Good morning, everyone. Good morning, good friends in the Dharma, quiet friends in the Dharma. And welcome to day two of our five-day sushi for the winter intensive. I want to thank Wendy and for the invitation to speak today. And it's been a joy to listen to the various Dharma offerings over the last few weeks during this particular intensive. And I appreciate the opportunity to contribute. And as you, I think, all know at this point, we are, the theme of our intensive is nature and experience. So Wendy asked if I would say a few things on that today. So that's my intention. I'd like to begin with a poem by one of my favorite poets, Rainier Maria Rilke.

[01:05]

And this is from volume two, number 29 of his Sonnets to Orpheus. Wendy mentioned in her talk yesterday how Sashin is a kind of a journey, one that has both its pleasures and its joys as well as its pains and its challenges. And our effort, I think, is to be with the continuous flow and reverberation of the myriad experiences that we may have along the way, along our journey, and to allow these experiences to bring us new insights into who we truly are and how it is that we might navigate this unfathomable life. So I think Rocco's poem speaks to this journey in a beautiful way. Quiet friend who has come so far, feel how your breathing makes more space around you.

[02:12]

Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring, what bad is you? becomes your strength. Move back and forth into the change. Was it like such intensity of pain? If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine. In this uncontainable night, be the mystery of the crossroads of your senses, the meaning discovered there. And if the world has ceased to hear you, say to the silent earth, I flow. To the rushing water, speak, I am. So we are sitting here together as quiet friends, some of us who have come from afar, and I think a good number of us, maybe just from right here, this very temple.

[03:27]

And the invitation as we sit together is to simply feel our life flowing through us, to feel, as Rilke says, how your breathing makes more space around you. What is it to simply sit in stillness and feel the spaciousness of the breath, which, with each inhale and exhale, invites us into the spaciousness inherent in all experience? What is it to sit in the darkness of the zendo, in the darkness of the hour, in the darkness of not knowing, and to allow ourselves to be sounded, to be called into being, and then left to reverberate with whatever experience makes itself known to us? The sound of a passing car, an intensifying pain in the knee, a nagging regret, the grief of a recent loss.

[04:41]

Roka invites us to let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you are wrung by mirrored experiences, particularly the painful ones, Can we take up his advice to let what batters you become your strength, to move back and forth into the change? You could say to pendulate with flexibility and resilience rather than to stiffen with resistance and denial. What is it to allow ourselves to simply ride the waves of sensations or to be pressed and fermented? by our experiences into a fine wine. Period after period in the zendo, we sit together in this uncontainable night, doing our best, as Roka says, to be the mystery at the crossroads of our senses, to embody the meaning discovered there.

[05:52]

We sit, as Wendy encouraged us yesterday, simply, Listening. Listening deeply to our experience. Listening to the sounding of our own being. Listening to the impenetrable mystery. And listening to the world around us and within us. It's in this compassionate act of listening that our true voice is heard. But if the world has ceased to hear you, as Roko says, then say to the silent earth, I flow. To the rushing water speak, I am. Touch the ground of your own being. Just like Shakyamuni did under the Bodhi tree when Mara challenged his right to awaken.

[06:55]

And allow the ground of your own being to be witness for you. Don't hesitate to add your own lion's roar to the rushing water of impermanence. Wendy also mentioned in her talk yesterday how children and animals often just naturally fall into states of meditation. And I recalled how this had, on occasion, happened for me when I was a child. In fact, one of my first foundational experiences of Zazen occurred amidst mountains and rivers of northern Pennsylvania, where I grew up. Actually, I grew up in southeast Pennsylvania. But in the part of Pennsylvania that I would go to vacation to was in the northern part.

