This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Thank you for coming out today. I think being in this part of the world, in this part of the United States, in this part of California, there's lots going on, as you all know. And actually, it just occurred to me that though what I was going to speak about is perhaps only indirectly related to the fires raging near us.

[01:12]

Nevertheless, how about if we sit silently together just for a few moments and holding in our consciousness, in our mind and in our heart what's happening so close, just up the road basically from here. And perhaps particularly whatever good feeling, solace we can extend to our fellow creatures, particularly the humans, but other creatures as well, who have suffered and are suffering because of the fires.

[02:27]

Let's just sit for a moment or two in that way. So what I'd like to speak about today is the quality of practice mind.

[04:28]

The quality or attitude of zazen practice mind, heart. I'd like to say some things about the of that as well as about the nature of that quality. And as I say, I'm not directly going to speak about the fires, but I have that very much in mind. It's very much on my mind. Buddhism begins with dukkha, which is usually translated as suffering.

[05:32]

And I came upon a recent translation of it as unwelcome things that happen to us. That's the first noble truth. The first thing that mythically, Shakyamuni Buddha said, having attained awakening in his first talk with the people that he had been practicing with. I thought that was really I think that's really a good translation. Unwelcome things that happen to us. How we face that, how we deal with that,

[06:44]

what our response is, what the quality of our response is, the encouragement that comes from practice is very central. And certainly now there are, just in our part of the world, our little part of Northern California, there are thousands of people who are dealing with very, very unwelcome things. that have happened in the last week, just in the last week. So that's a background to what I want to say. The other background, so one is, both of them are about dukkha, about suffering, about the difficulties we face in our life. So that's one.

[07:46]

And the other one is coming at it from a different angle, which has to do with how we can sometimes create or worsen suffering create or worsen a bad situation or create a bad situation and actually cause harm to others. That's also on my mind. You know, we speak about greed, hate, and delusion.

[08:55]

These are called the three poisonous minds. They poison our life. If we take it a step back, they're very powerful words, greed and hate and delusions. Taking it a step back to a kind of more general way of saying it is grasping and aversion. Greed and hate are like grasping and aversion on steroids. They're like really strong grasping and aversion. Grasping and aversion, that is that we hold on to certain things and we avoid other things, This is a necessary part of our human life, completely integrated into our life, that we make distinctions.

[10:01]

And on the basis of those distinctions, we say, yes, please, I would like some more potatoes. Please. No, I don't want poison hemlock. Thank you. We hold on to certain things and we push other things away. And I use those examples because, among other things, it is survival. So it's our gene pool. It's in our genes from millions of years to hold on to certain things and push other things away. And yet, if that becomes too powerful... too strong, too strong a determinant of what we see and think and do, if we're dominated by that, by those impulses, if that's all we can see, then grasping an aversion becomes greed and hate and has the potential for causing significant harm.

[11:18]

And when that grasping and aversion, no, when that greed and hate is then associated with great power, power to do stuff in the world, well, then the harm itself can be very great. I think that that's a brief attempt at the political and cultural moment that we find ourselves in. And also is part of the background of what I'm talking about today, which is what the quality is of Zazen practice mind, Zazen practice effort, Zen practice effort.

[12:44]

There's a group that I participate in, a Zen group that I participate in. I live here at Green Gulch Farm, but I work in San Francisco. And there's a group that meets once a week in San Francisco that I'm a part of on Thursday evenings, and we sit Zazen together. And then we have, either I give a talk or we have a discussion, And in the last few months, we've been studying together the Fukanzazengi. This is a very brief essay by a man named Dogen. Dogen, Zenji. Zenji means honored teacher. Dogen lived in the first half of the 13th century. and is a very important teacher in our lineage, in the particular school and teaching that we have here at Green Gulch.

[13:55]

And fukan zazengi means universal recommendations for the practice of zazen. So it's about zazen. So we've been studying the fukan zazengi. for the last few months and usually we read it to begin. We each take a turn. You know, there are 10 or 15 people and each person reads a paragraph of it. So we complete it in a few minutes. Actually, a couple of weeks ago I tried something different, which was everyone was assigned a paragraph and then we all read the paragraphs simultaneously. That was fun. So you had 15 people reading 15 different things at the same time for about five minutes.

