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. Welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. Is there anyone here for the first time this morning? Two, three, four, six. Good, welcome. You're here on an unusual day, a little bit, and normally after a lecture we have key and cookies served in the hallway and courtyard, and then lunch is available. But today we're sitting a one-day sitting, which means many of the people in this room have taken the day off from their usual busy lives and have decided to sit in a space is up that big for most of the day.

[01:01]

So how many of you are sitting in the one-day sitting? Yeah, fortunate. So you newcomers, I'm going to be mostly talking about zazen, but that's okay, because that's what we do in a one-day sitting, mostly. So how's your zazen going? How do you like your zazen today so far? Hard to say anything about it, isn't it? I remember there's a beautiful lecture and I think it's not always so where Suzuki Rishi says, how do you like your zazen? And he says, I think it's better to ask, how do you like brown rice? Zazen is too big a topic, which is... true not that brown rice is a small topic he then went on to give a long lecture not a long lecture lecture on you know you eat brown rice you digest it you know brown rice changes into energy in your body and that sort of describes that whole process and so he's saying you know this is example of everything changes you know a kind of like fundamental truth in buddhism impermanence nothing stays the same

[02:30]

So I thought it was a wonderful sort of little storyline, and he was sort of saying, and that's emptiness. Emptiness is impermanence, the fact that everything changes. I mean, we get that, right? I mean, that's pretty common Buddhist knowledge, everything changes. But the question I'd have for you today is, well, that's true, but if you're sitting an all-day sitting, do you... What's it like to experience that? What's it like to experience your impermanence, your constantly changing nature, moment by moment? What's it like to study that? Normally we're so busy and everything's changing so dramatically around us that we have no sense of the nuanced subtlety of what this impermanence means. Everything I'm changing all the time, there's nothing that's the same. So if you sit like we're going to sit till 6 o'clock tonight, you'll get a chance to observe, and I hope you do observe very carefully your breathing, become very good friends with your breathing, really feel each breath coming in, each breath going out in enormous amounts of detail in breathing, and you'll feel the change

[03:57]

It's always happening. No breath is the same. Your state of mind changes with your breathing. And pay attention to your posture. These are very simple things to do. But if you do that, if you make good friends with your breathing and put your focus and energy in your body instead of your mind, which will be doing all kinds of things all day long and certainly... It won't take long in observing your mind to notice that it's changing all the time too, unless it's getting into one of those stories that you've seen a thousand times, one of those movies that you've been through a lot. Even still, there'll be slight changes in it, but what we want to do when we're sitting zazan is to take our energy out of that movie storyline that's popping up and put more of it on our breathing. and see if we can feel the moment-by-moment change in our life, the life, our actual being, being alive.

[05:08]

And not only that, we're going to eat. We're not having brown rice for lunch. I think we're having bread for lunch today and soup. So you'll get to practice Suki Roshi's brown rice eating. We use oreoche, a very complicated bowl thing. So unless you're too paralyzed by worrying about making a mistake, you'll actually be able to, because it takes quite a while to eat lunch with oryoki, enjoy each bite of your meal and notice how it's changing all the time and what that's like. So it's a wonderful thing to spend a day doing nothing but paying attention to your breathing, your body, your eating food. and basically saying, whatever's happening in my mind today, I'm not going to worry too much about. I'm not going to make any plans. Even if I have some great insight, which usually happens in a one-day sitting, oh, now I really understand what my life's about and who I am and everything.