[08:02]

And it was one of my favorite places to go because my grandfather owned some cabins there. And he had seven cabins in the Tioga County mountains that were about five hours from my family home. And these cabins were along the line of a railroad tracks. And so as a kid, it was really fun just to sit on our porch, and the train was literally like right there, and have the train go by and watch it in all times of day and night. It's quite fun. And also beyond the trails, we have our tracks about, I could say maybe 500 feet or 700 feet, there was a river, and it was called Pine River. And one of my favorite pastimes was actually to go down to the river, and to climb onto a small rock that was just a few feet off of shore. And for me, that felt, as a little kid, that felt like, whoa, this is really far. I'm going deep into the river. And I would just sit on this rock in what I thought was the middle of the river for many hours, just resting there and observing the world flow by.

[09:08]

And this small rock in the middle of the wide river was for me a place of solace and healing. and refuge from the difficulties of my childhood. Occasionally, when I would wonder about what was going to become of me in my life, you know, and this is like 10 years old, right? What's going to happen? Where am I going? Who am I going to be? In those moments, there would be some kind of anxiety and fear that would come up. But most of the time, I was able just to sit there silently, absorbed in the present flow of experience, worn by the sunlight, listening to my breathing, enjoying the sounds and sights of nature around me. And I was discovering in that place how to be for myself the kind, steady presence that I most yearn for when the world around me seemed so full of uncertainty and chaos and unreliability.

[10:10]

And occasionally, the questions, who am I? or what am I? would arise on their own in my otherwise open mind, kind of like random clouds passing through a blue sky. And when this happened, and I didn't really think about this, but I kind of just naturally did it. I would just sit in the space that those questions opened up and allow them to reverberate within and through me. And all the while... in those moments of resting as open awareness, what I could call now open awareness, I knew that I was fundamentally okay. That no matter what had happened in the past or what's happening now or what happened in the future, I would be fundamentally okay because who and what I was was not limited to any experiences that I had had or would have.

[11:13]

And of course, in intervening years since then, I have forgotten this often. And I went about seeking answers in the external world rather than inward. And maybe perhaps like you, eventually these questions and search led me to Buddhist practice and to the doors of San Francisco Zen Center. And I'm gratefully sitting here with all of you today. From a rock, sitting on a rock in the river to sitting on a zafu in the zendo. All together in the same flow of life. So this memory of sitting along the Pine River comes back to me when I'm sitting zafu in the zendo. Just observing, doing my best to observe the flow of experiences and the various ever-changing sensations in my body. and the various eddies of thoughts and emotions in which I often get caught up in, spun around by, and struggle to escape from.

[12:20]

Do any of you have that experience? You ever get caught in eddies of thinking and sensations and daydreaming and so on, and you find yourself sucked in deep, and not until the bell rings do you realize, oh, I have to get out of here, right? So it's common. It's what happens, right? And just noticing this happens for us And what is it that brings us back? What is it that helps us pop out of these kind of circular ruminations? As you probably know, water metaphors and images are commonly used when talking about meditation and the nature of mind and experience. And I find that they typically fall into two categories, flowing and non-flowing. And you're probably all familiar with the metaphor of the mind as an ocean or a lake. Most of you heard that? So it's natural that the ocean, when the mind is like an ocean or a lake, its natural undisturbed state is described as calm and clear.

[13:28]

And you can see everything perfectly reflected on the surface of the water. So the water, the mind, becomes like a mirror. This is the mind as non-flowing or calm abiding. And the practice of cultivating this state of mind is known as shamatha. And this is a common phrase of practice for many of us. In this stage, our effort in meditation is directed towards stilling the waters of the mind. Not so much through attempting to make our thoughts stop, but rather simply by not engaging them by not stirring the water, trying to grab onto or control the thoughts in some way. So instead, we might redirect our attention to something that is non-conceptual and experientially grounding, such as the sensations of the breath. So this is a typical meditation instruction. Go out of your mind into your body.

