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. Good morning. This is our first day of the row, Hatsu Sesshin. And row Hatsu means... the 8th day of the 12th month, December 8th, which was yesterday, which is the traditional, at least in East Asia, date for Buddha's Enlightenment Day. So Rohatsu just means December 8th, or the 8th day of the 12th month. And usually that day, or often the Sashin, commemorating Buddha's enlightenment starts on the 1st and you wake up on the morning of the 8th for a celebration.

[01:07]

So our, and you know, all over the world probably people are sitting now at Green Gulch. Rohatsu is going on now. City just finished. And all over different places people are sitting at this time. So we are Now I'm joining probably thousands of people. During the seven days, we'll bring up the story, the teaching story of Buddha's enlightenment. As we go day by day, different parts of the story I'm sure many of you know it, but as all good stories are, we benefit by repeating them, and the story themselves takes on different meanings, deeper meanings.

[02:15]

The more it's told, the more we hear it at different times in our life. It's the power of narrative and story and myth and archetype and They never, there's a never-ending quality to the gifts that they bring us. So I wanted to say a couple things personally and also tie in our last class that we had the evening of work day on. Fivolous Talk and Idle Chatter, how that connects with our Sashin practice of silence and our own inner dialogue, inner talk, almost automatic kind of loops of talk. So I want to connect those two today with you as well as our body practice and

[03:24]

our feeling of session practice. So the personal things I wanted to mention, just for intimacy's sake, just to keep you informed of what's going on for me, I received mail, I think, I don't know when it was, not yesterday, the day before, it must have been when mail came in, and it was an... inter-Zen Center envelope. So it had gone to the city center in the regular post and was kept for, you know, send it down to Tassara eventually. So I'd been sitting there for probably a week or more. And then when it got to me to open it, it was a letter from somebody who I care about very, very much. I've known for decades who had written me a letter in April April 2016, about a very important matter which needed to go to decision-making bodies at Zen Center.

[04:34]

So in talking with this person, I said, I have to bring this to this meeting. That meeting got canceled. There was another meeting, so it was months. We finally had the meeting, and then I was supposed to write back to this person who I care about very much. And somehow... it through carelessness or neglect or avoidance, not wanting to say the answer to the request, which was maybe not going to be appreciated, somehow I never wrote the letter. And it's been months. And this letter that came was a second copy of the letter and a note about what that felt like to not have heard from me. and the hurt that only humans, it was a poem, that only humans can give that kind of hurt, especially with someone you have a relationship with.

[05:41]

So in the context of our practice period theme of upright and complete noble speech, this neglect, omission, And, you know, people have been very nice, who I've talked with about it, saying, you haven't had a consistent assistant. And, you know, all the conditions that led to, however, it still remains that there was big, big omission. Anyway, I've been feeling the effects of that. And the... Now what? Now how do I relate? And what do I say? And how do I make amends and reconnect with this person that I care about? And maybe I won't be able to. Maybe that will forever change the relationship to that.

[06:43]

And I have to accept that too. So these are everyday life events. And... you know, just a small forgetting of something can have a big effect, big impact, big hurt. The other thing I wanted to mention just was last night I had a drink of water right before going to bed, a glass of cold water, and almost as soon as I took the first swallow, I had this incredibly sharp, like I've never had before, like just glug, glug, glug, and then it went away. And that was another like, whoa, what's going on? All is well, but I just wanted to mention that to you. It was really surprising, and I don't know, there it was.

[07:47]

So we'll see what happens the rest of the sit. So in the class, when we talked about frivolous talk and idle chatter, there was one sutra that I didn't read. It's called Rajasutta, meaning kings. And it's very similar to the ones I did read, where the Buddha was staying somewhere near a monastery, and the monks returned from their alms rounds and gathered in a meeting place. And in this one... discussion arose, and this was the kind of discussion. It's similar, but a little bit different than the other things. Friends, which of these two kings has greater wealth, greater possessions, the greater treasury, the larger realm, the greater stock of riding animals, the greater army, the greater power, the greater might?

[08:51]

King Bimbisara? of Magadha or King Prasannad of Kosala. And this discussion came to no conclusion. So this was another instance of people gathering and just, do you think that person's stock of riding animals is more than this one? Well, I don't know. And getting very involved in this, coming to no conclusion. And then the Buddha, the Blessed One, emerging from seclusion in the late afternoon, comes upon them and says, what topic are you sitting together here? And what was the discussion? And they tell him about, you know, they're deciding which of these two kings has more treasury, bigger armies. And the Buddha says, it isn't proper, monks, that sons and daughters of good family, on having gone forth out of faith from home to the homeless life, should talk on such a topic.

