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. Everybody's looking quite awake and alert. Excellent start. So I just will review a little bit what David said yesterday about... The two Chinese characters for sesshin, setsu, which shortens to sesen, conjunction with shin means to treat something the way you treat a guest or a student treats a teacher. Another meaning of setsu is to control or arrange things in order. And shin means heart or mind. So sesshin means to have a proper functioning of mind. Or also another meaning is touching the heart-mind.

[01:00]

So hopefully, during this period of time, we can touch our heart-mind. And Suzuki Roshi says, and not always so, the purpose of Sashin is to be completely one with our practice. So this is an opportunity to focus on Zazen with minimal distractions. So I'm going to talk a little bit about Zazen and its three components, posture or body, breath, and thinking mind. I mean, the first thing to say about our zazen posture is that the human body has two billion years of evolution or evolved intelligence. It's unbelievably complex, and it's something that we can trust. And this zazen posture is the distillation of thousands of years of yogic experimentation with this body.

[02:02]

So in a sense, our sitting posture is rather precise, but it's not just some set of rules for how to arrange our body. It is the posture for yogic transformation. It's not just about your physical body, but some deeper, subtler body, the body of your awareness, or you might say, your awareness body, or we may say your Buddha body, and this Buddha body sits in the center of everything. Say when we're sitting zazaing, we sit from the inside out. Of course, we try to keep our back straight and our chest open. We pay attention to our chin. If it floats up, we're probably daydreaming or thinking too much. And if it falls down, we're probably sleeping. And we can pay attention to our mudra. If our thumbs part, we're sleeping or... losing concentration.

[03:05]

If they press too hard together, maybe we're tense. So we can pay attention to these aspects of our posture, but mostly we're trying to sit from the inside out, finding our noble, upright posture and exploring stillness. I say stillness because it's really one of the things that characterizes our style of posture sitting as we sit still. Sugiyoshi would say, don't move. And we try not to fidget or move too much. We try to really explore what our body feels like in stillness. And this is so that we don't move away from ourselves, that we sort of stick with ourselves, stick to ourselves. So that's just a few words about our posture and body during the Sashin. Now I'd like to say a couple of things about breathing. so much involved in breathing. Its breath is so completely connected to life.

[04:09]

We breathe life in and let life go on the exhale. We can live only for a few minutes without breathing. It is an intimate connection to living itself, our breath. And I have found my breath one of the most reliable companions in Zazen. It has gotten me through many physical difficulties and emotionally demanding places so i would recommend if you're running into difficulties physical emotional suffering stick with your breath pay attention to your breath get intimate with your breathing you can count on your breathing and just to review the basic approach to breathing you know we call it counting to 10, you know, one on the first exhale, two on the second exhale, three on the third exhale, till we get to 10, and then we start again.

[05:16]

And of course, if we find ourselves lost in a daydream on number four, we return to one again. This is a kind of basic way we, I think we all started practicing zazen, at least that's the way I was taught back in, whatever it is, 1970 or something, or 69. And I think it's something that you return to through your entire career of zazen. I remember when Suzuki Roshi told this story in April of 1969, when he almost drowned at the narrows. A few weeks later, he gave a lecture at Sakoji and appealed to his students to join him in rededication to sincere practice. I love that. Zika Rishi was 65 years old, and he was telling his students he wanted them to join him in rededicating themselves to practice because he had felt like his practice was weak.

[06:18]

That's why he sort of panicked when he almost drowned. So this particular practice that we're doing is an endless practice, a practice for many lifetimes, certainly this whole lifetime, which is nice. It's nice to have a practice that's, you know, run out of after five or 10 years. So anyway, in that lecture, he said, it might be better for us to concentrate on a simpler practice. I think the most simple practice is counting the breath. You know, and I think David said, commented in the book about that. Whatever the problems in zazen, pain, confusion, sleepiness, frightening or seductive images, the students were to join Suzuki Roshi in counting their exhalations from 1 to 10 over and over. I thought that was wonderful that Suzuki Roshi went back to counting all of our… I think he said, we weren't ready for Shikintaza yet.

