This podcast is offered by San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Welcome. So I remembered something this evening while I was eating dinner, which was that this time last year, just right around this time, I... I gave essentially the same talk. There was a community meeting. David generously invited me to come in and give a talk during the community meeting. And the only problem with it was that I had just, the day before, gotten very invasive surgery. And so I showed up. And without going into too much excruciating detail, I had post-surgical hardware installed all over my body, under my robes, and so on.

[01:06]

And so I was gung-ho for it. And then I got there and I realized I wasn't even going to be able to bow, much less sit in this posture. So the best I could do was... like bend decorously at the waist and maybe rock forward a little on my ankles and then sit in a chair right on the edge of the seat as though I was kind of a nervous suitor in the living room waiting for someone to show up. It was really a sketch of something. It was pretty great. But anyway, so it's great to be here. Man, yeah. So I've kind of been giving a series of talks about the Xin Xin Ming, and I thought I'd give a talk about the Xin Xin Ming a little bit.

[02:07]

I couldn't get my hands on a copy of the text. If it turns out we need a copy of the text, I have it in my phone. But we may not. So the Xin Xin Ming is a pretty early sort of Chan document. It's usually attributed to Song Tan, who is the third patriarch. So we chant his name pretty regularly, I think. The problem is that nobody really believes he wrote it. They don't really know when it was written, and they don't really know who wrote it. But it was pretty early. And like a lot of the early documents that are a big part of our liturgy, they just kind of came out of a mysterious flurry of document production activity.

[03:22]

during the period when Buddhism was kind of installing itself in China. This includes, interestingly enough, the Heart Sutra, which I gave a series of classes on at the last practice period. It turns out nobody's really sure where that came from either. There's even a dispute about whether it was originally written in Sanskrit and translated into Chinese or originally written in and translate it back into Sanskrit in order to give it the kind of, you know, like stamp of authenticity or something like that, right? So really, so, and the, the Xin Xin Ming is not exactly like that, but nobody really knows where it came from. And nobody really knows if Song San wrote it. But what it demonstrates, really, more than anything else, is I guess I'll say one other thing about it from a historical perspective.

[04:27]

It's had a tremendous influence on the writings around Zen since, right? So when Dogen says at the beginning of his, essentially his manifesto, the Fukanza Zengi, he says something like, you know, the way is basically perfect and all-pervading. Um... And then a little bit later he says, you know, if the slightest dislike... So the way is great, but if the slightest dislike or dislike arises, then the way is as distant as heaven from earth and the mind is lost in confusion, right? Those are either direct quotes from or paraphrases of the Xin Xin Ming, basically. And later on he says, you know, cease administering pros and cons, also... directly quoted from the Xin Xin Ming. So it's a very influential document and there's a koan that we'll talk about later as well that refers to it directly and tries to kind of get inside what's going on with it.

[05:33]

So we'll talk about all of that a little bit. What I was going to say was the main thing that it does for me is that it kind of underlines the way in which people were taking Buddhism, this essentially, you know, Indian production and kind of... I think somebody once quoted Suzuki Roshi, I'm not sure where this shows up, as saying, you know, here's how you install Buddhism in a new place. It's like you take a rock and you take a tree and you put them together and you go, grow. So it's, you know, Buddhism and being installed in China was a little bit like that too. And in particular, what it had to, the soil that it had to grow in was already, you know, sort of,

[06:42]

full of at least three philosophical frameworks that were very powerful and well thought through and had a huge literature about them, a pre-existing literature about them, right? And it shows the way in which Buddhism was in the process of being kind of tangled up with one of those frameworks, Taoism, in a way that... it's pretty distinctive, right? And Buddhism, and in particular Chan Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, became distinctive at least in part because of that confluence of philosophical systems, right? So the most famous line, and in fact the first line in the Xin Xin Ming is, it says, you know, The great way isn't difficult.

[07:46]

Just avoid picking and choosing. And so to pick that apart a little bit, so to speak, you know, right up front it says the great way, right? And, you know, up until... Buddhism showed up and people started writing about it in this way. What you meant in China when you said the great way was the way, the Tao, right? And the Tao is kind of most famously and most succinctly spelled out in this document written by Lao Tzu, right? It's a... Everyone's probably read it, but if you haven't, it's a kind of loose collection of kind of aphorisms, little poems, various texts, some of which Lao Tzu probably came up with it from himself, some of which were probably already in the kind of culture as aphorisms or little poems or things people say to each other, right?

