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. Good morning, Bodhisattvas. I feel like, good morning, America. Good morning, Bodhisattvas. It was a phrase that was used by Yogen Senzaki. He used to call everybody bodhisattvas. And bodhisattvas are awakening beings, enlightening beings. People who are here to wake up in a way that benefits everyone. How many people are here for the first time?

[01:01]

Welcome. So I especially want to welcome people who are here for the first time, because unless the idea of awakening appealed to you in some way, there's no way you would have even been interested in coming. And that basic appeal of the idea of awakening... is the seed of heart and mind that we call the bodhisattva intention, the intention to wake up. In the Diamond Sutra, we were talking about the Diamond Sutra a few people last week, and in the Diamond Sutra, the bodhisattva vow or intention is stated really clearly And please correct me if I'm wrong or leave anything out, but I think it is something like, as many beings as there are understood by the term beings, whether egg-born, born from a womb, moisture-born, or miraculously born, with perception, without perception,

[02:28]

with neither perception nor non-perception. All these beings I must lead to nirvana, to that realm of nirvana, which leaves nothing behind. And yet, when every being has been led to nirvana, no being at all has been led to nirvana. So it means everybody. Everybody. That's called the Bodhisattva vow. And we have practices here which we teach in Zazen instruction, from Zazen instruction all the way up to Dharma transmission. No matter how many years you practice, it will always be the same as that beginning vow. Because the task is limitless. All of us are beginners. when faced by this task. And the presence of beginners reminds us that it reminds everyone, whether you're beginning, middle, or really experienced, of this spirit of practice.

[03:46]

And reminds us also to focus on simple practices using parts of experience that we all share. So of the beginners or anyone else, how many people attended zazen instruction this morning? Okay. And you studied the form of, you know, how to, what room is where? Is that what you did? And how to sit down? Okay. And you looked at the posture? Okay. Did you study breathing? Yeah, a little bit, huh? Okay. So really, posture is first. When you're establishing yourself in a meditation program or practice, posture is really first. And the idea of posture is to establish yourself in a steady, comfortable pose.

[04:54]

And once you do, you may want to start studying the breath. So there's a sutra that was spoken by the Buddha. It's called the Anapanasati Sutta, which means the Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing. And this is a version that was made by Thich Nhat Hanh. And I understand that in Paul's class, on Zen in Action that you were looking at a text by Buddha Dasa. And I highly recommend both of these teachers. Thich Nhat Hanh has a talent and a skill of saying things very simply so that they're easy to remember and practice with. And Buddha Dasa was a great teacher. I wish I had been able to meet him alive. He had a world vision of Buddhism as a practice of peace and harmony, and he had ideas for social practices that would allow that to happen.

[06:02]

But he was also a master at understanding the nuts and bolts all the way through to the deepest insights of practice. And he wrote about a 500-page book just as a commentary on this sutra. which is accessible online. So if you go to the internet and you look up Buddha Dasha, like Buddha and D-A-S-A, Sutra on the Mindfulness of Breathing, you'll find a 500-page textbook available to you to read for free. And that should help you practice. It starts with preliminaries. and goes all the way through to rather refined states of concentration and talks about the whole study of the breath. But to start our study of the breath, I would like to start with a koan from the Zen tradition.

[07:10]

And this is called The Invitation of the Patriarch to Eastern India. And koans are stories The word koan means public case. And they're the Zen literature, the stories of how the teachings played themselves out in the lives of teachers in ways that we can use as examples. So, you know, when you started, when we started this lecture, you said having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept. I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. So that's a chant that you say when you're studying sutras. But listen to this. This is the introductory words. The state before the beginning of time, a black tortoise turns towards fire.

[08:11]

The one phrase especially transmitted outside of doctrine. The lip of a mortar bears flowers. Now tell me, where is the accepting and upholding, reading and reciting in this? Okay? So the state before the beginning of time. A black tortoise turns towards fire. A mysterious phrase. talking about something unusual. Maybe the state before the beginning of time is the state that isn't affected by birth or death. The one phrase specially transmitted outside of the doctrine points to a teacher named Bodhidharma, who taught that the teaching of Zen was transmitted a special use of language transmitted outside the written word.