[07:19]

to count our breath more. So I think it's good to return to counting if you're just totally distracted or you're sleepy or something like that, a good way to build concentration, maybe even for the first five or 10 minutes of zazen each period, just to stabilize your sitting. Certainly is a good way to do that. Of course, another approach to breath is just to follow the breath. Pay attention to it. You can do this from, you know, one position, feeling one position in your body, say your belly, just sort of noticing your breath as it comes into your belly and leaves your belly. Some teachers talk about noticing the breath as it comes in and out of your nose. I think our way, you know, is more to center ourselves in our belly and our hara and pay attention to our breathing. But if you're actually sitting, paying attention to your posture, you can actually feel the breath filling your whole body and, you know, having some warm feeling up in the center of your heart area as you're breathing.

[08:33]

So following our breath, just paying attention. And the effort is not to adjust our breathing, you know, not to try to speed it up or slow it down or actually change it in any way at all, but just to let it find its own place. You know, who's controlling this breathing anyway? Are you running it or can it just run itself? Can you let the breathing breathe you? You know, just relax into your breathing. Let the breath absolutely be just as it wants to go. We just notice it. We are curious about it. I think the only comment I remember about Suzuki Roshi saying something different than just paying attention to it is you can maybe exhale more completely. There's a tendency sometimes to sort of not exhale completely, to kind of hold on to your breath, like you're kind of holding on to life, kind of clinging to life.

[09:39]

So maybe pay a little bit of attention to your exhale and notice if you need to... let it more fully exhale. So, well, of course, as we're paying attention to our breathing, notice how closely related it is to how we feel and think. There's an intimate relationship to our thinking and feeling as we're breathing, and this is a great exploration. To be curious, I would, as part of your noticing your breathing, have a kind of curiosity about what is going on here. I mean, I think we can look at breath as a kind of koan, because it's like, well, the koan of life. What is our life? What is this living, breathing I'm doing right now? So anyway, counting the breath and following the breath are two ways to attend to the breath. The main point is attending so you become friendly with your breath. Become a friend of your breathing.

[10:44]

And I also want to say, just because it's not addressed very often, and you're walking, doing kin-hin walking on your own during the session, that kin-hin is a very important place to pay attention to your breathing. My teacher, Lou Richman, used to call it breath-walking kin-hin, breath-walking. It's because you synchronize your steps with your breathing. And this breath walking actually was transmitted from Gogen to Rujing, his teacher in China. So this is a very important transmitted teaching, the way we do kinhin, our breath walking. And I always, you know, start by standing properly. If you, you know, stand with your feet just, you know, a fist, your heels a fist to size apart, is what Sukarashi is to say. Stand there. Stand upright, you know, with just as if you were with the same kind of noble posture as if you were sitting.

[11:49]

And you hold your hands, you know, with your left thumb down and your left fingers around it and your right thumb like this. This shashu posture and your thumb is kind of like a great temple pole holding you straight up. So you just and we get many chances to stand during service in the morning. We're standing. Standing is an important place for us to feel our posture, feel our breathing and stand. And then, of course, you know, with each breath, you take one small step, kind of a half step. So this is not ordinary walking. This is more like zazen, breath walking, breath walking. And you're carrying your zazen posture through space with your breath. being your movement. So I recommend, you know, during this session that you, you know, take seriously your kinhin and practice carrying your zazen from your seated posture into your walking, your kinhin.

[13:00]

So I also want to, of course, say a few things about our state of mind. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of meditative practices. This is very broadly. Those which alter your state of mind and those which don't. Our zazen practice is on the side of not trying to alter our state of mind. Instead, we are more interested in noticing it as it is. Noticing the state of mind as it is. It may become altered, but we don't try to achieve that. If you're trying to alter your state of mind, we call this having a gaining idea, there's an implicit sense that the state of mind that you have isn't okay, that you need to be different.

[14:05]

And it's certainly, I think, a position we're very familiar with. Oh, I wish I was warmer, I wish I was colder, I wish it was... I was more awake. I wish I was this way or that way. But there is a reason that you're in the state you're in. And besides, it is the life you're experiencing right now. So our way in Zazen is to say yes to our life as it is showing up right now, saying yes to the life that we're experiencing right now without trying to change it, to see if we can actually settle in As Katagiri Roshi would say, settle into the self. So for this session, I'm recommending that you say yes to whatever appears. This is, of course, not necessarily what we do as we're walking through the world. But I think as an experiment, when you have nothing else to do but sitting zazen, see if you can have a deeper and more intimate experience of your life by not trying to adjust yourself.

