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. Recently in Dogosan, someone said to me, I want to be, I want to become. I want to learn how to be a skilled meditator. In some ways, this is the very heart of Zen practice. And then in some ways, it misses the heart. Gets close, but it misses. You know, Dogen Zenji in Vendawa, He lays out in the first paragraph this extraordinary song of praise to awakening, to realization.

[01:08]

All the Buddhas, all the ancestors have directly transmitted this one precious realization without deviation. And then the second paragraph he goes on and he says, it's not actualized without practice and it's not realized without experiencing directly. This extraordinary innate capacity. that's intrinsic in the capacity for awareness, which we're born with. Which if you watch any six-month-old child, you watch them practice it completely.

[02:18]

And what has this got to do with becoming a skilled meditator? Nothing and everything. First of all, we have to lop off I want. Let's set that aside. Let's set aside the emphasis on I and on wanting. And let's hold up the aspiration. The aspiration, cut through the enmeshment of karmic arisings. And this doesn't happen without intentional, deliberate activity.

[03:25]

In one sense. And then in another sense, if you get out of your own way, there it is. So Zen practice and Zazen hold the tension between the two. And for me, that's why I would start, and that's why I think the heritage of the tradition starts with way-seeking mind. quality and way-seeking mind that holds the first two factors of awakening, awareness and investigation. Think. Be aware you're aware when you're aware.

[04:31]

And again, dropping the me or the I. Aware of awareness when there's awareness. An invitation into spacious being. An invitation to lift up, or as Dogen says, leap clear, leaping clear. to lift up from the intrigues of me, even for a moment. How to keep this close, whatever we're doing. And again, here's Mary Oliver's version. So now I'm standing by the open door.

[05:45]

And now I'm stepping down onto the grass. I'm touching a few leaves. I'm noticing the way of the yellow butterflies that move together in a twinkling cloud over the field. And I'm thinking. Maybe just looking and listening is the real work. Maybe the world without us is the real poem. To everything that is beyond capture, shouting. I'm here. I'm here. Now. Now. now now now is this the accomplishment of the skilled meditator or is this

[07:07]

This simple activity of renouncing and allowing the world to come forth. This question is way-seeking mind. This question refines our effort, guides our engagement. I'm amused when I think of Suzuki Roshi saying, concentrate on your breath, but not too much. What the heck does that mean? Does a little bell go off when you've crossed over to too much? When you hear your teeth grinding, do you think, hmm?

[08:09]

Maybe this is the too much part. But even with conscious, discriminating mind, this refinement, this alignment, and this remembering, This initiation. Oh yeah. You know, in the early texts of Buddhism they say, oh, then once you start to enter, the habitual conditioned energies of the self come forth. known as the hindrances or the obstacles.

[09:10]

The fodder for your self-criticism. The enticement of engaging the karmic energy with which you engage challenges, problems. charge them like a bull you procrastinate you feel overwhelmed and a little nauseous I still remember going to one of my early teachers they're valid and teacher and feeling very sorry for myself and really wishing for a little pity, a little reassurance. You're an okay person. Nothing.

[10:15]

Karmic formations, kid. Cling to them all you like and you'll get a good dose of suffering. Yesterday, when I was talking about renunciation, I was trying to say something like, how do we get close enough to our own tightening that we can taste, that we can touch what it is to loosen, what it is to exhale, what it is to let go? Fortunately and unfortunately, most of us need a good dose of suffering to see the point.

[11:21]

I'm really grasping this. I'm really resisting this pain in my body. I'm squirming around, trying to get out of it. I'm tightening, trying to separate from it. engage the long slow path back okay let your breath soften let your jaw soften let your shoulders relax can that breath come down into the body are those mental, emotional formations.

[12:23]

So alluring in their psychological significance for us. Our deepest truth. leap in to conquer them, but to study carefully what is it that I invest my life energy in. What is this deepest truth? Wayseeking mind. Not to spin into thoughts, more to just listen carefully, to be a diligent student and let it expand the Dharma. If it's a persistent, adamant story, okay, and usually it will have a powerful emotion.

[13:37]

Often the emotion has a different story than the cognitive story, dare we say, more heartfelt. And as we move towards the emotion, we draw in a more sensate experience in the body. And that heartfelt, deep, personal truth invites us to a deep connection, to a deep intimacy. And this is where we discover renunciation.

[14:47]

Okay, this is really, really important to you. It's just a formation. It's just a cluster of thoughts, physical sensations, emotions, subject to impermanence. Its relevance arises in how it's related to other things. It has no independent self. characteristics of shunyata with way-seeking mind whatever comes forth

[15:55]

raises the banner of the Dharma. Why would we be busy manufacturing a special experience? Why would we do anything other than just allow a deep willingness to be present for whatever happens? Why would we insist that we know what is and what should be? Why would we cling to that which causes suffering and distress? So all this between

[17:11]

taking your shoes off and arriving at your cushion. And then we're ready to become skilled meditators. Every technique, every strategy is a double-edged sword. It can crack open the world according to me and allow the Dharma to flow. Or it can be just another version of me promoting me in the world according to me. This is the challenge.

