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. Thank you so much, David. So good morning, everyone. I hope you're enjoying the rain. It's so wonderful to have rain. And I was invited. by David and by the Sangha here to speak this morning on the topic of meditative concentration. Meditative concentration. As was mentioned, I began my Dharma training in Ann Arbor, Michigan in a temple that was just starting there in a Korean Zen lineage in 1982. And the teacher, a Korean Zen monk, had a formula that he taught to us and he had us recite.

[01:10]

So I may have gotten a couple of things which kind of mixed up, but it's pretty good. And the formula was this. What is meditation? So by this Zen meditation, what is meditation? Meditation is concentration. What is concentration? Concentration is no separation. What is no separation? No separation is oneness. What is oneness? Oneness is no life and no death. As the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh has said, we were never born and we shall never die. It's one of those things that if you're not a Zen student, you think, what? And if you are a Zen student, you might think, aha, the non-dual gate. The non-dual gate. Where we don't keep slicing and dicing things into binaries.

[02:18]

Just as folks are... pointing out these days that gender identity is on a spectrum and therefore the gender binary is not only harmful to many people, it's just kind of wrong. So, in terms of the reality. So concentration, concentration. Let's get in our time machine and go back to the summer of 1980. at which time I was in a Korean nuns training temple in South Korea, kind of the northern part of South Korea, not too far from the DMZ, during the summer kilchay. And I understand that this is being transcribed, so I will spell out certain words.

[03:19]

So the romanization is often K-Y-O-L-C-H-E, and that means the tight dharma season or the three-month summer rains retreat. And I was at a very large nun's training temple called Kensang Am. I think it's probably romanized K-Y-E-N-S-O-N-G-A-M. And I think that kensong is the same word in Korean as kensho in the Japanese zen. I think that's true. So anyway, there we were. We were locked down for the summer rains retreat in which you're really never supposed to. Once you start it, you are not supposed to leave unless you leave feet first. I mean, you're supposed to make a very strong commitment. And we had, it's a very famous mountain. called Toksung, T-O-K-S-U-N-G, Toksung San, Toksung Mountain.

[04:22]

And so we therefore had some visiting nuns for the summer rains retreat. Sometimes there's that kind of travel, and then you get to go different places and meet different people. Not that you're talking to them, since it's silent. However, when you practice for three months together, of course, there's a lot of... rapport and communication that builds up that is non-verbal. And so we had a number of visiting nuns from other temples, and as usual, the schedule in those Korean monasteries, if it's still the same, is up at 3 a.m. every day, no days off, and 9 p.m. lights out if one is lucky. but definitely up at 3 a.m. And so sleep, of course, in a Zen temple and monastery is a very precious resource. And I would... Wow, okay.

[05:25]

Yes, you understand. So sometimes I would be really mad because we would all sleep together during the Gilche in the big room. So It's Korean. It's called literally the big room, which is a multipurpose room. And so sometimes I would wake up and I'd have to go out to the outhouse. And it would be like 1 a.m. or 1.30, some nightmarish early hour. And, of course, it was a big no-no to disturb anyone else because everyone, all the other nuns are there. They're sleeping out with these quilts and things on the floor, which is heated. And so I would wake up and I'd look around and let my eyes adjust to, there was always a little light to see by of some sort or another. And there were these two visiting nuns. I never knew their names. They looked exactly like one another, which was kind of weird to begin with.

[06:30]

I don't know if they were identical twins or something had happened, but they were, you know, they were with us. And Whenever I woke up in the night, they were always sitting upright in Zen meditation. They were doing sleepless practice. So we all sat all day, and then they sat all night. So every once in a while, when I woke up, I'd think, maybe if I open my eyes, they'll be sleeping. But never happened. Every time I woke up, they were there in a very upright posture. They didn't even have wrinkles in their clothing. They were obviously or seemed to be in some deep state of samadhi or meditative concentration. The sleeper's practice is something that some Zen practitioners do and some Dharma halls do. There was a very well-known Korean Zen teacher who was approved by their teacher to receive the Zen transmission, meaning you're ready to teach

[07:37]

However, this person themself felt, no, I'm not ready, I'm not ready. So the story, as I've heard it, is that they decided to finish their training by doing sleepless practice with a long pole kind of underneath and then a knife that sticks to the top of the pole. So if they nodded off, it would prick them and they'd be, well, okay, back on task. and practiced in this rather radical manner until they were satisfied that they were indeed ready to teach. So such was the concentrated spirit of our Zen ancestors. And going back to our Zen nuns on Toksung Mountain in the summer of 1988, To me, the American, this seemed to be some pretty amazing samadhi.