[14:58]

So our approach to the Fukanza Zengi is not just understanding it mentally. As Suzuki Rishi said, we understand the teaching, it goes through the pores of our skin. That's an important portal for the teaching beyond hearing and seeing. So anyway, we've been mostly just reading the Fukanzazengi. So we've read it maybe 20 or 30 times together. And then I've been reading the Fukanzazengi for... you know, a long time, this very same translation. You know, from when the translation first came out, maybe 40 years ago or so. So I've read the Fukanza Zengi thousands of times, probably.

[16:02]

Hundreds, anyway. So it seemed like some members of the group were kind of getting bored with reading it again and again and again. It's like, okay, we read it 10 times, okay, let's move on to something else. You know? So it occurred to me, so about a month ago, I said to the folks in the group, because it hadn't occurred to me before, but it did, and then I said it, We're not just reading the fukanza zengi. We're practicing reading the fukanza zengi. We're practicing with reading the fukanza zengi. We're practicing the fukanza zengi by reading it. So it's a little bit different than just reading it. Is there a thing called speed reading?

[17:09]

Do the younger people know anything about speed reading? Because I think of it, but I think of it as like 30 or 40 years ago, there was, and it was some person's name, da-da-da, speed reading. Anybody know whose name that was? Anyway, it was her, it was a woman's name, and it was like speed reading with Emily... Tillerson or something like that. And speed reading, so you learned how to speed read so that you could read a long book in a very short period of time, just flip, [...] and you'd read the whole thing with comprehension. So we don't read the Fukanza Zengi as speed reading. We're not speed reading through the Fukanza Zengi. We're practicing with it. whatever that means. But it does mean something.

[18:13]

It does imply something. And then similarly, you know, a very basic practice of zazen itself is counting our exhalations. Some of you, perhaps many of you, do this practice, counting our exhalations from 1 to 10. And how many people is this the first time you've ever come to Green Gulch? And maybe you went to the Zazen instruction period earlier at 8.30 or so. And probably, I would guess, the person giving Zazen instruction suggested that you settle your body upright sitting. And then you count your exhalations from 1 to 10.

[19:14]

But again, to put it mildly, this is not rocket science, right? Counting from 1 to 10, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, it's really simple. It's ridiculously simple. Some people say that counting your breath from one to ten is for beginners. And then you move on to more advanced practices. But I don't know how long the beginner's period is. Beginners, the first... Month? The first year? The beginning practice of counting your breath for the first decade of your practice? How about millennia?

[20:18]

We could count our breath for the first thousand years, and then after that we'll find another more advanced practice than that. So Dogen was this teacher in the first half of the 13th century, and Suzuki Roshi, Shunryu Suzuki, Shogaku Shunryu, is the founder of San Francisco Zen Center, and he's no longer alive. But he's much more recent than Dogen. And he's the root teacher of Green Gulch Farm and Dogen. San Francisco Zen Center in the city and Tassajara. He's the root teacher, even though he didn't actually, he never saw a green gulch farm.

[21:26]

He came to the United States in 1959 and he died in December 4th of 1971. So he was, for 12 years. And during that time, we found Tassajara and also the 300 Page Street building. We call it City Center during those 12 years. And The spring after he died, the spring of 1972, was when we got Gringolch. And that was in great part due to the brilliant visionary quality of Suzuki Roshi's successor, Richard Baker, an American.

[22:36]

Baker Roshi, we used to call him. And he, Baker Roshi, Richard Baker, there was a small group of us that came out here to visit a couple of times before the property was purchased. And I think many of you know this was a hay barn, this room. And the rooms back there were stalls of some that had tractor equipment and these big salt licks, which were for the cattle. Where the bell is now were corrals because it was a cattle ranch. Anyway, though he never saw Green Gulch, he's nevertheless the founding teacher for us, Suzuki Roshi.

[23:43]

So Suzuki Roshi said, count your breathing, count your exhalations from one to ten, and then start again at one. And count your exhalations as though the whole universe is counting with you. whatever that means, there's something about that that has this quality of practice mind. Count as though the whole universe, and maybe we could even say, understand that the universe is breathing. The universe is counting its breath in and out as expressed by you and you and me and each of us.

