This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Today I would like to talk with you about Not about, but point to something that by now must be very near and dear to your heart. And that is the topic of awakening in the midst of delusion. If it doesn't seem to you like that's what we're doing, well, all I can say is that today is the... What's he? Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.

[01:03]

What is today? Wednesday. Today's the fourth day of Sashin. And so there are another Thursday, Friday, Saturday, three days of Sashin left. And I hope that you come to the experience of sitting with and awakening to and with delusion. Because that is the cornerstone of... the path. And if we're sitting, if we're really sitting, it's inevitable. There's only so much sitting and having ideas about awakening or enjoying the aesthetics of the Zendo or thinking about how neat it is to be a monastic in the tempo and stuff. There's only so many days that that's charming.

[02:03]

Before the actual substance of zazen, the actual process of zazen begins to take hold. And then one can feel a little bit more like a lobster being dunked into a pot and the heat beginning to rise. For some people that's not so. And so You know, for instance, between Blanche, Paul, and Jordan, and several other people in the room, there's probably about, you know, several thousand years of Zazen practice in the room. And maybe for some people, sitting with delusion is really something you're done with, but probably not. because all of us are human. And to be human is to be limited.

[03:10]

To be human is to be born and to die, to make mistakes, and to be in contact with how things aren't, aren't take your pick, aren't... pretty enough, tasty enough, charming enough, don't last long enough, they aren't quick enough, they aren't the way you would want them or like you would design it, take your pick. That experience comes up repeatedly in zazen and this slow immersion of in the texture of human suffering is one of the cornerstones of our school. It's our daily vitamin. And if you don't experience it mentally or in the realm of behavior or thinking, you may be experiencing it in the body, you know, how your body might not be flexible enough.

[04:29]

or have enough endurance, or be stable enough, or have strong enough knees or hips. Any of those things could be arising as well. Or maybe the breath is uneven and there's emotional life occurring. And you're practicing with that moment after moment. And it's palpable in the room. that there is stability and concentration in relation to that that is being built up, that's palpable and very supportive for everyone all around you. And so the experience of zazen is the experience of finding ourselves in the midst of delusion and taking various tacks in relation to that.

[05:32]

You know, we can take the tack of doing nothing in relation to delusion, looking away from it or even looking at it but staying close. We can take the tack of doing various wholesome practices in relation to it. We can take the tack of going with the delusion and doing what the impulse says to do or reacting from the delusion and trying to kill it. All of those are things that people do and things that I'm hearing about actually in practice discussion. Well, the Buddha did the same thing. We tend to focus on the time of Buddha's life when he was awakened. But there was a long time before he was awakened. when he was making exactly the same mistakes that we're making right now. So, for instance, when the Buddha had practiced for quite a long time, he started to do ascetic practices, thinking that maybe he would be able to conquer delusion

[06:53]

through various ascetic practices. So I don't know if this sounds familiar to some people in the room. So he would sit in meditation with his tongue at the roof of the mouth and his muscles clenched, taking the part of the mind that was diluted or not doing the right thing. And then he would grab it with another part of his mind and beat it down. So that was one of the ascetic practices that he did. And he found out that even though he was able to maintain mindfulness that way, there was always a sense of division in his body and mind when he did that. He would be tense or rigid, whether he did that consciously or unconsciously, and at that point he was doing it consciously. Then when that didn't work, he decided that he was going to try the practice of not breathing.

[07:55]

that he was going to hold his breath until he became enlightened. So he did that too. He clenched himself and made himself rigid and held his breath. But as you can well imagine, that didn't work out either. And then he also tried the ascetic practice of fasting, of just living on one grain of rice or one sesame seed, one bean. You know, one little drop in the bottom of his bowl. And he did all of these ascetic practices with great vigor, as strongly as he could. There's actually a picture of him in this practice that's very well known. It's the picture of the Buddha. He almost looks like a skeleton. You can see his spine through his belly. And you can see that his skin is dry and that he looks like he's about to die.

[09:00]

And it wasn't until each of these practices was played through to its end game that the Buddha realized that it was nihilistic and unprofitable and decided to do something else. Before the practices of asceticism, the Buddha had studied with some of the best yoga teachers in the country. The first one he went to see was Alara Kalama, who had 300 disciples and was well-known, well-versed in yoga. And he was teaching yoga as a meditation and the awakening to the end of suffering in yoga. Alara Kalama's teaching was to find a transcended state, a very unified state, a very yogic state in which body, speech, and mind were so well integrated, the body and mind were so well concentrated that you would dwell in the state of not a thing.

