This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. I just walked down past the garden... And it's so beautiful. And I just wanted to express my gratitude for the mountains and for Tassajara Creek, for the wild. It's so great to be able to be right here in the wild. So much we can learn. So much is clarified, I think, just by being in mountains.

[01:05]

Second day, Sashin. Since we've been doing this ongoing practice for a while, maybe it's pretty smooth just shifting into Sashin gear. No. Difficulties. Last night I came in to do some late night sitting and I noticed there were several other shadowy bodies in the room. So I thought, oh yeah, it's the first night of Sashin and some people already have some energy for late night sitting. So I just wanted to remind you that I think late night sitting is great. Someone asked me a couple of weeks ago what I liked about late night sitting. And I said, I found myself saying, it's peaceful.

[02:15]

It's so peaceful. However, I want to say there's no virtue in it. So if you think that you should come and do late-night sitting because there's some virtue in it, don't do late-night sitting. That would just be more of a problem. But if it's peaceful, if your samadhi energy is such that, oh, okay, sit a little while, then that's just a wonderful expression. of Buddha nature so yesterday Sojin was talking about the ten powers and then he afterwards he showed me his notes and of course the one the one power the eighth I think is the eighth one but the mysterious understanding

[03:28]

that there are whole Buddha realms in each pore of the body. And he penciled in, see Buddha nature in each thing. Something like that. So, I thought, started thinking a little bit more about Buddha nature, which is very hard to talk about. I shouldn't even talk about it. And then I feel like, okay, the Denko Roku really is so much about Buddha nature. And so it keeps coming up again and again. So maybe I should... find a way to say something.

[04:29]

Then I was thinking, okay, we have concentration, the practice of concentration of breath awareness. Again and again, I remind myself, oh yeah, breath awareness. Just this moment, just this breath, concentrate on the whole breath arising. in the body concentrate on the whole breath leaving the body being willing to die with the breath leaving the body not anticipating another breath staying right with and I was thinking staying right with the breath and then I recalled this phrase from an old poem concentrate the mind like you train a good horse. So then I started thinking about horse training. And I went off for a while.

[05:37]

I thought, well, it's okay to go off for a while because that gives me something to talk about. But then I recall that that line comes from Patacara. poem of Patacara. So I thought, well, in the Denko Roku we have many ancestors and then there's many ancestors who are on the side of the Denko Roku lineage and one of them is Patacara. Patacara Acharya. We chant her name when we chant the women ancestors. And she along with others, had this poem, which is in the Terigata. So a very old, but this is, so they had this practice of writing their own realization poems. And this is her poem.

[06:38]

This is from, by the way, this is from the book, First Buddhist Woman, Susan Mercott, A lot of work. I think Deborah Hopkinson, I think, too. I guess Murcott is one who is credited with this. Anyway, this would be her rendering of Apatichara's poem. When they plow their fields and sow seeds in the earth, when they care for their wives and children, young Brahmans find riches. But I have done everything right and followed the rule of my teacher. I'm not lazy or proud. Why haven't I found peace? Bathing my feet, I watched the bathwater spill down the slope. I concentrated my mind the way you train a good horse.

[07:47]

Then I took a lamp and went into my cell, checked the bed and sat down on it. I took a needle and pushed the wick down. When the lamp went out, my mind was freed." So this one line in here, I concentrated my mind the way you train a good horse. This is maybe a little too high. It's making some static. If I move it down a little, try that. So this is, I thought, such a lucid expression. It's worth investigating a little bit. So she concentrates her mind. So she maybe has... some experience with horses. And so the horse is like your own body.

[08:56]

So when you train your mind like you train a good horse, you're actually training a horse is allowing yourself to be trained by the horse. That's really the most important understanding, I think. allowing yourself to be trained by the horse. To concentrate your mind means to be completely attentive to the horse. So this is a very kind of focused attention. And it means giving up, giving up so much, giving up your own ideas. giving up what you might want and really listening to the horse. The first horse I trained I really ruined.

[10:00]

I had my own ideas and I wasn't listening enough to the horse. So the horse was always two steps ahead of me and learned every bad trick. Every... everything wrong before I could correct it because I wasn't tuned in enough to the horse. So sitting zazen is the same way, listening to your body. It may take years of sitting before you actually listen to your body. Most people sit and sit and have ideas about sitting and what it should be and what it should feel like and how it should go and all this and it's without actually listening completely to the body. Right now I'm trying to decide whether I should tell another story about

[11:06]

Well, it's almost irresistible. This is about another ancestor then. I can say, okay, that gives me a good excuse. This is about my grandmother, her teaching. So it's also about me, and it's also about a horse. So my grandmother, Olga, a pretty, let's say, wise person, So, let's see, I'm about 12 years old, and we have this new horse. And I'm not very experienced riding. And so my dad says, this horse is a pretty spirited horse, so just ride around in the yard. Don't take it out into the pasture. I said, OK, so I'm riding the horse, just riding bareback.