[09:00]

And the story... The story, I think, is that he showed up at some border station after living a life as an archivist or a librarian or something, hands over this document, and then goes through the border and disappears. And no one ever heard from him since, basically. And the idea is he had kind of gone off into the world and become a part of everything. But, you know, the Tao Te Ching and Taoism is in some ways really concerned specifically with behavior and how people should behave, right? And it offers this way that if you live that way, you're living in such harmony

[10:02]

in each moment in such harmony with the forces that are alive in that moment that even though you're acting, you appear not to be doing anything at all. That's kind of what he says. He says early on in the Tao Te Ching, he says, the wise teach not doing and no talking. later on it becomes clear that he doesn't mean that they, that they're actually not doing anything. It's just, and that they're not talking. It's just that they're not, they're, what they're doing is continuously in conformance with the forces that are acting in the moment right now and so appears to just be like water flowing downhill, right? Not doing anything. Like, miss rolling down the mountain or rolling up the mountain depending on which way the wind's blowing.

[11:10]

And that's the way. That's the way as it was understood in Tang Dynasty China. So in the Xin Xin Ming, it's saying it has a different preoccupation. It's not as preoccupied with behavior. In fact, the title means, well, it contains the word shin, which is usually translated as either mind or heart in the metaphorical sense of heart, right? And it appears twice. right together, xinxin, right? And that's often translated as faith in mind, but the other and sort of more, I don't know, intriguing translation of it is something like truthful or true mind, right?

[12:14]

So in some ways it's the true mind poem or the true mind document, right? Or on true mind. And so it's... preoccupation is not so much with behavior but with mental activity and that in fact was the preoccupation of Zen. The founding principles in some ways of Zen are two. One is you do a lot of sitting and two is that all of the significant moments in which teaching, learning, transmission, waking up occurs happen in the context of direct face-to-face encounters between people and things. You can have dharma transmission from a pebble or the whiskers of an ant or a bucket.

[13:26]

if it works out that way. But in any case, they come from these momentary encounters, from people and things meeting and together bringing up the way. And in that context, the main... object of interest is the mind and the state of mind. And when, for example, Bodhidharma, in the first koan in the Blue Cliff Record, when they're talking about Bodhidharma coming and talking with the Emperor Wu and having one of these encounters, the Emperor Wu's sort of... the resident teacher, Master Juror, says something like, that was a bodhisattva bringing the mind seal.

[14:32]

It's like the minds meet and one of them impresses the other, literally, and causes this waking up. So that's the preoccupation of the Xin Xin Ming. It's mind and the state of mind. But... But at the same time, it's still talking about the way. It's talking... And so it says... It says there's this way of being where you harmonize perfectly with the forces that are alive in this moment, both from the standpoint of behavior, external behavior, and from the standpoint of mental activity, right? And then it's... And then it goes on to say, and here's what makes it difficult to just live that way all the time.

[15:34]

He says it's picking and choosing. It's drawing distinctions and attaching to the things on either side of the distinction. And usually when you attach to something on this side of the distinction, you revert from something on the other side of the distinction. That's what it says. If you can avoid picking and choosing, then you're golden. The way is right in front of you, right? It's easy, he says. So what's the problem, right? Anyone want to hazard a guess? Exactly. I mean, well, they can do a couple other things, but absolutely. What humans are incredibly good at is making distinctions, right?

[16:39]

And building categories around them and reifying those distinctions as absolutes and attaching to the content and and definition of the distinction in a way that can often be really emotionally charged. There are some really obvious examples. Democrats and Republicans. And then there's a bunch of examples that are quite subtle, actually. what's better about... You know, there's a... One way that people talk about what's supposed to happen when you're sitting zazen is they say you're supposed to quiet your mind, right?

[17:51]

The Xin Xin Ming, rather explicitly asked, well, what's so good about having a quiet mind? It says, don't grasp after a quiet mind. If you make that distinction, quiet mind, active mind, don't elevate quiet mind. Just let quiet mind happen of its own accord and appreciate it when it's happening and let, you know, a mind that's rushing like a mountain stream over rocks in flood happen when it's happening and appreciate that. What's better about sitting than standing or lying down? Not better. but in the Zen world, we're always talking about sitting.