[10:17]

Not a thing would appear. that your senses would be turned in and not a thing would appear to you or matter. And the Buddha tried that and became very good at it almost immediately. And when he did, he realized that even that very highly concentrated state in which everything falls away wasn't the answer to his question. His question was, how can I wake up? How can I find an answer, a response to the human condition for the benefit of all beings? That was the Buddha's question. And even the state that transcended every single thing didn't do it. So even though Alara Kalama said, please stay, be a teacher in our community, you've learned everything that I have, Gautama, the seeker, did not stay.

[11:19]

He went on. He heard about another great yoga teacher, Rama. And he got to Rama's place. He decided to go there. He walked to Rama's place. Rama had passed away. But his son, Udaka, was teaching Rama's yoga practice. And so he... studied and very quickly learned that jhana, which was even more refined than the state in which not a thing exists. So in Udaka's teaching, under Udaka's teaching, Gautama entered a state of concentration in which he was neither perceiving nor not perceiving. So it was a state of neither perception nor non-perception. So very concentrated, not discursive, self-sustaining concentration in which there was not perception, but there was not the denial of perception either.

[12:29]

And that we call the eighth jhana, the eighth concentrated state. So all of these, both highly concentrated states and also extreme ascetic practices, were not satisfactory to Gautama, as unsatisfactory for his purpose as his earlier life in the castle had been, in the palace had been. So the Buddha suddenly remembered a moment in his childhood when there was a picnic, a very large family feast, and he wandered off. He was a child and wandered off to sit under a rose apple tree with all of its good-smelling blossoms. And as he was sitting there in the shade, he was so happy and peaceful, this young boy. And I think Sangha members have had experiences similar to this in childhood.

[13:36]

He was so happy and peaceful. And so later... when he had done all the ascetic practices and all the concentrations and found them unsatisfactory, he remembered that moment of peace and said, it must be something like that that's the answer. So he actually gave up his concentrated practices and his asceticism in favor of a concentration that was less deeply concentrated. I shouldn't say less deeply concentrated. It's a concentration in which he hasn't thrown away the world. So he uses the tool of not a thing is. And he uses the tool of being neither in perception nor non-perception.

[14:40]

but he uses them and lightens the emphasis on those concentrations to be able to fully contemplate the human condition, which means to sit in the midst of his delusion, in the midst of the human condition of being in a limited body. Now, there are many ways to do this. You know, the ancient, the Tendai name for Zazen is Shamatav Vipassana, which loosely translated means stopping and seeing. So Ananda, Buddha's disciple, I can't remember where he says this, but someplace he says there are different ways in relation to stopping and seeing. You can stop first and then see. You can see first and and then stop. You can stop and see both together.

[15:43]

Or you can stay in right view and just contemplate the human condition using your thinking mind. So all four of those are valid ways. And so there isn't a right way or wrong way to do zazen, except, you know, please come. Please sit. Please be still. But if you think, oh, you know, I'm not doing so well because I'm just calm and sleepy and I'm not awake, you can practice calm first and then awake seeing. You think, oh, no, I'm not doing so well because I have insight, but I don't really have the stability to maintain it in relation to myself or others. That's okay. You can see first and then stop and integrate those insights.

[16:49]

Or you can do both together. Or if your mind won't stop, then just use it to think about things that you need to think about, like what is the human condition? What is life? Where does it go? I'm not saying dream. I'm saying you can reflect and take it to its conclusion. You know, any of those ways will produce insight. and understanding, looking into the human condition. So for instance, you know, you might remember back to before Sashin, when mental formations would come up, and they'd come up as past, they'd come up as present, they'd come up as future.

[17:50]

And through the process of sitting and studying, what study experience in the present, the mental formations come up now in the present. So when we're not concentrated, it seems like they're coming up in the past or in the future or in the present. But when we're sitting, they come up in the present. You can feel You can see, you can experience, you can directly view how the mental formations arise. You can look at them. You can say, okay, there's form. Like, let's say there's the form of my knee doing this or that. There's a slight positive or slight negative feeling, and on that gets built... a mental formation, a series of thoughts that flip and build back and forth to make fully formed thoughts and perhaps a reaction that I move my leg.

[19:04]

And you can witness this happening. It's very clear as you come into pace with the body and into pace with the breath. That is actually insight. That's direct experience of how things are. And if you're stable during that perception of how the mental formation arises in the present, if you're stable with that, it's a moment of zazen, a moment of stopping and seeing both together. You know, when you see the formations rise and fall, rise and fall, they begin to lose their charm. Because you see that it's not just all rising, that there's falling and death associated.

