This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Worn greetings to the Great Assembly. And happy Valentine's Day. February 14th is also the day that the Zen tradition remembers and contemplates the day, the time when the historical Buddha Shakyamuni passed away in India.

[01:08]

And then tomorrow we do another ceremony, another memorial ceremony, but today is the day, tonight is the night when the Buddha traditionally is observed passing away, the historical Buddha dying. So we will do a ceremony tonight and tomorrow here at Green Dragon Zen Temple. And you can do a ceremony wherever you are, too, by thinking of the great teacher passing away tonight. Thank you. On the screen, just before we chanted, it said something like, please join us in sitting zazen before the Dharma talk.

[02:32]

And today, I would like to talk about zazen, which is also sometimes translated as sitting meditation. or Zen meditation. Zen meditation. Another word that could be used is Zen. So I suggest that Zen meditation is Zen. Another way to say it is Zen practice. Another way to say it is Buddha activity. Zen meditation is the activity of awakening.

[03:38]

Please join us. in the activity of awakening. Please allow us to join you in the Buddha activity. Today I'd like to talk about different perspectives or different facets of this, of Buddha activity. Different facets of Zen meditation. And as I begin to speak, I...

[04:49]

I want to acknowledge that some of the words I use maybe come with lots of connotations. So, one aspect of Zen meditation could be called psychological or psychophysical. Another aspect of it could be called metaphysical. Or spiritual. And the word spiritual, for me, has lots of connotations. And so does metaphysical. It may sound kind of intellectual. But anyway, I can see these two aspects of Zen meditation. So again, one aspect is to wholeheartedly be present in this body-mind.

[06:08]

To wholeheartedly and intimately accept responsibility. for this body and mind, for this psychophysical experience. This could also be called personal experience. to fully inhabit our personal, psychological, moment-by-moment experience. This is what I used to think was pretty much all there was to Zen meditation, to be silent and still, fully present, fully mindful, and intimate.

[07:17]

with my moment-by-moment, with my moment-by-moment psychophysical experience. And this is an essential aspect of our life, which is the same as an essential aspect of Zen meditation. there is another aspect. An interpersonal aspect. The way that all personal experience is relating to all other personal experience. The way personal experience is interacting with all other personal experience.

[08:33]

This is not a psychological practice. It's spiritual in the sense that it is the relationship between all the individual beings psychophysical beings. And that relationship is not psychological. The relationship, the intimate and interpenetrating and reciprocal relationship between all psychophysical beings, between humans and humans, humans and dogs, humans and horses, humans and dolphins, humans in And trees, humans, and all beings, that relationship is not psychological. It's spiritual. And it's invisible. It also can be called Zen meditation in the interpersonal aspect of it.

[09:47]

It's the way... Zen meditation includes everything. It's Zen meditation which is the container of everything, of all beings. And it is the way Zen meditation is contained in all beings. these two aspects of Zen meditation, the personal and the interpersonal, the limited and the unlimited, those two are not two. So Zen meditation is both of them, and not just both of them, but both of them in intimate meetings.

[10:53]

It is the personal effort of being present in this moment and fully embracing this moment of experience personally and this present person meeting the interaction among all beings, joining it, entering it, and allowing it to enter. here which it does and yet the meditation is to remember that and contemplate that and become that become my personal experience and become interpersonal experience and become the sameness of personal and impersonal There are many practices which are articulated, have been expressed and passed to us by awakened beings to help us be responsible for our body and mind experience.

[12:28]

Virtually unlimited practices to help us be fully inhabiting, intimately accepting our experience. A summary of this unlimited number of practices is called the six perfections. So, in summary, the practices which help us be fully responsible and fully present are generosity, careful, gentle, minute attention to everything we think, everything we say, and all of our postures. Ethical discipline, in other words. Patience, enthusiastic diligence,

[13:38]

concentration. These practices help us. These practices help us, but actually these practices are the way that we fully accept and inhabit our personal practice. Our personal Zen meditation. Practicing these practices five practices, which culminate in the sixth practice of perfect wisdom, can be done and should be done by persons in relationship to their personhood. And to practice this way again and again so that we can be consistently practicing Zen meditation in this way.

[14:45]

Being generous, being careful, patient, diligent, calm and open and wise. This is how we fully accept our personal Zen practice, our personal zazen. In my early years of practice, I thought of my practice as my personal practice. The thought arose in my mind that Zen meditation was what I did at my seat. Little by little, I realized that Zen meditation was more or included more than I knew. It really wasn't more than what I personally was doing. It's just that I didn't realize that what I was personally doing included everything. That my sitting still and quiet included all those practices I mentioned summarized in those six ways.

[15:55]

But also it included all beings. All beings who were thought they were practicing Zen meditation, and all beings who don't think that they're practicing Zen meditation, they're all included in our personal Zen meditation. I didn't see that in the first years of my practice. Little by little, I see that more and more. but not with my psychological eyes. I think about that, and I'm talking to you about it, but I can't actually see how what I'm saying to you right now includes the whole universe. And I can't see how what I'm saying is included in every aspect of the universe. That's the other side of Zen meditation.

[16:57]

And I also can't see how this interpersonal, intersubjective aspect of Zen practice is the same as my personal effort right now. My personal effort to speak, to blink, to hold my head up. All these efforts I'm suggesting in Zen meditation are included in all beings and include all beings. Zen meditation is a solitary practice being this soul person and it is social practice. It is the social relationships among all beings, right now, that is Zen meditation.

