating. It is Buddha's practice. Therefore, it is not something which we do just for ourselves. Since no two things can exist on the same spot at the same time, we each appear to be sitting in a solitary way. That's a complicated thought, actually.

[37:12]

Since no two things can exist in the same spot at the same time, we each appear to be sitting in a solitary way. I think that means that as we sit here and our practices to sit in basically the same posture, to sit side by side, and we're doing the same thing. But we're doing this, each of us, in our own individual fashion. And it's not special for us, it's not special for the person sitting next to us. In fact, to me I would say that nothing special points out that it's just the most natural thing in the world to sit down and take a moment to collect ourselves.

[38:15]

And that is the nature. And when we learn this practice, this skill, which we cultivate by sitting here in this lovely room, which is relatively quiet, which is pretty safe. We learn how to carry this forward into the world. And so our Zazan is not just something we do when we sit facing the world. It's actually the mind of our entire activity in life as we let it really seep into our bones. Nothing special. It's just, it's nowhere, it's not at all any more special than taking one breath after another. That's nothing special.

[39:18]

But it's, at the same time, it's a special nothing. It's, we, how is it we're taking this breath? How is it that we take this, or even that I open my mouth and words come out? Or that the thoughts arise and the words come out in sequence in my head? This is, this is nothing special, and yet it's miraculous and mysterious. And I was saying, What really drew me to Zen, long ago actually, in high school, was reading Chinese and Japanese poetry. This was kind of in the days of the Beat Generation, and the Beats were people like Gary Snyder and Kenneth Rexroth and others were pointing towards models in poetry.

[40:31]

that they derive from these Chinese and Japanese poets who are largely Zen poets. In translation, I was really moved by the ordinariness of their perception and by a glimpse that within that ordinariness of nothing special, there was something remarkable. with a kind of unformed yearning, that's what I wanted to, I wanted to touch that somehow in my life. It took me quite a few years to figure out how. So the last point is your difficulty is your treasure, which is good to remember. It's really good to remember as we're going into Sashim. Zazen has its difficulties as well as its pleasures, in the same way that our daily life has its difficulty.

[41:39]

Sometimes our response to problems is to avoid or resist them. But if we approach our problem as a vehicle or an opportunity, we can welcome and use the problem in a beneficial way that can deepen our practice, rather than allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed and victimized. Sometimes Suzuki Roshi would say that you should appreciate the problem you have now. If you get rid of it, another one will take its place and you may wish you had the previous one. I was thinking of another story that Sojin tells in one of his lectures. He said one time, He thinks it was about the fourth day of Sashim in San Francisco when there was enough pain and discomfort to go around. He began his talk slowly by saying, the problems you are experiencing now will go away, we were sure he was saying.

[42:58]

Mrs. Biroshi continued, will continue for the rest of your life," he concluded. The way he said it, everyone laughed. But it's true. What can change is how we meet those problems. There's problems that we have that we can laugh at. There's problems we have that we really have to We have to dig in and meet. There's problems we have we really need help with. And here we have a Sangha that can... Dharma friends and all kinds of friends who can help us. So that problem or that difficulty is your treasure. That problem is...

[43:59]

Always good to face these problems as much as we want to get rid of them, to ask, what is the teaching here? What can I learn here that's useful even though I really don't like this? It's okay not to like it. But it's important to recognize that there's a teaching there as well. So that's the end of this piece by Sojin. And I'll stop here. You may have some questions or thoughts, both here in the room. And if you're on Zoom, please raise your digital hand. And Joe, are you going to carry around the microphone? We now have this snazzy two microphone. working.

[45:01]

So if you have something you would like to ask, please raise your hand or say. There's a hand back there. And what's your name? Salvador. Hi. Hello. Thank you for your talk. I was just wondering, in that writing by Suzuki Roshi, does he address any of those talks? Well, this was actually a talk by Sojin. Yes, Suzuki Roshi talks about emptiness and... I think you missed my class on Thursday. But my class on Thursday... It essentially is about emptiness. It was from a chapter, there's a chapter in Zen Might Be Goodness Mind called Believing in Nothing, or Believe in Nothing.

[46:12]

And that's about emptiness. But what's your question? It's interesting that you said nothing because I've been kind of sitting with, is there a difference between nothingness and emptiness? Are they the thing? Does it matter? Well, you know, it all depends on what the words mean to you, right? So, what I said on Thursday was my, my gloss on this is believe in no thing. And so when we talk about emptiness, if we go back to the Heart Sutra, in the first lines of the Heart Sutra, It talks about the five skandhas, the aggregates that we, in Buddhist understanding, see as kind of what we construct a self out of. In their own being are empty.

[47:17]

All dharmas in their own being. There is no thing that you can point to that has its own identity. You don't. That microphone doesn't. This computer is made of chips and cards and wires. You know, there's no one part of that that I can point to and say that is the essence of computer. So it's empty of a fixed identity. It's the coming together of causes and conditions. That's how I see it. Not as nothingness and emptiness have a certain, I think they have a certain implication in English that is kind of negative. But it's, I think, not the meaning in Buddhist terms.

