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, good lovely spring morning to all of you. Welcome to San Francisco Zen Center, city center. Welcome to those of you here, but also even those who might be listening at a distance, live streaming or later on. So I say hi to everybody. My name is Jordan Thorne. I'm a priest here in the Venice Center. And it's my... It's my opportunity to try and find some words today for all of you, words that mean something to me and I hope mean something to you.

[01:08]

What I want to talk about today is surprise, Zen practice. And more particularly what I want to talk about today is Zen meditation. something called zazen. And I want to talk about meditation for a couple of reasons. One of them is that this evening, a seven-day meditation retreat begins. A bunch of folks will be spending Saturday night through next Saturday afternoon mostly in the meditation hall. coming back over and over and over to the practice of their breath. And it felt like saying something about that practice made sense. And there's another reason I thought it made sense to talk about meditation today, which is that this afternoon there's a class on something called Upeka, which is

[02:26]

translated as equanimity. And while equanimity is not exactly the same as meditative concentration, they're close siblings. And one more surprise, who's teaching that class this afternoon? I am. So... And so I felt that talking about meditation, talking about Zen meditation would maybe also lay a foundation for later on talking about equanimity. I hope that's so. The class on equanimity is actually the last class in a series on the Brahma Vaharas. And... as I'm sure the ENO will mention later, anybody can join it that would like to. Even though it's part of a series, it's the last class.

[03:29]

Anyway, more information will follow. when it goes good, Buddhism is teaching about how to live our life in a way that supports us to meet people and to meet ourselves and meet the moments of our life cleanly and helpfully. Well, Zen practice has got a lot of sometimes highfalutin stuff around it. I think that that's really one piece of it.

[04:34]

It's just this simple thing of learning how to live our life in a way that's straightforward and clean. And when we come to, for instance, when you come to Zen Center, One of the ways you learn about how to do this is through words. Like you might attend a lecture and hear the words that I and a succession of others offer about Zen and Buddhism. And you also might, for instance, read about Buddhism. We receive instructions and encouragement in our practice in various ways. But there is a kind of insufficiency to learning about Buddhism through attending lectures or learning about Zen through reading books. There's a missing element in this.

[05:39]

Maybe I can try to illustrate this insufficiency by switching metaphors. I'll talk about if you want to learn about cooking. If you want to learn about cooking, you can only go so far by reading cookbooks or even by going out to nice restaurants and eating. At some point, you have to put yourself in front of the stove and apply heat to an ingredient. And in the same way, if you want to practice Zen, if you want to practice Buddhism, you need to get into the kitchen, by which I mean you need to get into the Zendo, and cook yourself there. See what happens. When I first started to practice Zazen, kind of amazingly, 39 years ago,

[06:44]

Two months. Three weeks and one hour. A while ago. Actually, I don't remember which hour it was, but I remember the year. When I started to practice and started to go to the Zendo, one of the strongest feelings I had was kind of about how many half-baked ideas I had inside me about who I was. And maybe, I don't know, some of you might have a similar experience. It's a kind of remarkably sobering moment I have found over years to stop, sit down, and face my breath and realize that the stream of my activity is difficult to stop, the stream of my mental...

[07:48]

my mind, my dreams. Well, these, this stuff that we carry around in our minds that maybe when we might sit down and try to practice meditation comes up and seems like that it's not meditation if you have that thought. I want to say that this actually is the starting point for our practice, the starting point for our waking up, if I can be so grandiose as to say waking up. This stuff that we have that we sometimes can't let go of is, you might say, the compost that informs. the soil of our effort.

[08:55]

And just like, for instance, at the city center kitchen, you know, they take uneaten meals and uneaten food and they send it to Gringold's farm and it somehow, strangely, changes from kind of glocky, unattractive stuff into beautiful, fragrant soil. In our effort to practice meditation by kind of coming back again and again to the roughage, the undigestible roughage that seems to sort of like occur to our mind. This also has a possibility of becoming kind of a rich soil. Each of us, it's really amazing. Now each of us are different. And within our differences there are some common threads that we might experience as we start to practice meditation.

[10:02]

If we want to practice meditation, there may be some common threads. common threads, common threads as no common threads does the Buddha teach common threads. And one thread shared in Zen practice is that we have to start where we already are. We don't start by looking over to some other place and imagining that would be nice. We have to actually sit down where we are and acknowledge it. And this is why the Zen is a practice, is a thing that we do, is a path.

