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. It is said that Shakyamuni Buddha only taught two things, suffering and nirvana, or suffering and liberation. Many people miss that he only taught one thing, suffering, liberation. Usually we think suffering and liberation are opposite poles.

[01:06]

This practice that we do here and this zendo at the end of the road is suffering liberation. Same practice. Bodhisattvas bow is the same, no matter if you're in heaven or you're in hell. I'm sorry. So it's a waste of time trying to avoid it, trying to avoid your life. This is actually wholehearted, fully engagement with your life. Sometimes we say, we call it shikantaza. Shikantaza. This is nothing but.

[02:19]

Shikan means nothing but. Nothing else. And ta means... precisely or just exactly this and sitting shikantaza precisely just what is right now so whether you call it suffering or call it liberation you just have this one life you just have this one moment moment by moment. Before I forget, I have some... First day of Sashin, right? First day. People are already a little tender, I think, just having this practice period.

[03:25]

So it's good to... Be willing to be exquisitely tender. Which means being kind to yourself. So it's a great effort. It takes a great effort not to squirm. Not to squirm away from this life. is very courageous, tremendously courageous to sit without squirming. And then when you're squirming, to be compassionate with squirming. So you don't even turn away from your own squirming.

[04:28]

your wiggly mind. Don't even turn away from wiggly mind. Here we call it, you know, we ring the bell in the middle of the first hour of sitting, we call it interval. When I was up at Great Vow, Chozen Beis called it the wiggle bell. We ring a wiggle bell in the middle, give you a chance to consciously move around a little bit so every once in a while there's a wiggle bell but sometimes you might wiggle even when there's no bell so be compassionate but I was going to say oh yes first day of Sashin I wanted to mention I like to sit in the Zendo as much as possible but then it's also necessary to do Doka-san.

[05:32]

So tomorrow, at some point, I'll start doing Doka-san. But today, unless there's an emergency, I won't do Doka-san today. But tomorrow I'll start. And then I intend to see everyone during the session at least once. So you don't have to worry about it. You don't have to think about it. so we said we have a full schedule and we added at the end of the day schedule this time we added yaza we added late night sitting and so late night sitting is optional that's not something that everyone has to do except everyone and have the approach or the intention of extending zazen throughout the 24 hours.

[06:40]

So it's good to have the thought of extending zazen throughout the 24 hours. So if your samadhi energy supports your practice enough, you can come back after we do the refuges in the evening. Take off your... Okesa, Araksu, and just come back and sit and let the energy of your concentration just support your sitting. You don't need to make any particular effort. So it's a great time to have no agenda. In case you had some agenda earlier, you can come back and just enjoy sitting in the dark. And then when you're tired or sleepy, then just go to bed.

[07:43]

So, yaza, late night sitting. But everyone is doing this practice of extending zazen through the 24 hours. And let's see, I wanted to mention posture adjustment. Occasionally someone will go around the room adjusting postures. And the people doing that would be the Tanto or myself or at some point the Shisho also start adjusting people's posture. So if for some reason that's not okay with you, let the tanto know. You can give the tanto a note so that people won't be... so we will know that it's not something that you appreciate.

[08:51]

And so when I was thinking about that, I was... At dinner the other night, someone was talking about Katagiri. So, great patience. Zen master, great patience. Dainin Katagiri. Dainin means great patience. So we called him Katagiri Sensei. I think I sat my first session at Zen Center with Katagiri. And... going into Doka-san, went into Doka-san and bowed and sat down. And he looks at me and he says, oh, you're sitting like this. So he just got up and immediately came around behind me and started adjusting my posture.

[09:57]

And I thought, yeah, very compassionate. And no hesitation, just, oh. But it was pointing out to me that my head was not on straight. And where I thought I was was not where I was. And so it was very helpful to have someone physically kind of moving me. And over the years, many times, my posture has been, you know, people have adjusted my posture. And sometimes I feel some resistance, you know. What are you doing? I'm already making a great effort, you know. And so sometimes...

[11:00]

hard to accept you know and then but then it's always an opportunity to learn something so I keep working with my own posture I feel like that the alignment posture of alignment is very very important in Zazen and is endlessly available to work with just noticing exactly where the body is how you sense it from inside. And also from outside, how you're aware of it from outside. So it should be in alignment, inside view, outside view. So this asheen is a great opportunity to work very carefully and in a very concentrated way.