[20:10]

We die every moment in Zazen. Every inhalation, the self comes fully into being. Every exhalation, it goes away. It dies. That self dies. And we can see this happening. And staying with the repeated death of the fixed view of self, moment after moment, this fixed self begins to lose its charm as a place to take refuge. There's a kind of disenchantment. They lose their spell. The formations lose their spell. And even more clearly, a feeling, oh, I want to be free of this, can arise.

[21:13]

And that's an insight, too. that leads to a deeper understanding of what the Buddha taught when he talked about impermanence, ill and not self. So what I'm saying is that you don't have to have a special fancy insight. Just look at how life comes up on the inhalation and falls away on the exhalation. That itself is insight. There doesn't need to be something extra. besides that. And just sitting with that is a practice of equanimity, of one practice, whether it's the one practice of the breath, whether it's the one practice of friendliness, whether it's the one practice of upright stability in relation to each moment, whether it's the practice of genjo koan,

[22:22]

whether it's the practice of Jijuyuzamai, if you see this with stability, that in itself is a very beautiful and helpful insight that will help not only you, or does help not only you, but everyone around. That kind of perception, which may be coming up, You may not recognize that it's coming up when it comes up, but it may be coming up just because it's our experience in this simplified world we call seshin. It leads to a cutting of the lineage of our lives from the way we think it is, our history, our karma. It doesn't mean we throw away our history or our karma, but it cuts our attachment to that as our inevitable future, as our inevitable and predictable response.

[23:36]

I want to talk about Patacara, who was one of... the women who practiced with the Buddha. Actually, I'll talk about another woman too, but I can't remember the name that goes with the poem, and so please excuse me. But this one's Patachara's poem, and she was an amazing woman. She was highly developed in insight, and she introduced many of the first generations of Buddhist women to the Buddha's teaching. She trained nuns in those days. Women weren't allowed to train men, but she trained many nuns to awakening. And this is her awakening poem. Maybe you'll hear the echo of Sesheen in this poem. When they plow their fields and sow seeds in the earth, when they care for their wives and children,

[24:47]

Young Brahmins find riches. But I've done everything right. I've followed the rules 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. 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 maybe you recognize I've done everything right.

[25:48]

I follow the rules of my teacher and I'm not lazy or proud. Why haven't I found peace? Why haven't I found peace? So Zen is unique in the transmission of Buddhism in how few doctrines or dogmas there are and how, you know, have you eaten? Well, wash your bowls. You know? Is it the bell ringing? Well, put your tools away. You know? Is it the densho? Then sit down. You know? It's just the way it's transmitted through very simple things. Is this person... Doing dishes slower than me? Keep doing the dishes. It's very simple. It's so simple.

[26:51]

Keep giving the gift of doing the dishes. Keep giving the gift of sitting. And then doing whatever. Washing the dishes. I watched the gray water spill down the drain. I concentrate my mind the way you train a good horse. Then, take a lamp and go to your room. Check the bed. She was checking the bed in case there's any insects, scorpions or snakes in it, right? That's something you have to do. And then she sits down on it. She takes a needle and pushes the wick down to extinguish the lamp. When the lamp goes out, her mind is free. That's... It's not predictable that way. Aiken Roshi used to say, enlightenment is an accident. But when we sit Zazen, we make ourselves accident prone.

[28:03]

It's good. I remember sitting Sashin with him one time. And... I was sitting there and I was describing my experience to him and says, Sheen, you know, the way you do in practice discussion or Doga-san? I'm sitting and this is happening and that's happening. And he said, that sounds like a summary. And it wasn't a, oh, that sounds like a summary. It was like, that is a summary. You know, speak now. So I'd just like to go over some of the nitty-gritty delusions that come up in Zazen, just in case you haven't had enough of them in your own Zazen practice.

[29:03]

There are many of them, but I was trying to list some of them. to try to somehow communicate that these delusions aren't, they don't make your zazen. It's not that your zazen is bad or awful because you have these delusions. And it's not great if you think you don't have these delusions or if they don't appear to come up. Neither of those things is true. Zazen is zazen. Zazen itself is the realization of the way. So, for instance, let's say that we're sitting and we sit down. You can try this yourself. To sit in a completely upright posture, adjusting yourself in relation to the ground,

[30:12]

creating an upright spine, balancing the head over the spine and softly closing your eyes halfway, just enough for light to come in. Not attaching to eye subjects as you see them or sounds as you hear them, but just staying on the edge between in and out. Letting your skin Be the boundary that it is, not attaching to sensation, but allowing yourself to experience the breath through the skin. So pretty soon something will change. You know, the... Mind will go to a sound or a sight. The feeling of calm, ease that you might have found in the first breath of the permeability of the skin will fade.

