This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. So we're in the middle. The beginning is history, vague history. The end, it's too far away. to get too excited about. So we're at this opportune moment, this opportune place in the practice period. And within that, to forget all that, allow ourselves, to invite ourselves, to persuade ourselves to become Shashin, the mind and body of Shashin.

[01:08]

You know, that other world, that other way of being that illuminates the world we're always constructing and living inside of. with its pains and its pleasures Dugan Zenji wrote a fascicle called Zazen Shin and the Shin there is like an acupuncture needle so Zazen as the acupuncture needle your acupuncture needle It touches, it enters the place where the energy is blocked and it lets it flow. So where's the blockage, where's the constricting, where's the holding back in the flow of our being?

[02:21]

And how is it to engage Zazen in a way? How is it to engage Sashin in a way where some things allowed to flow? And as Dogen Zenji writes in many places, this is not a matter of you know the ideas and opinions in our head when it's ideas and opinions we've already removed ourselves we've already shifted the relationship to this dynamic original being Mysterious as this may be, the entry point is extraordinarily simple.

[03:28]

Just be now. Just be here. Period after period of zazen. If it's a matter of reminding ourselves in words and ideas, My life is happening here. Nowhere else. Just on this small square mat. I live. I am. I'm not anywhere else. All sorts of thoughts and feelings and images and memories may come here to be, but they're here. And I am the host. I am participating in their being, in their construction. So the first gate is very wide.

[04:35]

Everything and anything that arises, what is it? Notice, acknowledge, contact, experience. whatever state of mind, whatever sense door gives rise to an experience. Nothing is outside the range of Zazen. This kind of willingness. And what it does, it offers a release from a tendency to manipulate our experience. I am going to do zazen. Something particular has to happen. Something different from what normally happens has to happen.

[05:39]

And I am going to make it happen. To turn that on its head, as young men would say, Turn it upside down. It happens and creates the I that thinks it's making it happen. Or is attempting to make it happen. So something about the functioning of the event of Zazen. right as we begin to reorientate our effort. The word virya, it covers a range from effort to persistence to energy.

[06:45]

When the blockage is removed, there's just of energy when we're struggling against the flow of our own life we can make enormous diligent effort with deep sincerity and dedication and exhaust ourselves exhaust our bodies Sometimes in the messy business of Zazen, that's what we do. And in its own peculiarity, it teaches us something that didn't work too well. The request, the invitation,

[07:54]

is this innocent beginner's mind, this Bodhidharma's don't know, this Dogen Zenji's constant quote, non-thinking. What is the essential art of Zazen? Not thinking. And how is this not thinking brought into being non-thinking? This willingness to experience without an agenda as to what should happen. And of course, every single one of us knows this. Every single one of us has probably heard this over a hundred times. Hear it in a way that flows into your effort.

[09:03]

To rediscover what it is to practice it. To remember how it feels in your breath. To remember how it influences how you make contact with the body. Remember the difference between being present for what's arising and trying to manipulate what's arising. So we enter Shashin with this don't know. We enter Shashin to rediscover zazen. How susceptible our state of mind is.

[10:18]

Even a couple of days with not so much zazen can reintroduce more thoughts and feelings. Something about anticipation of Sashin can quicken something. Not to be in a hurry to change any of that. Just, okay. What's happening now? This liberating trust in what you already are. Just as it is. And this request to experience it rather than struggle in manipulating it. So maybe we start with that frame of reference.

[11:36]

Then we translate it into a mode of engagement. And that mode of engagement reveals the intimacy of Zazen. It becomes an array of particularities. you settle into your posture noticing in your own body those places that are tight that are restricted and allowing that acupuncture needle of awareness Not with an agenda that it should be different, but just awareness. And similarly with the breath.

[12:43]

Noticing the mind breathing the body. How that relationship is. discovering that the breath is not an idea. The breath is a physical movement that you've done since your first breath, the moment of birth, the moment of leaving the womb. Giving over to the vital life force that keeps you alive. Letting something that deeply knows assert what it knows. And letting that breath that knows breathe the body, breathe the mind, breathe the stream, breathe the sky, breathe the floor.

[13:56]

as we enter zazen, to rediscover this. And the mind state, attending to the mind state, the mind that's all over the place, in the past, in the future, in this vital issue in this annoying argument, in this deep yearning, and staying here in unconstructed stillness and letting them come here and be what they are. Taking responsibility for what arises in your own being.

[15:07]

And again, we can start off cognitively. We can remind ourselves of that idea and then let it initiate. Let it reveal how amazing a different topic can be. This one tightens the body and the breath. This one softens the body. This one draws the attention. into focus, this one disperses it. And to discover that all of them are a play of energy. The word sashim is usually translated as gathering the mind or making the mind whole.

[16:21]

It's like when the mind is dispersed, the energy is dispersed. This topic is energized and this topic is energized and it feels like the mind and the energy of our being are moving in different directions. They're not whole. They're an array of discrete parts. And they're tantalizing. There's some tantalizing that what's in front of our nose is almost like a dream. And as the mind is gathered, what's in front of our nose becomes more vivid. But especially as we start to sheen, there's no need to wonder.

[17:43]

What will happen? Will the mind come into this singularity of being or not? Beyond that, just however it arises is how it arises. it be experienced for how it is in Zazen we don't have to parse out the five skandhas no we just allow being here and now without moving with to the object let it come here And the very process of Zen Zen happens.

[18:50]

The same way the process of digestion happens. The same way the blood flows through our veins and our heart. Something in the life force of being flows. So even though this is initiated by effort, it's not an effort with a goal. Even though this is initiated by attention, it's not an attention that sets out to grasp an object. Sometimes called objectless concentration. maybe just more simply called the presence of here and now. And then I would say diligently, skillfully relating to body, diligently, skillfully relating to breath, diligently, skillfully relating to the state of mind.