[18:59]

So we draw these distinctions, subtle or gross, right? We attach to the things on either side of the distinction, we drag up emotional interpretations of them, and we cause ourselves suffering, right? And the reason why we're so good at it and the reason why it's such a huge part of our life is exactly because of what makes us human, right? So what we're good at as humans is language and long-range planning, right? Both of which require distinction-making of the first order, right? If you're going to use, you know, grammatically complex, richly expressive language, it's just nothing but distinctions, right?

[20:03]

Otherwise, it would just be... Might be nice, but, you know, it'd be hard to order... hamburger something like that and you know and tell the person that you wanted no mustard but you know pickles please and some onions right so that's why we do it that's why we're that way and so you know I don't know exactly how many years after but you know well over, probably at least 100 years after this thing was written down, Jojo is talking to his students and he says, you know, the way is easy.

[21:06]

Just avoid picking and choosing. And then he says, but here's the problem. The minute you use language, all of a sudden you're saying things like, this is picking and choosing. And this is clarity, right? And he says, this one, me, Zhao Zhao, doesn't or can't abide in clarity. So the question is, what do you preserve? How do you carry forward if you're, if as the Xin Xin Ming says, At one point it says, don't grasp after oneness. It's okay to appreciate the one. If you find yourself sitting here and your body and mind becomes very quiet and your preconceptions about the world drop away and all of a sudden it's just this body in a vast empty space full of light where every cell...

[22:15]

knows exactly how to sit and knows exactly how to sing its own song, right? Not bad. You can guarantee that sometime thereafter it's not going to be like that, right? And the main injunction is if you spend any time grasping after that and trying to make it happen, it's just kicking some can down the road and hurting your feet. basically. There's no reason to grasp after that. It just happens when it happens and it lets go when it lets go. So if you can't, if the Xin Xin Ming says don't grasp after the experience of oneness, just like you shouldn't grasp after the experience of worldly the satisfaction of worldly desire, then what do you carry with you that makes it possible to practice the way?

[23:26]

Any ideas? Yeah, that's an important one, right? You make a vow, right? And you can carry that vow with you, right? And that's what putting on this robe is about and putting on a rock suit is about and so on, right? It turns out that our mind is tractable in some way to the power of vow, to the power of particularly vow when it's made in a context where the significance knob is turned way up and where there are people around that are supporting that vow and its sincerity and so on. Yeah, absolutely. That's right. And then beyond that, something else, right?

[24:36]

The fundamental nature of Zazen, and in fact the fundamental nature of this kind of interactive transmission that's at the core of Zen, they both have the same request, right? And it's, be in the midst of whatever experience you're having now, right? and connect with it directly, dropping off conceptual baggage and the ideas that get in the way of being right there in the middle of that experience. bring up a mind that's both compassionate and curious.

[25:50]

Look, this is this one in this world at this moment, and amazingly enough, the following is happening. when you start practicing, your life is an endless series of opportunities to notice and respond to that, what's happening now. I've probably told this story so many times that everybody's heard it, but I remember once talking to someone who was living at Tassajara, and she said, you know, I was walking by the garden, And I looked and I saw some flowers. And they were really beautiful. And I noticed tears welling up in my eyes and I felt this kind of fullness in my heart.

[26:57]

And then all of a sudden the thought came up and she was moved to tears. And then I was deeply ashamed. It's like this moment happened, and all of a sudden, and she has a response, and then something gets larded on top of that, and something gets larded on top of that, and within, you know, how long did that take? Two seconds. Within two seconds, you know, she runs the gamut between this kind of... direct, unvarnished connection with the beauty of nature to a kind of shame and self-torment, right? It's remarkable. And we can all do this, right? And we all do things that are equally, you know, wild and wacky.

[28:00]

Making up complicated stories about total strangers, or deciding to quit your job for no apparent reason, just because something feels funny or fishy about it, right? Et cetera. We're constantly like that, right? So the request of practice in that context is to bring up compassion for that. That's what it is to be a living human being, right? We're all like that. And we're all like that exactly because we're living human beings, right? And... The Xin Xin Ming says something really spectacular.

[29:01]

It says, things are things because of mind, and mind is mind because of things. We make up this world of things, and it conditions the mind in this remarkable way. As a result, right? Our mind would not be the mind it is if it wasn't for the way things are. And our conception of the world as a collection of things would not be the way it is if it wasn't for the nature of those things, right? Remarkable. And so to explore that... through the only window that's available to us ever, right? Which is this body, this mind, in this moment, right? That's what, when Dogen says, to study the way is to study the self.

