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. We're coming to the last several days, last few days of our practice period, our spring practice period. And I think about it. tonight, really, after the Dharma talk, we might say that the sashin, we enter into our sashin, even though it really starts tomorrow morning, but that feeling of we wake up in the morning and we're in our three-day meditation retreat, sashin, and for those people who have been practicing online and are all over the world actually, Colombia and Mexico and Ireland and Italy and Sri Lanka, Nova Scotia, I suggested to those people that they might, if they can, take some days of mindfulness, some quieter days, maybe let go of their screens

[01:27]

and internet, and take some time to sit more and join the seshin in that way. And I also, for those of you who are unable to do the full three days, some of you are doing one day, all of you might take these three days and think of them more as days of mindfulness. What might that be for you? What might you let go of to have some quieter days? Tomorrow morning, the Eno Kim will read the Sashin Admonitions. And these are a set of reminders and guidelines for entering into Sashin in the most in the deepest way, I would say, and in a way that takes care of yourself and takes care of your fellow practitioners.

[02:34]

The admonitions start out with sashin is a time to gather the mind, collect the mind. The word sashin means to gather, collect, and convey the mind. So as we practice in silence, sitting a lodge, eating our meals and meditation posture, serving one another, listening to the Dharma, and coming back to our cushion over and over again, we gather the mind, which might have been scattered, which may very well feel scattered. We gather it in. into one suchness. What does that mean? So all these admonitions are to help us, to support us, to help us to gather the mind.

[03:40]

And some of the admonitions are no writing, no reading, no talking unless you're working and need to use functional speech also to guard the eyes, meaning not looking around, not having eye contact, not looking at others, but taking care of our own practice and our own what's before us rather than looking around at others. So these admonitions are not depriving us of something, or punitive even, or we might have some like reaction almost to that, but they're ways to truly support us to enter the session thoroughly without distracting ourselves in various habitual ways.

[04:46]

So if we enter completely, the sashin and the guidelines and the admonitions, the sashin will meet us there completely. As I've said many times, there is no such thing as a sashin that's kind of out there that you're supposed to be doing. The sashin is your practice meeting the schedule and whatever happens throughout the day and coming back to your cushion, what you bring to your cushion. what you bring to the care and I would say impeccable quality of following the admonitions. And to the degree that we enter, the Sashin will meet us there with that much powerful and power and depth and and transformational activity.

[05:52]

And if we cut corners and miss and are resistant, which can happen, or it's hard and you don't want to, and if we allow ourselves to kind of be drawn by those likes and dislikes and preferences, The sesheen will feel like that, a little bit ho-hum. So each of us has the, you know, the kind of personal power, I would say, to deeply enter the sesheen. And the admonitions will help us. The sense, sensory, you know, the eyes and the ears and reading and speaking, you know, these are very powerful sense organs and a lot of energy can be flow out through the eyes, you know, to objects.

[06:57]

And there's other ways to just, in the scene, let it just be the scene instead of being involved. dragged in and elaborating, getting caught by. We don't put blindfolds on, but to practice rather with allowing each thing to come and go and not be caught. Same with not writing and speaking. A lot of energy flows out, or this is a technical term, outflows, ashrava. it also sometimes is translated as leaking. And we can feel our energy kind of leaking out. And we can also feel it gathering in, the sesshin, gathering the mind-body. So these are things to work with, and we've been practicing for the last six weeks, almost six weeks, with our speech and our...

[08:08]

words and noticing and attuning and listening. And during Sashin, we're going to let go of speech and we're going to practice noble silence. And also there's other times in the day we practice silence, but in Sashin, the spaciousness of day after day of silence will also support our practice. Most early, it's maybe one of the most wonderful things about sasheen. We relate and communicate with one another wordlessly. We convey our practice without having to say anything. By the way we move and serve food and make space for one another and help one another and give each other space. And as Tenchen Roshi says, leave each other profoundly alone.

[09:11]

And I understand that as give each other all the space we need to practice without getting involved. And at the same time, be ready to help if need be, and be aware and attuned. So this is all part of the subtleties and beauty, really, of Sashim together. During session I'll be offering posture suggestions, meaning I'll walk through the zendo and I might notice some area of your back or your shoulders or head that might benefit by more awareness or attention there and I might place my hand on a spot

[10:12]

And if for some reason this is something you do not want to have happen, please let the acting Tonto know. Jeremy, just let him know by a note so that I can know to not do a posture suggestion with you. The practice of silence is, you know, word speaking and not speaking is our daily life and there are a number of koans that where silence is maybe the center, the center expression. We can express ourselves in silence, we can express

[11:15]

Everything in silence. And I wanted to share with you a koan and then a story that in one of the reflection papers that someone wrote, they ended their reflection paper with a story and it reminded me of this koan. They resonated and so I wanted to share that with you, And before I recite the koan, share it with you, I wanted to say something about the fourth skanda, you know, the psychophysical self, the psychophysical flowing being, is in the Heart Sutra, it talks about the five skandhas.