[06:20]

Maybe I should think about that for 45 minutes. No. oh, I think it's better, oh, yeah, I really understand, and maybe I'll go back to my breathing. And if it really was something that was an insight, I guarantee you it'll show up later. Anyway, I had a couple of quotes from Suzuki Roshi that I liked about this changing, evanescent nature of our life. He said, when we feel the evanescence of our life... or when we have problems for ourselves and the direct feeling of these problems and the fact that you have to face these problems, that's how you arise the way-seeking mind. So if you really feel the evanescence of your life, that will arise a way-seeking mind, a mind that wants to know what this life is about. Or if you're just swamped with your problems,

[07:21]

And when you finally face the fact that you have to face these problems, that'll be another way to arise the way-seeking mind. And then he goes on to say, usually we find it very difficult to live in the evanescence of our life. It's just too scary not having anything solid to stand on. But it is only in the evanescence of life that we find the joy of eternal life. Kind of a contradiction in terms, isn't it? Only in the evanescence of life do we find the joy of eternal life. It's good that everything's changing all the time. I mean, it creates most of our suffering because we keep clinging onto things. We wish, well, I don't want that to change. I like that part. So I want the bad parts to change away, but not the good parts.

[08:25]

But that's not the way the deck was dealt. It's all changing. So for some reason which is not entirely related to what I've already talked about, I'm going to tell a favorite Zen story of mine. This is titled, Jiaojou's Ass's Cross, Horse's Cross. So a monk asked Jiaojou, for a long time I've heard of the stone bridge of Jiaojou. but now that I've come here, I just see a simple log bridge. A monk asked Zhao Zhao, for a long time I've heard of the stone bridge of Zhao Zhao, but now that I've come here, I just see a simple log bridge. Zhao Zhao said, you just see the log bridge, you don't see the stone bridge. And the monk said, what is the stone bridge? And Zhao Zhao says, asses cross, horses cross. That's the whole story. So, I think I'll just, you know, flesh it out a little bit.

[09:30]

So, first of all, Zhao Zhou was, this is 778-897 in China, one of the most famous Zen masters of the Tang Dynasty time. He was a disciple of Nganxuan, a very famous teacher. And he met Nanchuan when he was 20, and he studied with him for 40 years until Nanchuan died. So then he was 60 years old, and then he went on pilgrimage for 20 years, visiting all the other famous teachers in China, testing his practice. And then at the age of 80, he settled down at Kuan Yin Monastery, where he was the abbot for, according to the records, for another 40 years until he was 120. Maybe it was only 110. We don't know for sure, but... They keep pretty good records in China. But anyway, he was a very mature, developed Zen master when he started teaching. Maybe I'll go back to that other part of that a little bit.

[10:40]

So I also want to say something about the Zhaozhou Bridge. Zhaozhou is the name of the province that his temple was in, and there was a very famous bridge that was built there that crossed the... I forget the name of the river, but it was a famous river that connected Xi'an to Beijing, and it was built from 595 to 605. It's the world's currently oldest open spandrel stone segmental arch bridge, and the oldest standing bridge in China. So it was built in 600, And I went to China and visited this monastery that Zhajo taught at. It's got a beautiful seven-story pagoda. And I went to this bridge, which is a very famous bridge. It's still standing there. Beautiful rock. It won some award from some structural engineering group in America, and it was named, you know, a famous structural... It's a beautiful bridge. And you can imagine what it was like...

[11:40]

in china 1400 years ago i mean it's a beautiful wide bridge of all this fitted stone magnificent kind of like maybe the golden gate bridge you know level kind of bridge right so so this monk a traveling monk has heard of this famous bridge and has heard of this great famous zen master living in the monastery that's right near the bridge and so he travels walks they walked all over china walked probably a long time to finally get to Jajo to meet this famous Zen master because he wants to find out, you know, what's up with Zen. So he sees, oh, and I, God, I could say so much about Jajo, but maybe I'll stick with it. In this monastery, they had these huge, beautiful open courtyards with magnificent, old cypress trees, huge.