[09:54]

And then he, this is a little different than those ten that I mentioned, and it's helpful for Sashin, I think, he said, when you have gathered, you have two duties, either dharma talk or noble sounds. That's simple. You either keep noble sounds or dharma talk, and dharma talk can take... as we know, many, many forms. So after the class, someone mentioned that, you know, this frivolous talking idle chatter, do we give it less weight than some of the other things, harsh speech, abusive speech, false speech? We... Do we perhaps say, well, of course, small talk is okay, and this is just ordinary conversation. We can't always be talking about Dharma talk.

[10:56]

And as this person mentioned this, I reviewed again that Dogen, practically on his deathbed a few months from him dying, and the Buddha on his deathbed brought, and in this right speech definition, didn't say this is a lesser one, You know, it didn't say, oh, but of course this one, you know, you could fudge around with it. They actually brought up frivolous talk and idle chatter, hollow discussion to pay attention to for our sake and the sake of out of compassion for the men. So when this person brought up, you know, are we maybe treating it too lightly? And I asked, did I? And I... I just wanted to say again, what would it be like? What would our community be like? What would our relationships be like? Taking this up in a more wholehearted way.

[12:02]

So, two duties, Dharma talk or noble silence. So right now, we are in a time of noble silence, you might say. Be silent and still. is a time to gather body and mind in one suchness, and yet we might be sitting, and lo and behold, there's an enormous amount of frivolous talk and idle chatter that's going on internally, we might notice, and hollow discussion. And I want to draw our attention to this because the impact of that just as if it were outward speech in terms of scattering the mind, distracting the mind, distracting and disturbing others. But internal speech has great, great effect, big impact on our psychophysical self, the physical side

[13:19]

When we think in certain, especially negative ways, negative thoughts, dwelling on all sorts of negative stories, ruminating, brooding, going over and over certain things that have happened, certain ways we think about ourselves or others, our failures, our shortcomings, our defects, our lack of I mean, all sorts of things that we think, you know, I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm a failure, I'll never be this, nobody likes me, nobody includes me, I'll never, and just the round of this kind of almost unconscious, we may not even be tuning into it, just ongoing chugging along of this kind of talk. which I would call frivolous talk and idle chatter, that has an effect on us bodily.

[14:32]

There's a way that that kind of talk creates stress and chronic stress and the manufacture of stress hormones. The cortisol and other peptides, that are associated with stress and affect us negatively, affect our physical health, literally. So it's not a throwaway nothing kind of thing. I've mentioned this many times before, but I feel even more strongly about it. I happened to, when I was up in the city, listened to a TED Talk. TED Talks, I'm sure many of you listen to them and know what they are. It's Technology, Entertainment, and Design is what TED stands for.

[15:39]

Not too long, 17-minute, I think there's supposed to be 17-minute talks on a huge range of subjects. And I happened to hear this one about brain... I think it was called brain hygiene, which seemed like a kind of funny combo of words. It was by a neuroscientist talking about self-care, I guess, in terms of our own brain and emotional life and these negative thoughts in particular. So what this person was saying is, For our body, if we were to hurt ourself or have a cut or break an arm or something, we immediately do first aid. We clean it, put a bandaid on, you know, get the bones set. We get help, and we attend to it right away with first aid. And we also know the consequences of not, you know, infection and other kinds of things.

[16:44]

This is kind of hygiene. He was calling this hygiene. However, with our emotional life and our thinking life, we can start thinking in certain ways. This is what he likened it to. It was very graphic, as if we were to get into a kind of cesspool kind of bath, is what he described. Cesspool, you know, some... completely filthy water, you know, stagnant, and bathe in that, you know. And what might be the effects of such a bath, you know, total immersion in this? And he was saying, this neuroscientist, that that's kind of what we do when we have this ongoing negative...

[17:47]

negative thoughts, ceaselessly. And don't do anything to need it, to meet it with first aid. It may be that this kind of thinking comes up, but we allow it to just go, [...] without any kind of countermeasure or addressing it or looking at it, and we end up becomes a habit of mind and believing in it. And this has huge effects on our health, stress, and psychological, emotional, mental health. So what might be a kind of countermeasure, first aid, you know, When we notice this, do we notice this?