[12:19]

The five skandhas are aggregates, or heaps is another translation of the word skanda, heap. And these five skandhas you're familiar with from the Heart Sutra, form, feelings, perceptions, formations, and consciousness, those five. The fourth one, which is in Sanskrit, samskara. Samskaraskanda is, it means the sam part, sam is together, and the skara is maker. So the samskara is a together maker. It's a formation, it forms something. It brings things together and forms something, the samskara. And in the samskara skanda, our volitional activity, volitional, which is karmic activity, and when I say volitional, I think we talked about this in a class, there's many activities that are involuntary, involuntary actions.

[13:40]

bodily functions, and all sorts of things. And then there's voluntary things. And the samskara skanda and karmic formations, when it's depicted in the 12-fold chain, the pictorial 12-fold chain where each of the links is a picture, the karmic formations is pictured as somebody, a potter, making pots. So it's a person with pots around them and they're forming pots. So they're making these vessels. And our current formations, the other skandhas of form, which includes all the sense organs and the objects of the sense organs, and those are kind of neutral, you know, we see or hear something and it's sound, it's an audible, it's a visual, it's a tasteable or a touchable.

[14:48]

And in that, you know, that experience of just a visual may not have valence one way or the other. That happens in the second skanda, which is feeling or which comes in Pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. So you hear a sound, and it's just sound. And then there's a noting of a feeling, unpleasant. And in the samskara, we have a kind of emotional reaction to it. Like, I hate that. I hate that sound. I hate when the sirens come up. during zazen and ruin my zazen. This is part of the samskara, skanda, where somebody else might hear a siren and say, oh, I love hearing that. When that siren came and helped me after that accident, I was so happy.

[15:52]

Every time I hear it, I'm just transported. I'm so happy. That's somebody else's relationship due to their own karmic life when they hear siren. Siren has no It has no valence one way or the other. We give it positive, negative, or we have greed, hate, and delusion around it, or all sorts of things, joy and jealousy and pushing away and grabbing it. This is samskaras kanda, the karmic formations. And when we act on those, more karmic formations are formed. So as we've been working with speech, you know, I think people have come up and become connected and more clear about their karmic life, their karmic consciousness, their karmic tendencies and habits and patterns.

[16:53]

These are patterns. And they're malleable. You know, if you think of a potter, they're malleable. So I wanted to add that a little bit to our conversation, this karmic formations and the world, we each live in our own world of karmic consciousness and formations and we share many things and we don't share things due to our past experiences and education and socioeconomic life and religion of origin, just you name it, and our world is created by those things. How we see the world. How we experience the world. There isn't a world out there that's a kind of thing.

[17:57]

We impute meaning. And in our speech in particular, I think a number of people have been mentioning seeing these patterns from their family. So in Sashin, where there's not much going on, it's pretty quiet in terms of input. We can watch the samskarskandha, the reactivity, how we bring greed, hate, and delusion to circumstances that It's just a bowl of hot cereal, you know. But, you know, I like it, I don't like it. Why do they always serve such and such? That's part of our karmic life. And we can watch it arising and also refrain or see how we get involved or not.

[18:59]

So the koan, this is the first case in the Book of Serenity. The Book of Serenity is 100 cases that are more connected with Soto School and the Blue Cliff Record, another collection of koans and Zen stories is more connected with Rinzai School. There's other collections. And one might, these were, put together in an order. Someone, they didn't just say, they didn't just gather them up. This is number one, this is the first one. And it's called The World Honored One Ascends the Seat. And I'm sure many of you know it. I've been turning it myself for many years and it came up for me tonight for a number of reasons. One, because of silence and our about to go into silence.

[20:06]

And also this story that this person told me in their reflection paper. And then this karmic formations is in there too. So one day the world honored one, world honored one is an epithet for the Buddha, the world honored one. One day the world honored one ascended the seat, meaning got up on a meditation platform somewhere on Vulture Peak or whatever. which signals people that there's a Dharma talk about to happen. You know, let's gather. So, one day the world honored one ascended the seat. Manjushri struck the gavel. That's some kind of gavel. Ooh, that doesn't sound strong. And said, clearly observe the Dharma of the Dharma king. The Dharma of the Dharma king is thus. And the world honored one got down from his seat.