[12:44]

And that's where this famous, one of his famous Giao Zhou stories is a monk comes up to Giao Zhou and says, what's the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the West? And Giao Zhou says, the cypress tree in the courtyard. That's an even shorter story than this one. But anyway, so Giao Zhou is known for being sort of very succinct and pithy, very down to earth and real. I mean, he... In China, a lot of times you would lecture from a big chair with sort of beautiful-looking chairs. Sometimes we have ceremonies where the abbot sits in beautiful chairs like this, and the leg broke one day. So the students were running around trying to figure out how they were going to get a new chair for him, and he went out and broke a branch off a tree and tied it to the chair, and that's what he sat in. He was simple, sort of. So I imagine that when this monk... finally arrived and met Zhao Zhou, and he was probably 95 years old, you know, probably not wearing all kinds of fancy clothes, just standing around in the courtyard.

[13:47]

He didn't look like much, right? You know, so the monk goes, what was this? I've heard of this great stone bridge. I mean, I've heard of a great Zen master here. But now all I see is a simple log bridge, you know, like one log versus this big stone bridge. All I see is an old kind of, you know, not too much of a person here. Where's this great Zen master, right? So Giao Giao's wonderful in that way. Well, of course, you just see a log bridge, because I am just an ordinary. regular person. Because we all are just regular, ordinary, messed up people, right? But you don't see the stone bridge. You don't see what?

[14:50]

What doesn't he see? What does this monk not see? He doesn't see Zhao Zhou as Buddha. He doesn't see Zhao Zhou as Buddha nature. He doesn't see More importantly, he doesn't see his own Buddha nature. He doesn't see his own Buddha. He probably doesn't have the courage to see. And he doesn't see the possibility of the two of them meeting in some way that's real. And that's why Jiaojo says, you don't see that. And he must have said it in a way that the monk stopped a little bit and said, well... What is it? What is the stone bridge? What is the possibility of connection? What is your Buddha nature? What is my Buddha nature? What is it?

[15:51]

And Giao Giao says, Asses cross, horses cross. Kind of an odd thing in some ways, except for we're using this metaphor of a bridge, right? And of course that bridge... Everything crossed that bridge. It was a major commercial traffic bridge. And commercial traffic bridges, they didn't have semi-trucks and wooden carts. He could have said semi-trucks. No, he said the most regal animals, horses cross. And lonely asses that just carry piles of sticks cross. Everything crosses the stone bridge. Everything crosses your Zen mind. Your craziness, your joy, your expectations, your disappointments, your messed upness, your ecstasy, all of that. All that is part of your Buddha nature.

[16:54]

That's all part of your life. Everything. A good answer, I think. And a good thing to think about when you're sitting zazen all day today because something comes in and I don't really like that. I think I'm not going to go along. Well, that's what's happening right now. And that's okay. The next moment something else is going to come along. And that's going to be maybe a beautiful horse or a magnificent warm feeling instead of the pain in your knee. Maybe it'll be a pain in your knee and a warm feeling at the same time. So this question of how do we accept and value everything that comes across as a chance of meeting our true self. See, this is a story, of course, of meeting.

[17:55]

Almost all the Zen stories are of someone meeting someone else. And that's the story of you today, meeting yourself, meeting something, meeting everything that's happening. I remember when I first went to Tashara, it's a natural thing to do. I went to Tassara, there was this famous Zen teacher, Suzuki Roshi. I looked at him. Kind of small. I don't know, you know. I listened to the first lecture, he was talking about Dogen going to China on a boat, and it was stormy. I'd been reading, you know, heavy-duty philosophy, existential.

[18:56]

I was ready to hear the Dharmic truth. He's telling me some kind of, you know, little, you know, little fable of some guy traveling. But, you know, eventually I met Sikyoshi and saw that he wasn't just a little guy telling fables. So I hope when you're sitting and you meet yourself, you decide that you're not just a cranky, person stupidly sitting all day on a cushion. That there's something bigger going on with you that you want to meet. And you meet that by everything that happens. That's okay. Everything that happens, that's okay.