[15:17]

your state of mind, but just finding yourself settling into that state of mind. And there's a classic koan around this, which I like to share. It's case 43 of the Blue Cliff Record, Dungshan's no heat and cold. Monk asks Dungshan, When heat and cold come, how can we avoid them? And Dengshan said, Why don't you go to the place where there is no heat or cold? That's interesting, isn't it? Why don't you go to the place where there is no heat or cold? And the monk said, What is the place where there is no heat or cold? And Dengshan said, When it is hot, the heat kills you. When it is cold, the cold kills you.

[16:20]

That's the place where there's no heat or cold. So just to remind ourselves of some of the actors in this little koan, Dengshan was the founder of our Soto sect in China. You might remember him from his parting conversation when he was leaving his teacher Yunnan. Dengshan said, in the future, if someone happens to ask whether I can describe the Master's truth or not, how shall I answer it then? Basically saying, you know, in the future, you know, if somebody wants to know what your teaching was, you know, what do I say? And apparently Yun-Yang paused for a while and then said, just this is it. Just This Is It, a fairly short and succinct teaching, but the kind of teaching that leaves you to wonder, well, what is Just This Is It?

[17:34]

And that was what Dengshan did. And Dengshan had studied with Yong Yong for 20 years, but still, apparently, he did not get it. So he left... pondering this. And as he was walking in the mountains, he eventually awakened to its meaning and wrote a poem. And there's a whole story associated with that, which I won't go into this morning. But I think it's a wonderful thing to puzzle about. Just this is it. Just this moment is it. Just this moment of connection is it. Maybe he was saying just this connecting with us and having tea is it. Just this you leaving is it. Or maybe we could say, just this breath is it. Just this breath. This moment of breathing is it, is life, is everything. So anyway, the monk asked Dengshan, when heat and cold come, how can we avoid them?

[18:40]

And naturally, this is what we want to avoid. We want to do, we want, it's, It's too cold, we want to avoid it. And of course, if it is too cold, I mean, you know, put on something warmer. That's one solution. Or if it's too hot, you know, take something off. But there's a sort of a deeper sense here. I mean, we might be sitting zazen, and at some point in time in the period of zazen, we might be feeling a little cold. Well, maybe we just sit with that discomfort, explore it a little bit. Or maybe we're a little bit too warm, we just sit with that more, explore a little bit. Because this is also true for our emotional discomfort, as well as our physical discomfort. I mean, we may be sitting with our knee hurting, quite possibly, almost certainly. If we're sitting this much, our knee will hurt. And, you know, do we move? Well, if it's too bad, we move. But maybe we explore a little bit, you know, what is this? Discomfort.

[19:41]

And the same with our emotional suffering. You know, we will be emotionally suffering during this seven days together, for sure, because that is the nature of our mind. So anyway, to continue, Deng Shan says, why don't you go to the place where there's no heat or cold? So what is that place where there's no heat or cold? Where there's no... emotional suffering. Well, I could go numb, I could just kind of like numb out, I could go to a distracted place, like I could start daydreaming, I could, you know, do some serious distracting with thinking, I could, you know, maybe I could find some bliss state of mind by doing various things. So there's ways that we could, you know, try to run away from it. But that is not the direction this monk is going. When the monk says, what is the place where there's no heat and cold? Dengshan says, when it is hot, The heat kills you. And when it is cold, the cold kills you. And this is kind of like a dramatic way of putting something.

[20:46]

So I'm going to read Suzuki Roshi's comment on this because it's very to the point. And, of course, it's always wonderful to have a little bit of Suzuki Roshi with us while we're sitting. To kill the pain or cold or hot means to become one with. you know, pain. I'll repeat that again. To kill the pain or cold or hot means to become one with the pain. You should forget, you know, about your legs, you know, you should become one with pain. Not your body's pain, but pain. It is not you who feels the pain because you are one with the pain. That which exists is just pain. Nothing exists but the pain. You have no legs, no body, no feeling. Then it means that you, when we say kill the pain, it means that you become one with the pain.

[21:47]

I stole that from an unedited part of Suzuki Hoshi's lectures, which sort of reads a little bit like he actually gave the lectures. So if we're suffering, it's okay to suffer. We become one with the suffering. we learn something about suffering, if we're willing to become one with the suffering, it will connect us to others, it will allow us to be, you know the story, I think I told the story once during this practice period, maybe I didn't, that Suzuki Rishi was down at Tassar and gave a lecture and talked about the fact that they were, all the students were his friends, and one of the students who was relatively new there was kind of confused about that and said, I think he ran into Sigurishi in the path and said, you know, I'm a little surprised. I mean, we don't really know each other very well. Why do you say you're my friend? And Sigurishi said, you suffer, I suffer, therefore we're friends.