[21:14]

And that's the koan. So you can picture that you can be there. If you were there, you're about ready to hear a Dharma talk, and it's Shakyamuni Buddha, And he takes his place. And Manjushri, and you all know who Manjushri is, or many of you know, Manjushri is the bodhisattva of wisdom. And Manjushri, we have this size Manjushri in the Zendo. Manjushri sits in the meditation hall. At Green Gulch, it's life-size. And Manjushri carries different things, sometimes a sutra, sometimes a staff like this, sometimes a sword that cuts through delusion, but it's a manifestation of wisdom, wisdom that sees things the way they are, sees reality, that kind of wisdom, not just gathering of knowledge.

[22:18]

So Manjushri hits the gavel, calls people attention, and then indicates clearly observed, tells everybody, clearly observed the Dharma of the Dharma king. The Dharma of the Dharma king is thus. And the Buddha gets down from his seat, and, well, what happened? Why didn't the Buddha speak? And what happened there? One might think, one might wonder. So this is, you know, for me, this koan. It's turning and turning and turning. It's one of those gifts that keeps giving, I find. And I brought this koan up a number of weeks ago, actually, because in the commentary it says, it brings up this sandiva that I brought up, this word that means whatever it needs to mean at that time.

[23:27]

It meets the situation with a word or a speech that meets exactly what you need. And in the commentary it says, if there had been a person of saindava, then Manjushri wouldn't have had to do what he did. So in this silence, the Buddha is fully expressing the Dharma, the truth. the Dharma of the Dharma King, the truth, Dharma is one translation of Dharma. Dharma means many things, but the true teaching. And there's a meditation instruction in here which is Manjushri, Wisdom Bodhisattva is saying to us, clearly observe the Dharma of the Dharma King. And I would venture to say that that meditation instruction is not about, and vulture peaked 2,500 years ago, but right now, clearly observe the Dharma of the Dharma king, or the queen, and the Dharma teachers, the Dharma of the Dharma teachers is thus.

[24:46]

It doesn't sort of reside somewhere back in the day. It's thus, and thus, and thus, Are we clearly observing the Dharma of the Dharma King, which doesn't depend on Shakyamuni Buddha or Dogen or Suzuki Roshi? Are we clearly observing this moment, this thus? So in the... There's a poem, there's commentary in poems, and this poem says, the unique breeze of reality. Do you see it? Slowly creation runs her loom and shuttle, weaving the ancient brocade, incorporating the forms of spring

[25:52]

But what can be done about Manjushri's leaking? But nothing can be done about Manjushri's leaking. So this story, and this poem too, it's the unique breeze of reality. Do you see it? And this poem is for us. Right now, the unique breeze of reality. Clearly observe. Do you see it? And then this next line, I had said slowly before, but it's continuously, continuously creation runs her loom and shuttle, weaving the ancient brocade, incorporating the forms of spring. So this image of the loom, and actually loom in... In Japanese, the words ki, the character for ki is function and also loom.

[27:03]

So you have this image of this loom that's weaving the ancient brocade. What is the ancient brocade? The one cloth where we are all threads being woven in, in all the myriad forms. incorporating all the forms of spring, all the forms of each one of us into one fabric, you know. Clearly observe the Dharma teachers is thus, do you see it? And then that last line, but nothing can be done about Manjushri's leaking So this leaking, you know, my commentary on this is it was enough that the Buddha got on the seat and just was Buddha.

[28:16]

Just aliveness, just thusness, suchness. What can you add to that? What can you take away from that? There's nothing missing there. And we miss it, the unique breeze of reality that took that form of climbing the Dharma seat. So Manjushri in, and this is how I understand it, in great compassion, pointed, you know, hit the gavel and pointed, clearly observed folks, everybody look, wake up, open your eyes. This is the Dharma of the Dharma king. But that was like extra, you know, that was leaking. That was some kind of pointing out something that, you know, was complete without pointing, but out of compassion for us, Manjushri and all the people who were there waiting for the Dharma talk.

[29:25]

Manjushri helped us by saying, look, look everybody. So in this commentary, or in this poem, nothing can be done about Manjushri's leaking. We have to leak. We have to point out. We have to say something, as Karagiri Roshi said. If we just sit in silence, or never share the Dharma or try and convey it out of compassion our life and what matters to us. Even though everyone's part of that brocade and is completely lacks nothing, still we don't realize it, right? So we have, out of compassion, there's leaking. There's a kind of outflow. Outflow meaning as if there was some object outside of, that's separate from us.