[09:19]

The lip of a mortar bears flowers. So that's, it says it's miraculous. Now tell me, where's the having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept? Where is that exactly? So that's the introduction of this case. So you expect this case to be about What is it that, what are we talking about to see and listen to and so on? So once a raja in eastern India invited the 27th Buddhist ancestor, Prajnatara, to a feast. The raja asked Prajnatara, why don't you read sutras? Prajnatara said, this poor wayfarer doesn't dwell in the realms of body or mind when breathing in, doesn't get involved in myriad circumstances when breathing out.

[10:27]

I always recite such a sutra, hundreds and thousands and millions of scrolls. I should tell you a little bit of backstory on Prajnatara. He was Bodhidharma's teacher. Bodhidharma was the first ancestor in China. Bodhidharma's teaching, you can see it quite clearly in this koan about Prajnatara. Bodhidharma was known for a practice called wall-sitting, which you learned about today. and which the people in the one-day sitting are practicing today. And in wall-sitting, we sit facing a wall. Okay, that seems pretty clear, right? We sit facing the wall. But where's the wall? You know?

[11:28]

So we actually sit facing a real wall. But where's the wall? Bodhidharma's teaching was, it went something like this, without getting involved in external objects, without glomming onto internal objects. I don't think he said glomming, but it was something like that. No coughing or sighing of the mind. Sit facing the wall. Body and mind drop off. Thus we enter the way. And then Prajnatara said, I don't dwell in the realms of body and mind when breathing in. I don't get involved in myriad circumstances when breathing out.

[12:32]

This is the sutra I recite. hundreds and thousands and millions of scrolls. So this is the sutra which we don't have to go to the internet or to a bookstore to read. This is the sutra that has been given to us as our birthright just by taking human form. We always recite the sutra of breath. hundreds, thousands, and millions of scrolls. And I have to do a full bow to Prajnatara for giving us back this sutra, which we otherwise might not know was actually a sutra. The sutra of the awareness of breathing starts with the sutra of awareness of body or breath in the body. And to really understand it,

[13:35]

We have to create good conditions of body and mind, a good condition with which to recognize it as a sutra. So, for instance, we shouldn't be involved in gross misconduct, or if we are, we should admit it, because otherwise that misconduct will hit us in the face when we try to face the breath. and will distract us. So we have to be following our deeper values about life. And we also have to be involved in response rather than reaction. So when we have feelings of love or hate or confusion, we'd have to... temporarily give up reacting to them in favor of doing something more important.

[14:37]

And that's called restraint of the senses, where no matter what comes in through the senses, whether it's the aroma of chocolate cake with icing and strawberries or, you know, the smell of a dung heap, We wouldn't react to that, but we would turn our attention towards something even more important than that. Also, our livelihood needs to be such as doesn't disturb us. And our relationship to the basics of life has to be on a footing that we can relate to. Like, we don't... If we feel bad about our relationship to clothes, food, the place we live, or medicine, we'll get distracted from paying attention to the breath.

[15:40]

Now, I do have to say that there are certain times of life when all of those things don't matter anymore. So if we're desperate enough, even about things like bad things that we've done or... being sick or not having clothes or shelter. If we're desperate enough and can turn to face that desperation, then we already understand that there's something more important than those things. So I'm not talking about special privilege. I'm not talking about having specially great food or clothes. The Buddha said that the appropriate food or clothes were those that sustained life. And so that's really what I'm talking about. And then there's certain practices that make it helpful, that are helpful if we want to turn our attention towards the breath. So we can do these as full-on practices in formal ways, or we can do them in informal ways.

[16:46]

And they mostly involve having respect for ourselves and what we're about to do. So, and then a few, I think a few weeks ago, we spoke about the environment of practice a couple weeks ago on a Wednesday. And that environment also needs to be regulated. So, and then basically, the intention is to develop concentration in relation to breath. Well, what is concentration? Concentration is when we can fix our attention onto something as the most important thing for this period of time. Technically, it's when you establish both the mind and the subjects of attention the mind has in a particular and helpful way.