[11:10]

We start off by being in one spot. Later maybe we come back to, we might come back to that spot, but along the way we check things out. Another common thread in Zen practice, particularly in Zen practice, is that we follow a particular form. When we try to practice meditation at a Zen center, there's an etiquette a family style, so to speak. And I know many of you know these family style points, but maybe not all of you in any way. It's always good to hear them again, so I'm going to say some things about them. We sit as still as we can when we practice meditations.

[12:13]

We find a comfortable, stable, alert posture. We cross our legs as our flexibility allows. We plant our bottom or our feet firmly on the ground on a cushion. And we straighten our back. We don't straighten it completely. We keep a kind of curve to it, but we lift up at the top of our head we tuck our chin in we balance our head above our shoulders so it naturally rests there so we don't have to use our muscles to hold it in place we check that our nose is above our belly button that our ears are above our shoulders And we relax our shoulders slightly by, you don't have to do this, but you can relax your shoulders slightly by moving the tips of our shoulder blades downwards, which naturally kind of opens your chest.

[13:27]

Maybe another way to think of it is from our sternum we lift up a little bit. And doing these particular forms, following this particular etiquette of a bodily posture, We arrive in an upright position, which very soon will become more relaxed, and we remind ourselves and come back to it over and over. Another piece of it is we keep our eyes slightly closed and yet slightly opened, and our view is cast down with a sort of soft focus. but still maintaining some sense of visual awareness. And then, all those things I described really don't take that long to process and settle on.

[14:29]

It's just sort of like a beginning, and then after that beginning of arranging our body in a particular way, we pay attention to our breathing. You know, it's arbitrary to say in-breath or out-breath. I'll start with exhalation. We observe how our exhalation starts from the abdomen and goes all the way out. And we observe how our inhalation just naturally and freely comes in through our nose and fills our chest and fills our belly. Breathing is something that happens with or without awareness. It's kind of like the ancient reptilian part of our brain. It takes care of our vital rhythms.

[15:33]

It's steeped in the physiology of survival of our body. And knowing this can give us some faith in our breath. Knowing that it's something that, I mean, when we're born, we take our first breath. When we die, we take our last. But in between, it just happens in its own way. And paying attention to our breath is a part of zazen, is a part of meditation. We don't want to pay attention to our breath in a way that manipulates it too much. But we do pay attention to it sufficient so that we are aware of it, which in itself is a manipulation.

[16:36]

But this being aware of our breath is a kind of tool that helps us also stop our discursive conversational mind. To some extent, initially, especially, we might replace the thoughts and plans and agendas of our day and our faults and insults and hopes. We replace that story with the story of breathing in and breathing out. we pay careful attention to our breath, and even doing that, we might even start to notice how feelings begin, how feelings and thoughts arise. And we perhaps could return to our breath and let them sort of, I don't want to say go away, because I don't know if they go away, but let them subside a bit.

[17:50]

So, anyway, I've just said some things about Zazen. I think that for me they're true things. It's kind of described my own practice of trying to be aware of myself, of my breathing and my body when I sit in the zendo, in meditation. And on some level, for me, those words are true. But It's only part of the truth. Because this effort to sit, to practice zazen, to sit in meditation, to discover ourselves, to be present with our breath and ourself, it's a mystery, actually, how it unfolds. It goes forward in ways that are beyond our selfish mind's understanding. So we do this.

[19:06]

Each of us maybe does it for their own. I'm sure people find their own reasons to want to do this. I wanted to do it some years ago because I had this idea that there was something called Buddha. Something called a waking up. And I had... a materialistic, acquisitive attitude about that. I thought, yeah, that's good. Why not? Buddha. And so one of the things that troubled my meditation when I began was the desire to change my state of mind. the measurement of how I was doing against how I thought maybe I could do.

[20:19]

These things are self-correcting. After a while, time passes. You run against the wall over and over, and maybe then you might try a new approach. And one new approach that I tried, but actually it's not a new approach that I discovered, that's unique to my particular insight, it's a new approach because I heard about it, I received some instruction about, well, this is another way you might do it, which is not just to focus my effort on the time spent on the cushion. We learn a lot about ourselves by the time spent on the cushion. But also we learn a lot about ourselves by when we approach the meditation hall, how we take our shoes off.

[21:19]

Do we just scuff them off and leave them kind of higgly-piggly at the entrance, or do we reach over, pick them up and carefully put them on the shelf? There's a difference, especially in the Zen family style. There's a difference between taking your shoes off and taking your shoes off. And in fact, I want to say that the space outside of the meditation hall, which is for most people most of the day, most of the week, most of our life, is, am I going to say even more important? Well, yeah, it's even more important than the time we spend in Sazen, just because there's so much more of it. Some time ago, and I think I told this story once before, but you know, it's something I remember.