[12:23]

This is a horse named Hilarious Lady. And she was half thoroughbred and half quarter horse and had been used before. And before she came to us, she was a barrel racer. Some of you know what that's like. Horses. But anyway, so I'm going around the yard, around and around and around, walking. And my grandmother comes out, because her garden's there, she comes out and she sits down, a little stump there that she sits on sometimes. So she's sitting on this stump and she's watching me go by and then she's watching me go by again. And she raises her hand and stops me. Whoa. She says, why are you just riding around in the yard? I said, well, the dad said not to take the lady out into the pasture because I'm not experienced enough.

[13:34]

She said, oh, okay. So I ride around again. She stops me again. She says, you know, I've been wondering... Has anyone checked the water in the reservoir lately? I said, I don't know, but I'm pretty sure there's water in the reservoir, Grandma. She says, I really want to know. Would you go out, take Lady out, and check the reservoir and see if there's water? I said, so I did a quick calculation. I said, she's my mom's dad and she's my dad's mom right she's my dad's mom and so if I get in trouble she'll back me up right so so I went out opened the gate got back on went out into the pasture and went across into the reservoir and sure enough there's water in the reservoir

[14:46]

And I turn lady, and she just takes off. Running, running, full tilt. And I'm, first I'm going, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm trying to, but she has the bit in her teeth. She's going. She's not going to let me have the bit. And I'm riding bareback, you know, so. And there's this little creek, just a little creek coming through. And so we're approaching this, and I kind of feel her gather herself. And she leaps the creek. I almost fall off, and I'm hanging on to her mane, tight. I'm hanging on to her mane. And then she keeps running. And then I realize it's fun. Come on. [...] survived the leap over the creek.

[15:49]

And then it's so much more fun than walking around the yard. So I'm still, I'm just hanging on, you know. And so I have a few seconds of pure bliss there. It's really great. Flying, just flying. And then we come to the end of the pasture and there's a fence, right? I'm thinking, uh-oh. I can't control her. She jumped the creek. Is she going to jump the fence? I didn't know what was going to happen. We're charging right to the fence, full tilt. Just 10 feet before the fence, she just plants all four feet. I slide up over her head and fall down against the base of the fence there. And she just stands there.

[16:52]

She said, did you learn anything? So then I got myself up, brushed myself off. I guess I'm okay. And find a place where I could go over where there's a little hill and I could kind of get back up on on her and this time I gathered the reins. Training a good horse is a relationship. Neither one is separate. It's not exactly me and not exactly the horse, but there's a kind of a vibration holding the And the horse then can actually come into balance. If you do too much, the horse can't find its own balance. So I was just beginning to learn that.

[17:58]

So we walked back up. I think mostly walked to where grandmother was. Said, well, grandma, there's water in the reservoir. And she just nodded, and then she said, now you can ride anywhere. So for me, that was a very powerful teaching. And I thought, you know, it was very encouraging. So there was some risk involved. But it was all within the realm of learning how to fully participate with the situation that I'm in.

[19:01]

So my grandmother at that time thought that I was adding something extra or that my dad had added something extra that wasn't really necessary. to fully participate something like that and so to have some opportunity to just enter more completely into this relationship so I think coming back to Zazen that this is the whole practice of fully participating sitting Zazen fully participating That this body is like the horse. The mind is like the whole body. By body, I don't just mean physical body. I mean whole body, mind. Whole body, mind is like the horse. So that means more to me than the ox-roding pictures, you know.

[20:10]

I have never ridden an ox, but... Something about this concentrating mind, like one concentrates training a horse. Now this poem, there's more to it. And Patacara, you know, had a terrible life. Well, she had a great life, and then she had a terrible life, and then she had a great life again. People may not all know the story, Patacara. Patacara was... So this was in the time of Shakyamuni Buddha. Bhattacharya was the daughter of a wealthy family. Her father was a financier, banker, something like that. And they had servants. So she was used to that.

[21:13]

I think maybe someone with, I imagine, a very independent-minded girl definitely had her own ideas. So when her father told her that he wanted her to marry somebody that he'd arranged, or her mother, they had arranged this marriage, she had already fallen in love with one of the servants in the house. So they eloped and took off and went away and lived in another place. And then she had a child. But when she was about to have this child, she thought, I should go back and make amends with the family. And it was customary in those times to go back to your, if you're a woman, to go back to your maternal family, to your parents. And that way it can support the whole birth process.