[24:55]

That's a whole different kettle of beans than just 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. So we divide things up. We divide things up into inhale and exhale, me and you, here and there, yellow, red, green, blue. We divide things up. Again, that's our natural, that's the natural way. That's the way we have to be in our life. That's natural and good and... really. It's beautiful. Red is beautiful. Yellow is beautiful. The light on that Buddha statue, the Buddha statue reflecting the light the way it does is just beautiful.

[26:02]

So we divide things up. But if we forget yet what Suzuki Roshi meant was there's an undivided there's a divided way of counting our breath and there's an undivided way there's an undividedness there's an us that is undivided not divided up in the usual way And that has to do with the quality of practice and the attitude of practice and the expression of that attitude in the world. And if we forget, ignore, deny, don't know about, don't recognize that undivided quality,

[27:12]

if we're dominated by the divided nature of things, then, as I said a few moments ago, then we're quite capable of causing great injury to others and to our home. So there's a contemporary teacher, not Suzuki Hiroshi, a contemporary teacher, an Englishman. His name is David Brazier. Some of you may have heard of him.

[28:22]

He's a practitioner and a teacher. I'm not really sure if he's a Zen person or some other type of Buddhist teacher. I'm not sure. I think maybe he's a Zen fellow. He was here, actually, not here at Green Gulch. He was here in the city a couple of years ago. Very nice guy. I think he wore a bow tie, which is interesting. And he's written a number of books. And a book that I've been looking at recently is called The Feeling Buddha. Interesting title. And at the beginning of that book, he recounts the mythic story of Shakyamuni Buddha, about Shakyamuni Buddha becoming a Buddha, about Siddhartha Gautama. That was Shakyamuni Buddha before he was a Buddha.

[29:23]

Siddhartha Gautama becoming a Buddha. And I've said this before, but I think it's worth saying again. This is a mythic story. It's a myth. It's a myth. What else would you call that? Not a fairy tale, but a myth. And what I mean by myth, the story of Shakyamuni Buddha's trajectory in his life, what I mean by that is that because it's a myth, it's our story. It's the story of our spiritual development. You know, the story of Shakyamuni Buddha, very importantly, is the story of his awakening. But as it's a mythic story, it has to do with our awakening. The awakening in us that is possible, that can be cultivated and developed and nourished and occurred.

[30:32]

So I think it's useful to understand the story as our story. Although the little problem I have with awakened, with that word awakened, it's very intrinsic to Buddhist teaching. B-U-D-D, that root, means to wake up. So Buddhism is the Sanskrit name for this practice. In English, we'd call it awake-ism or wake-up-ism. That's the ism that we're isming. Wake-up-ism. That's what we practice. Zen wake-up-ism. The problem is that it's a verb. And because it's a verb like awaken, like Buddha is the awakened one, You notice the past tense of that verb?

[31:39]

That's the problem with it, is that it's got a past tense. Because it's got a past tense, we might think that there's before awakening, then I'm awaken, then I awake, then I'm awakened. Right? We might think that. But actually, the teaching is not that way. The teaching is that waking up is... endless and continuous. So we emphasize continuous practice. That fellow Dogen, the 13th century guy, he wrote an essay called, in Japanese, it's called Hotsu Bodai Shin. Hotsu means to arouse. Bodai means this awakened mind, enlightened mind. It means awakening or enlightenment or realization, and shin means mind. So the title of the essay is Arousing the Spirit of Awakening, Arousing the Mind of Enlightenment.

[32:45]

And he clarifies in that that Hotsubodai shin, arousing this spirit of awakening, waking up, is not something that just happens. I think it's a common misconception. of Zen practice is that you work really hard to, you know, concentrate or do certain things, do Zen, you know, and then after you've done Zen for a while, then you wake up and then you're awakened. Then you're a Buddha. And everyone thinks you're terrific because you're a Buddha. Oh, yes. That isn't the way it is, though. So... Awakening is endless, basically. That's my problem with awakening. But still, it's pretty good. So, see if I can get back on track here.