[22:21]

Some time ago, I was on 18th Street at Buy Right Market. And I was in the checkout line at Buy Right. And if any of you know this market, it's kind of very popular. It's kind of a smaller store, and there's a checkout line that sometimes is tannier. more people along, and I was somewhere in that line when I heard from behind me a person say, that guy in front of us is a Zen priest. I didn't turn around, but I thought I was busted. I was outed. The guy in front of me is a Zen priest. And I didn't want to ostentatiously straighten up and become more... make my posture more regal. But I did consider, you know, well, how was I standing? What was in my mind at that moment, right before I was pointed to as an exemplar of this Zen tradition?

[23:27]

What was in my mind? And if I ever needed... more evidence, right then I understood that my practice is not something that just happens in the zendo. My practice is something that manifests itself in my life, in my day, at the grocery store checkout line. Now, that said, I want to come back to making the point of how important it is to ground ourselves in intimacy with meditation, in intimacy with us, and how important it is that we persevere and continue. And continuing doesn't mean that we more and more spend our days and evenings in this endo, but continuing means that we keep our...

[24:35]

this common thread of our intention alive, and we don't forget it. Because it's, as I say, practice is a mysterious thing, and we never know when we're going to have the good fortune of sort of stumbling into just the right moment that helps us see who we are. There was... In the Zen tradition, there was a time which lamentably is called the Golden Age of Zen. I say lamentably because, you know, it would be much better if this was the Golden Age of Zen. But there is this time. There's a book, The Golden Age of Zen. It's about the Tang Dynasty, some of the great luminaries and teachers who gave the shape and kind of the back story of Zen lived. One of them was famous, famous in some circles, a Zen teacher named Guishan, who had said he had 1,500 students, 43 of whom were fully awakened, whatever that means.

[25:46]

Only 43, anyway. And one of them, one of the students who was not awakened, one of the 1,452, of them or 57 of them who were not in that elite group was someone named Ling Yun. Of course, things are fluid and don't always stay the same way. Ling Yun was someone who had practiced for 30 years in the temple with Gresham and had never settled his doubts and had never been able to feel it. Well, I think he's someone who thought that his compost was still stinky. And there's a story that has come to us that one day Ling Yun took a walk in the hills around the temple. And he rested in a meadow and looked across the valley and saw on a

[27:03]

maybe not so distant hillside, he saw peach blossoms in full bloom on a tree. And at the instant he saw these peach blossoms, it said that he felt the sufficiency of the moment. That's what I said. I said, he felt the sufficiency of it. I think the story goes, he woke up. And after this incident, he wrote a poem to his teacher, presented a statement of his kind of understanding. He said, for 30 years I've looked for an answer. Many times leaves fell, new ones sprouted. Today, one glimpse of peach blossoms. Now, no more doubts. Just abyss. And when Guishan read this note, he said to Lingyan, he said, one who enters with ripened causes will never go away.

[28:15]

One who enters with ripened causes will never go away. He approved of Lingyan in this way. Ripened causes. When Zazan opens this up wide, Zazan can open up and expose our guts. But this is something that exposing our guts may not seem like the most lovely thing, but take my word, I think it is. And it's something that takes our effort and intention to have happen. I think that for myself, and maybe for other people, there's a benefit found in making an effort to understand who we are.

[29:47]

A benefit found in being honest about ourself as much as we can be. And there's always more of that. And trying to understand how to be helpful and meet other people. Kategori Roshi was a Zen priest who helped found San Francisco Zen Center. He was a helper to Suzuki Roshi. And he said, Kategori Roshi wrote this slightly longer poem, but in some part of it he says, knowing how to live, knowing how to walk with people, demonstrating and teaching, this is the Buddha way. And knowing how to live, knowing how to walk with people, demonstrating and teaching, this is the Buddha way. The thing called Zen practice, this way of knowing how to live and knowing how to walk with people, is actually kind of robust.

[30:57]

Once it's taken into our heart, it can find application in many areas. And right from the beginning all the way to the end, this practice that we engage in includes our smelly compost. We have to include that or else we're not being honest. The smelly compost gives new meaning to Guishan's words, ripened causes. will never go away. In this journey, in this thing that we do, in this great adventure called our life, we need to have friends.

[32:06]

We need, using a metaphor of Buddhism, we need a Sangha. We need a community. We need a practice community. It's only... I mean, I think there are very rare, instinctively talented individuals who perhaps can go through their life usefully and helpfully without other people's assistance. But most of us, that's not true. We can't make this trip on our own. We need Dharma friends. We need partners. We need elders to help us on the way. So I want to say again, welcome to all of you to San Francisco Zen Center. I want to say again that there is a seven-day sashim that starts tonight.