[22:14]

And grandparents like to get involved in that kind of thing. But her husband really was strongly opposed. He was really afraid if they went back, he would be paying some terrible price. So... So they didn't go. She had her baby. And then a couple of years later, she was pregnant again. And so they decided this time she insisted that they go back this time. They have a two-year-old and she wants to go back for the second birth back to her family. And so they go. But it's kind of late in the game. Very much late in the game. And... On the way, they have to stop for the night, and a big storm comes up. Terrible storm. Lightning, thunder, big wind, pouring rain, just pouring rain all night.

[23:16]

And as the storm's coming up, they decide, well, they're going to have to just make a quick little camp for the night, and her husband goes off to gather materials to make a little shelter. But then he doesn't come back. And then she feels like she's been abandoned. He never wanted to do this trip anyway, right? So he doesn't show up. So she is in the night by herself with her two-year-old and she gives birth during the night to her new baby. And then in the morning, she has a two-year-old, she has a little infant, a newborn, and she goes around and and sees that her husband's not very far away, just lying there dead. He'd been bitten by a poisonous snake while he was trying to gather material. So what can she do but try to continue her journey with two babies? And so she's carrying, one's toddling along by the hand, and the other one, maybe she carries them part of the time, and carries the infant.

[24:24]

and comes to the river to ford the river at the usual place, but the river now, with all the rain, has been swollen and dangerous to cross, and so she thinks she can't really do it with both babies at once, and so she tells the two-year-old, you sit right here and wait right here, and I'll come back, and so she goes across the river with her newborn and puts it on the other bank and wades back starts coming back across for her two-year-old and at that time she sees an eagle coming down toward her newborn. So she starts shouting at the eagle and her two-year-old thinks he's being called and so he comes into the river and he gets washed away and the eagle takes the infant. So at that time she's completely bereft, standing in the middle of the river.

[25:32]

So again, she thinks all she can do is continue her journey back to her family, now with nothing, no husband, no children. And when she comes back to the town, which is not far away, she asks about her parents. And the first person she meets says, no, don't ask about them. They died and the house collapsed with a big storm last night. The house collapsed and they were just putting their bodies on the funeral pyre. So at that point, it was too much for her and she just went mad. just started screaming and tearing off her clothes and wandering around. So, after a while, I don't know, at some point she stumbles across some place where the Buddha is teaching.

[26:51]

There's some gathering, so she's She's this mad woman who's approaching and so Buddha's disciples try to kind of keep her away. But the Buddha notices her and at some point says to her, Sister, recover your presence of mind. And so she does come back to herself. And so recovering her presence of mind, she realizes she's basically naked. She's shredded all her clothing. So somebody gives her a cloak. And the patacara actually means cloak walker, person walking around with a cloak. And then... The Buddha Shakyamuni Buddha says to her, don't think that you've come to someone who can help you.

[28:01]

That always surprised me. See that line of the story. Don't think you've come to someone who can help you. You have already said more tears for the dead than there are in all the oceans. actually talking about many lifetimes many lifetimes of grieving many lifetimes of loss you've already shed more tears for the dead in your many lifetimes than are in all the oceans and then she didn't know how to take that I think but the Buddha then said there is the path there's a path. And so she becomes one of the ordained people, joins the assembly, starts practicing.

[29:09]

I imagine that when she says she followed the rule of her teacher, she may be referring to Shakyamuni Buddha, she may also be referring to Mahapajapati, because Mahapajapati was the leader of the women's sangha at that time. Patacara then takes up this practice. And eventually she composes this poem that I'll read again. And she becomes a teacher herself. Actually has many, many students. So the first phrase, she really has to deal with her own loss. She says, when they plow their fields and sow seeds in the earth, when they care for their wives and children, young Brahmans find riches. So she remembers that life.

[30:19]

She remembers that life where things or the way they're maybe supposed to be. You think, oh, okay. You do these things and then you have a family and you have wealth. Young Brahmins find riches. But I have done everything right and followed the rule of my teacher. I'm not lazy or proud. Why haven't I found peace? that it's not lazy or proud. This is a very, very profound statement. In the Denko Roku, talking about Nagarjuna and Kanadeva, there's this whole story of Nagarjuna going to give Dharma talks.