[33:51]

David Brazier telling the mythic story of Shakyamuni Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. And it's a very beautiful story, you know, taught at a very important part. Shakespeare would have put it in the third act, I think. You know, he sits under the Bodhi tree, the tree of awakening, the tree of realization, enlightenment. He sits for seven days and seven nights without moving. We hope this is mythic. You know, that'd be pretty difficult, imaginable, but difficult. Seven days and seven nights without moving. And then on the morning of the eighth day, the morning star, he sees the morning star and understands and wakes up. It's quite beautiful. He sees the morning star.

[34:52]

It's not the sun. It's not like... things that the sun implies, which is like everything is seen, but it's like the reflection of the sun on, what is the morning star, Venus? I meant to look it up and forgot. He sees the reflection of the sun on Venus. And when he sees that, that's his awakening, he has this awakening experience, so-called. So what David Brazier said is, Siddhartha had become a Buddha. That is to say, one who has woken to an authentic way of life. So what he woke up to, according to David Brazier, is an authentic way of life.

[36:14]

And understandably, you know, this has been going on for thousands of years, this mythic story and its interpretation. So there are many different understandings of what it was that... Siddhartha Gautama woke up to. In some of the traditional texts, it says that he reviewed the circle of causation for many hours in this direction, and then he reviewed the circle of causation for many hours in that direction. So as a result, when the morning star, when he saw the morning star, his awakening was understood as completely understanding how things happen. And yet more mythically, I think there's another version that says that he reviewed all of his past lives going back thousands of years. And another version says that he reviewed not only his past lives, but all lives of all time.

[37:22]

He had a review of that, and the result of that was him waking up. But the reason I bring up David Brazier's interpretation is because I like it. He woke up to an authentic way of living. This is very, to my understanding, this is very straightforward. Not It's not mystical. It doesn't refer to some mystical, mysterious experience. In some sense, it's quite common. It's not common, but it's in the world of what is common, to be authentic. So what is authentic?

[38:29]

What is it to be branded with authenticity? to be engraved with authenticity, to live a life of authenticity. I think that's, again, this practice quality of Zazen mind and resonates with whole universe is counting. In a certain way, our practice in the zendo, our zazen practice in the zendo, our sitting practice, is a kind of model or example of authentic

[39:56]

authentic way of living. But I don't feel that most fundamentally our practice has to do with some special activity called zazen. Don't tell anyone. LAUGHTER I feel a little, what's the word, heretical. I feel a little heretical because people around here really love zazen. And have done, I myself have done a zillion hours of zazen. Even so, I think this practice quality of our life, this practice quality of zazen, of zazen mind, is more like a teabag, more like, you know, when you put a teabag in hot water?

[41:19]

That's how you make tea, right? You submerge the teabag. That's called infusion. So you infuse the water with the flavor and, very importantly, the caffeine of the tea. That's why we drink tea, because it's infused with those things. Russian caravan and oolong and all the different types of tea have slightly different. They infuse the water with slightly different flavors. So I don't know if it's more fundamental or more important, but to infuse our life with this Zazen quality of mind, to infuse our life with that, seems to me to be a very important thing.

[42:23]

and allows this awakened quality of an authentic life. Infusing practice into our life so that the flavor of it permeates what we do. Counting our breath or reading the Fukanza Zengi more common activities. So we could say that's the point of practice, to infuse our life with this quality. But though our life is infused with this quality, that doesn't mean necessarily it's like

[43:32]

you know, a really great life. It's just like everybody else's. It's just like all of our lives, this life that's infused with practice. It's got plenty of difficulties and suffering. So again, that's kind of a misunderstanding. We think Zen practice is some way we're going to get around the problems of our life, the difficulties in our life. Get around, get over, get under. Basically, disintegrate those problems, you know, all kinds of ideas we have about Zen practice. But none of that is actually the case. What's the case is that by practice we can work toward, we can actualize, we can enact an authentic way of living.

[44:45]

According to the dictionary, authentic means genuine, a genuine way of living, true, a true way of life. The real thing, That's in the dictionary as a definition of authentic, the real thing. A life about which we can say, that's the real thing. So I feel like that is a project worthy of our attention, worthy of our effort. even though it's not a shortcut to a fake nirvana. So I want to say something more about the fukansa zengi.