[18:05]

So once again, any activity of any being, any particular being, includes all other particular beings. And I am responsible for taking care of my particularity. And in taking care of my particularity, or the particularity of me, there is a discovery that this particularity includes all other particularities in perfect peace and harmony with all other particularities. And it also includes all unpeaceful and disharmonious situations Everything is included in this particularity.

[19:32]

And taking care of this particularity wholeheartedly and thoroughly is realizing and becoming the peace and harmony among all unpeaceful and disharmonious situations. other people's peace, other people's disharmonies, other people's stress, other people's pain, but also my own pain. Being intimate with my own pain, accepting responsibility for my own pain. Completely. is the responsibility of my own being and in taking care of my own particular pain in this way I realize or not I realize but there is the realization of taking care of the suffering and pain

[21:03]

of others and taking care of the suffering and attending to the suffering of others awakens awareness of who I really am. Last month we had a three week intensive studying the Lotus Sutra and one of the teachings in the Lotus Sutra that we spent a lot of time discussing was that only a Buddha together with a Buddha realizes the true

[22:04]

of all things. And this is an expression which is originally in Sanskrit, and then in Chinese, it's a four-character expression. First two characters are only and Buddha. Only Buddha. Next two characters are together Buddha. Only Buddha. Only Buddha together with Buddha. That's the situation in which reality is realized. And that is the reality of

[23:06]

Buddha's wisdom. The reality which sees and realizes peace and harmony. The realization of the reality which realizes peace and harmony. Buddha's wisdom. What's the situation? Only Buddha together with Buddha. I heard that the ancestor Dogen plays with this Chinese expression and looks at the expression as the name of two Buddhas put together. The first Buddha's name is Only Buddha. The Buddha named Only Buddha.

[24:11]

The second Buddha's name is Together Buddha. Only Buddha is only you being completely you. Only Buddha is there's only you. That's all there is. That's one Buddha. You being completely you. You practicing generosity, tender, loving care of all your actions of body, speech, and mind. You being patient with the suffering of the world and yourself, of course. You being diligent and enthusiastic about doing all practices of compassion.

[25:12]

You being calm and open and undistracted moment by moment in silence and stillness. No matter how active you are, you're calm and open. Riding the waves, upright, balanced, relaxed. This is the Buddha called Only Buddha. And that Buddha practices together with another Buddha named Together Buddha or Together with Buddha. And that's the Buddha of everybody practicing together. That's the Buddha of social activity. It's not just that one.

[26:18]

It's not just the former one. It's the two together. Your solitary practice, wholehearted solitary practice, intimately meeting and practicing with social Buddha, social life, interpenetrating intimate conversation among all beings. Those are two Buddhas and together Buddhist wisdom is realized. Together we all become Buddhist wisdom. We all enter it. We don't make it. We don't get it. It's ungraspable but it's right with us all day long and we can open to it and enter it. It's always available.

[27:20]

We can't get away from it. But if we don't do our job, it's like we're someplace else. We don't find our place where we are. We don't find our place right now. It's like we're someplace else. From what? From Buddha together with Buddha. Only Buddha together with Buddha. Another resonance between this wholehearted personal Zen meditation and wholehearted interpersonal Zen meditation and the constant, wondrous conversation between these two.

[28:25]

Another aspect is, not another aspect, another way to talk about it is that Zen meditation is wholehearted sitting, your own personal body and mind wholeheartedly sitting, and going to meet with the teacher, and conversing about the Dharma. These two are Zen meditation. Wholeheartedly sitting where you are right now and being in conversation with the teacher, discussing the Dharma right now. These two, together, are our practice. Personal practice and interpersonal practice.

[29:34]

Individual practice and universal practice. These two together. They hit the mark. of Zen meditation. And we, we come to, we become, you could say, we come to realize, we come to realize, but also we become, we become what? We become wholeheartedly, wholehearted sitting, and we become the conversation with the teacher, and the conversation, with the student. We become these. And we become that they're one and the same. We learn by becoming that in wholehearted sitting, when we wholeheartedly sit, which means when we wholeheartedly are who we are right now, that includes, there is in that wholehearted sitting by myself,

[30:48]

there is a conversation with the teachers. And there is a conversation with all the students in my wholehearted sitting. And when we wholeheartedly converse with the teacher, and when we wholeheartedly converse with the student, when we wholeheartedly interact with all beings, we discover that right in the middle of that, is wholeheartedly sitting myself. The solitary practice is fully alive at the center of social practice. The wholehearted practice of upright sitting is fully alive in the midst of a great social practice of all beings.

[31:52]

It's not fully alive if it's not situated at the center of the universe of all beings. And similarly, the practice of wholeheartedly interacting with all beings is not fully realized unless it lives in wholehearted responsibility to this psychological and particular and limited being. The wholehearted particularity lives in the middle of the universal interaction and social life of all beings. So we have these two to take care of. in becoming Zen meditation. Understanding and being responsible for this limited person and understanding that actually we are including all beings and they include us.

[33:09]

Each one of them and all of them include us. I have this thought that I have laid out the table for a conversation for a wonderful conversation of the practice of Zen meditation. Thank you for listening to this podcast. offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[34:17]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[34:20]

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