[31:26]

the south of India and he goes to the south of India and he's talking about Buddha nature and the people in the town are gathered around and one of them says well you talk about Buddha nature that really doesn't mean anything to us we know what is of value the best thing in the world is to be doing the activities that produce good that produce good fortune that are virtuous actions. So that's the best in the world. And Nagarjuna's response is, you can't see Buddha nature until you let go of pride. You can't see Buddha nature until you let go of pride. So then they said, the spokesperson said, well, maybe you can help us see Buddha nature by telling us, you know, is it something that's big or is it small or, you know, some characteristics.

[32:35]

And Nagarjuna says, it's not big, it's not small. It's not wide, it's not narrow. It's not something living, it's not something dead. they became intrigued what is this what is this Buddha nature and so then Nagarjuna in this story this is in the Denko Roku it's also in Dogen in his fascicle on Buddha nature has a whole commentary on this and Nagarjuna then manifests as a full moon. People can't see him anymore. They can just hear him talking about Buddha nature. They can hear a voice talking about Buddha nature coming out of moonlight.

[33:39]

That was kind of confusing for them. So... So Kanadaiva then was in the audience and speaks up and says, this is just the way this master is showing what Buddha nature is. That it has no particular form. And so then Nagarjuna reappears in bodily form and says... something about, yes, this full moon is showing that the Buddha nature has no particular characteristics. It's vast and clear. And so this Buddha nature, vast and clear, so then this is...

[34:51]

the entry, how Kanadaiva, or Kanadeva, I think it's Kanadeva in Sanskrit, and Kanadaiva in the way we chant it. Kanadaiva and Nagarjuna then meet, and Nagarjuna presents this bowl, big bowl of water, full to the brim. They have a conversation without words about Buddha nature, which is maybe the best way, right? A big bowl of water. And then a kind of daiva produces a needle and places it on the water. And they are in complete agreement. There are different translations of that. Some translations say plunges the needle into the water. For me, I like the image of placing the needle on the water.

[35:52]

You know, the needle can float, right? Just float on the water. But this is the mind of Zazen. This is the mind of Buddha nature, where we have both the needle focus and the whole bowl. the whole ocean, the whole ocean mind. Ocean mind and precise focus, attention. This is the same mind that trains the horse to be right there, focused, you know, exactly what's this information, this connection, very precise. At the same time, have a whole field of awareness. Without both You can't really function. Coming back to Patacara.

[37:01]

Why haven't I found peace? So bathing my feet, I watched the bath water spill down the slope. So here's another water image, bath water. I think this is wonderful. Bathing my feet, I watched... I imagine she's there on the hillside, a basin, bathing her feet, and then just lets the bathwater spill, flowing. This reminds me. One time I asked Sojin. A long time ago. I don't know if you remember. Sojin. A long time ago I asked, this may be 20 years ago, so I asked Sojin, what is your practice? And he said, my practice is water. Like water.

[38:05]

Like water. There was a little pause in there, he paused a moment and he said, my practice is like water. So I knew that this was very reassuring to me at the time that water has these properties that it can take any form. It can flow. It can be still. It can vanish into cloud. So here in this, you know, one image we have the Nagarjuna with the bowl, big bowl of water, still, clear. Bath water is spilling down the slope. Water is fearless.

[39:05]

Water can go anywhere. Water can go to the depths. Water already is in the depths. So this is a image, Pantachara's image of watching the bathwater. Her mind is one with the water spilling, flowing. Water endlessly, water endlessly flowing, disappearing. Water in her own body flowing. And this is then this concentrated mind on water and at the same time it's not a mind without the form of her own life so then she goes into her little hut into her little cabin

[40:19]

And she has a lamp, an oil lamp, say, which would be probably ceramic with a little wick coming up. And with the lamp, she kind of checks the bed. I checked my bed. Good idea. In India especially, right? Snakes, scorpions, things. Check the bed. So there's that thought. Okay. To actually, in a way, it's like bowing to the cushion. Bowing to the cushion. Respectfully attending to what's in front. And sitting down. And then this needle. Again, the needle. This time the needle is precise. Pushing down the wick. The lamp goes out. Everything is perfect.

[41:22]

The mind is not holding on to any particular thing. This dark, this is what we say, when you actually are fearless, that means that your mind can completely encompass the unknown. The mind already encompasses the unknown. Unknownness in the dark. Sometimes we say darkness and light in the dark. The dark actually represents Buddha nature. The dark represents what is empty, what is not grasped, what is inconceivable, which is the source. We could say there's a source. Let's say a source is not quite right because then we might think, oh, there's something else.

[42:25]

So Buddha nature is not something other than what's right here. When we talk about it, it sounds like that. So meeting each thing as Buddha meeting each thing as yourself meeting each thing without separation feeling that this intimacy this is what Nagarjuna means when he says let go of pride letting go of pride pride is you know maybe You know, we think, oh, we can only have pride with something that's good, but actually pride is involved with anything that is held with some attachment.