[33:14]

Not all of you Probably hardly any of you are signed up for that. But someday, it'd be a good thing to do. You learn a lot about yourself. In the complete failure that a seven-day sishin can bring forth, or even in the success of it, you learn something in the success. You know, for those of you who are sitting in the sishin, I hope that you... Engage in your practice of zazen in a way that is alive and not just rote. Not just something to kind of get through because it's the fourth day and you have three more days you have to get through so you're going to sit still. I hope it's something that kind of wakes up and is, I'll say, an adventure. Though adventures are kind of exciting and it's not about being excited. I remember, you know, sometimes, it's very rare, I've given talks a bunch of times, and actually I've hardly ever talked about my own Zazen experience, or experiences.

[34:33]

And I think, I think maybe, I will right now. Well, not because it's so particularly special or anything, but just because, anyway, why not? That's what we do here. We practice Zazen at the Zen Center. So let me say some things about my Zazen. On the whole, it's kind of middling. There have been some moments of... I've learned about how I can bring myself to meditation, to zazen, over years through the practice of sashins and Monday sittings and even just even sometimes one period of zazen.

[35:35]

It's strange where I've learned things about how to sit for myself, things that are useful for me. And thinking back, I have various memories of times when... I gained some insight personally about how for myself to more effectively sit. And one thing that I realized for myself that was true is that when I sit in meditation, if I'm able to be present with myself, And if I'm able to develop some continuity of that presence, it's not uncommon that a sort of endorphin thing happens. I start to feel kind of a little, I get in a groove. I get locked in. And I used to think that that was like success.

[36:42]

I had the feeling that getting locked in, put my hands together and I could feel a kind of chi flow. I used to think that that was like... Oh, going good, Jordan. But actually, it's been a fairly long time now. I've come to understand that that's just another sort of distraction. That's completely happening on the level of dualistic mind frame. And that there's another thing I can do. which is that when I'm sitting and when I hold my hands together like this and my body's upright and I kind of get into the groove, I can let go of that feeling. I can actually go under it. See that as a kind of excitation. And it's actually kind of almost perverse how when you let go of it, it gets even better.

[37:44]

So then you have to let go of it again. It's kind of like one of those time-lapse photographs of a rose or something, like this. Each time you have to kind of let go. If you can do it, if you can remember this, it's not always possible to remember this. In the midst of it, sometimes we actually want to be that rose that opens. But I think that for those of you who are going to have the opportunity, for instance, of sitting for a week and going to spend a lot of time in the Zendo, I encourage you to sit very still. And as... things arise, and even as it seems like your zazen is focused, understand that that sense of your being focused is extra. There's an expression in Zen called take the backward step. I don't really know the first person to say that, what they meant. But for me, this backward step is manifested in the kind of careful surrender of

[38:47]

that I'm describing, that we do with our breath, or that I try to do sometimes when I can remember with my breath. I could say more, but, you know, I think it's after 11. Actually, according to Gretchen's watch, I borrowed, it's only 10.02. So buckle yourself in. We got another. Better get on that question. Anyway, this, as what I've described as an effort in zazen, is one way practice unfolds. There's other ways. It's... On one hand... This is a natural thing for us to do, this thing called stepping into the way, trying to understand how to live in a useful way.

[39:52]

It's not some horrible chore that we've been regrettably assigned. It's a joy. It's kind of like it's the easiest thing. It's the way we want to discover how to live with happiness. And also it's kind of difficult. We carry our prisons inside of ourselves. We don't realize it until our day goes badly. But really, when it goes badly, it's not so much that it really did go badly, but it didn't live up to our ungrounded hopes. There's almost, there's a semi-requirement, unofficially enforced, that a Dharma talk has to end with a poem.

[40:57]

And so I have a poem from Leonard Cohen, whose music somehow, strangely in the last week, as I was thinking about this, I listened to a bit of Leonard Cohen, His music is sometimes so sad. It was so sad. But I listened to some of Leonard Cohen's poems. One of the ways I prepare a Dharma talk is I waste time by surfing the Internet before I can kind of bear down on it. And so I typed Leonard Cohen poem. And what did I look? Well, here's what came up. It's just a few lines. It's called The Lovesig Monk. L. Cullen. Bye. I shaved my head. I put on robes. I sleep in the corner of a cabin 6,500 feet up a mountain.

[42:03]

It's dismal here. The only thing I don't need is a comb. Mount Baldy Zen Center, 1997. San Francisco, California, 2012. 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, please visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[42:54]

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