[30:04]

That's what he's talking about. The only way you can study the way is to study the self because there is no other way to see it. It's like, you know, it's like the... it's the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of Buddhism or something like that, right? You need to have the, you need to stake out a position, reach out into the world with your sensory hardware, bring it in, and turn it into something that makes sense in order to, that's not, you know, utter howling chaos, in order to study the self, or to study the world, to study the way, any of that. So here we are, we have this body and this mind in this moment, and we use that continuously as a way, as the...

[31:12]

the kind of benchmark for awakened activity. For what it is to be alive and awake in the world. And that's what Dogen is also talking about when he talks about Gigi Yusamai talks about self-receiving and employing samadhi. You're employing the capacities and predilections of the self, not any abstract self, this self, this body and mind, in order to connect with as directly as possible with experience. In order to wake up to what's actually happening. And It's easy to see why a mindful engagement is necessary for that.

[32:21]

It's also easy to see why a kind of compassionate curiosity is necessary for that. If you're constantly going, oh, that. None of that is going to be particularly helpful. To be able to say, to be able to have both self empathy and empathy for the others that present themselves continuously and, you know, even for the things, right? For the whiskers of an ant and the tiles and the pebbles, right? It's a requirement to support that kind of engagement, right? Through the lens of the body and mind. And then the last request, the third request of practice is to, from that place of compassionate, mindful engagement, to step right into the middle of the experience of living.

[33:26]

Not to try and make anything out of it. Not to add anything in. Not to leave anything out. Just to... and not to do the first thing that comes to mind, just to be there in the middle of it and let that experience inflect and determine what happens next from, again, from the point of view of the self, this self, right? When the Xin Xin Ming says, If you're struggling to quiet yourself or to make this experience quieter than it is, then that's just more activity, right? If you listen to the Tao Te Ching and you said non-action and your approach to that was to say, I'm not gonna act, I'm not gonna act, I'm not gonna act, that's action, right?

[34:30]

That's activity, right? something else is being asked for not that something more like when the next obvious thing presents itself just to step in line with it and do it and then the next obvious thing and then the next obvious thing that's teaching non-doing that's teaching no talking. So does anyone have any questions about all that? Tell me about it.

[35:33]

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Or, you know, to get up and sit sazen, right? So you've set up this distinction. I'm just lying in bed and snooze. I'm going to go sit sazen. And sometimes this looks pretty good. Sometimes this looks pretty good. And there's a whole bunch of emotionally driven value tags attached to both of those things, right? So everyone recognizes the value of lying in bed and snoozing, right? And it's pretty awesome, right? On the other hand, over time, the... benefits of getting up in the morning and sitting zazen also become increasingly apparent, right? But all of that stuff is in the domain of conditioned thinking, right? And again, what Zhao Zhao says is, I can't help drawing distinctions, and I can't help picking and choosing, right?

[36:49]

All I can do is I can remember how to embody this activity that we were just talking about. To step into the moment in a way that's mindful and wise in the sense of willing to let go of fixed ideas and preconceptions. That's Manjushree Bodhisattva doing that. To bring forth a compassionate and curious mind. That's Avalokiteshvara doing that. And to step directly into the middle of the experience, that's Samantabhadra. So can I remember how to... Can I preserve in my body...

[37:53]

that activity and act it out moment to moment, regardless of whether I get up and sit zazen or spend the next 45 minutes blissfully snoozing and petting the cat or something like that. Either one is good, depending on a bunch of things that have to do with if you're not getting up to sit and 15 people are depending on you to open the Zendo. Maybe that's not so good. Leaving all that stuff aside, either option is equally good. The question is, can you, in the midst of that, preserve this activity? That's the question. That's what Jiajo is saying. He's saying, it's not so much that we're capable of... avoiding in any long-term picking and choosing. Yeah, of course you can avoid picking and choosing for some, you know, if you're sitting and no thoughts are arising, then you're not doing a lot of picking and choosing, right?

