Welcome to this great assembly. About 51 years ago, some of the people in this room moved into this valley to live and practice together. Before we moved in, this room was a hay barn.

[01:04]

the hay out and started practicing in this room. Over those years, in this valley, in this room, we have spoken of the suffering of this world. We have acknowledged it. and vowed to listen to it and observe it with compassion. And in this room over those years, we have said, we have recited, we have listened to vows, vows of those who wish to become Buddha in order to help this Ocean of living beings.

[02:09]

Later today, we will say those vows. Four vows. Four universal vows. Sentient beings are numberless. I vow to save them. We vow to save them. Afflictions are inexhaustible. We vow to cut through. Dharma gates, gates to the truth, are boundless. We vow to enter them. The Buddha way is unsurpassable. We vow to become it. We call these bodhisattva vows for those who are in the process of realizing perfect awakening.

[03:18]

These vows are quite similar to the vows of those who have realized awakening. Those who have fully realized it are called Buddhas. is the Sanskrit word originally, which means awakened or awakened one. The root of the word is bud, which means to awake. So the Buddha is the past participle of bud. And the word bodhi, which means awakening, is also based on this root. And the name bodhisattva is bodhi, again, awakening, awakening, and sattva, being. A being of awakening or a being in the process of awakening.

[04:24]

So the Buddha also has vows, had vows and has vows, but you might say the Buddha's vows a little differently. Rather than become the Buddha way, the Buddha is... maintain the Buddha way. And rather than enter all Dharma gates, they have entered. And rather than cut through, they have cut through all afflictions and liberated all beings. So in this valley, we often say these vows. We also say in this room often, we speak of our unceasing effort to free all beings so they may dwell in peace and harmony. We speak of that unceasing effort. We aspire to that unceasing effort.

[05:26]

And we have a practice that we do in this valley and in this room. It is the practice of realizing these vows is the practice of the Buddha way. And also we have a family style word or two words that we use to express the whole Buddha way. The whole way of freeing beings so they may dwell in peace and so on. And we call this practice just sitting. And last time I gave a talk on Sunday here, I also talked about just sitting, our practice.

[06:38]

or the practice of the Buddha way that we speak of. And I said, I think, during that talk, I said that this just sitting is a radiant conversation. It's a conversation between each of us and all Buddhas. It's a conversation between each of us and all beings. The just sitting includes everyone in conversation. Everyone in wholehearted communion. That's the just sitting. Since it's not, since it's a conversation, since it's a communion, we don't do the communion. It's done together. We together enter the communion.

[07:40]

In reality, we do. And even though in reality we are entering this communion moment after moment, we need to actually offer our moment-by-moment human activity to what we're already doing. We need to offer our body, speech, and thought to this conversation. Otherwise, even though it's always going on, we don't realize it. That might be called an irony. It's kind of ironic that it is necessary that we do something that we're already doing. That we offer what we're doing to what we're already doing in reality. When we sit in this room and any room, when you sit, you can offer your sitting.

[08:49]

You can offer your posture, your sitting posture, as a token of everything. This individual body is offered as a token to the just sitting of the Buddha. The sitting, every moment of the sitting is an homage to the Buddha, which is an homage to the conversation between Buddha and all sentient beings. So the sitting is a token to a practice that concentrates all the practices of Buddha, the Buddha way, that have happened from beginningless time and are now happening all over the world in great variety.

[09:50]

It collects and concentrates them all, or it concentrates on collecting them all. And this is called a meditation. It is called a samadhi, a state of gathering and collecting. into one one suchness one the way things are one universal universal vast and unhindered communion which in this unhinderedness and vastness it is radiant It is ungraspable. There's no place to get a foothold. And it completely includes all beings who are grasping things and trying to get a foothold.

[10:56]

And many people in many traditions do practices where they feel like they personally can do the practice by themselves. And that they can grasp the practice. And they can get a foothold in the practice. So some people may need to do a practice that they can grasp. And they can get a foothold. In order to open up to the practice that nobody can grasp and nobody can get a foothold to the practice of the Buddhas. I can't grasp the Buddha's practice, and Buddha can't either. But Buddha is that practice, and I wish to enter the samadhi of the Buddhas, the concentration of the Buddhas, and live there. And living there is realizing it.

[12:02]

To offer my graspable speech and thought and gestures as tokens, to this samadhi. Again, in this samadhi, all the different practices that you may have heard about in the Buddha way and other traditions, they're all living together in harmony. They're not obstructing each other. They're helping each other become the truth. Even unwholesome activity. And all kinds of delusions are in this samadhi. But in this samadhi, they are in conversation with awakening. Awakening is embracing them and sustaining them so that they may be free. Awakening is also embracing and sustaining all skillful, wholesome activity.