[08:44]

However, it must be said that I really had no way of knowing whether this kind of amazing concentration made them wiser or more compassionate, which I think is important to consider. I myself have done sleepless practice. really pouring on the one-pointed concentration. So when we say concentration in meditation, perhaps there are various kinds. All the Zen I've encountered means usually one-pointed concentration. So that means fixing the attention on an object, an object of concentration. And that could be the breath, It could be in some of our Zen lineages. We have the koan practice, which I have done, both in the Japanese Rinzai form, or one of the Japanese Rinzai forms in the United States, as well as in South Korea, in which case I think the classic practice is a form of koan Zen in which

[10:02]

It's called that you take the word head, and that's hwadu, usually romanized as H-W-A-D-U. And there's another variation there, various systems of romanization. But I've seen it as H-W-A-D-U. So you take the koan, and you just choose the word head, the salient point of it. And then you're concentrating on that day, night, night, day, as much as possible 24-7. So one of the classic huadus that I was introduced to, I think it's called imoko. I don't know how to spell it, sorry. And it translates as either what is this or who am I? in which case the word head is what or who. These word heads, however, evoking the rest of the question, which is not repeated mechanically like a mantra.

[11:09]

It's actually one is asked to urgently bring it up at every single moment as much as possible. So it's really, in my point of view, an incredibly great practice. And Once again, I've had a lot of my training really was about concentration. Meditation is concentration. And around 1984, again in my early training in our temple of the Zen Buddhist temple in Toronto, we did our equivalent of Rohatsu, the great... Zen retreat that celebrates the Buddha's great effort and enlightenment. So that's R-O-H-A-T-S-U, I think, usually. And in Korean, these intensive retreats are usually called Youngman Junction.

[12:16]

I think that's usually romanized as Y-O-N-G-M-A-E-N-G-C-H-O-N-G-J-I-N or something like that. So we were doing Yongming Junction in the Toronto Temple in December of 1984. And as you know, during that retreat, Zen students are asked to make even a greater effort to respect the Buddha's effort. And... that temple was at that time a townhouse in a quiet residential area of Toronto. So it was a townhouse and then it had a very tiny gated little garden backyard off of the basement area and it was two stories high and so it had this wall that it shared with whoever was living in the townhouse next door. And the thing was that at nighttime, it was pretty quiet during the day, as I recall, but at nighttime, whoever was next door played music really, really incredibly loud.

[13:37]

Like, I don't know, was 10 decibels really loud? Something like that. Anyway... it would cause the wall between the townhouses to shake violently. And so as this retreat went on and we were getting more and more concentrated, in which one usually becomes more sensitive to sound and things like that, this music just was, it was again quiet during the day and then at night it would crank up and so it would become like surround sound. And it was just this incredible kind of container and weird container for this retreat. And one of our Canadian monks, after the retreat was over, said two words when we broke silence. And those two words were Pink Floyd. So... I had really terrible bronchitis during this intensive retreat.

[14:42]

And at a certain point, the teacher did something that I had only heard the former generation, I was kind of the second generation, I think, of students of this teacher. And the first generation, the old guard, had said that back in the day, sometimes during the wintertime during these intensive retreats, that they would go out in Toronto, which is very cold in the winter, and sometimes there's a lot of snow, and they would run around barefoot in the snow just to kind of brighten things up. And I hadn't experienced that in Ann Arbor. However, during this retreat, there was just a lot of energy. The teacher was really urging us to concentrate, concentrate, concentrate, put in the maximum effort.

[15:44]

And at a certain point, sure enough, the word came down, take off your shoes, go down the basement and run around in the snow. So I did, coughing and kind of staggering the whole time. Why? Because concentration was In concentrated states, as many of you may have experienced, what we might ordinarily call pain becomes another type of energy. We have a different relationship to it. We can have a different relationship to it, not that it's particularly pleasant, but it can actually become a lot less unpleasant or when we're just kind of in our day-to-day mode. And the world... just seems very, very different usually when one is in these states. Our perceptions are sharper in some ways, and then other things that we might usually pay more attention to recede into the background.