[46:00]

that speaks to some of these points. So I'm going to recite a small section of the Fukan Zazengi, the universal recommendations for how to practice Zazen. And for those of you not familiar with it, it's short, as I said, it's just a couple of pages. And it's this wonderful combination, which is characteristic of Dogen's writings. of being a combination of very sort of down-to-earth practical details, like put your left foot here and your right foot here and so on like that. He wrote another thing about the work of the head cook. And in that, again, it's all full of practical details. Put the smaller things up high and the heavier things down low, you know, like really down to the... down to a ridiculous amount of detail about the way to do things. So it's a combination of that and very, very kind of gigantic, high-flown, beautiful, poetic images and metaphors of practice and so on.

[47:17]

Kind of this interesting combination of these different aspects. So in the Fukanzazengi, Dogen says, This will take a minute or two. So I'm going to say it, I'm going to say it once, the full version, which has some details in it that are complicating and aren't essential to the point that I'm making. But I'll say the whole thing first. Then I'll say, not the whole Fukanza Zengi, that would take too long, but just this one section. And then I'll say it again in a shorter version. So it begins like this. Or the Fukanza Zengi doesn't begin like this. My recitation begins like this. The bringing about of enlightenment provided by the opportunity of a finger, a banner, a needle, or a mallet, and the effecting of realization with the aid of a fly whisk, a fist, a staff, or a shout, cannot be understood by discriminative

[48:30]

Indeed, it cannot be known by the practicing or realizing of supernatural powers either. It must be deportment beyond hearing and seeing. Is it not a principle prior to our knowledge and perceptions. So that's the whole thing. Now I'm going to say it again. I'm going to leave out the finger, the banner, the needle, the mallet and the fly whisk and the fist and the staff and the shout. Those all He was very literary also, Dogen. Each one of those refers to a Zen story of the Tang Dynasty in China.

[49:36]

It refers to enlightenment experiences, stories of enlightenment experiences of Tang Dynasty Zen masters. But it's not important for us now. So the structure of it is the bringing about of enlightenment, the effecting of realization. It's not this. It can't be understood by this. It's not a matter of this. It's not a matter of that. It's a matter of something else. That's the basic structure of what I'm saying. I'll say it again, deleting those things. The bringing about of enlightenment. The effecting of realization. is not, cannot be understood by discriminative thinking. Indeed, it cannot be known by the practicing or realizing of supernatural powers either. It must be deportment beyond hearing and seeing.

[50:43]

Is it not a principle prior to our knowledge and perceptions? This is one of those things where just in a few lines, you could say, you know, there are millions and millions of words written about Buddhism, but this is kind of Buddhism in 25 words or less, or a Zen anyway. So the bringing about of enlightenment, the effecting of realization is not a matter of discriminative thinking. That is, it doesn't have to do with the mind that divides things up. Discrimination, discriminative thinking. It is not about that. And it's certainly not about the discrimination on steroids called greed, hate, and delusion. It's not about that. Also,

[51:46]

you know, this was the 13th century, so Dogen was clarifying that it's also not about supernatural powers. Most of us don't think so much about having supernatural powers, but Dogen, when Dogen was writing this, you know, that was a thing, you know, that with supernatural powers, you could really do some supernatural great things. It's not a matter of supernatural powers either. It cannot be fully understood by discriminative thinking. Indeed, it cannot be known by the practicing or realizing of supernatural powers either. What is it? What is it about? What counts? Deportment. It's like, what? Deportment? Is that what counts? It must be deportment. The original Chinese characters literally mean dignified behavior. It must be, that is, what counts, what matters for the bringing about of enlightenment and the effecting of realization is dignified behavior.

[52:58]

It's kind of surprising that that's what he would say. Or another way of, another translation is awesome presence. translation I originally memorized was deportment. So what's important is deportment or dignified behavior or awesome presence or how we conduct ourselves in the world. Not just now, but after you leave Green Gulch in a few hours and tomorrow and wherever you are the day after that. That's what That's what matters, according to the Fukanzazengi. And, you know, I think it's good. I agree. So, how we are in the world.