[12:01]

You know, seshin means to concentrate or gather. Suzuki Roshi said the sets in seshin has a connotation of how you treat someone with respect. Treat someone with respect, but it also has a sense of putting things in order. And then the shin is, of course, heart and mind. So what we're doing in seshin is putting heart and mind, gathering heart and mind, composing heart and mind, very respectfully, recognizing this is really good materials to work with. this heart and mind that is bequeathed to each of us.

[13:05]

Great material to work with. So to take good care of it is simply to gather and bring with a sense of everything being brought together and in alignment. Katagiri would begin every one of his Dharma talks with a very fierce kind of frown face. And then his first words, I think every time, I don't think I heard him give a talk where he didn't start out saying, Dogen Zenji said. And then he would go off quoting Dogen for a while and then... But then at some point, he would comment. I remember, usually, actually, that first session, I think, I don't remember anything except pain.

[14:09]

The first two words I could remember, Dogen, Zenji said, and after that, it was just a blur. But at one point, he got my attention. He said, You people think Zazen is someplace else, like you're talking to Zazen on a long-distance telephone. Say, hello, Zazen. How are you? It was out there someplace else. So how to bring this practice right here, he was saying. How to do this. So it's a reeling in, a long distance call, maybe even to get to a local call.

[15:19]

And then to... get to a very kind of intimate communication with what's happening in your field of awareness. Realizing, even though someone says, oh, whatever you see, whatever you hear, whatever you feel is yourself, that's not what we usually experience. It's not the way we usually think about it. We usually think that what we see and hear is something else, not ourself. So it's actually, even though someone can say that, it takes a great effort in practice to bring that home. So it's actually very clearly experienced. So the sound of the bird, we tend to think it's over there.

[16:26]

And that my own mind is over here. So it's something to understand that that sound is my mind. That's the same this mind. So this mind is completely right here. And at the same time, it's coextensive with all of experience. All of experience that is happening in this moment of experience and also all of experience that is remembered in the past and all of experience that is possible in the future. This mind is exactly the same. Kadigiri, after he moved from San Francisco Zen Center to Minneapolis, but he would come every year for many years.

[17:41]

I don't know when he stopped coming, but he would come and participate and lead session or sometimes just visit and give talks. And then he would participate in the whole day. So at Green Gulch, he would always show up for communal work. And I was in charge of the farm. At one point, I remember assigning him to dig potatoes. And I just remember the wholehearted energy that he would bring to digging in the ground, lifting up. holding up the potato. Like this was Dharma teaching. Holding up a potato. And with a sense of complete presence and energy. So I wish I could convey that, but it was a sense of learning from Katagiri, from his own body.

[18:53]

His English wasn't so good. Pretty good, but his pronunciation was always... It was hard to understand. You kind of had to learn how to hear him. And he was Japanese. And he was... because of that, sometimes not always welcome. I think that was pretty hard in Minnesota, or maybe pretty hard in North Dakota and Iowa. Someone, one of his students told me once he took Katagiri to a place in I think in Iowa, and they were on their way to visit another Zen group, and they stopped at a little gas station, convenience store, and Katagiri is going around in the store, and the owner or the proprietor there says to one of the students, who's that guy?

[20:18]

And he said, well, he's a... Japanese and Zen teacher. And the proprietor said, well, get him out of here. When I heard that, it's so sad. People don't know, you know, what they're missing. So anyway, I'm deeply indebted in feeling For some reason today, very deep gratitude to Katagiri. Dainin, great patience. And for him, it was, I think, pretty difficult to have... He had to have a lot of patience with American Zen students. He had a hard time at first. I know he had...

[21:23]

He came to Los Angeles and then Suzuki Roshi invited him actually to come up and help in San Francisco. And so he was, I think, kind of surprised that Suzuki Roshi had this whole motley group of people sitting zazen. And he wanted Katagiri to help him. And so sometime after working with American students, For a day, at night, Katagiri would cry. I said, I don't like these students. They're so rude. They don't know how to behave. They don't even know how to clean their feet before they come into Zendo. But then, by the time I knew him, he was quite accepting of grungy American Zen students.