[19:58]

So, I thought I'd also talk a little bit about what Dogen had to say about sitting zazen. You know, Dogen is the founder of our Soto sect of Buddhism, was born in 1200 in Japan and studied the existing Buddhism in Japan and at the age of, or 22, I can't remember, 23 maybe, decided he needed to go to China, which was where he thought the source of authentic Zen was. And so he took a boat. Oh, that was that story that Stu Gershi told that day. But anyway, he took a boat to China, and I'm telling the same story. But I won't tell you about all the storms and various things. And he spent four years studying under a very famous Zen system.

[20:59]

teacher in China and came back to Japan and decided that he would share his understanding and found a sort of a new way of doing Zen in Japan. And he wrote Fukan Zazengi, which is translated recommending Zazen to all people. It's the first thing he wrote. It was kind of a manifesto of what he learned in China. And I'm going to share a few paragraphs from that. So since Dogen is the style of Zen that we do here in this temple, basically. Which is very similar to all Buddhist meditation but has a slight kind of tilt to it. So he starts off this little four-page manual on how to sit zazen with the following paragraph. The way is basically perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent upon practice and realization? The Dharma vehicle is free and untrammeled.

[22:03]

What need is there for concentrated... Well, that's interesting. One of those printers printed page five and not... Oh, there we are. We have print six. Excellent. What need is there for concentrated effort or the next page of your lecture? Apparently there's... He claims there's no need. Indeed, the whole body is far from the world's dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It is never apart from one right where one is. What is the use of going off here and there to practice? The way is basically perfect and all-pervading. He's just basically saying life is perfect. It extends in all directions. You're part of life, so you're perfect. What do you need to practice for? And we hear this sometimes, right? You're Buddha. So if you're Buddha, you're all good, you know, you don't need to do anything.

[23:06]

So the Giroshi would say, you know, you're perfect just as you are. And then he would pause and say, and you could use a little improvement. So that's, both are true. But I don't think we, mostly we don't go for the we're perfect just as we are part, mostly. because we have a long laundry list of things that are wrong with us, extending in all directions, even beyond the world, far from the world's dust. So I think that's a, it's sort of something for us to remember. And there's a miracle going on here, a significant one. We happened, I don't know how many trillion galaxies are out there and how many... 10 to the 28 stars are floating around. And that's as far as we can see. So there's a miracle going on around here. And life is certainly a part of that miracle. And you are a living example of life and that miracle.

[24:09]

And so there's got to be something going very well for you, I think. I really do think. Even though you have your problems, which... Most many times you think, oh, my problems are so big, why I can't even, I get subsumed by my problems, so I can't remember that I'm alive. But today, since you've set your problems down, or are setting them down as they come zooming into your brain, oh, no, I'm not going to follow that problem. So, unfortunately, Dogen, because most of Zen is like this, doesn't just end with telling you that you're perfect. He says, and yet, if there's the slightest discrepancy, the way is as distant as heaven from earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion. If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion.

[25:10]

Well, from one hand, having heard that, this is simple. I'm just going to eliminate liking and disliking. Right? I have no preference for anything that's going on here. I won't have any problem there. And it doesn't take long before you find that's impossible. Our mind is a liking, disliking machine. That's basically what it does. I choose this over that. I like this. I don't like that. I want more of this. I want less of that. This is, I mean, in very more subtle ways, this is mostly what's going on in the brain. And this does cause suffering, right? From the simplest thing. I would really like a cup of coffee. And I came up from zazen. I hope this wasn't the case, if you wanted a cup of coffee.

[26:16]

And there was no coffee in the urn. And I'm unhappy. Well, that's one way of being unhappy. There's other ways of being happy that are more foundational. I've fallen madly in love with so-and-so, and they don't even know I exist. There's lots of things in our life that are... We want things, and we don't want other things. Why did I get sat next to that one person in a zendo that just always shakes and mutters and... Whatever it is, I don't like that, you know. Some of my best friends spent years shaking in the Zen though. So if you have anybody that's doing a little shaking, you know, put up with it. Find out why that's irritating you.