[13:08]

it's embracing wholesome activity too. All the wholesome activities are in this samadhi called just sitting. And those wholesome activities, those wonderful, skillful, compassionate activities, are also embraced and they're also liberated. Because even wholesome activities, we can try to grasp them. Some people, without trying to grasp anything, surprise themselves and do something really lovely and wholesome. And they're very happy about that, and then they try to grasp it. Which is a defilement of the goodness to grasp it. Rather than saying thank you, you say I'm going to keep it. Or rather than just saying thank you, try to get more. So the deluded mind can defile anything. That defilement in this samadhi is in intimate communion.

[14:13]

And that communion is the samadhi, and that communion liberates all beings in the samadhi. Which we call just sitting. But once again, many people are not ready to just do a practice. which is a token of everything. They want to do something. They want to do one or two things rather than be in a space where everything is happening and everything is included and everything is at peace. They're not ready for that. No thank you. I want to do something that I can do by myself. I want to do something I can get a hold of. And in the Zen tradition, we actually have, we offer many things that people can get a hold of. Because without giving them something they can get a hold of, they may not be ready to open to what they can't get a hold of.

[15:21]

And actually Zen is somewhat famous for having teaching techniques or teaching opportunities called koans. which are like public examples of awakening that people can be given in words or in writing, and they can contemplate these, and they can get feedback from teachers about how to work with these stories, which initially they feel like they can grasp. It's like someone might initially think they can grasp just sitting. As you just sit, as you practice this just sitting, you gradually realize that it also is kind of like, it's ungraspable. This graspable offering is actually ungraspable. So the just sitting becomes another koan, if you want.

[16:31]

What is the just sitting? Well, I just said what it was. It is the Buddha way. It is freeing all beings so they may dwell in peace. And this practice can occur in this room. And it can occur and live anywhere. Because it includes anywhere. Everywhere. It is, if you excuse me, it is everything. Everywhere. All at once. Our life is actually everything, everywhere, all at once, and just sitting celebrates the reality. I don't remember who told me this, whether I read it or heard it, but it was kind of an imaginary interview between the founder of our school, Dogen Zenji.

[17:45]

who lived in Japan long before there were talk shows. But so the image is kind of like somehow a talk show host managed to get this ancient teacher to come on his show and ask him questions about Zen. And the host said, I understand that you teach that the Buddha way is just to sit or just sitting. And then Dogen Genji said, yes, that's right. And then the host said, what about the koan method and the koan techniques? And Dogen said, they're good. They're good. And the interviewer says, well, if they're good, why do you just say that the practice is just sitting? And then the teacher, Dogen, says,

[18:47]

Well, some people have to do koans before they can just sit. After they do koans for a while, they're actually able to just sit. And they can continue studying koans, but they're no longer studying koans by their own power. They're studying together with all beings. And they can open to that. And they need koans in order to open to it. But some people don't have cones to help them enter to it, so they maybe want to switch to that other school. Where you can get something and do it by yourself. Leave me alone. Let me do this by myself.

[19:49]

That's part of our evolution. As children, we have to do that. Let me do it myself. There's this girl I take care of. Now she's a pretty big girl. She's almost 12. But when she was younger, she would try to do various things like unscrew a jar or something. And then she might have some difficulty. And I would say, would you like me to help you? And she said, no, let me do it by myself. And then she would try. And sometimes she would succeed, and sometimes she would not. And if she didn't succeed, she sometimes would say, I need help. And I said, do you want me to help you unscrew it? She said, yes, and then I would help her. but she had to try herself to realize that she needs help to do certain things.

[20:52]

In this room also, and in other parts of this temple, we have formal ways of walking, sitting, bowing, chanting, eating, formal ways of doing these things. And people come in here and try to learn those forms, but sometimes it takes a while before they can learn it or remember it. For example, when we walk from this room, we try to stand upright, And also, we put our hands into a particular mudra, hand mudra, which is we put our thumb down of our left hand and wrap the fingers around it like this. Then we place it around our sternum and we take the right hand and cover it and put the thumb of the right hand on top of the crease behind the thumb of the left hand and place it here and also hold the arms a little away from our body.

[22:13]

And we walk in this posture. That's the formal way. And so people come in here, and then they have their hands in other ways, like at their side, where they have this hand wiggle down really low. Usually not really up really high. That's very uncommon to see this way of walking. Or even this. Or this. This is more common. As it approaches the usual spot, it becomes more common. And then it goes below the usual spot and it becomes even more common. And then in this room, we're practicing just sitting while we're walking. In other words, we're walking as an offering. to the Buddha samadhi, to the reality of the Buddha, where all beings are living together.