[22:31]

Yeah, I guess I was pretty grungy myself. So anyway, deep gratitude, great patience. He really needed it, really needed the great patience. So this whole question about Satipatthana, four foundations of mindfulness, how to work with that in Sashin. I want to encourage people today to do a breath-body practice, to really focus on breath-body practice. with counting the breath. I found some quotations from Suzuki Roshi with some help from Charlie Picorny. But you know there was a time here at Tassahara that Suzuki Roshi in the summertime went down to the Narrows with a group of students.

[23:49]

I think he was trying to, I don't know exactly. I, of course, wasn't there, but people tell the story. But anyway, he was there, and then he wanted to go across to the other side, and so he stepped into the deep pool where other people had been swimming, but he just went right to the bottom. He had never learned to swim. So there he was down there in the bottom with the crayfish and the trout. and then he realized how attached he was to life that he actually wanted to breathe but he was underwater and he didn't know what he couldn't really get going and he couldn't really couldn't do anything so finally the students noticed him down there and fished him out and he was coughing and sputtering and And pretty shook up, I think.

[24:53]

So after that, he gave a number of talks in which he mentioned, I want everyone to count the breath. We need... He said, I myself have realized that I'm so attached to life. And I really need beginner's practice. So these are from July of... 1969, that was that time. He said, it may be better for us to be concentrated on more simple practice. I think the most simple practice is counting breathing practice. Before we can practice koan zen or shikantaze, we should be able to practice counting breathing practice or following breathing practice. If you count your breathing, you will easily notice that you are not taking care of your everyday life. He says that the cow's step is best for us.

[26:01]

But that's too slow for American people. Let's make our practice sure and steady. So a cow step, walking like a cow. Slow... Not a calf, a cow. Slow, step, steady. The cow step is best, but that's too slow for Americans. He was pointing out people's impatience. People don't want to go like a cow. We want to go like a racehorse or maybe a race car. But this practice is maybe best if slow, steady practice. So then a few days later in a talk he said, so it was interesting actually in that talk he said, before we can practice koan zen or shikantaza, we should just practice counting breathing practice.

[27:14]

Then a few days later he said, So with all of your effort, physical effort and mental effort, you should count your breathing. That is shikantaza. Shikantaza means to take hold of whole being, all of your mind and body, which includes all the world. Just to count our breathing is not counting breathing practice, actually. With your whole body and mind, you should count your breathing. So he's trying to point to counting breathing as not counting breathing. Counting breathing itself is actually going beyond counting breathing. It doesn't mean that going beyond counting breathing is you stop counting breathing. It means that counting breathing itself is going beyond counting breathing. And then again, a few days later, another talk, five days later, he says, when we count our breathing in each number, we find limitlessly deep meaning of life.

[28:29]

Not only we count our breathing with our whole body and mind, we count each number with the power of the whole universe. So very interesting to me to see in the course of a couple of weeks of talks after he almost drowned at the narrows. And he's emphasizing counting breathing. He goes from thinking, maybe thinking, this is beginner's practice himself, before doing shikantaza, to saying counting breathing itself is shikantaza practice. And then saying counting breathing is with each number, each number, this is limitless practice, limitless deep meaning of life. And each count, each breath is with the power of the whole universe.

[29:37]

The power of the whole universe is manifest in each being here. power of the whole universe is manifest in each of your bodies. This is the way we practice with mountains and we practice with stream and we practice with the trees. This is all a manifestation of the power of the whole universe. So when one is feeling that the resistance I have to whatever is arising is itself something that I can be joined with. I can actually be joined with the resistance I feel. If I don't set myself apart from the resistance that I feel, completely meeting that is to also...

[30:43]

be intimate, practicing with the whole universe. So we tend to think that intimacy practice is something special or distant, like long-distance telephone call. But intimacy practice is something right here, whatever is arising. So our bodhisattva vow is always the same, always waking up, always Sometimes the idea of saving, we think saving in some sense of being like there's someone who's being saved and someone who's doing saving. But actually saving is just to meet completely. No one's being saved and no one's saving. So that's how we do the practice of bodhisattva vows, saving.