[14:28]

Whenever you get caught in eddies of thinking, and the mind is churned up, Ground, get to the bottom of the ocean itself. Touch the base of the breath and the hara. And if we don't further disturb the mind water by grasping after or trying to stop the waves of thoughts or emotions and sensations, then what happens? The water settles. And in time, it becomes clear again. That is, until the next mind wave manifests. And in studying the mind, we recognize that mind waves are more or less endless. Moments of calm and clarity are regularly interrupted by waves of thoughts and emotions. And if we think we need to keep the waves out or stop them altogether, then we're misunderstanding the practice of zazen. Our effort in zazen is not only to observe the waves,

[15:35]

as they arise and dissolve, but to also recognize them as simply manifestations, or you could say modulations, of the vast boundless ocean of Buddha Mind. Suzuki Roshi also used the metaphor of mind as water in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. If you remember in a section titled Mind Waves, he says, true understanding is that the mind includes everything. That everything is included within your mind is the essence of mind. To experience this is to have religious feeling. Even though the waves arise, the essence of your mind is pure. It's just like clear water with a few waves. Actually, water always has waves. Waves are the practice of the water. I love that line.

[16:36]

Waves are the practice of the water. To speak of waves apart from water or water apart from waves is a delusion. Water and waves are one. Big mind and small mind are one. When you understand your mind in this way, you have some security in your feeling. As your mind does not expect anything from outside, is always filled. In other words, it's always a sense of completeness. A mind with waves in it is not a disturbed mind, but actually an amplified one. Whatever your experience is an expression of big mind. So in other words, everything is water. You can't escape the water. You are complete because you are water. Everything that appears in water is water itself. So there's nothing to fear, nothing to hold on to, actually nothing to identify with.

[17:42]

Just appreciate the modulations of our water nature. Speaking of water, I'm going to have some. as I was reflecting on the experience of the theme of nature and experience, I looked up the etymology of the word nature. And the word nature is from the Latin natura, meaning birth, constitution, character, and course of things. And natura is ultimately from the word nasi, which means to be born. So the broader meaning of the word nature is the material world and its collective objects and phenomena, including the products of human action and intention. And so this relationship between the root meaning of nature, to be born, and the flow of human experience brought to mind for me a particular koan from the Blue Cliff Record.

[18:56]

This is case 80, titled Jaojo's Newborn Baby. Is anyone familiar with it? Oh, I get to introduce a new colon. All right. So the main case goes as follows. A monk asked Zhao Zhou, does a newborn infant also have six senses or not? Zhao Zhou said, like a ball tossed on swift flowing water. The monk, who didn't understand, later went on to ask Daotsu, what is the meaning of a ball tossed on swift flowing water? And Tao Tzu said, moment to moment, nonstop flow. Moment to moment, nonstop flow. So for those of you who might know, Zhao Zhou is one of the most famous of the Chinese Chan masters. And he probably figures in more koans than any other of the Zen teachers. Zhao Zhou was known for his amazing gift with words.

[19:59]

People said that at times when he spoke, he emitted light from from his lips. That's a pretty powerful capacity for speaking well. Illuminated speech. The other monk in the con is Tao Tzu, who was Zhao Zhou's junior by about 40 years. And it's said that after his enlightenment, he lived as a recluse on a mountain for almost 30 years until he met Zhao Zhou. And then they studied together. So a monk asks Jaojo, does a newborn infant also have six senses or not? The character for six senses can also sometimes be translated as six consciousnesses here. And for those of you who are maybe not so familiar with traditional Buddhist psychology, the six senses are part of this. And Buddhist psychology posits that there are eight levels of consciousness.

[21:02]

The first five correspond to the five senses. So that's sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. And then in Buddhism, the sixth sense is thinking. Or you could say the level of conceptual thought. And in Buddhist doctrine, thinking, like I said, is conservative sense like the five others. And all together they are framed as six consciousnesses. And I won't go in how... the relationship between objects and the senses create consciousness and so on. You can study that at another time. So these six consciousnesses are followed by a seventh consciousness called manas, which interprets and aggregates the data that comes into the six senses. So everything we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and think is synthesized by the manas. And then this... data is deposited in what's called the eighth consciousness, or the eighth level, alive vijnana, which is also sometimes termed the storehouse consciousness.