[48:21]

Thank you. Thank you. While you're waiting here to see Judy, but let me ask Ron. Ron, can you unmute? Yes. Thanks, Ozan. Let me put my hand down here. I'm always frustrated when we talk about emptiness without saying of own being. What's emptiness? We're talking about a very specific... It's an emptiness of own being. It's not that there's no phenomena or nothing's here, not a void, but it's an emptiness of an own being, something which stands independently and is not dependent on anything else. And, you know, I always frustrated when we just leave it at that, because it's emptiness of an own being, which is really important to me.

[49:27]

Right. Thank you. Yeah, I agree. And we talked about this the other night too. Yeah, I fully agree. Thank you. It's easy to misunderstand that because of the implication of that word in our language. Judy. Thank you, Hosun. Where I notice this coming up a lot, is when something's going on in posture, and there could be pain or discomfort or just something, and this question of whether to move or whether to stay with, this form of bowing if we're going to adjust our posture.

[50:28]

I'm wondering what your understanding of that is in terms of receptivity and respect. We're talking about expression. You're talking about the bowing? Yes. What's the purpose of that? Well, I think the purpose is twofold. One is you're bowing to yourself. You could say, you know, if you whatever rigidity or judgment you might have about yourself for moving, that you're respecting yourself, but also it's communicating to the person who's next to you. You know, it's recognizing I'm moving which may surprise you, it may interrupt the flow of your mind, and I'm being respectful of it. That's basically how I learned it.

[51:31]

But I think that it's both dimensions of that. One of the pieces in Sojin's book, early periods of asana, he talks about the first few years of his practice were really, really painful. And I think that some of us have had that experience. And it's like A message that's put out, and some places it's emphasized in different ways, you know. Some places, if you move, they will yell at you. I've been there, and I never go back to a place like that, you know. I've seen the... Where does that come from? That's like... You don't find that in the Pali Sutras, you know. And... And yet, you know, the surgeon talks about Suzuki Roshi saying, don't chicken out!

[52:41]

You know, and he talks about an early experience in Sashin where he got to the whole Sashin, it was excruciatingly painful, and it was the last period of Sazen, and five minutes before the end, he moved his legs. You know, it's like, Oh, you know, there's some judgment involved there. And I don't think the judgment is necessary, but meeting the judgment is necessary. If you have a judgment, that's really an experience. And to say, you know, to ask yourself, all of us who've had long painful seshins, we've all had to reckon with those moments of When to move? When not to move? Can I do this? You know, how do I... How?

[53:42]

You know, I want to hang on. My intention is to hang on until the bell. How do I do this? And that's an existential question. Yeah, I'm going to... Karen has a response, so... Wait, wait for the microphone. No, no, it's your... I just had another addition to the understanding of why we bow before we move during zazen. And that is that I was taught that if you move, it's a continuation of zazen. It's not like, oh, I have to move. Let me stop zazen, and then I'm going to readjust myself and settle into a new posture, that the movement is actually part of the practice. Yeah, I think that's right. Ajayan.

[54:48]

Thank you. It is really raining outside. I think I'm . I can hear you. You're a little broken up. Was that a question? Yeah. What was the question? Yeah, you told that understanding. Yeah, my question is, you told that understanding Nirvana, we must see things through one thing. Is that one thing is where things are originated or the non-duality. The things we see now, is the expanded form of the one thing or the point. So actually, what is the one thing or the point? I'm not quite sure I understand your question. But I don't think Suzuki Roshi was being... He wasn't talking about any one particular thing.

[55:55]

He was talking about whatever it is you're doing, see it through, see it through to the end. And nirvana resides within every activity if we, you know, if we do it completely, if we use our up in that moment and then we're reborn in the next moment and we have the energy to do something else. Does that make sense? Thank you. I got it. Thank you. Well, maybe there's time for one more. Anyone else in here? Yeah, Chloe. earlier point about when to move legs in I was wondering there seems to be a conflict between no gaining idea and seeing one thing through at least for me sometimes the idea of not moving my legs until the bell rings that gaining idea

[57:23]

That's the question of how to resolve that. Right. So, welcome to the world, you know, and welcome to, I think that at the heart of our practice, the point I would add as essential is like that we What I love about Zen is that we're learning to live with ambiguity. We're learning to live with things not necessarily meaning one thing and not necessarily meaning two things. And this is a distinction for me between the early Buddhist tradition and the later Mahayana and Zen tradition.

[58:24]

You know, in the early Buddhist tradition, there's not really much ambiguity. Things are positive or negative. Things are wholesome. Pure, impure. What we come to in the Zen tradition is that things are complex and constructed of a variety of elements and that in every in every good thing there's a shadow side you know in every shadow there's a treasure and we really you know we exactly meet that

[59:26]

when we're looking at the pain in our legs in Sishin. And there's no right or wrong answer. Actually, the teaching resides in the very contemplation and effort that you have to make to engage with your situation. And if you don't move, great. You don't get a badge. And if you move, okay. You don't get a mark, you don't get a point marked off. It's how do we learn from this? For some reason, as I'm saying, it's just... It's very emotional to me. And I don't even know where the source of that emotion is.

[60:29]

But I think that's at the heart of the teaching that we've received for all these years. We will keep on learning this together.

[60:43]

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