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. Taking a moment to take a look at you and feel your presence here with me. This is not as good as when we get to give lectures in the Buddha Hall at City Center. at least I can see you all, which is wonderful. And just take a breath or two here to settle down. Seems like we've been in the midst of an enormous amount of change lately. I hear the rumors are that we finally come to an end of this election season, which is a positive thing. Now I think we can turn our attention to all the work that needs to be done on all the many issues in this country and the world.

[01:03]

So I'm happy that that's the case. As Kodo mentioned, we are halfway through our practice period and we're having a one day sitting. Most of you I think are sitting with us and I think it's wonderful that you have a moment to sit down now. Maybe we can settle for a day and find out where we really are, find out who we really are, find out what it's like to be together in quiet. So for those of you sitting in the Sashin, thank you for taking some time out of your busy day to do that. And for those of you that have come to the lecture, welcome, and thank you for coming to hear something about Buddhism. As Kodo said, the theme of the practice period is fierce compassion, enacting bodhisattva principles in a troubled world.

[02:08]

And so far we have studied Shakyamuni as bodhisattva, Manju Sri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, Samanta Bhadra, the bodhisattva of wisdom in action, and Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion. There is so much going on in the world now, so much suffering and confusion. The bodhisattva vows to live for the benefit of all beings. Does this unrealistic goal make sense? How do we do this? How do we use this idealistic goal as a compass and a guidance for our life? And I think it does make sense because I think it is the only practical way to approach life. When we realize through practice and careful observation of our life that it's only through giving up our self-centered desires and helping others that we can be truly fulfilled.

[03:09]

It is only through recognizing our deep connection to all beings that we can become free. So the bodhisattva path is both a path of liberation for others and a path of liberation for ourselves. In the class on Samantabhadra Bodhisattva, I shared this statue of Samantabhadra, which I will hopefully share now. Let me see if I can do that. Okay, let's see. Did you get a picture of a bodhisattva sitting on an elephant? Good. So, Samantabhadra represents the shining function of wisdom, wisdom in action, one of my favorite bodhisattvas.

[04:18]

And she's shown on a blue lotus, sitting on a blue lotus, on a white elephant. And white elephants are symbols in Buddhism for enlightened practice and awareness. And a blue lotus is a symbol of wisdom or enlightenment. And David mentioned in the opening ceremony that our great ancestor A.H. Dogen wrote, that the time and place that the blue lotus flowers open and spread are in the midst of fire. in the midst of time of fire. And he went on to say, now is the time of great fires and great sufferings. We are afflicted both by literal fires and figurative fires, pandemic, systemic racism, social injustice, gender inequality, climate crisis, economic disparity, a divided country, and other conflagrations caused by the three poisons of greed, hate, and delusion.

[05:23]

So now is the time for blue lotuses to bloom. And blue lotus blooming means that bodhisattvas are needed and coming to work on the suffering of the world. It's sort of, I think, ironic that in times of suffering is when bodhisattvas are needed most and when they come forward. It sort of makes sense. And I picked this picture of Samanta Bhadra for a couple of reasons. One is she is sitting in a very quiet zazen pose, which will, I hope, be an inspiration for today's sitting. And in her right hand, she's holding it up in a mudra of fearlessness, of calm, settledness. And her left hand is in the mudra of giving, of generosity. I'm taking a look at her now, some more.

[06:27]

And she, usually Samantabhadra is on this elephant, which is sort of striding along with a sort of sense of calm, deliberate activity imbued with clear, considered intention and dignity. But I think this elephant and this Samantabhadra has decided to settle down, of course, with all of her clear intention and dignity to sit with us today, to take a day off from her busy wisdom and action, her work in the world, to sit with us and encourage us. So I just thought I would, this, of course, is a marvelous porcelain figure from a museum in Inner Mongolia in China. Beautiful picture. So I hope that inspires you to sit quietly today.

[07:32]

So we're going to take today to settle in and find our home in the heart of all beings. Samantabhadra is... a bodhisattva that is a purveyor of the interconnection of all beings, someone who courses in the world of interconnection. And so we want to sit in the heart of our interconnection today. And I want to share this sort of story, this root into our interconnection. This is a story from the Tang Dynasty. dynasty Chinese poet Wang Wei. This is 8th century China, and this is the story. In my middle years, I became fond of the way. I make my home in the foothills of South Mountain. When the spirit moves me, I go off by myself to see things that I alone must see.