[22:09]

So that's a brief description of these eight levels of consciousness and how it is that the sixth senses, the sixth consciousness, fall within that. In his commentary to the case, Chan Master Sri Tao wrote, in the School of Buddhist Teachings, This eighth consciousness is set up as the true basis. Mountains, rivers, and the great earth, sun, moon, and stars, come into being because of it. The ancients say that the triple world is only mine. The myriad things are only consciousness. So, in other words, all we really know or experience is mine giving birth, and manifesting as myriad forms and appearances. Again, all we really know, according to this, all we really know or experience is mind giving birth and manifesting as myriad forms and appearances.

[23:14]

So now, while a newborn baby is usually equipped with the six senses by way of... eyes and ears and nose and tongue and skin and brain and so on, these faculties aren't usually actually fully developed yet. So you could say that a baby, a newborn baby, is a human being, but it's not a developed one, nor is it a self-conscious or self-aware one. And without a fully developed sixth consciousness, a newborn baby lacks the capacity for necessary discrimination. Therefore, it hasn't yet learned to use its six senses to skillfully discern what is harmful or not harmful, or what is right and what is wrong. As children grow, that's kind of how we begin to teach them how to discern when the stove is hot, you don't want to put your hands on it, right? And it's not nice to hit other people. because it hurts them, and how would you feel if you were hit? You don't want to hurt, therefore you don't want other people to hurt.

[24:19]

So it takes time to develop the sixth consciousness. Now, we can probably guess that the monk in this khan isn't asking Jaljo about the experience of a newborn baby. He's asking the fact about what it is we're supposed to be experiencing in Zaza. It seems that he's equating the practice of Zazen without it being a newborn who doesn't yet have the developed six faculty of a conceptual mind and therefore is without thoughts. So Zen is usually presented as a teaching that transcends words and concepts. And here the newborn baby is being offered up as an idealized model of pure, unmediated responsiveness. This is the very state that a monk seemingly inspires to. He wants to be baby-like again, unburdened by dualistic thinking or conceptual categories of any kind.

[25:23]

Does anyone else here want to be that way? Oh, come on. Just a little bit, right? No more thoughts to be burdened by. No more churning of the mind. Just be unmediated responsiveness. What a joy that would be, huh? So... The monk's question reflects the initial approach many of us take to practice sazen, that of trying to quiet the waves of the mind and a phenomenal experience in order to become enlightened. And this process involves, however, a matter of subtraction or cutting off or trying to get rid of emotion thoughts altogether, or in some cases, preferring certain ones over others. As I mentioned a moment ago, a newborn baby lacks the capacity for skillful discrimination because it doesn't yet have developed the faculty of the sixth consciousness or thinking. So as a result, it doesn't yet fall into like and dislike.

[26:28]

Of course, it has basic responses to things like cold and warmth and hunger and pain. It's going to respond to those things, right? But a baby doesn't conceptualize about how things should or shouldn't be and why. That's not going on in its mind. That happens much later. It doesn't have preconceived notions or ideas or narratives of what this moment or the next moment should be. It just responds to direct experience. It's just pure, unmediated responsiveness. Now, when talking about the six senses or consciousness and direct experience, there is a related Japanese word that is helpful to keep in mind, I think. And this word is nen, N-E-N, nen. It seems that nen is not an easy word to translate. Perhaps the shortest translation of nen, although it's imprecise, is as a thought or a thought moment.

[27:36]

And we find Nen in the last two lines of the Enmei Juku Karengo, which I deeply will chant tomorrow. If you remember, Nen Nen Shu Jin Ki, Nen Nen Furi Shin, those last two lines translate as, Nen Nen arises from mine. Nen Nen is not separate from mine. So you could translate these lines as, this thought moment arises from mine. This thought moment itself is mine. Again, neither moment or thought moment really captures the original meaning of the word. Bodin Kajahide, I'm not sure I'm pronouncing his name correctly. He's the teacher at the Wilchester Zen Center, describes a succession of men or thought moments in this way. Now there is what we call the first Nen, the second Nen, and the subsequent Nen.