[18:49]

And especially during Sushi, when we have seven days of noble silence and meeting ourself time and time and time again, and what if we might be caught in this kind of negative thinking? That's just automatic. It just goes on. And the effect that has on our energy, our physical energy, our state of mind. So there are ways that these are not only sort of neuroscience of modern day, but classic teachings, classic countermeasures, that we can take up as practices. One is, when we notice such a thing, return to our breath.

[19:57]

You might say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard that before. This, you might have heard it before, but you might not. What I want us to feel is the kind of urgency, almost. Not that we add more tension to, but feeling like this is not worthy of my efforts and my attention, my energies, to be thinking in this way and caught in this way, and to notice it and come back to the breath, to our breathing, and maybe with a long exhale. the deep and long exhale or inhale and exhale to turn the, kind of disrupt the train that's going and make a real shift there. And maybe we say, remind ourselves to completely relax because along with this chugging along of the thoughts is also tension in the body.

[21:12]

And I imagine even more attention with negative thoughts or stress. So to come back to our breath, relax the shoulders, shoulders dropping away from the ears, which Lauren brought up in her talk, remembering our shoulders dropping away, actually, there appears the body of faith. letting go of contraction and bracing and tension. So this is one thing. And this is classic return to the breath. When you notice you're thinking about, especially negative, but any kinds of thoughts, notice back to a breath. And this can disrupt in a positive way.

[22:15]

Disrupt, you know, and it's, as Uchiyama Roshi said, this is a mini awakening. Oh, and billions of times we come back, come back, come back. Another classic thing is replacement or substitution. And this is, one might think, well, that's a trick, that's technique, and I don't want too much of a contrivance. So I appreciate that. I appreciate no techniques and no contrivances. And what about being lost in this kind of, you know, negative thought pattern that goes on and on? If that's the choice, then I would suggest some substitution is one word, or what I like to think of it is bring up some positive thought, such as taking refuge, such as asking for help, where you make that switch in your mind.

[23:40]

or some phrase that speaks to you, mantra or otherwise, your own English mantra, or gate, gate, or whatever it is you actively take up, I take refuge, you know, or gate, gate, or may all beings be happy, may I be free from suffering, actively, and then return to the breath. So loving kindness, refuge, this engagement with this in a positive way, rather than just allowing the flow as if it doesn't really matter, or as if, well, that's the truth anyway, right? I am a failure. I am worthless. I'm never going to find anybody to, et cetera, et cetera.

[24:43]

Because we end up unexamined thoughts of this nature, we may say, well, that's the truth. That's the real truth. And I've gotten to it, you know. And it's totally, you know, these are partial, inaccurate, emotional snippets. conceptual phrases and things that are unexamined and are not true. And yet we get caught in the volume. So they have a persistence. They pop into our heads. I mean, if you say, well, am I doing this or not? It makes us feel worse. These are ways you can tell. They kind of come unbidden. Have a persistence. Make us feel worse, not better.

[25:46]

Serve no use. Go nowhere. Are not for the benefit of self or other. Unhelpful. And they're not based on anything accurate. So our wherever the karmic formations of this have come from is vast, the causes and conditions we can't necessarily point to, nor is it necessary. I mean, that might be something one might do therapy or something, that's fine, but we don't have to. Where did this come from? How come I'm thinking like this? I think we can just address it completely in the moment with our... returning to the body, relaxing the body in particular, and these taking up practice of gratitude, loving kindness, breath.

[26:59]

I say mantra in widest sense, you know, some words that are teaching, that teach you that you can turn in a positive way. And the plasticity of our psychophysical self, that way of thinking is not that idle chatter, frivolous talk, hollow discussion internally is not set in stone, is not the way things are. And it is malleable. It is our plastic brains and new neuronal pathways, new karmic formations that we can... in the moment, right now, creating the fertile ground for change, you know, this kind of transformation. But we have to actively take it up because it took years to create this kind of way of thinking that we fall into either a lot or sometimes everybody has this kind of thinking to some degree or another.

[28:12]

And it takes a while to also turn it. But eventually, same with Phil was talking to idle chatter, we lose a taste for it, actually. You know, this gossip, what we were talking about the other night, and the addictive quality of it. I was having tea with someone recently, and I brought out cookies that I have in the tin in the Addis's Cabot. And the person said, you know, I kind of lost my taste for cookies. Thank you, but I'm not, you know, I'm going to not have any, not out of, you know, discipline or all the other reasons we don't have sugar. It's just, I don't have a taste for it anymore. And I think we lose the taste for this kind of regular role of both internal frivolous talk and we're not, I think we can lose our taste for it by tasting the positive energy and, you know, more fruitful ways of speaking internally or externally.

