Good morning, everybody. Welcome. Welcome to the San Francisco Zen Center. My name is Jordan, Jordan Thorne. I'm a priest here. I'm head of practice here. And it's my opportunity to speak today. So thank you for giving me that opportunity. I want to talk about something called Zazen. And this is something you'll hear about at the Zen Center. If you've been here, this is something you have heard about. And I want to say more. Zazen or Zen meditation is the central practice of this tradition.

[01:01]

And it is a gift that we're given when we walk in the door, an encouragement to practice zazen, to sit facing the wall, facing ourselves. A Japanese Zen teacher who we respect greatly as the founder of our school, of our lineage, or one of the founders, He said, the Badzazan, he said, it is the Dharma gate, the gate of repose and bliss, the practice of realization of totally culminated enlightenment. It is the manifestation of ultimate reality. Traps and snares can never reach it. Once its heart is grasped, you are like a dragon gaining the water, like a tiger entering the mountains. the gate of repose and bliss, or the way we act like a dragon entering the ocean, or a tiger diving into the mountains.

[02:19]

May it be so. May it be so. This is a Zen Buddhist temple, a Zen Buddhist practice center. And Buddhism is a teaching, is a tradition, a practice that has its inspiration, its beginning from awakening. But practicing Buddhism, practicing Zen, is not just about becoming intimate with awakening. It is very necessarily about becoming familiar with delusion, with confusion.

[03:23]

Right from the beginning when we start to practice, we may have a glimmer of insight or spacious mind, but almost certainly we also taste our confused and limited mind. That same teacher who offered those words about dragons and tigers also wrote a poem about Zazen. And he said, contemplating the clear moon, reflecting a mind empty as the open sky, drawn by its beauty i lose myself in the shadows it casts contemplating the clear moon reflecting a mind empty as the open sky drawn by its beauty i lose myself we lose ourselves in the shadows

[04:33]

So Zazen is a meditation practice. And it's more than a meditation practice. It is an orientation of your heart and intention. And it is a metaphor that we use in this school of Buddhism, in this tradition, to help us walk the line between confusion and awakening. It teaches us how to walk between the shadows and the open sky. And in this walking, if we do it completely, really truly in the middle way, in the middle between the shadows and the open sky, we might have the opportunity to understand or to have a glimpse.

[05:46]

of how our mind is Buddha's mind, our heart is Buddha's heart. We might have the chance to understand that this very mind, your very mind, is Buddha's very mind. And also, you might have the chance to think that such a statement is a little pompous or too much. Maybe too grand a statement. And it might be so. Because in the midst of saying things like this very mind is Buddha, also Zen practice is very pragmatic, practical. It is not an orientation

[06:47]

which simply focuses on purity. I think that the fundamental intention of Zen practice is to live a helpful life. Sometimes the starting point of heading towards a helpful life is a messy life. each one of us has our own mess, or not. But one of the consequences of each one of us, starting from our own place, is that there are many ways to enter Zen practice, Buddhist practice, the waking up practice.

[07:52]

But also, There are, at the same time I look around, all the different sorts of folks in this room, of course everybody's going to find their own way into it, but there's some common threads. There are some things we share. For instance, in Zen practice, we follow a particular form when we go to sit down for meditation. Even though everybody's different and everybody's mind is in a different world system, we arrange our bodies in a shared delusion. Here are some of the details that we pay attention to. We find a comfortable, stable, alert posture.

[08:53]

We cross our legs if we can sit on the floor or we sit carefully in a chair with our feet planted securely. We're aware of our bottom on the chair or the cushion. We're aware of our knees or our feet on the floor. We think of straightening. When we first settle ourselves in meditation, we think of straightening our spine. We tuck our chin under, we lift our sternum up, we make certain our nose is above our belly button, pull our head back just a little bit so that our ears are above our shoulders. And while we each are different persons, we try to agree. on these forms, on this form, on this posture. Arranging our body in such a fashion, we then let our hands rest in our lap, making this mudra with our fingers of the right hand below the fingers of our left and our thumb tips lightly touching, resting

[10:18]

this mudra in our lap where it falls. We keep our eyes slightly closed but actually open. We reduce our, we close our eyes a little bit but not all the way and we aim our gaze in front of us several feet. We give up a direct focus with our eyes, but we remain aware of a peripheral sense of what's happening in the room, shadows and insects. And then we pay attention to our breathing. You know, our breath is always happening.

[11:25]

So we can start by paying attention to our exhalation or our inhalation, but wherever we begin, we don't let go of it. We keep attentively paying, noticing our inhalation, our exhalation, and we have confidence that our breathing will happen without our effort. So this is something that we can use as a, we can observe and use as an anchor to return to when the simplicity of our posture and our breath awareness becomes complicated by the fact that we start to plot our life or plan revenge or experience discomfort. or realize that this is a perfect moment. All of those are just distracting thoughts that we drop as we come back to our breath.