[28:41]

The first Nen is direct perception, the immediate experience of the six senses, the thought, the sound, the sight, taste, touch, and smell, just these directly. For example, there is the sound of a bird or a motorcycle passing by. Just that, just that sound. The second nen would be then to make something of that sound, to have a fault about the bird or the motorcycle, say a memory or an association of some type. And actually in this second nen, that manas is activated. Now the immediate experience is once removed. There was the first Nen, direct experience, and then secondly, the second Nen, an additional. The third Nen is another thought form on top of the first two.

[29:43]

And then the fourth and the fifth and subsequent Nen all pile on, forming a chain of thoughts, or Nen. This sequence rushes by in nanoseconds. You can't really capture it. You can't really see it. and it's ordinary beneath our everyday awareness. Does that make sense? You got a sense of that? There's a direct experience, and then there's other things that we kind of just get piled on top. The legendary Chinese Zen master, Linji, who is of the Rinzai tradition, once declared, just to learn to cut off successive nen, just learn to cut off successive nen, And this is worth more than 10 years of pilgrimage. So he's saying just the ability to stop with the first Nen, the first immediate experience, right there, and not add a second Nen or a third Nen or get onto that kind of train of thinking.

[30:49]

That is liberation. That's the path to liberation. So... I want to backtrack here for a moment and mention another detail about the seventh consciousness, manas, which is that it's sometimes defined as the seat of the I concept or the sense of a separate self. And yet it also comes to that which is beyond limitations of selfhood. You could say undifferentiated mind or what Suzuki Roshi called big mind. So in his commentary, in his koan, Kato Hede writes that manas occupies a double role, mediating between self-consciousness, or the sense of I, and the unconditioned, between the individual mind-body complex and a capital M mind, or big mind. So small mind and big mind. Manas is mediating between these two.

[31:51]

The way in which we use the mind, The way in which we direct our intention determines the balance between these two aspects of our nature at any given time. The more we conceptualize direct experience, the more we nourish self-concept, or a sense of a separate self, which only increases the number of thoughts that are self-reterential, such as I, me, or my. So the more we conceptualize, the more we make a story about or think about direct experience, and basically, you could have this image, the more we spin around and use as our reference point a sense of a separate self or I, it's like creating an eddy around that I. We just kind of revolve around it and spin around it and whirl around it, right? And that's what I think most of us are doing a good deal of the time, right?

[32:57]

But here, what's being said is there's a decision point. That I is not separate from the big self. It is that. But how we direct our attention, if we use the sense of a separate self as our reference points, we're going to get stuck and we're going to suffer. But if we don't use that as a reference point and actually have a sense of undifferentiated self, a wide field of experience or direct experience, then the that we experience when we find ourselves splitting off into a sense of a separate eye isn't going to arise. And we won't experience suffering, in other words. So this is why we're basically told in Zazen, the practice is just to leave the direct experience as it is. Just allow the sound to be sound. So what moment did your mind try to fix onto that sound just now a label?

[34:04]

Truck. And with that came maybe a judgment or evaluation. That's bothering my zazen. I can't hear the Dharma talk. I don't like trucks. I don't think we shouldn't have trucks in the city. I think we should only have bikes in the city. So in the center of that was I. I don't. I'm referring to that sound from a sense of a separate self. It only matters because I matter. If I take the I out of the picture and no longer have this be the anchor, then that's just sound. And I can just appreciate it for what it is. It's just flowing by. It's already gone. Everything I'm saying about it is old news, right? So just allow the sound to be the sound. Just allow the feeling to be the feeling. And likewise, the thought just to be the thought. A thought, too, is part of human experience. And it poses no problem if we can refrain from stitching successive thoughts onto it.