[08:51]

I follow the stream to the source. I sit there and watch for the moment when the clouds crop up. Or I may meet a woodsman and we laugh and talk and forget about going home. I love this story. The first line, in my middle years, I became fond of the way. Maybe some of you have become fond of the way, fond of the way of Buddhism, fond of your way of practice. And he made his home in the foothills of South Mountain, made his home next to a mountain. We might say next to a mountain of practice, you've made your home on the foothills of practice. Of course, I love mountains. I've always lived in mountains. I was raised in New Mexico. on a 7,000 plateau of a 10,000-foot mountain.

[09:56]

And, of course, I lived many years at Tasar, which is in a valley surrounded by magical mountains. And, of course, here in the Bay Area, we have Mount Tamalpais. We have many mountains around us. And mountains are really sort of a symbol in Zen of our Zazen practice, of the practice of sitting, sitting like a mountain. And then he goes on, when the spirit moves me, I go off by myself to see things that I alone must see. I follow the stream to the source. So I'm kind of thinking of this story as a sort of metaphor of our sitting here today, you know. The spirit has moved us to go and sit. We will sit with our sangha and the support of our sangha, but we will be sitting by ourselves to see. What alone we will see. And we will follow the stream to the source. While we're sitting, what source will we find?

[10:59]

What will be the source that we follow the stream to? What is the source of our life? What is the source of our awakening? What is the source of our compassion? And when you sit, you will sit and watch for the moment when the clouds crop up. We don't have to wait very long when we sit down before the thoughts come moving through our mind, moving constantly through our minds. Of course, our way is to see the clouds, oh, there they are, oh, there they go, coming and going across our mind, but not always so quietly for us. Quite often, we get very involved and say, we don't like that cloud. I wish that cloud was different than this cloud. I'm very unhappy with that cloud. But this story, the person is sitting there with the clouds just arising.

[12:03]

And what is that moment of arising? Can we actually quiet ourselves enough to see the moment when the thought comes up and where the source of that thought is? Well, we'll probably go on to that. And then the next line, but I may meet someone who interrupts my quiet sitting in my composure. And that's fine because we will laugh and talk and forget about this search and continue our interaction and living in the world as it is. So to be present at this moment is to witness both the inevitability of our thoughts and their illusory nature.

[13:13]

They're there, but they pass so quickly. This is the birth of compassion, when we observe the production of phenomenon and understand their source. The source of the stream of experience is completely calm, and serene. Still, something will crop up. Being willing to give up great calm and to be involved again in particular thoughts is compassion. This is the bodhisattva way to willingly enter the world of confusion and suffering. Compassion comes from emptiness and the ability to sit with the suffering of all sentient beings. want to share a little bit of guidance here from our founding teacher, Suzuki Hiroshi. Suzuki Hiroshi started his lecture titled, Be Kind with Yourself, with a sentence, I want you to have the actual feeling of true practice.

[14:22]

So we're sitting here and he is saying he would like us to have the actual feeling of true practice. And he says, we put emphasis on warm heart, warm zazen. The warm feeling we have in our practice is, in other words, enlightenment or Buddha's mercy, Buddha's mind. Warm heart, warm zazen. warm feeling in our practice and he says we start this warm-hearted practice by paying attention to our breath we have many instructions on paying attention to our breath all of you that have taken zazen instruction know the beginning is follow your breath and pay attention to your posture and sometimes we say count each breath, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 on each exhale, and then start again at one.

[15:34]

And this is a good way to increase our concentration if we're feeling sleepy or we're thinking too much and we need to focus on our breath. Maybe at some point we get tired of counting our breath, maybe after three or four years we do that, although I remember Suzuki Roshi had almost drowned at a stream at Tashara. This was a couple of years before he died, and he came into the Zendo and said, we need to all return to counting our breath. That's what we need to do. We need to focus on counting. We're not yet mature enough to just pay attention to the flow of our breath. But so you can count your breath, or you can just pay attention to each breath as it comes in and goes out. You can put your attention sort of in your Hara, in the center of your body, and Just follow it. And we can actually bring a lot of concentration to following our breath by actually following it as it comes in and moves entirely through our body when it stops after the inhale and just turns to make the exhale.