[18:14]

That we stimulate something. This global awareness, it has a balancing quality to it. It has a moderating quality to it. As we attend to how our endeavors in the way are unfolding. If it leaves you with something like a headache, check out what you're doing. If you're pushing your body so hard that you're exhausted, check out what you're doing. If you're splitting your world into your virtuous Zen activity and those moments of freedom in your room on the break, could you look again at how you define practice, you know, that it can be so neatly

[19:41]

absolutely split from something else this opening awareness this all engaging awareness and the reassurance it's about alleviating suffering it's about enabling life. It's about... There's a term that gets translated as gladdening. Gladdening the heart. Gladdening the heart, mind of being. Lightening up the states that cause anxiety, fear, lack of hope?

[20:56]

Can that, even just on an intellectual level, stimulate us to a more courageous willingness, I will look at everything that comes up for me. The sacred, the profane, the neurotic, the deeply wise, all of it. I will open to it, experience it. Everything is teacher in the world. of not knowing. This is the heart-mind we bring to the cushion. And having said all that, I would indeed like to toss in some of my own notions about meditative or zazen technique.

[22:12]

I've often puzzled over the years wondering where's the detail, you know? Dogen will give you like three pages on how to wash your hands but a half sentence on how to follow your breath. He'll quote you three cons on how to sort the rice from the grid. I would not tell you very much about the relationship between the abdomen and the breath. I remember

[23:14]

eagerly reading Carl Bielfeld's Dogen's Meditation, a collection of works of Dogen's and previous. And I have to say, maybe I'm a little slow, but I didn't see a whole lot of detail in there. And my own understanding is this is addressing this inconceivable process of zazen. Once we trap it inside some fixed ideas, we're diminishing something. And yet Dogen himself says, in Bendawa, the first fascicle he wrote, Returning to Japan, without practice,

[24:17]

not actualized realization arises from direct experience so how do we attune the body the breath the state of mind how do we relate to the mental objects our mindfulness of body is a to the particulars of the body. The lower body is placed in a position where it's stable and can disappear. As I said somewhere in the last few days, the left leg and the right leg are no longer separate entities.

[25:20]

This part of the body becomes sensitive. The spine, and so however you arrange your legs and your hips, that it can have this connection to the earth that allows it to not be held in place by cognitive thinking. Lengthening the spine. In the various texts, dogans, and the ones that apparently he was inspired by. Rock in the body, left and right. This lengthening the spine.

[26:28]

Sitting still has a compressive influence. In the settled way, the body slumps. When the body slumps, the mind slumps. When the body slumps, it's like we're parking the body and being mind. We join the mind-only school. tradition of Zazen is we're the body school. Mind? Yeah, well, whatever. If you must. An uprightness.

[27:37]

In anatomical terms, we talk about lengthening the spine, raising up through the back of the neck. More subtly, in anatomical terms, we're talking about how the psoas muscles, how the lower muscles in the back. We're talking about lengthening and opening the front of the body. We're talking about letting the shoulders widen and soften. The most important detail is this noticing slumping. And it's a wonderful practice because it's very tempting.

[28:44]

And the antidote to slumping, this uplifting, helps this lifting up from the way in which we sink into the thought, the way in which we sink into the psychological complex. So this lifting up, this lifting up in honor of our innate capacity to be awake. It has nothing to do with the triumph of good over evil. It has nothing to do with some extraordinary athletic accomplishment.

[29:59]

It's about renouncing and releasing hindrance and allowing a natural wakefulness it's about renouncing the way our suffering has made us ambivalent about being fully alive discouraged us uplifting of the body. There is uplifting gladdening the heart. There is a willingness to be And its balancing, its balancing attribute is relaxation.

[31:16]

It's not resisting. It's expressing. This is not through self-determination. This is more about receiving than manufacturing. Presence is always present. You don't manufacture it. It's received by the vessel of awareness. The body stays soft. The hands come tenderly, alively, aliveness in them and hold together the precious gift of being alive.

[32:23]

And this body is breathed, the inhale It flows in. It's received fully. The exhale flows out. Everything is let go. And in the practice of Zazen, this breath is studied because of its remarkable versatility in how it can support the process of awareness. When the mind is very distracted, more diligence, more particularity to how you're following your breathing. This can be done counting, personally,

[33:34]

I recommend working with the breath in the abdomen. And this can also have more pronounced particularity when the mind is more unsettled. Extending the exhale. Shota Roshi said to me, he says, on the first exhale, your mind goes completely quiet and concentrated. And I thought, okay. I'll take your word for it. when you're starting something, exhaling like you've just arrived in this body.