[35:09]

So not piling thoughts on top of thoughts. Not hooking them together like a train of thoughts. Zazen is not a matter of subtracting thoughts or experiences, but simply not engaging them, and particularly not engaging them in the service of a sense of a separate eye. So Zhaozhou's answer to the monk's question undermines this idea of cutting off the flow of thoughts and concepts. instead points to allowing the expressive and free play and flow of consciousness, like a ball tossed in swift-flowing water. Not understanding this, the monk later goes to Tao Tzu and asks, what is the meaning of a ball tossed in swift-flowing water? And Tao Tzu replies, moment-to-moment, nonstop flowing.

[36:16]

There's a Sanskrit term that's often used in Buddhism, which is citta-samtana. Am I pronouncing that correctly? Okay, something I have to study. Citta-samtana. And it means stream of mind. Stream of mind. And it's used to describe the stream of succeeding moments of mind or awareness. The citta-samtana, or mind stream, is said to provide a continuity of the personality in the absence of a permanently abiding self. Does that make sense? Because Buddhism denies a permanently abiding self. So this mind stream provides a continuity of personality in Buddhism. And in a later Yogacara thought, Chitta Samantana replaced the notion of Alaya Vigiana, or the storehouse consciousness, which some felt posited a sense of a reified self.

[37:20]

Like there's this thing, a storehouse consciousness, that actually exists in a separate way. And rather than the idea of a mind stream, it's just a flow of experience itself. So I find the image of a ball bouncing on swift-flowing water to be a useful metaphor for the concept of nen, or discrete thought moment. Every occasion that the bouncing ball touches the water is a moment of nen, or thought moment, kind of taking a brief snapshot of the mind stream, of chitta samantana, or big mind. And while there is a boundless, continuous flow of non-localized awareness, our brains act more like cameras, which are only able to take single, discrete photo of what's occurring at any time. There's only one direct moment of experience that's occurring at any moment. However, our minds tend to piece together these discrete Nen moments to give the perception of continuity.

[38:28]

So again, it's not a problem as long as we don't make a self out of this flow. try to grab onto it in some way. So sitting as a scene, the more we try to stop the flow of thoughts and emotions, the more we're going to be at war with ourselves. The more we'll be judging ourselves, judging the content of the mind and others, and somehow judging that it's not doing what it's supposed to be doing. This judging and evaluation just keeps the whole selfing mechanism in motion. we give the content of our minds too much attention. Give too much attention to the thoughts and the ideas rather than recognizing that there's always something passing through. Kind of like clouds passing through an open sky or ducks or tennis balls passing down a river. So in Sashin, we sit on our seats and watch the flow of experience.

[39:35]

Just sit. and watch the ball bounce down the stream. Experience yourself as the flow of life in which and through which all experience is passing. As Kodare reminds us that what Zazen offers is a way to live with the immediacy of a newborn, with openness and simplicity. So I'll conclude by referencing the closing lines of Wilco's sonnet that I shared at the beginning. In this uncontainable night, meaning the night of non-discriminating awareness, be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses, the meaning discovered there. So can you stay at the crossroad of the senses, basically just being rest at direct experience.

[40:37]

Not knowing what it is. Not knowing what the sound is. Not knowing what the sight field is. Just resting and experiencing it directly. In this uncontainable night, being the mystery at the crossroads of your senses, the meaning discovered there. And if the world has ceased to hear you, say to the silent earth, I flow. to the rushing water, speak, I am. So the ritual of zazen is a profound response to our experience of being human, including all its joys and pains and sorrows. You could say that zazen is the embodied realization of I flow and I am. I am both the ceaseless flow of impermanence and the ever-present, ever-abiding stillness of awareness.

[41:41]

May you find some measure of joy and ease while bouncing along on the boundless, swift-flowing waters of your life and of Sashim. Thank you very much for your kind attention.

[42:02]

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