[23:21]

We're walking as an offering to this Buddha way, to this Buddha samadhi, to just sitting. And the just sitting helps us walk that way, and the walking helps us sit that way. I think it was... Quite recently, like last weekend, we had a one-day sitting here where people came and sat and walked in this room. And some of the people were, during the formal walking, their hands were in these kind of informal places. And some of the senior people here were observing that, but they weren't sure. They weren't sure if they were invited to help, to give people help. They weren't sure if they were invited to go up to some people who didn't seem to know or weren't practicing the formal way of walking.

[24:24]

And they didn't feel invited to go up and say, do you need any help with your hands? Well, I think we're going to have a little discussion here soon where we're going to ask if the seniors are invited. to give instruction to people about how to walk in the room if they seem to need it. The instruction comes from this samadhi. And because it comes from this samadhi, it is not given one-sidedly. It's given as a conversation. Do you need any help? Sometimes if you say that to people, they say, no, let me do it myself. So the question is how to open up and maintain the conversation around these forms and how to use these forms as an opportunity for the conversation.

[25:35]

Sometimes we also offer posture suggestions while people are sitting. However, we're careful to do that because we don't usually touch people without asking them. So we sometimes say, during this period of sitting quite a bit, we will offer postural suggestions. If you don't want them, let us know. We won't. And then if people are up for it, we... gently put our hand on their back, or the back of their neck, or upper back, lower back, to make a suggestion about how to sit. Or we make a suggestion about how to hold their hands during the sitting. So we make these suggestions. But these suggestions are made in this respectful, intimate communion of the samadhi.

[26:43]

For the sake of realizing the samadhi. exercising. Sometimes when I'm sitting and I'm also talking, I sometimes sing. And someone recently said to me, you know, it might be good if you've got a pitch pipe. And actually, I do have a piss pipe. A pitch pipe. I do have one, but I forgot to bring it.

[27:43]

So I'm going to sing this song and I hope it isn't too irritating if I'm off key. And it's a song about the way enlightenment, radiant wisdom, interacts with delusion and confusion and affliction. It's a song about that, I feel. It's a song I heard when I was quite young, like seven or eight, but I remember it. And I liked it when I was seven or eight, and I still do. And now I see it in a new way. I see it as what is the way we relate when we're in samadhi, when we're in the Buddha way. So please excuse me if this song is off-key. Is that off key?

[28:55]

The evening breeze caress the trees tenderly. The trembling trees Caress the breeze tenderly. That's the way it is in the Samadhi. Everything is tenderly, respectfully, wholeheartedly embracing everything else. And that is the light of Buddha's wisdom. which frees all beings. It's always going on. It's a question of offering and aligning with it and requesting it.

[30:01]

And then by the power of that great Buddha wisdom, we enter the samadhi and we live there with all beings and do the work. A very simple work. which is inseparable from infinite complexity. The one practice, this samadhi is the one practice samadhi. Just sitting is a one practice concentration, and it embraces infinite variety of practices. And again, just recently someone said, We don't give much instruction in Zen compared to some other traditions of Buddhism. I would say... Actually, we do give instruction, detailed instruction, when it's appropriate.

[31:04]

We hope to. But sometimes we just say, one practice, let's all just sit. And then we discover... that it's time to give some instruction about this or that [...] or that. So that we both have the complexity and difference, and we have oneness, and they're working together in communion. So I ask if, you know, do you want me to help you with that? And you might say, no, thank you. I'll do it by myself. Also, sometimes in this valley, we might see someone who looks lost. And we might say to them, excuse me, may I help you?

[32:07]

And then they say, yeah, where's the... Where's the kitchen? Where's the zendo? Where's the parking lot? People often ask, where's the parking lot? They also say, what's the way to the beach? Where's the garden? So we see people and they seem to be calling out for help. So then we gently offer ourselves to assist them on their path. So I ask, do you need anything? Do you need me to help you with anything? And that's just what you call it. I was going to say that's a standing offer, but I think it's a sitting offer. It's a sitting offer. which is, may I help you?

[33:15]

Also, on Tuesday, I went to visit. I have a couple of 90-year-old friends. They're older than me. And the wife of one of my friends said, are you still teaching? And I said, what do you think? And then she said, I mean formally. And I said, yeah. I'm formally teaching. Like, this is kind of like formally teaching. But when I see somebody wandering around, it seems lost, and I say, may I help you? That's kind of, I guess, informally teaching, you might say. And sometimes what they, if they say, I'm looking for such and such, and sometimes I say, oh, I don't know where that is.

[34:21]

So the way I teach sometimes is I say, I don't know. 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. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[35:00]

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