[34:47]

You know it needs to breathe and you're giving it a trial run. Okay. What's exhale like? As you extend it, what gets engaged? What is it to breathe? with the body rather than the mind trying to run the whole show. A disembodied breath is not very interesting. There's a giving over. These are the yogic details. Our body knows how to breathe. Can we attend to initiating Zazen in a way that enables, rediscovers, remembers this giving over?

[35:52]

And what do you discover? Sometimes you go right in there, you get right in the flow, and sometimes you don't. Sometimes you sort of get in there. Sometimes some mental affliction arises. Sometimes some physical tightness. Okay, that's today's scenery. That's today's weather. That's what's here. to sit with today. Allowing and releasing. Four stages, allowing, pausing, releasing, pausing.

[36:59]

It's my personal opinion that in the sota school, and maybe this is my own delusions and whatever else, that we're not so diligent in this attending. The non-dual, just as it is, sort of gives us a pass. I would say, as diligent as heck. Attending to the inhale, attending to the pause, attending to the exhale, attending to the pause. the mind and heart have a lot of movement, unsettledness, allowing, opening, willing, committed, attending to the exhale, releasing, not lingering, letting go, cleaning ideas.

[38:39]

characteristics. They keep the mind flexible. When your meditation becomes wooden, oh yeah, I count my thinking. One, what's for lunch? Yeah, I hope it's brine rice. I don't like that white rice. Two, I hope it's bean soup. And there you go, you keep your numbers going. That must be Zazen, right? Everything you've got. The big mind, the way-seeking mind notices, oh, there's a lot of background commentary going on here. Let everything in. Willingness to experience.

[39:49]

Let everything go. That kind of commitment. And of course this will illuminate, this will make evident the chatter, the distraction, the abiding activity of mind and heart. In following the breath we bring forth the great vow of practice. And following the breath, we enact Dogen Zenji's bendawa. This transmits the way. This illuminates

[41:02]

karmic formations of our being. This receiving and releasing. This dynamic changing flow of existence. This alive body of upright being This breathing the mind into the body, breathing the emotions into the body, breathing the emotions in the mind through the body. It will start to make evident. terrain of your own inner landscape.

[42:05]

And way-seeking mind will go, hmm, is that so? Really? I'll never be happy unless, hmm, really? Each of those determined mind states, it's its own koan. And each koan, as it's related to, as it's engaged, offers its own dual teaching. What is the mind emotion of, I'll never be happy unless... I'm not willing to be fully alive, free, at ease, unless... What recklessness would it be to renounce that, to let it drop with the next exhale?

[43:43]

Tender mercy would it be to soften it with the exhale. To soothe some quivering inside. We're not taking a sledgehammer to the constructs of self. We're discovering the wisdom and compassion of skillful practice. We're discovering a diligence, a discipline that respectfully upholds the workings of our human being. In a way, upholds them in a way that lets them be seen for just what they are. conditioned existence, precious in their vulnerability, but not to be turned into absolute truths.

[45:04]

So way-seeking mind meets karmic formations, not in a battle to the death, but in the transmission of awakening, in the discovery of skillful practice with the self. that we are. With its lumps and bumps, with its own set of clinging and resisting. It's interwoven with our own innate capacity awakening and these particulars are what unfold the teaching

[46:32]

One of the challenges is to not be seduced by the allure of what arises, pulling us in, but inviting it to upright being, inviting it to be seen clearly. We invite the arising to meet way-seeking mind. We don't sink into it. Or, maybe more humbly, when we sink into it, and notice we've sunk into it, in that moment, pause, connect, experience, Include within that experience the body.

[48:33]

Deliberately bring body back to uprightness. Bring breath back into breathing body. Deliberate, steady involvement. And carrying it into our day, punctuating the day. As you walk from here to there, be the walking. Be the activity of walking from here to there. Forget there for now and just be the activity. Be the eating. When you go to your room for a long anticipated break, notice what is conjured up What is my room, my time?

[49:42]

How is your being nurtured by it? We're seeking mind lights from everything. Okay, let me end with Oliver's simple words again she comes this from the book of time I rose this morning early as usual and went to my desk but it's spring and so now I'm standing by the open door and now I I'm stepping down onto the grass. I'm touching a few leaves. I'm noticing the way the yellow butterflies move together in a twinkling cloud over the field.

[50:48]

And I'm thinking, maybe just looking and listening is the real work. Maybe the world is the real poem. Thank you. For more information, visit SSCC.org and click Giving.

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