[27:18]

I wrote some really nice stuff about this, but I don't think I want to get into it. I'll just sort of throw it out a little bit. You know, one of the sort of foundational teachings in Buddhism is desire is what causes our suffering. And, of course, the reason why we're always picking and choosing and liking and disliking is it's just built into our neurology. You cannot look at anything. without your mental construction creating a picture of what's out there. You're not just taking a photograph of those trees. Your mind is interacting with the environment and producing a picture which has lots of preferential elements in it. And the picture of what I look at when I look at a tree or what you look at and look at the same, they're different. And that comes out of the nature of the mind. So we are built in this way to... pick and choose.

[28:31]

And unfortunately, an enormous amount of this picking and choosing causes suffering because its axis is located around what I want for me. So much of this choosing is what will make me happy, what will be good for me. And so that's mostly where the suffering comes from. If you can... see actually the desire is the driving force of your life in actual fact it's the energy of your life that puts you forward it's your awakened mind looking for buddha itself and how do you have it experienced that way you widen the scope of what your desire is interested in instead of being interested in just taking care of yourself your desire is interested in taking care of everything connecting with the whole world. That's our vow to save all beings.

[29:35]

And if you open that up, this desire, this energy of your life is no longer something that's suffering, it is compassion. That was quick. It's a whole lecture in itself, but I decided to throw it in because it fits so well with likes and dislikes. Anyway, continuing on in the remaining few minutes we have with a couple more paragraphs from this marvelous essay, Dogen then goes on to say, Need I mention the Buddha who was possessed of inborn knowledge, the influence of his six years of upright sitting is noticeable still, or Buddha sat for many a long time, or Bodhidharma's transmission of the mind seal, the fame of his nine years of wall sitting is celebrated to this day. Since this was the case of the saints of old, how can we dispense with negotiating the way? So he's telling you. That's what Bodhidharma and Buddha did when faced with the problem of the human situation.

[30:44]

How do I solve this human problem? My picking and choosing mind. So that's how the ancients responded. They took up the way. And he's recommending that you do that too. And so then he gives you this first paragraph. You should therefore cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate the self. Body and mind of themselves will drop away and your original face will be manifest. Beautiful, isn't it? It's like poetry. Practical poetry. You should therefore cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following after speech and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate yourself.

[31:51]

Body and mind of themselves will drop away and your original face will be manifest. So, I think basically in this first sentence he's saying, you know, pursuing intellectual understanding, pursuing following after speech, pursuing anything, reaching out in the world to grab anything, to take any object to fix your situation. I'm going to fix my situation while I'm sitting zazen by having really, really... concentrating hard and having a great enlightenment experience, that'll fix myself. That's grabbing something, that's gaining, that's reaching out, that's trying to make something happen. And that's our normal life. Our normal life, I mean, basically our daily life, that's what we have to do all the time. We have to fix things, make things happen. There's a kind of force in our life like that. But he's saying if you're going to sit zazen here, you can take a backward step, which is instead of...

[32:54]

reaching out to fix things step back wait see what comes up see what's there already without trying to change anything see what's happening without trying to change anything turn your light into your life as it is in this moment, inwardly to illuminate yourself, who are you anyway? That's a good question. And he says, body and mind of themselves will drop away and your original face will be manifest. This is a very famous statement Dogen body and mind of themselves will drop away. And it's used in Genjo Cohen and many other one of the essays he's written, and there's a beautiful sort of deconstruction of the whole story that originally it was thought that this was an enlightenment experience that Dogen had when he was sitting in China.