[30:30]

So nothing can be done about Manjushri's leaking. And this leaking, I understand, is compassionate action, actually, which our words can be, or our gestures can be. So you can turn this koan if you'd like. What reminded me of this koan was what this person wrote in their reflection paper and a number of the reflection papers and I do encourage you even if you thought you wouldn't do it to maybe give it a try to look at patterns of speech and how you've been practicing the speech. It's not too late to send one to me. Many people have been quite honest with what they've seen in their patterns of speech and areas they want to work with and have trouble working with, losing tempers.

[31:45]

We've heard some people talk about them in class. way-seeking mind talks and feeling some maybe judgment about ourselves around these. One person wrote, they didn't even want to do the online practice period because of the theme, because they thought they would really be criticizing themselves so much about their speech, they didn't even want to go there. They didn't want to get close to it, but they did it anyway. Anyway, this person, told me this story, and I'll try and tell it to you. And maybe you know it. I think it's a traditional story. The story is about a kind of worker who was working for a king, and one of his jobs was to carry a kind of...

[32:49]

with buckets on either end of a long kind of wooden pole thing, and he had two buckets, and he would go down to the stream, which was a walk, quite a walk away, and bring back these two buckets filled with water, and that was one of his jobs. And one of the buckets was very well made, and... would carry the full pail of water all the way back, and the other bucket had this leak. It was leaky. And by the time he got back to the estate, the leaky bucket would be about half full. And one of the buckets, the bucket that wasn't leaky, was kind of proud, you know, that it was, it could carry a whole big full bucket all the way back from the stream.

[33:53]

And the one with the leak was just so kind of ashamed of himself. And he finally, after about two years of this job that they had of going back and forth, the bucket with the leak spoke to the workman who was doing this job and said, I just want to say I'm so ashamed. By the time you get back, It's just half filled with water. And I can't, the bucket was saying, I can't hold it all. I can't carry it. I'm leaky. And so the workman listened and he said, well, okay, I hear you. As we walk to the stream today, I want you to just notice, look around and notice some things. So they walked to the stream and the bucket that had spoken to him, was noticing, and when they got back, it was half full, he said, I noticed there were all these wildflowers, all these flowers all along.

[35:01]

And the workman said, yes, there are wildflowers. And did you notice which side of the road they were on? And they were only on the side of the road of the leaky bucket. And then the workman said, about two years ago, when we first started doing this job, I noticed that you were leaky and I put these seeds in my pocket and I cast them out all along the side that you were on. And over these years you've been watering these seeds every day and now we have this luxuriant wildflower kind of walkway thanks to you. And the bucket, the leaky bucket, realized that he had been comparing himself to this other bucket person, and had been judging himself as weak, criticizing himself, seeing all his faults, and embarrassed, and chastising himself terribly.

[36:17]

Meanwhile, he didn't see at all his strengths, you know, that had been beautifying this pathway and giving moisture to these flowers. So the end of the story is, you know, sometimes we don't know, sometimes our weaknesses are our strengths, and sometimes our strengths are our weaknesses, you know, so to be, judging and comparing in this way is, it's not wide enough, it's not big enough, doesn't include. And these are often the way we chastise ourself and are deeply critical of ourselves. We don't see, we don't see how what we call weakness, how that is appreciated and endearing

[37:18]

and is compassionate and helpful often. So I wanted to leave you with that story of... And I connected it because of the leaking. Nothing can be done about Manjushri's leaking. That's the kind of guy Manjushri was trying to help. And that's the kind of bucket this was. And in being who it was, it was serving in ways that it didn't even understand. I hear the wonderful hall clock saying it's 8.30, which is when we're supposed to end, right? So, Just one last word as we enter Sashin, just as it says in our Zazen instructions from Dogen.

[38:23]

Do not think good or bad. Do not administer pros and cons. Do not name what's strength, what's weakness in ourselves just with sincerity and devotion enter deeply into the sesheen, into the schedule, into all the admonitions, hold them as precious gifts, really, that will support us during these next three days. And for many people, three days, you know, is right around day three, we might be thinking, oh, I wish it could go longer, you know? I finally settled down, and then it's over. And I just also want to suggest, just forget one day, two day, three days. It doesn't matter. Just clearly observe the Dharma of the Dharma ones and the unique breeze of reality each moment.

[39:37]

Let go of counting. Let go of everything. Thank you very much.

[40:10]

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