[16:47]

I think that's fair to say. So everyone ran around barefoot in the snow, and being part of the group, I did too. And when I came back in, I'll never forget from the snow, The teacher was standing by the back door putting down towels for people to dry their feet on, and I was just coughing and coughing and coughing, this racking coughs, but in some sort of what the folks in the Theravada would probably call a jhana state, J-H-A-N-A, the state of meditative concentration. So like the Duracell bunny, I just kept on going. When I came back inside the temple, staggering and coughing, the teacher, as I dried my feet on the towel, I'll never forget the teacher, like, leaned closer and hissed at me, what are you doing? With the general meaning of, what the heck is wrong with you?

[17:50]

Like, you're really sick. Why are you doing this? And I thought, I didn't know I had an option. Well, because, I mean, I didn't. So that was first a... kind of a little signal that, gee, maybe I don't have to follow the group all the time if I could practice some common sense, which was a kind of insight that just was quite amazing to me. So the first point I want to make about my experience of unusually deep states of samadhi, unusually deep for myself, I only speak for myself, or meditative concentration, is that they're real, they happen, and that ordinary people like myself can, under certain conditions, do things like sleepless practice, which is what we were practicing during that particular intensive retreat,

[18:59]

and which also I did some sleepless practice when I was in Korea in the monasteries there in 88 and 89. And as I said, this is not necessarily limited to Zen or even to Buddhism because those of you who have raised babies and taken care of babies are very familiar with sleepless practice. in which case I would say the object of concentration is the child. And that is a wonderful object of concentration. As a mother, I particularly think so. So the second point, so that's the first point I want to make about my experience, is that meditative concentration is real and ordinary people can do it, can do things we might not ordinarily think we can do. And the second point is to say that this, however, does not necessarily result in something great.

[20:05]

I did, in fact, during that period, damage my lungs and have ever since been prone to chronic bronchitis unless I'm really careful. In other words, once I start coughing, I don't stop and it gets worse and worse and, you know, I'll even like displace a rib and it gets really, really bad. So I have to intervene or not start at all. And I know that there have been true stories of what in my old friend, the late Robert Aitken Roshi, sometimes called the Dean of American Zen, Aitken Roshi once called the bad old days of Zen. And he said that in the bad old days of Zen in the United States that some people concentrated so deeply so much and entered these states of concentration or just decided to tough it through and they sat and they sat and they sat in lotus posture and they did result in permanent nerve damage in their knees, which as far as I know is not what the Buddha would have taught.

[21:17]

However, that point being, we get into these concentrated states and sometimes just don't have common sense. And that brings me to my third point, which is that as far as I can see right now, single-pointed concentration as a meditative technique needs to be paired with mindfulness. And those are two aspects of the Eightfold Path, the Noble Eightfold Path. We have the concentration, meditation, samadhi or jhana, and we have mindfulness or sati. Otherwise, so when we have concentration, it needs to be accompanied, I think, by mindfulness, which has the ability to step back, kind of get a broader view. So with concentration, single-pointed, it's like this laser beam, and then the mindfulness simultaneously stepping back and saying, huh, is this wise?

[22:20]

Do things need to be adjusted? How is it going? Otherwise, it can be kind of like getting totally and even joyfully absorbed in having a drill. You have this drill rig, and you're drilling down with incredible intensity, vertically, down through really hard rock. Because with concentration, we can. Or those of us who have great concentration, we can. It's like we can do it. And it's kind of exciting. It really is. We're like drilling down, we're drilling down, and we're busily drilling down to the core of the earth. I mean, who knows what incredible things we might discover. But if mindfulness is not accompanying the concentration, then, so to speak, in this metaphor, there's no one operating the drill rig up tap.

[23:23]

and the engine might be on fire, and someone is playing Pink Floyd really, really loudly. That's kind of uncontrolled up there. Dr. J. Michelson published an article in Tricycle Magazine in 2016 titled Jhana, J-H-A-N-A, The Spice of your meditation has been missing. A Theravada take on states and stages of meditative concentration. And this is online. You can look it up. The spice your meditation has been missing. Sounds great. So this is a quote. In most of the Pali canon's discussion of samadhi, it's described not simply as one-pointed concentration in general, but as the ability to enter the four jhanas.

[24:24]

Distinct and concentrated mind states in particular. So jhana 1, 2, 3, 4, this author is saying they are each different from one another. They're distinct in their concentrated mind states. Eventually, I don't know how to pronounce it, dhyana, D-H-Y-A-N-A, the Sanskrit for jhana, became chan in Chinese and later zen in Japanese. And for the transcriber, I'll spell those out later. The author continues, these words became roughly synonymous with meditation itself and later identified with various specific meditation practices such as zazen, which is done here at San Francisco Zen Center. End of quote. So from what I'm understanding, Buddhist words for meditative concentration are, number one, Pali.