[20:04]

This great paradox that we're always this one, And this one is a mystery to us. So this is the don't know mind. This is the non-striving effort with which we begin Sashin. And I would encourage you, quite literally, to remind yourself, especially on the first day, each period, watching. Are the issues of there and then still being energized? Are they still more real than here and now? Have you got your select few that can never be replaced by here and now?

[21:19]

They're too precious. They're too urgent. They're too important in your very survival. Now there's an idea. I have to keep thinking and feeling this issue to survive. Not to push it away. Not to tell it it's wrong. Not to transform it into something else. But to experience it. What important knowledge that is about your own being. That there are such issues in your being. That they hold that much importance about being alive. In Zazen Shin, Dugan Zenji talks about an exchange between Nangaku and Basso.

[22:36]

Basso is busily doing Zazen. In Nangaku's passing, and seems to notice the busyness. So he asks, what are you doing? I was like, is this something special? Is there some special outcome that's going to be attained by doing all this? When I went to Thailand to be a monk, I went to a place that was remote because I knew very clearly how to get enlightened. And so I went there enact that and I practiced very diligently and then after about six months when I was crushed the dust by my own arrogance I went back to Bangkok and I walked into the door as I was working in the temple gates my friend fellow monk started to laugh and he said

[23:54]

He says, before you were in an arrogant dream, now you can start to practice. And he took me by the hand. And we walked in. Not to say our arrogant dreams are such a terrible thing. Maybe in the messy business of practice, we've all got to run into ourselves before we're willing to try something else. So Nangaku approaches Basso and asks, what are you doing? And Basso says, a Buddha.

[24:59]

Nangaku picks up a tile and starts to polish it and says, so Basel falls for the bait and says, what are you doing? And he says, well, I'm making a mirror. So this point about non-achievement or not attempting or not having a fixed idea of what the outcome is. I'm doing this to get to that or to achieve that. It's a very famous exchange. And then Dogen Zenji, in his amazing style, I think in general terms that's considered to be the crux of the matter. And then Basso asks Nangaku, well then, what should I be doing?

[26:08]

And Nangaku says, well, if the horse and cart won't go, would you beat the cart or do you beat the horse? And of course we all say, well, that's easy. You beat the horse. Dogen says, not so fast. Not so fast. Even though the particularity of this world is just what it is. arising out of myriad causes and conditions, how it's related to. Of course, your effort, the horse, of course, the energy of involvement is the prime mover.

[27:13]

But how the particularity is related to initiates the acupuncture point. We diligently attend to the body. Not to turn it into the 16-foot golden body of Buddha. We diligently attend to the breath. Not to achieve some great yogic breath. But because these are the instruments human being of being human we attend to them skillfully so as you sit attend to the body skillfully don't try to have an out-of-the-body experience attend to the body

[28:26]

of your physical condition now. Don't let the pain be so severe it wears you out. And don't let the pain intimidate you into squirming away sit come in complete contact until it's time to move and there's no fixed formula for that only in the experiencing Is that moment decided? I would suggest to you that little exercise that we did in class, not knowing the body, is to start to sit down, don't know the body.

[29:52]

You know, I was reading some of those early prescriptions for Zazen. Rocking back and forth seven or eight times. Seven or eight times. That many? How long does it take to shift from your mind saying what's vertical to feeling vertical with your body? How long does it shift from your mind saying this is the correct posture to your body feeling some balance, some space? So we work with the physicality of our being.

[30:58]

We're not trying to beat it into something it's not. We're discovering how it becomes an ally. And the same with the breath. first five breaths, extend the exhale. As Suzuki Roshi said, start, breathe in, hold the breath, press down with the diaphragm, loosening up the abdomen. Open up the front of the body so this area has lots of room to breathe. as intimately as you can, this breath that breathed your body before your mind could begin to think.

[32:23]

So this particularity of being, this cart that goes with the horse, Dogen Janzi says, don't forget that. Maybe the image of beating it is the wrong image. Engaging. Something in there is also associated with the energy of our life force. So I would say, in the pain of Shashin, watch how the pain can draw in attention. Watch how attention can stimulate energy. But watch how the pain can also draw in contraction or agitation.

[33:43]

how that can block. So can there be attention? Can the body and the breath stay soft in the pain? And when it's time to move, with full authority, move. not as an act of defeat, not as an expression of frustration, just this is the appropriate response. And don't let the mind dictate when that happens. Don't let fear dictate it, and don't let stubborn determination to conquer something dictate it either.

[34:55]

So Dogen Senji says, you know, relate, or within the language of the koan, beat the cart, relate to the cart, work with the cart. And work with the mind. Work with the motivation. Work with the attention, the concentration. Both. So as we enter Shashin, we look at these requests. And we allow... a certain magic. We allow this construct that we've conjured up called shashin, we allow it to become real.

[36:03]

We allow it to be energized. We allow it to influence our being. And we allow something else, some world according to me our world according to us we allow that to start to float away on the side of the stream and when it pops up let it be held with shashin mind shashin heart shashin body shashin breath it come here don't chase after it Nangaku says it has its own natural absorption its own natural intimacy

[37:14]

And that intimacy is the energy, that intimacy of interaction. That's the flow of the life force of being within the body and within the one body of being. As Dogen Zenji says, this is not something the mind figures out. This is something our being experiences. And Bodhidharma condenses it all into one phrase, don't know.

[38:18]

So here we are in the middle of the practice period, in the sashin in the middle of the practice period, in the middle of our lives, in the middle of this valley, in the middle of the Los Padres forest. 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, visit SSCC.org and click giving.

[39:30]

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