[12:31]

Being quiet and being calm and being physically still, which is a very important aspect of zazen, not moving, not moving. this being physically still and quiet and calm in our mind and in our breath allows us to start to see actually who we are. Or not. Maybe we don't see who we are. Contemplating the clear moon, reflecting a mind empty as the open sky, drawn by its beauty, I lose myself in the shadows. So, I've said just a few things about Zazen.

[13:42]

And some of you in this room are experienced meditators who've heard a lot of things about Zazen before. And maybe for some of you it's kind of new. And maybe the next thing I'm going to say is also something some of you have heard a lot before, but I want to say that Zazen is a mystery. It is a mysterious action that moves in us in ways beyond understanding of our selfish minds, of our limited minds. It's like a crack in the ice. of our whole life. One of the things that's important to understand about our mind of Zazen, our mind of Zen meditation, the mind which we try to wake up within,

[14:52]

is that the important experiences that are going to transform us are not just things that happen in the meditation hall. They are the things that happen in our entire life, walking around, talking around, driving around. Because It's difficult to start with our whole life. We start with something particular, like we start by saying, for the next 30 minutes, don't move. And hopefully we gain an experience, an intimacy with understanding, like how our mind does move, that will inform our day, will inform the chaos of our exchanges with friends and foes. There is at the center of Zazen and Zen practice a kind of non-dualistic heart which doesn't make distinctions between Zendo and Budo Hall and movie theaters or how we take our shoes off when we come into this room or how we say hello to someone on the street.

[16:26]

Two weeks ago, time flies, maybe it was three weeks ago, I was on 18th Street. I was at Buy Right Market. I was in the checkout line at Buy Right. And I heard behind me somebody say, that guy up there is a Zen priest. And I thought, immediately I thought, am I slouching? What's my state of mind? What was I thinking about? I didn't want to turn around. Also, there were a few people. I wasn't sure. I didn't want to get to. But I realized that in that line, in that checkout line, was where my practice was being observed by someone, maybe one of you here, later on. today.

[17:28]

And we don't look around in the zendo. We ask people not to gaze upon other people's posture. In some ways, the way we learn about who someone is is when they're at the market, when they're on the sidewalk. I think that this fact is really important. There's a book by, well, there's this book, which by Malcolm Gladwell, and it's called Outliers, the Story of Success. And it's, you know, take it with a grain of salt, but it provides sort of some anecdotes about what are what are some common denominators in people who become accomplished.

[18:36]

And one common denominator is 10,000 hours of practice. 10,000 hours of practice. And Mr. Gladwell uses the example of hockey players and violinists and a whole slew of different professions and shows how actually if you unpack the training and background of people who are successful in those activities, that they have all passed 10,000 hours of practice in their activity. He even... examines the career of the Beatles. And by looking back to the experience the Beatles had in the early 60s of going on five occasions to Hamburg where they performed in a dive club from noon to midnight seven days a week, how they got their 10,000 hours, or so to speak, got their 10,000 hours.

[19:50]

And I think that there's some truth to that, that in when we come to Zazen, even though the non-dual Dharma gate of deliverance is immediately available to us at the same time to ground ourselves in, for instance, Zazen, it takes doing it over and over and over again. But even more complicated than just doing Zazen over and over and over again is In any particular day, even if you're diligent, you might be able to sit an hour or so or two of zazen. Sometimes, occasionally, there's a week extravaganza of zazen. But it's going to take a really long time to get your 10,000 hours if you count your time when you're on the cushion. But if you have a spirit and a heart that walking around and down the street is also your time on the cushion, well, you'll get there real soon.

[20:54]

You'll become a 10,000-hour practitioner. But it means that you have to not just think Zen practice is something that happens in the Zendo. It's something that happens at Buy Right Market. And elsewhere. Safely do. There was a great Zen teacher in China, one of the great ones in the so-called Golden Age of Zen. His name is Guishan. And he had, I think, it's reported that he had 1,500 monks in his temple. And who does the arithmetic on this? I'm not sure. And who counts the 10,000 hours? I'm not sure. But it's reported that he had 43

[21:55]

disciples who had penetrated to the marrow of Zen. Well, one of his disciples who hadn't penetrated to the marrow was someone named Ling Yun. And Ling Yun practiced for 10, 20, 30 years without success. He continued after 30 years to feel a great doubt, but he also continued after 30 years to practice. And then one day, not when he was in the meditation hall, but when he was out for a walk on a path, he stopped and looked across the valley and saw a blooming peach tree. And at the sight of that tree, his heart opened wide.