[29:28]

And we get a taste for that. And the other is it's actually, we actually are not interested. And I think that, and maybe we've noticed that already, you know, Or when you go back home, you'll notice that your tastes have changed. So I bring this up right at the beginning of the Sashin. And, you know, Sashin is this time where we're practicing gathering, you know, collecting body and mind in one suchness. And the feeling is that, you know, it's just one long meditation one long zazen period, you know. Kin hin, that's no break in our zazen. Kin hin is total unified body, breath, and mind, and movement. Can we walk? Can we lift our foot and place it down, unified?

[30:31]

And oh, clackers hit, back we go, and it's just nonstop. And our break, if we think our break is some kind of break, like real break from our zazen practice. That's, you know, think again about sashe practice. How can we make rest time or whatever it's called on a schedule, rest, I think, continuing our zazen practice and mealtime. Are we practicing zazen? Are we with our breath as we're chewing, as we're serving and receiving? No break. one long sasen period. And if we need help in that, you know, for me, one helpful thing, like when I do bowing, have you ever noticed you've been bowing, you have no idea what number it is, and you've been thinking about something else, you know?

[31:40]

So one practice that I have is for the nine boughs, taking the triple refuge, you know, take refuge in Buddha and then Dharma and Sangha, take refuge in Buddha as the perfect teacher, as the perfect teaching, as the perfect life. Now I have completely taken, you know, here's a chance to take the triple refuge times three, you know, nine vows. That's why Suzuki Roshi, I think, said you all need nine vows, folks, you know. It's not what they do in usual temples, just three. But for us, you can use nine, I think. So this is our practice. I think Suzuki Roshi lineage temples do nine. So this is a chance to stay with the vows, internally and externally. Yes, we're all bound, but are we wandering? And other threesons, there's all sorts of threesons.

[32:41]

Bolding Nazago is a threeson that I like to take refuge in. Again, you know, just... Stay with it. Stay with my life. Instead of, very easily, often for those talking idle chatter, which scatters the mind, right? And we're into, this is Sashin, we're into collecting and gathering rather than scattering. I wanted to mention something. When we did that calligraphy class, not everybody was here. I have a book on brushwork, and before doing calligraphy, this teacher does a series of exercises to basically gather, or not gather, but bring up chi, you know, the energy energy.

[33:53]

to get ready to do the calligraphy, both painting, you know, sumi circles and paintings, but also kanji, you know, the calligraphy. And it shows pictures of him doing these rather strenuous yogic, qigong kinds of things, you know, very active. And then right next to it, there was a drawing. These were photographs, and then next to the photographs was a drawing. And... The drawing had... Oh, what did I do? It's my little sticky. It had a picture of... I brought a yellow sticky... So next to these photographs was a picture of a human body, just a line drawn, and it had sort of chakra spots. It had one on the head, one in the... two inches or so below the navel, the hara or the tanden, and then one at the palms of the hands.

[35:00]

That was called the rokyu. And then one at the soles of the feet, each foot called the yusen. That was the foot. And these were these points of where chi flows. And what he was saying is you want to feel this chi, before doing calligraphy in your hands, you know, activate it, arouse it, before you then, flowing through your hand, do your kanji, you know, or use. And when I saw those points on the hand, the ru, you know, the ro-q, ro-q, I thought immediately of our mudra, you know, with chi, like flowing it. into the hands, which, you know, this is a very alive area here in our mudra. And if we collapse it, you know, we, I think, kind of lose a kind of vibrant vitality energy there if our mudras collapse.