[16:47]

So, There's a lot to paying attention to our breath, but the emphasis that Tsukiroshi is putting here is we want to have a warm-hearted way of paying attention to our breath, to take good care of our breath. And what does it mean to actually take good care of our breath? Hmm. Are we sometimes critical of our breath? Oh, I'm not breathing deeply enough, I'm breathing too shallow. Do we constrict our breath? What is our relationship to our breathing? Do we have a warm-hearted, caring relationship with our breathing? Our breathing is so central to our life, so central to our connection to the world. And how do we care for that breathing? in a warm-hearted way.

[17:50]

He says, if you are very kind with your breathing, one breath after another, you will have a refreshed, warm feeling in your zanzan. You know, there's a kind of, as you're paying attention to your breathing with this kind of warm feeling, you can actually feel some warmth up, in your heart, the source of your compassion, warm feeling in your heart, warm sense of caring for the world and yourself. And of course, you can extend this kind feeling to not only this part of your body, but your whole body, the aching part of your body, the part of your body that is not feeling so good. Hmm. Such a miracle to have a body, to be alive in a human body, and to be able to breathe.

[19:05]

And of course, we have our mind and what's going on in our mind. And can we have a kind, warm-hearted feeling to what's going on in our mind? Can we actually spend today sitting with a warm, kind-hearted feeling for our breathing, for our body, for our mind? Can we sit with kindness and non-judgment about everything that we are experiencing? This is not so easy. given that we are all karmic human beings, and some thoughts come into our mind that we go, whoa, I shouldn't be angry, I shouldn't be feeling this way, I shouldn't have been slighted by that person.

[20:13]

These thoughts that come into our mind are a product of both our karmic life and the karmic life of all the people we're associated with. This is just the nature of being a human being. But can we sit with some non-judgment and just say, oh, these thoughts are just Buddhas sitting on lotus flowers arriving in my mind. And they are. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the mind and what to do with it. The poem, Harmony of Difference and Equality, begins... with the mind of the great sage of India is intimately transmitted from west to east. So when the great sage of India brought Buddhism from India to China, and then, of course, it was brought by Suzuki Rishi to America, what was brought was the great, the mind of the great sage.

[21:16]

And that is Buddha's big mind that includes everything. The mind we have when we practice azan is the great mind. Suzuki Roshi says, we don't try to see anything. We stop conceptual thinking. We stop emotional activity. We just sit. Whatever happens to us, we are not bothered. We just sit. It's like something happening in the great sky. Whatever kind of bird flies through it, the sky doesn't care. This is the mind transmitted from Buddha to us. Hmm. Well, of course, Sikurashi means that we don't actually stop emotional activity. We stop letting emotional activity push us around. And we don't stop conceptual thinking. We stop letting our thinking push us around. And we sit like we're sitting in a big sky.

[22:22]

The sky is a metaphor for emptiness or oneness. During most of our daily activities, we are so busy with the many things of our life that we have no time to sense this oneness, this big sky, this connection to a bigger self. In sitting, we get a sense that the limited life we are living is a reflection of something bigger. Sometimes while sitting, your senses may be quiet enough that you can actually see or hear. with a kind of clarity, and you sense a quiet around things, reconnecting to something bigger, something mysterious. Whatever happens to us, we are not bothered. That's what the Zikrashi said. So there's a famous saying about sitting, a teaching on sitting. Yao Shan was sitting, and a monk asked him,

[23:24]

in steadfast sitting, what do you think? And Yashan said, think not thinking. And the monk said, how do you think not thinking? And Yashan replied, non-thinking. This is a kind of fundamental teaching about our relationship to our thinking. We do non-thinking, and we do non-thinking by thinking not thinking. So, well, just let's deconstruct that a little bit. Thinking is, of course, we know what we do with thinking. Thinking's all our mental faculties, the mind, problem solving, moving towards a goal, planning things. But there's something always propelling it forward in our thinking. It's interesting when you're observing your thinking that the central character in your thinking is you. You are propelling your thinking. So much of your thinking is actually around you. Very often, sometimes when you're sitting zazen, you'll be criticizing yourself, telling stories about others and you.