[25:25]

The Pali word is jhana, J-H-A-N-A. There are diacritical marks, which I will not describe here, but you can look them up. Number two, then Sanskrit, D-H-Y-A-N-A, same word. And then it became in the Chinese Chan, C-H-A-N, in the Japanese Zen, Z-E-N, Son in Korean, usually romanized I think as S-E-O-N, and Tian in Vietnamese, T-H-I-E-N, with a diacritical mark. And as this author, Michelson, says that these words became roughly synonymous with meditation itself. I got curious because I'd heard about the jhanas, which I was never trained in, from other Theravada practitioners, insight meditation practitioners, Vipassana meditation practitioners, and teachers whom I know and respect.

[26:31]

And I heard about, oh, we're going to do this jhana retreat, or they're the different jhanas. And I got curious. So in preparing for this talk, I did do some reading. And so it seems as though, the way it's described, as though there are four stages, at least, of the jhanas, one, two, three, four, and that these are within that tradition mapped out in incredible detail, very different from the way that I was trained originally in Zen. It's a very amazing and wonderful system of practice and teachings. of meditative states of concentration described in the suttas or sutras, the discourses of the Buddha. So to give you a taste of the flavor, if you're not familiar with them, which I wasn't, of this system of teachings, this is from Lee Brasington's book, Right Mindfulness, a Practical Guide to the Jhanas, in the chapter titled Second Jhana on page 51.

[27:36]

So I quote, The happiness of the second jhana isn't triggered by anything external. It's triggered by your concentrated mind. You have a gift within you, and the second jhana enables you to experience it directly. The sukha, S-U-K-H-A, meaning happiness, initially arose from the concentration generated in excess concentration, then being focused on pleasure. So don't worry about this. You can go read the book if you want to. It's very technical. It's kind of like a technical manual in some cases, and then the author also brings a great deal of warmth in a personal story. So this brought, he continues, this brought the first jhana consisting of both piti, P-I-T-I, rapture, and sukha, happiness, with piti predominating.

[28:37]

By spending some time in the first jhana, you stabilize both the piti and sukha. Now, in the second jhana, you chilled out the piti and let the sukha dominate your experience. And it gets even more technical from there. And as the author explains, you should maintain this state in the second jhana for 10 to 15 minutes. And that makes me wonder with all due respect, do you set a timer or something? And I want to be very careful here because I knew there might be a laugh that I hope no one feels disrespected. So I want to say something loudly and I hope clearly. And that is because of diversity, meaning because as human beings we have similarities and differences. Of course, there is biodiversity as well. But as human beings, we're diverse, and therefore there are different methods and approaches to meditative concentration, samadhi, absorption.

[29:42]

And that's not only a good thing, it's a great thing in my point of view. It's sometimes said there are 10,000 Dharma doors, and that means inclusivity, that this practice can welcome all who come, who are interested. So mindfulness or inside or vipassana meditation is really good, really wonderful for some people and probably a lot of people in terms of now the secularized mindfulness that's helping so many people in hospitals and schools and workplaces. And Zen meditation, obviously, I think is really good and very wonderful. And so on with the probably hundreds of other types of of Buddhist meditation, the myriad Tibetan practices for instance, they're all good and different people will gravitate toward what works for them, what works for each of you. And when different people find the concentration practices that work for them,

[30:48]

We could also point to many concentration practices. This is a human thing in all the great religions of the world and all of the spiritual traditions. This is a totally fantastic thing. I would venture to guess that you've probably all had your own taste of samadhi. Those moments when perhaps you've experienced worries, cravings, the usual... thoughts that are proliferating, and time passing, the nature of time as we normally, got to get here, got to get there, all of that drops away. And we effortlessly drop from the world of everyday prose into the realm of poetry. Once again, I distinctly remember having a conversation many years ago with Robert Aitken Roshi, and we discovered that one thing we had in common was our love of poetry, which is also very common among many Zen practitioners, along with appreciation for so many of the arts that are associated with Zen.

[32:02]

And Aitken Roshi had been a high school teacher before he went into Zen, And he taught English and he loved poetry and he could recite poetry by memory and so could I because I was trained as a poet. That was where I was destined to go to teach poetry and creative writing before I was kind of sucked off into Zen. And I remember Aiken Roshi once said very... Bluntly, he said, Zen is poetry. And I thought, oh, that's why I ended up in Zen. It's just like this moment of, never thought about it that way. So those moments of samadhi, of grace, of... Usually very beautiful. Often there is a lot of what our Theravada... Siblings might call that rapture, might be called bliss. And we might see a ray of light coming through, sunlight coming through the room.