[23:00]

His heart became sufficient. And he said, he wrote a poem to his teacher. And he said, for 30 years I looked for an answer. Many times leaves fell, new ones sprouted. Today, one glimpse of peach blossoms. Now, no more doubts. and just this. And when Guishan read this poem from his student, he responded, he replied by saying, one who enters with ripened causes will never go away. One who enters with ripened causes will never go away. He approved of Ling Yun in this way. What does it mean? develop ripened causes. How many 10,000 hours of practice did Ling Yun log before his doubts were settled?

[24:08]

So not talking about our big life, but talking about our particular life when we're in the zendo. When we're in the zendo, when we're on our meditation cushion, we do the same thing over and over. We sit upright, we tuck our chin in, we attempt to drop the wandering thoughts of our mind. and rest in the fullness of just our breath, just this moment. And there is a possibility doing this that we can have a taste of the marvelous moment that we're in.

[25:35]

We might be able to be like a kid sometimes we see at the beach who picks up a seashell and looks at it and you feel that holding that seashell they're seeing the whole world in this marvelous place that doing one thing can open for us. We might understand that when we meet one person and how we are with that one person is how we are with everybody. In this way we maybe can open a little wider. I say open a little wider because zazen reveals the effort to be still and not move, reveals our guts, reveals every instinct that we have, opens us wide.

[26:40]

When Shakyamuni Buddha, who was our great founder of this Zen tradition, of this Buddhist tradition, when he was sitting under the bow tree after following years of practice and after a resolution to simply sit down and be there until he understood. As days passed, he had a difficult time. He did not feel that he was resting easily. Problems and concerns, and you might even say demons attacked him, the same demons that attack us. And he did not have to get up from his cushion and from his seat and consult some other instructions, but rather was able just simply by becoming more and more present with himself at that spot where he was, with his eyes open, he was able to at some point understand

[28:02]

a great truth that still reverberates for us in this tradition. And the power of Buddha's awakening is a power that we also have within us to realize for ourselves the important practice, the important fact of Buddhism is that all of us have the opportunity to follow in his footsteps he was a very good student we shouldn't be disappointed if we don't match his understanding but meanwhile there's no reason we can't Now, talking about Zazen is a little complicated because I find myself saying things that I want to say to be helpful, but also I recognize that even as I say them, oh, well, they're maybe not the entire story.

[29:29]

Maybe that's because they're my story, not your story. We each have to find our Zazen story. our own awakening. We are not the same as Ling Yun. Hearing about his glimpse of peach blossoms and his opened heart, maybe we can appreciate it, but it does not open our heart wide. We have to find our own peach tree, our own So this practice of awakening through being still and not moving is actually difficult. It takes a lot of energy to not do anything but be present. And one of the things that makes it also, just when we think we maybe are making some progress with ourself, one of the things that makes it richer, emotionally satisfying, but also maybe complicated is that we also need to understand that we don't do this for our own sake.

[31:27]

That we don't do this because we want to have a special state of mind. But we do this because we want to be helpful to other people. We want to encourage them. Even we're willing, we might be willing to sacrifice our state of mind for somebody else's benefit. This is easier to do, to have that attitude. When we know without any doubt that everyone we meet is on the same path that we are. And that everyone we meet has the same instinct towards awakening. And that being first across the finish line is in some ways to be last.

[32:29]

You know, we cannot make this trip on our own. We start off on our own because we start off with our limited self, perhaps in pain or maybe perhaps looking for glory. We start off on our own, but we will not continue and we get the 10,000 hours or whatever hours it is. on our own. We need to practice with other people. We need to have friends. We need to be encouraged by friends. We need to encourage friends ourselves. This is really a glorious happy journey filled with painful missteps. Dogen Zenji, who told us about the dragons and the tigers, and mentioned in the same person who contemplated the clear moon and lost himself in the shadows, Dogen Zenji said to the community he practiced with one morning after breakfast, he offered these words.

[34:13]

He said, Students of the way, do not cling to your own understanding. Even if there is something you do understand, you should ask yourself whether there might be still something not completely resolved or whether there may be something beyond what you understand that you should try to understand. So you should seek far and wide for those who know You should also inquire into the words of the sages of former times. Yet, do not cling even to the words of people of old. You should think that also they could be wrong. Even though you believe them, think whether there might be something beyond this and turn to that and keep inquiring. This is an important, I think, instruction.

[35:26]

When I read those words to myself, I was encouraged by. You should seek far and wide for those who know and inquire into the words of sages of former times, yet do not cling even to the words of people of old. You should think that they also could be wrong. Even though you believe them, think whether there might be something beyond this and turn to that and keep inquiring. So I hope that we all will keep inquiring, keep turning towards the light and question whether we can do better.

[36:16]

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