[24:31]

That is thinking. And of course, one can actually do not thinking, which is actually not to think at all, or to see the spaces between the thinking. And if one settles deeply enough into zazen, one can kind of just say, well, I'm just going to get rid of all that thinking. I'm going to sort of like go away. And that's a kind of denying your life. And that's not exactly where we want to go either. Non-thinking is kind of both thinking and not thinking. It's putting them together. It's letting the thinking happen, but not letting it catch you, not being caught by it, not building on it. This is sort of just another way of setting. Let the clouds go through. Relax. Just be with your thinking and just let things come and go.

[25:31]

When thoughts arise, be aware of it. Just don't pursue it. Let it come in, let it go. That is non-thinking. Sukiroshi would say, if a thought comes in, welcome it, but don't invite it to stay for tea. Don't put energy into it. It is the difference between grasping your life with our desire to further it or canceling it. Let your life be our life without grasping it or pushing it away. Appreciating it as it is. Non-thinking is a kind of thinking that goes with the flow of life. In that it doesn't go by ego or desire or me or mine. If a thought comes by, we don't grab it and make it mine. We let it be free. Non-thinking is a way of being in our lives without thinking or not thinking.

[26:32]

Letting things unfold without grasping. This is a moment today to let things unfold without grasping at them. And even if you're in a pickle for some reason, something that's really got a hold of you, sitting steadfastly will help, will give you some solidity, will settle your heart. So our commitment today is to return to steadfast sitting, to our warm-hearted breath. Someone might say to me, Ed, well, this is all very confusing. It seems like I'm not doing anything at all, just sitting here like this. I shared this other story of Yaoshan.

[27:45]

Yaoshan was sitting zazen, and Shurdo asked him, what are you doing here? And Yaoshan answered, I'm not doing anything at all. Sherdo said, well, in that case, you're sitting idly. And Yashan replied, well, if I were sitting idly, then I would be doing something. And Sherdo asked, you say you're not doing anything. What is this not doing? What is this not doing that we're doing when we're sitting here? And Yashan replied, not even the 10,000 sages know. What a mystery to sit here and not do anything and just focus on feeling being alive.

[28:54]

Remembering what it means to just feel being alive. Feel the feeling. of being alive. We don't even need to understand what it is. Not even 10,000 sages know what it is really to be alive, to be a human being. The sages have written many stories and poems. But we have the opportunity today to quiet down enough to actually settle into that feeling of being alive. And that warm feeling in our breath. And that feeling of being connected to something bigger than our busy, active, small view of our life that our mind so easily builds.

[30:08]

to rest in something larger for a little while. course, eventually we will get up at the end of our day of sitting, and we'll get very involved in our lives. And we'll forget that we're actually alive, because it's so compelling, the busy life we live. And we'll forget that this is really happening, that we're actually a human being living this life with all of its complexity.

[31:13]

But I suggest if you do sit zazen a little more often, like every day, and do a one-day sitting maybe once a month, maybe sit the seven-day Rohatsa Sashin with us, if you make zazen a part of your life, then when you're up and around, when you're busy doing Samatha Bhadra's work, beneficial work of the world, you won't forget so quickly. that you're alive. You'll forget less often. You'll remember the miracle of your life. And it's important that we do. It's important that we have some of that sense of our life in the midst of the beneficial work that we're doing. It gives us a ground to stand on.

[32:18]

That breath that we have, that body that we have, and that mind that we have, to stand in the midst of our actual life, moment by moment, to remember to stand in the midst of our actual life, moment by moment. This is the place from which we can do the bodhisattva, beneficial, wise action. that we need to do and that the world needs us to do. Well, I think I've said all I wanted to say today, and I think this maybe gives us a chance to end a little bit early and maybe sit a little bit more today. So I thought I would, since I do miss city centers, Buddha Hall, with the wonderful statue of Gakyamuni Buddha sitting with us today.

[33:23]

I think I will share him with you, her, with you. Yeah, is he, is it up, Kodo? It is visible. It's been a long time since I've been able to sit with Shakyamuni. Such composure. Such a sense of settled, calm, humble nobility. You know, that is... our birthright. That is the great mind of Buddha that has been brought to us. That mind is all of ours.

[34:27]

It is with us all the time. And we can settle in that mind, and it will make us. So I'm going to stop sharing and take a quick look at all of you and wish you a marvelous day of quiet in the midst of all the activity that is swarming around you inside and outside. Thank you very much. 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.

[35:31]

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.

[35:47]

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