[43:29]

Anything that's held as self-clinging, there's some reason I believe that it's me, right? It can be a good thing, it can be a bad thing. So this sense of pride, to use pride in this way, is to mean anything that is held that separates me from what is. So that is really any conceptions that are held. Conceptions that are held separate me from what is. So in our practice of Zazen, tomorrow we have a silent day that may help. It may help to think, oh, right now I enter silence. Silence means I don't fill the world with my own names.

[44:31]

I don't fill the world with my own busy mind. I don't fill the world with my own conceptions of things. I'm ready to receive the teaching. of the whole body. The kind of readiness to receive everything as teaching from the whole body. This body not separate from the body of the environment. That's why it's so good to be practicing here in the mountains. It's so good to be in the wild we can be more confused or often are confused by artifice that we create. As human beings, we've created so much artifice that we don't know how we are supported by Buddha nature. That we don't know that even 99% of what we're doing is not our doing.

[45:33]

Maybe more than 99%. So it's so easy to be distracted by, oh, I'm doing this or I'm doing that or that person's doing that. And actually that's only tiny, tiny, tiny percent of the total dynamic working of things. So as we sit, we begin to notice setting aside busy mind, setting aside the grasping of conceptions. setting aside names, setting aside desires. All this is in the realm of pride. The things that I hold on to, that I think is somehow necessary for me to be. And it's only those things that I think are necessary for me to be that separate me from really understanding who I am.

[46:40]

Everyone here is so much more than you think you are. So Patacara's poem and this practice. How to... how to see Buddha nature, how to let the mind be free. It's so difficult because it means accepting all of what seems unfair. Patacara had to completely accept the unfairness of life, of all of her losses. She had to actually realize it's not about having wealth.

[47:47]

It's about being right here with bathwater. Being right here in the dark. This mind concentrated right now receiving the teaching of this moment, which is receiving all of the perceptions, all of the senses, all the information, the big shouts and the quiet whisperings, the sense of your own internal organs, the sense of your own heartbeat, the sense of your own blood circulating, Knowing, okay. So much is given. This feeling of gratitude. And when this is clear, then it's clear how to respond.

[48:59]

And there's no big problem. just the difficulty of this moment just the pain of this moment not fearing that it would not fearing the future not regretting the past so this is letting go of pride in its more complete sense Noticing any little thing that separates. I think the timing is pretty good. With the kitchen. Thank you. Kitchen. Thank you, chairs.

[50:15]

So please continue this practice of deepening and being and courage, I think. courageous practice, being willing to meet what comes up without being defended by one's own pride. So there's a vulnerability, right? When you set down what it is that, when I set down what it is that I think defines me, identifies me, if I set that down, it's a vulnerable feeling. So it's good to sit with a kind of a soft feeling. Noticing the mudra. Holding the mudra, it may be hard. It may be a challenge. It's a lot of work to hold this mudra. Holding nothing.

[51:38]

It's useless. It doesn't... produce anything. This is Sambhogakaya. Sambhogakaya is not producing anything except enlightenment. Nothing that you can hold on to. So I think if you, I was noticing myself that when I get drowsy, my mudra tends to droop so then I make a little effort to lift it up a little bit and the thumbtips just touching feels like right there there's a little jewel of light right there where the thumbtips may be not quite touching if they don't quite touch sometimes they touch and sometimes they don't you can't quite tell if they're touching and they're touching and not touching

[52:42]

that there's a little jewel. That's where the Buddha's in all those realms are existing right there. Very sweet. So that point, to concentrate, to have that in your concentration and also where your tongue tip is right here. Another little jewel point. maintaining that. I was also noticing that for me a big difference if I'm holding my elbows like this or holding my elbows like this. You can't see the difference. It's maybe just maybe a millimeter difference. If I'm holding my elbows like this, I'm kind of a little bit asleep.

[53:46]

And if I'm holding my elbows like this, oh, wow, wake up. So as you settle into refining your practice, you may notice each person is unique. Each person, you find your own, say, places of sweetness. jewels and refining your practice so it's a I know there's a time of maybe a phase of feeling oh ok it's boring I'm just sitting here it's boring I've got to manufacture things to keep little drama going, right? Otherwise it's boring. But if you refine your attention on this present moment, you don't need all those old movies.

[54:55]

There's so much, so much vitally alive right now. Please pay close attention. Thank you for your practice. For more information, visit SSCC.org and click giving.

[55:31]

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