[54:01]

So then the last thing, maybe the last part of this talk is, which is not so obvious what he's saying. It must be deportment beyond hearing and seeing. Is it not a principle prior to our knowledge and perceptions? So what he's saying there is... I was trying to say it earlier. Hearing and seeing is our senses, right? It's not just hearing and seeing. It's hearing and seeing and tasting and touching and all of the ways that we... all the ways that we know things. This is deportment beyond hearing and seeing. Hearing and seeing, again, like I was saying earlier, it's really not only necessary, but it's beautiful, our life of hearing and seeing. We see beautiful things and we hear beautiful music, like...

[55:08]

I've taken up, I think I've mentioned this before, I've taken up playing the piano. And since I live at Green Gulch, I have to put on earphones. I have an electronic piano. I played the piano when I was younger, so I took a 50-year hiatus, and now I've resumed playing the piano the last few years. And I told my piano teacher, and I started to take piano lessons as well, the wonderful person in San Francisco. And I told my piano teacher that my goal is to be able to play Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach's. There are these pieces called the two-part and three-part inventions that some of you may know. And you play them, and it's like, how could anything be so beautiful? be so wonderful.

[56:12]

What a genius to do this, and then [...] this. It's staggering. They're not so beautiful the way I play them, but anyway, I'm working on it. Even the way I play them, they're beautiful parts. until I make an error. Very frequent. Anyway, so our life of hearing and seeing is a wonderful, wonderful life. Our knowledge of, I mean, our life of knowledge and perceptions is, that's our life. That's our karmic life. Necessary and beautiful and wonderful but oh but it's limited and divided right obviously our hearing and seeing are limited we hear this from this decibel whatever it's called not decibels it's from this range to that range right

[57:38]

And dogs hear a different range. They hear at some past our range. And bees, don't bees have eyes that have many, many facets? So what are they seeing? They're not seeing what we see. They see something else. We're limited. We have limitations. Knowledge and perception and hearing and seeing are all divided up. So here's another story from Suzuki Roshi. I am coming to a close, so don't worry. So at Tassajara, many of you know, I think, Tassajara, deep in the mountains, 200 miles south of here, in Los Padres National Forest. Tassajara is extraordinarily... It's extraordinarily extraordinary, and in many, many, many ways.

[58:43]

Beautiful, and many people come because it's so deeply peaceful. However, there are blue jays at Tassajara. And I don't know that much about blue jays in general, but the blue jays at Tassajara And I'm not even sure this is still the case. This was the case years ago. I haven't checked in on the blue jay, the Tassara blue jay situation recently. But years ago, and probably still now, the blue jays, first of all, they're very aggressive. So they chased most of the other birds out of the valley. So then you've got lots and lots of blue jays. And They're also aggressive because if you're walking around with a piece of bread with peanut butter and jam on it, which is a really good thing to be walking around with, they will come and dive bomb.

[59:50]

It's right there, you know? Just outrageous behavior. Not dignified conduct. Anyway, oh, and then also their call is not a mellifluous, beautiful song. It's more, I don't know, and then lots of them are doing that at the same time while you're sitting zazen in the morning at Tassajara. And you know they're just waiting for you to come out to be walking around with a peanut butter sandwich to dive bomb. So I have some discriminating thoughts about blue jays, as you may notice. So one morning, Suzugiroshi said, that's the sound of a blue jay, but you should take the blue jay into your heart.

[60:57]

That's all he said. Take the blue jay into your heart. He meant the same thing as The universe is expressing itself through this bird. He meant the same thing as what is the undivided understanding of the Blue Jay's call? Is it not prior to our knowledge and perceptions. Once our knowledge and perceptions get in there, it gets really, it's just like what I was just saying, prior to our knowledge and perceptions, prior to beautiful, ugly, greedy, generous, big, small, light, dark, yellow, green, et cetera, et cetera, prior to that.

[62:08]

Dogen's words are prior to our knowledge and perceptions, it really means, oh, it's not just prior. It's always there, along with our knowledge and perceptions. This undivided, unlimited understanding. the point of our practice is to infuse our complicated sometimes painful sometimes wonderful life with undivided unlimited perspective to infuse our life

[63:26]

not to reject our life, but to infuse it with that quality. That's my understanding of what David Brazier meant by authentic. Thank you. 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.

[64:20]

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