[34:12]

Somebody was sleeping next to him. They sat all night long back there in those days, and his teacher came up and took a slipper off and hit the guy in the head and said, you know, You're not practicing seriously enough. How can your body and mind drop away if you're falling asleep? And supposedly, Dogen had an enlightenment experience. This was the story written by Dogen's successor, modern research, of which Shohaka Okamura is very familiar with and laid out in this book. It's turned out that that's not really the case. He didn't have some big enlightenment experience. So what does he mean by body and mind? dropping away so he uses this wonderful example like we all wear clothes that we put on and our clothes signify I think maybe not as much nowadays as it used to if you were wealthy you wore expensive clothes maybe now if you're wealthy you wear not expensive clothes I don't know but you know businessmen wear business suits or at least they used to now they wear around here sports shirts but anyway you get the point if you're an artist you wear

[35:21]

interesting artistic clothes. If you're a Zen monk, you wear black robes. So these clothes are some description of who you are. But we have other kinds of clothes. We have our status, our job identification, all kinds of other descriptions of us based on the work we do. place we are in the organization oh you're a vice president you're a professor you're you know so this is more clothes that we wear in fact you've built an entire life up of a self-image that you have I'm a person that's a dependable person I'm a hard-working person I'm a smart person I'm a stupid person I'm an agile person. You have tons and tons.

[36:21]

I'm a person that could never sit all day long. That's impossible. I'm a person that can always sit all day long. You have a self-image that you've built. So what Shohaku is saying here is all of that is what you can let go of when you sit zazen. You can let go of being a lawyer. You can let go of being a dependable person. You can let go of the fact that you were born in New Mexico or Norway or all these other ideas about who you are and just become, as he would say, taking off the clothes analogy, a naked person. Just a living human being. And what do you see when you just become a living human being without having to support all of that karmic life?

[37:25]

These thoughts we have about who we are and what we can do and what we can't do and our ideas about ourselves, they are a reinforcement of the karmic life we had. We were raised in a certain way by our parents and we reinforced that by believing all those things. But if you... take those definitions away and open your mind to the possibility that you're much bigger than all that. And by the way, I'm not sure I believe any of that, actually, when you get down to it. That's leftover news. There's a famous quote, We open the hand of thought. These concepts drop off, and the body and mind release us from our karmic binding. We can drop our karmic binding by letting go of all of this stuff.

[38:27]

And your original face will be manifest. Your Buddha nature will be manifest. That's the kitchen crew leaving to attend to our lunch. And also the signal that it's 10 o'clock. or 11 o'clock, time to go back to the zendo. Well, I can't talk about this next thing, but I will say something about this. Oh, I didn't even get to think not thinking. Please, this was his only instruction about the mind. Think not thinking. How do you think not thinking? Non-thinking. This is the essential art of Zazen. My only comment on that would be to just pay attention to how much of your thinking is related to yourself, your self-concern.

[39:35]

That's the hook in your thinking. And if you can put down the self-concern, and the way you do that is you pay attention to your breathing, and your posture while your self-concern is going on up here, you diffuse it. You can have thinking going on, but it is not the same as your normal thinking, which builds a whole story around how you were not treated well or various other things. So having taken the backward step, having thought not thinking, this is what he says you get to. The Zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It is simply the Dharma gate of bliss and repose. Marvelous. The Dharma gate of bliss and repose. So when you're sitting there with your knees hurting and you say, Ed must be joking.

[40:38]

Well, that's what Dogen said. And I think it really is the Dharma gate. It is the gate. of bliss and repose, even in the midst of your knees hurting and your back hurting. It is the practice realization of totally culminated enlightenment. It is the manifestation of ultimate reality. Traps and snares can never reach it. When you can settle on yourself, not trying to change anything, and really settle into your zazen, You're like... The next sentence. Once its heart is grasped, you are like a dragon gaining water and like a tiger taking to the mountains. I was hiking once in Colorado and way up in a high bowl above the tree line. I saw a beautiful mountain lion moving across.

[41:39]

I mean, he owned that mountain. I mean, such composure, such... He was in his element. And that's... Once it's hard as grasped, you are like a dragon gaining the water and like a tiger in the mountains. May it be so. 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. 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.

[42:32]

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