[39:04]

But that, you know, we can't live in that world, and the Xin Xin Ming specifically says, you don't try and stay there, you know, just get up and walk around, right? You know, be, get up and meet. the world as it presents itself, right? So, given that we can't avoid in any long-term way picking and choosing, and we would have to do such violence to our humanity that it's not worth it in order to become beings that don't pick and choose ever, right? Then the next question is, What do you preserve in the midst of a life that requires picking and choosing? All you can preserve is this activity, right? The activity of kind of awakening engagement, right? Whether you get up to sit or lie around in bed and pet the cat. Anyone else?

[40:07]

There's nothing wrong with rational thinking. Rational thinking is a spectacular gift. And it goes along with our human capacity to do language and long-range planning. The thing to watch for when you're in the midst of rational thinking, so I'm an engineer, I used to be an engineer back when I still did that sort of thing. You know, you spend the entire day having rational thoughts and then trying to wrangle them into code that doesn't just fail the minute you push the button and so on, right? Nothing is wrong with that. And the request is exactly the same. The request is, in the midst of that, activity of using the mind as an invaluable, powerful tool.

[41:27]

Can you stay engaged in this way where you go, where, you know, you step in, you take in the world as it is without preconceptions, bring up the mind of compassion and step right into the middle of your experience, right? Now, here's the problem, right? Mental activity, thinking in particular, is very grippy. And quite often what we find when we're sitting is that, you know, sometimes we're really here and there's not a whole lot going on. And then shortly thereafter, somehow we get tangled up in thought because the thought has such, particularly when the thought has a... powerful emotional content or some other kind of hook, right? And it can totally enclose the mind. It almost feels like the mind has fallen down this gravity well of self-construction, right?

[42:31]

And then, miraculously, sometime later, that lets go, right? And you're back, right? So typically... the rhythm in Zazen is to just ride that cycle. Everyone has a cycle like that. And to be especially aware of the moments when that lets go and when you can be there with the content of the thought, with the experience of having thought that thought, with the contents of your sensorium and the entire world. Over time, that distinction gets less and less. and it becomes easier for the mind to shuttle kind of seamlessly in between the mode of self-construction and rumination and the mode of unconstructed engagement. But anyway, nothing wrong with rational thinking. You had a question too, I'm sorry. Yeah, sorry.

[43:36]

Well, I would say this, right? So this is precisely what we've been talking about, right? The activity of zazen is to become as continuously and wholeheartedly aware in each moment as possible of what's actually going on in that moment, right? And if that means... Oh my God, my mind is just so full of stuff, I think my head's going to explode. Okay, that's it. And if it's not like that, if things have settled down somewhat, then to notice that, right? And so that's the first thing, right? That's the main request of zazen is to do that. The second thing is that it's possible to work with that state of mind in a subtle way as long as it doesn't involve grasping after quiet. And there are techniques for that that have to do with the breath, that have to do with the posture and so on and so forth.

[44:57]

But the main request is to be as as wholeheartedly engaged with what's happening right now as you possibly can. That's particularly true of this Zen school. There are other Zen schools that have a slightly different flavor. The same basic request is there, but there are different ways of getting at it, basically. But anyway, does that help? Yeah. And paying attention, and like I said, mindfulness, compassion, particularly self-compassion in the context of zazen, and this kind of willingness to put yourself right in the middle of that experience, not to hold back, not to skate over the top of it. Anyway, that's right. Yeah, exactly.

[46:18]

In some ways, when you do this thing of kind of dropping off preconceptions and putting yourself in the middle of your experience, typically what happens after a while is the next obvious thing to do just keeps presenting itself. Sometimes the next obvious thing is I'm going to get up and sit zazen now. And then every now and again, it's, I can tell you, now I'm going to stay in bed. But yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Thank you. Well, you know, we've kind of run past the half hour. We could probably do one more question if anybody has another question. Otherwise, what do you think? Go ahead. Well, that's a really good question.

[47:21]

I would say this. There's something really marvelous about the early morning. You come up out of the cave of sleep and you go down to the cave of the Zendo and you bring just what you brought with yourself out of sleep and explore the mind and study the self in a context where it hasn't really had an opportunity to get rolling yet, right? So that's what's good about it. But, you know, I take the subtle point that you could also do that at 9 a.m. if you got up at 9 a.m., right? I think, you know, back before I started being a student, I was playing in rock bands for a living, and I didn't get up before 11.

[48:24]

And then I had to make a, in the middle of it, I had to make a switch to getting up at 4.30, and it was really an adjustment, I have to say. But that's why, I think. All right. 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 sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[49:10]

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