[17:48]

And when you allow your body your breath and your mind to become one, unified, and focused on that particular subject. The breath is a particularly good subject for concentration, although there's many subjects of concentration. There are 40 formerly named meditation subjects, but there are thousands and thousands of meditation subjects. Anything can be a meditation subject. The only thing is, there's certain subjects that will take you deeper and wider and more effectively into meditation. And of those, the breath is one of the most valuable subjects. And because it's a practice that leads to... happiness and ease in the moment because it's a comforting practice.

[18:53]

And it also leads to awareness, to a clear understanding or comprehension of the way things are or the way our life is. And it also leads to the practice of mindfulness of the breath also leads to a control and maybe even extinction. Finishing up with the kind of inevitably flowing quality of suffering that occurs in our life. As I said, it's a very comforting practice.

[19:56]

And because of this, it can be used during our entire course of practice from the day we begin to meditate until the day we die. As a matter of fact, I've used it as a deathbed meditation. Sometimes I'm called in to speak with people when they're about to die. And often they'll say, well, what can I do? I'm so uncomfortable. You know, there are many ways in which people are uncomfortable. And so I remember in particular there was one young man who was dying of AIDS. And he... he had had a sense of separation from his family because of his life and that was plaguing and torturing him in a horrendous way and in the last week of his life he was and he couldn't actually be with his family and in the last week of his life

[21:14]

he started following his breath. And through that following of his breath, he found a sense of equanimity and comfort in the process that even when his family arrived, he was able to resolve things with them that he hadn't been able to resolve his whole life. And he was able to finally to breathe out and not breathe back in. in a very peaceful way. And there are steps to the meditation on breath. So, and the first step, as Prajnatara said, is to not get too involved in anything that happens that we love or dislike, either externally or internally. And Suzuki Roshi, who started this temple, Tassahara and Green Gulch as well, suggested that we practice counting the breath.

[22:26]

And there are many ways to count the breath. If your energy is low, you can count inhalations. If your agitation is high, you can count exhalations. Or you can count inhalations and exhalations if you want to very closely follow what's going on. All of these things are a matter of personal need and choice. And someone once asked Suzuki Roshi, okay, I've been counting my breath for a while. Well, actually, there's two stories about this. One, Blanche was smiling because it was her story. I've been counting my breath for a while, and I can do it now. And Suzuki Roshi got angry, right? He got very strict.

[23:39]

That's strictly before. Okay, so for the benefit of people who couldn't hear or for the recording, I'll say, Suzuki Roshi got very, very strict and said, don't ever imagine that you're the one who sits zazen. Zazen sits zazen. You know? Okay. So that's the one story. And someone else who wasn't Blanche, asked Suzuki Roshi, okay, I've been counting breath for a while. Can I stop now? And basically he indicated that it was a lifetime practice. You could just do it forever. And it is a practice to return to or to do again and again. Counting at some point, if you count the breath, and most of us will not have to worry about this, But at some point, if we count the breath long enough, we'll find that the practice of counting itself begins to feel a little bit rough.

[24:47]

And then the mind, we can do something called following the breath, which is like counting, except without the shape of one, two. So following the breath is exactly the same as counting the breath. except you don't make a name called one or two. And it only occurs really as an integrated practice when you're counting without thoughts arising in between. If you actually want to count the breath, you can start with one and go to ten. But every time your mind changes the plan, you know, with a distracting thought or... something underneath that you're not acknowledging. Just go back to one. So I've been practicing counting the breath for about 40 years. And I think the highest I've ever gotten to is actually about five.

[25:53]

And that was on a good day, you know, at Tassajara with... you know, 20s and masters in the room. Okay? So, but anyway, there are times when counting will seem a little bit rough, and then one turns to following the breath. And eventually, when we really become concentrated at a deeper level, we may be able to fix the attention at the place where the breath goes in or out or on some other very tiny aspect of the breath. And that's called contact. And if we do that for long enough, a kind of a, it's called the sign.