[33:07]

We might hear a bird. In Zen, it could be anything. It could be a toilet flushing. It really could be anything. And then we have this experience of expansion and radiance or whatever it is that... that comes to us that is truly transformative. So having said all this, it's not unusual these days for people to ask me, what is your practice? What is your practice? And they will say things like, well, how much do you meditate every day? And these days, I would say... that informed by the Bodhisattva vows that I took in 1983 in Toronto when I received the name Mushim, which is from the Heart Sutra, that informed and led by my Bodhisattva vows, the vows I took in 1983 through all these years, where it's brought me to today.

[34:15]

These days I would say that my practice is the intersection of Dharma and social justice. Because I beg you to remember, just as mindfulness is always awareness of an object, there cannot be mindfulness without an object of mindfulness. We can't be just aware. We need to be aware of something. Concentration, as far as I know, also always has an object. And this brings forth the koan, the question that I'd like to leave you with, offer to you, invite you to, what are you concentrating on? If you're practicing concentration, are you clear? What are you concentrating on and why? And if you're practicing mindfulness, what are you mindful of? I think these are really good questions to ask ourselves in order to invite wisdoms.

[35:17]

And so in ending this talk, with deep gratitude once again for your invitation and for this opportunity, this precious opportunity to connect with all of you here today through the intimacy of this gathering. I would like to share with you the practice instructions given to me in South Korea in 1988 on this mountain by the Zen master of the mountain, Wondam, W-O-N-D-A-M, Kun Sinim, that means like sort of high monk. Kun is big, K-U-N. Sinim, it means monk or nun, S-U-N-I-M. And I was offered a private interview with this Zen master because there was a translator present who was fluent in both English and Korean language. and was a monk and who also knew Zen and Buddhism and Korean Zen, who said, gee, I'm here, so why don't I ask if I could get you an interview and you could talk to the Zen master?

[36:29]

I didn't even know that was possible. I said, sure. It was great. So I met with him. He was wonderfully kind. And he said these were the instructions that he gave to me. So I was at that time practicing huadu, or the concentration practice. What is this? What is this? What is this? And his instructions were to continue this. Day and night, night and day, without ceasing, in all of my waking moments, as continuously as possible. He said... It is easier to practice in a seated position, and that's why we sit, but don't limit yourself to formal sitting. He said, take this, take your practice. Practice if you're washing your clothes. Practice when you're going to the outhouse. Practice this when you're eating. And he said, you will have, this was how it came out in English, he said, you will have many experiences along the way.

[37:37]

And by this, my understanding was that if one continued in this way, there would be many cool and interesting things that would happen. And so here I think, I don't know, this is probably kind of a Zen thing. Instead of, or at least Korean Zen, instead of going into them and mapping them all out and analyzing them, he said, you will have many experiences, but ignore all of them. And just keep on going. Keep practicing. Don't stop practicing this until he said the final explosion. Or as Zen Master Sun San Sinem, S-E-U-N-G-S-A-H-N Sinem, wrote me very kindly. He lived in the United States and traveled around the world. He wrote me in a postcard after I returned to California in 1989.

[38:38]

And he wrote me, he said, be a good friend to many temples, visit them, learn things everywhere you go, make friends, keep practicing. And he said, little by little, you will attain universal cookie taste and help all beings. Attain universal cookie taste and help all beings. And that's pretty much been the way it's gone, I have to say so. It's been a long journey so far. It's been a good journey. I've met all of you. So how could it not be great? And at least for now, it's not over yet. I'll end by, once again, thanking you all deeply. Thank you for your presence. Thank you for your practice. Thank you for your mindful awareness and your compassion because this is a world in which there is very deep suffering.

[39:47]

You know that for yourselves and you can also observe it in so many ways by reading the headlines in the newspaper, by watching the news, by wandering around on the streets. Everywhere we go, we do see that and it is very deep and it is very pervasive. So your practice is needed. I hope that it also brings you joy. And in the words of my friend, the late Baba Ibrahim, a transgressive Sufi imam who passed away a couple years ago. I miss him very much. He was a provost at Star King School for the Ministry. And I was present once at a talk in which he ended with these words, and therefore I would like to pass them on to you. May all who seek, find. May all who love, become complete.

[40:53]

Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:23]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_96.39