[31:44]

Same as to just wake up with each encounter. So fully participating and fully involved with the experience of whatever seems to be some object. So meeting that in that sense of some difficulty or sense of maybe some discomfort. is to say in the sense of having some tension with the breath. So if we're doing breath practice, you might think, oh, limitless practice would be a very easy breath. But limitless practice is each breath, no matter what it is. So sometime in Sashin, You might find a time that your breath seems very constricted.

[32:48]

I'm speaking from my own experience. Very constricted breathing sometimes. But to trust the breath, to actually be willing to simply let the breath be as it is, bring full awareness to it, fully participate with it, understand that The wisdom of the breath is much greater than your own idea, your own conception. So to fully appreciate that and trust that is this practice of completely engaging in the breathing. So counting the breath is helpful to bring the mind's attention. It's taking our usual mind, which knows how to count. Our usual mind knows how to count. Bringing that usual mind that knows how to count to the mind that does not know.

[33:55]

So the mind of the breath does not know counting. The mind of the breath just knows not knowing. Just not knowing is complete readiness. So bringing the mind that does know to the mind that does not know is this practice. So again and again, when we get lost in the mind that knows, the mind that's thinking, the mind that's knowing everything, the mind that's imagining things, the mind that's remembering things, the mind that's making distinctions, that's very active we bring to this steady steady cow's pace of the breath cow's breath very slow usually very sweet maybe you know

[35:10]

Maybe not so many people here have good memories of cows. I don't know. Some people do. How many people here have milked a cow? Quite a few. By hand? Yeah. All right. Maybe half the people. When I was a kid, I had to... Sometimes very cold mornings go, and it was great to have my hands warm up on the warm cow. And the cats would come around, you know, cats, the barn, farm cats would come around, and then you'd squirt the milk, try to hit them right in the mouth. And then they would be licking all around their whiskers. So the cows with the cows just standing there, deep breathing the whole time.

[36:16]

So something about, you know, why in India do they make cows sacred beings? I have some feeling that I think about that. The calves, you know, the young ones sometimes aren't so steady. They can get excited, spooked. That's why we say ride around them real slow. Ride around little doggies. Ride around them real slow. Because the fiery and snuffy are raring to go. The fiery ones and the ones that are kind of snuffy, they go, you know.

[37:20]

And so something can set them off and their tails will go up and they'll go. So maybe right around your zazen real slow. Right around, slow, coming back again and again and again. You can land right here. And just stay. Maybe that's enough. Short talk. Or maybe there's a question. I don't know. Is that not clear? There's a question right here. Ooh, cold hands. Cold morning. I don't know. Probably not so much different than just the cold air, you know. Yeah, yeah, that's what I think that's evident.

[38:52]

Yeah. Yeah, I already am practicing counting breath. But since you remind me, now I need to remember. And then in Kinhin too, I think it's actually good when the bell rings for Kinhin to see, to know, oh, what breath I'm on. Five. Can I continue? Six. Getting up. Seven. Standing before the clappers hit. eight, clapper's hit, stepping over to wherever, nine, ten, and the foot comes up with the breath, nine, goes down with the breath,

[40:03]

So usually when I'm counting breath, I count up to 10 and then backwards, 10 to zero. And when you go all the way up to 10 and then back to zero, you get a free pass. For zero. And then one again. Okay? Yes? Why do you ask Daniela to take off the case of democracy? Yeah, that's a good point. We have to take them off sometimes. We don't sleep with them. But also it's a practicing of, I think, just wearing the robe with the whole community doing the, you know, we put on the robes together.

[41:08]

And with the robe chant, and for the most part, we're all practicing with Buddha's robe together. And then at the end of the day, we've done the refuges. After the refuges, we put the robes away. So just completing the day with everyone. But maybe there's... Yes? So there you have it, it's informal. Yeah, cows will come up.

[42:46]

They have to do that. They're kind of curious. Someone new shows up in the pasture. come and visit yeah that's I once when I was hitchhiking across west Texas once that night I went into I guess I yeah I climbed over a fence or something and went into a field and put out my sleeping bag and when I woke up in the morning I was surrounded by cows with all their All their noses were just like this close to me. They were very curious, you know, what is this thing? No, they started to feel a little fear when I sat up. Then they backed up a little bit. Then when I stood up, they backed up a little more.

[43:52]

Turns out to be a human being. Maybe we'll all end together and then the kitchen can go, okay? Let's chant. Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge 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.

[44:27]

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