[26:56]

arises, a subtle aspect of the breath arises, and we begin to pay attention to that. So I only mention these particular parts of breath meditation because there are some people who are sitting the all-day sitting today, and you may become very concentrated and know that there are stages of concentration leading to absorption And that you'll be using this absorption to look at the human condition. And this is the path of the Buddha. This is important if you're studying Buddha's way. Zen practice is Buddha's way. It's the yogic practice of Buddha's way through a particular form that traveled from India to China to Japan. and now to the United States, and it's traveled in other directions too, physical directions.

[28:02]

And it's been handed to us generation after generation, faithfully not letting this tradition be cut off. So Suzuki Roshi did transmit to us the practice of working with the breath to find concentration. And... I should mention that really when we study the breath, quite possibly what will happen is not that we'll become completely concentrated on the breath, but that we'll discover that there's obstacles to becoming concentrated on the breath. So for instance, we could become discursive. Our thoughts could get in the way. we could go into unwholesome states of ego around following the breath.

[29:04]

Or, you know, satisfaction that's premature and kind of less than waking up fully. And so... At the beginning of our concentration practice, we have to focus and pay attention to the obstacles that are arising. We have to be realistic about what's really happening and allow that stuff to die down in us by our skill. We have to develop skill with each and every one of those obstacles. And then... And to do that skillfully by addressing each one of the obstacles and hindrances in turn develops us in the art of concentration. And it is itself the expression and the development of equanimity in action.

[30:12]

Through... applying skill and finding real concentration, the mind develops a quality of lightness and ease. And that's a very important fruit of meditation that we should know about. That we develop the ability to bend the mind in an appropriate way, in a way that helps ourselves deal with hindrances and obstacles. So, for instance, if we become overexcited, we can bend the mind towards that and bring up equanimity. And we can particularly use the exhalation to do that. If we become lax... we can bend the mind in a compassionate way towards that laziness or laxness and perhaps use the inhalation to develop some energy.

[31:32]

Anyway, there's so many different features to practicing with the breath. But I think that this is a good stopping place for a Saturday lecture on working with the breath. For people in the one-day sitting, I would like to request that you sit with the breath today if you can, if it's appropriate to you. And then this evening after dinner, we'll have a formal question and answer ceremony. on working with the breath. That way maybe we can develop some skill through all of our experience. And for people who are not sitting the one-day sitting, I highly recommend that you work with your posture and at some point practice studying the breath.

[32:42]

It's such an important skill. It's such a good way to work directly with our suffering. You might notice, even as you're walking around during the day, you might notice, when do I take long breaths? When do I take short breaths? You might notice that if the feelings change, the breath changes. Have you ever noticed that? So like, for instance, if you're crying, there's a particular kind of breath. If you're happy and peaceful, there's a particular kind of breath. And so there are 16 techniques that are given in this sutra, the Anapanasati Sutra. And the first ones are to know breathing in a long breath.

[33:44]

That one is breathing in a long breath. to know, breathing in a short breath, that one is breathing in a short breath. And notice what the body feels like when breathing in a longer or short breath. Notice what the body feels like when the breath and the body are uniting to make peace. So thank you for your attention, and I'd like to close with a poem. And this is by Wendell Berry, and it's called The Law That Marries All Things. I think it's from The Country of Marriage. I don't remember right now. I gave my copy of The Country of Marriage to a couple that was getting married, and since then I haven't been able to find it. So it's a wonderful book of poems on intimacy. That really is what we're doing.

[34:46]

when we're studying the breath. Here it is. The law that marries all things. The cloud is free only to go with the wind. The rain is free only in falling. The water is free only in its gathering together, in its downward courses. in its rising into air. In law is rest, if you love the law, if you enter singing into it as water in descent. Or, song is truest law, and you must enter singing It has no other entrance.

[35:48]

It is the great chorus of parts. The only outlawry is in division. Whatever is singing is found awaiting the return of whatever is lost. Meet us in the air over the water. Sing the swallows. Meet me, meet me, the red bird sings. Hear, hear, hear, hear. Thank you. 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.

[36:50]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[36:59]

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