[31:28]

And we'll think, oh no. or turn away from it somehow. So that everyday sort of action is exposing a delusion, the delusion of permanence, that we think, if we compose ourselves, that that's permanent somehow, or that we're permanent somehow in that state. And what happens in that moment when it fades away is And impermanence is an insight which we can follow moment after moment. Let's say there's a moment when, you know, the soup comes for lunch and it's exactly right. And you're sitting there tasting the soup and it just tastes so good.

[32:40]

And so there will come a moment at which that soup will become unsatisfactory in some way. Either it'll just keep tasting the same and you'll lose its flavor, or the soup will end and the bowl will be empty. You know, something will happen to that soup and the satisfaction of the soup will fade. So that is called suffering or unsatisfactoriness. And it's an insight which we can follow moment after moment. We don't have to create anything to do that. Just find it. It's the flavor of reality. impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, are two examples of the flavor of reality, which we usually see as bad or wrong in some way when it happens to us.

[33:57]

But it's actually insight when it happens to us. It's not something else. So many wonderful things like this happen in Sesshin. Sashin is just an example of life. It's just a simplified, safe, ritualized example of life in which we can stay with something without other interests coming into play. But it's not a different world. It's the same world. insofar as our world could be the same moment after moment. Sashin is just our world. It's just our life. So, for instance, we could be sitting in Sashin and the concept of the self could be continuing moment after moment.

[35:05]

A certain kind of structure of the self could be just continuing. And we might not even see it because it might just seem like the way things are. or the way things is. But what comes to us moment after moment is a wider view, a view of causes and conditions. We can see that there are other people in the room, that we can feel just when the bell rings, do you go or not go? It means you have to let go of your fixed self, your fixed agenda, and just go. And that might feel like a pain. And that's an example of one of the wonderful ways in which this practice, that's actually an insight.

[36:05]

That wider view is an insight that can be followed moment after moment. You know, there's so many of these, but the point of this practice is freedom for and with all beings. And the people here are all beings. The people who we know in our lives and who we love and are doing this for are all beings. the people in our past, the people in our future, are all beings. There doesn't have to be another all beings for us to be with. So, the flavor of zazen is not necessarily the flavor of jelly beans.

[37:08]

You know, the flavor of zazen, can be the flavor of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, non-self, change, but also can be the feeling of thoughtfulness and unselfishness and of freedom. And all of these are insights that we can stay with. So the Buddha himself made many mistakes and followed his impulses, followed his ideas about how to practice. And he did them. He practiced them all the way to the end. And we don't throw out that part of his history.

[38:12]

That part of his history is helpful to us. And in the middle of Sashin, when we come to a personal experience of the texture of our lives, this is insight. This is the Buddha's insight. We are the Sangha. And the experiences that we have are the Dharma. So I just wanted to say that this is the real flavor of Sashin, whatever is happening, whatever we're trying, whatever we practice to the end. What comes up here is the direct experience of awakening, have no doubt. It doesn't matter what limitations we have.

[39:15]

That limitation is exactly the door, exactly the doorway, exactly the gate of liberation. The other poem that I wanted to say, I can't remember who she was, I can't remember the name, but it was one of my favorite ones. It's one of my favorite ones, particularly when I'm dealing with disability. So here it goes. Though I am thin, sick, and walk with a stick, I have climbed up Vulture Peak, robe thrown down, bowl turned over, leaned on a rock, and great darkness opened. Not thin right now, but I still like this poem.

[40:21]

Though I am thin, sick, and walk with a stick, I have climbed up Vulture Peak, robe thrown down, bowl turned over, leaned on a rock, Great darkness opened. Please, whatever practice you're doing, follow it all the way to the end. And please learn to or continue taking in what arises as the content of awakening.

[41:23]

It's delusion. Delusion is the content of our awakening. Take it in like we take in the letting in a stained glass window. It seems unimportant, but it lets the light, the beautiful colors shine. Let the delusion, let the pain, let the suffering, Let the texture be like the crack that allows the light to shine. Please take very good care of yourself because you're taking care of the three treasures. Please continue to sit, walk, stand, and lie down.

[42:37]

in the noble posture of the Buddha this whole time. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dormen.

[43:09]

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