[36:17]

And after seeing that picture of these two points, If I bring my attention there, I can feel, you know. And then it's, you place the mudra, where do you place it? If you're sitting cross-legged, if you're sitting in a chair, if you're sitting in seysa, if you're lying down, that mudra goes where? Right at the hara, you know. So you've got the hara point, these two, and if you're sitting cross-legged, you've got the feet up here too. So you've got the ro-kyu and the yu-san and the tam-dan all gathered in this ball of cheetah, cheetahs right here, right? And warmth. So this is, you might say, well, I don't know what she's talking about. I don't feel like that. And, you know, beginning to ruminate, I'm not a good practitioner. You know, nip it in the bud. I'm just asking us to be aware of this

[37:22]

the warmth of our hands and what energy we might feel there if we're unified and not scattered in our minds and thoughts and burning and ruminating, but coming into our bodies completely in relaxation, uprightness. In a chair, those of you who are sitting in chairs, either sometimes or all the time, you know, you want to sit a little bit forward in the chair, not lean back, but... if possible, to sit without leaning a little bit more forward on the chair. But this unified body, there's no problem with unification in a chair or lying down. Suzuki Roshi, in a session, December 1st, 1967, Rohatsu Sashin Atasahara brings up, you know, what he says is, I want you to bring your attention into your tanden, into your heart, into your tummy, he says.

[38:38]

Now, I hesitate to bring this up because I know, and I've known in the past, that this can be misunderstood, and people doing a lot of pushing and pressing down and shoving air into this lower, which is not what's the... It's bringing the attention down. Another Zen master, Masunaga Roshi, you know, said, probably others too, but this is who I know it from, place your mind in your left hand, you know. And this... to me, is bringing our attention low, but not with some kind of forceful, pressured, over-the-top, I don't know what, something that substitutes for real strength, actually, a kind of applied contrivance.

[39:43]

That's not what we're talking about. The power of our of our body-mind is there, is already there. We don't have to, like, shove power there. The power is there. It's are we unified? Are we collected? Are we gathered? And are we appreciating our bodies, relaxing in the body, finding upright, finding our center? So you can kind of grab onto this power and have it and use it even. It will be there for it. Your treasure store will open up of itself, or you will use it at will when you need it, when there's a response that's needed. You will respond. This is who we are. When Suzuki Roshi, I think, says put your power in your tummy, it's not some other power you're making go in there.

[40:53]

It's appreciating bringing your attention there without pushing or forcing anything. else he says in this talk I think I'll bring up now our first day he brings up pain pain in our legs in particular but pain in our backs and ankles and shoulders and anywhere you can have pain and he connects this calmness of our and power he uses the word power in our lower belly this imperturbable calmness that can receive anything, can receive pain with calm, and not just physical pain, but we get a chance to work with physical pain in Sashin in a way that we don't... It doesn't make sense in our regular life to...

[42:07]

you know, create a situation of pain in that way, leaving your hand on the stove or something. No, we don't do that. But in Sashin, we sit like the Buddha under the Bodhi tree with this strong resolve to sit with imperturbability and this power that Suzuki Rishi calls power in our tummy, not really our tummy, which is, but our lower belly will help us to be able to be with that pain, be with mental, emotional, and physical pain with calm. We can accept it. And if we feel this is not right, this is not beneficial, this is time to move, then we accept that with impetitability and calm, rather than that change in our posture or in how we're practicing during that period of time, not letting that scatter the mind all over and turn into negative, internal, comparative thoughts.

[43:31]

Let's sit together this seven days in silence, letting go of the thoughts of vacation, where we're going to go, who we're going to see, what we're going to find out there. There's no out there, out there. Let's cast aside all involvements and sit in silence. I wanted to read it. Oh, I didn't bring my glasses. Let's see if I can read this. This is a poem by Pablo Neruda. And I found it in a windmill, an old windmill, Zen Center's magazine, kind of literary current defense magazine that used to come out four, then two times a year, then every other year. Now we don't have it anymore. And this was written when Zen Center... was doing vigils protesting nuclear proliferation.

[44:50]

Wow. And there was one in Mill Valley. We were doing it. A number of people marched. And so this, let's see, can I read this? Does anybody have, do you have glasses that might work for me? No. Should I try? Are they just magnifying? Thank you so much. Thank you. Oh, yes. So this is Pablo Neruda. And now we will count to 12, and we will all keep still. For once, on the face of the earth, let's not... speak in any language. Let's stop for one second and not move our arms so much.

[45:52]

It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines. We would all be together in a sudden strangeness. Fishermen in the cold sea would not harm whales. and the man gathering salt would look at his hurt hands. Those who prepare green wars, wars with gas, wars with fire, victory with no survivors, would put on clean clothes and walk about with their brothers in the shade doing nothing. What I want should not be confused with total inactivity. Life is what it is about. I want no truck with death. If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves.

[47:11]

and of threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the earth can teach us, as when everything seems dead and later proves to be alive. Now I'll count up to twelve, and you keep quiet, and I will go. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[48:09]

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