[22:54]

You suffer, I suffer, therefore we're friends. So to become intimate with your own suffering is the way to be friends. with other people. And Sukeroshi going on some more about this, the only way to sit where you are to find out the complete absolute composure where you sit, that is, that is, let me say that again. The only way is to sit where you are and to find out the complete, absolute composure where you sit. That is how we sit, and that is so-called shikantaza. So that was, if you can become one with your heat or one with your cold, you can have the absolute composure where you sit.

[23:58]

You know, we always talk about these things with respect to pain, because pain seems to be part of our human life. But it's not true just of pain. Pain is true of all feelings. You know, if you can completely enter all your feelings, and I'll give you an example. I was at Tassar early on, I think, in my Zen career, and was... didn't really understand what full bows were about. I just was doing them like everybody was doing them. And I was doing service, and we were doing the nine bows. And I think maybe even the first or second bow, just as I started to move to the floor, all of a sudden, my entire body was swept with the feeling of gratitude. Consumed me. I just was gratitude. as I fell to the floor, bowed to the floor, a moment of grace, you might say.

[25:03]

And it's that, so that purity of being one with any feeling, love, gratitude, reverence, suffering, discomfort, these are the things that we want to live fully and embrace with our whole life. body and mind. So when it's hot, the heat kills you. Very dramatic, but it means the person who's standing outside your life complaining about it is not there. You're completely living that heat. If when it's hot, you're willing to be hot, and if when you're in pain or misery, you're willing to be in pain or misery, then it won't be so bad. It's the standing outside of it that is the real suffering, that's the adding on to the suffering.

[26:04]

To be alive is to be all these things, to be able to experience these states without complaining so much that we lose track of our lives. So I want to talk a little bit about about thinking. You know, we say when thinking is going on, you just watch it. You watch it hopefully from a stance of being in your body and paying attention to your breath so that thinking is not totally disembodied. You know, the kind of thinking that happens when you're just lost somewhere, you don't even know where you are anymore. I always like the way St. Kershia would say, thoughts come in, but don't invite them to stay for tea. We're not going to stop our thinking. Our thinking will stop sometimes on its own, of course, but mostly it's just too fast. It comes in, and we don't take that posture of trying to stop our thinking.

[27:10]

That is getting involved in a fight with our thinking. There's nothing wrong with our thinking. Our thinking is like the sound of the bird outside. It's there. We just let it come and let it go. But of course, we don't always just let it come and let it go. Somehow these stories start building. A thought comes in and it triggers something. Oh, that person mistreated me and this and that. And then we build a whole story around it. And these stories then can go on endlessly. And of course, it's the nice thing about sitting at Sashin, as you get very familiar, some of these old stories that you've been telling yourself, and you'll notice how much suffering is involved in many of these stories that you carry on about the suffering that you're experiencing. And if you have some sense of remembering, you'll notice that these stories cause suffering for others as you act in ways that aren't exactly the kindest.

[28:20]

And all this pain and suffering that comes from these stories, and these stories are powerful stories that come from our childhood, and they're not easy to let go of. I say we try to disconfirm our stories. We try to see, oh, this story is just a story from our childhood. This isn't really real about who I am or what I am in this world. I've seen this story before. It is from my early relationship with my parents or my society or something. But of course, it isn't long before the ego says, no, no, no, this time what I'm telling you about what a dork you are or whatever is true. You really are that way. You know, it's different this time. It isn't that old story just coming from your childhood. It's really, here's all the reasons it's different this time, but that's just the ego being clever with you. You have to notice, oh no, it is really basically the same story. I'm just, beating myself up. And of course, you know, a friend of mine used to say, and we have to beat ourselves up, we have to bang our head against the wall until finally we just get tired of and say, no, through beating myself up about that story, that idea about who I am and what I am.

[29:40]

And I think if we sit long enough with these stories, which we will during this period of Zazen, and we sit with in our body and with our breath we will get some sense of these stories not having so much control over us we will be able to let them go we'll notice that the hook in these stories is all from some self-centered place some idea about ourselves that is spinning these thoughts and if we let go of that idea about ourselves We can let go to a large extent of those stories that are causing us suffering. So to be clear, to let go of thoughts is not to repress it. What it does mean is to allow everything, to welcome everything, to welcome something, to really welcome it freely, actually means to let go. that is what everything does. Everything comes and goes.

[30:42]

So if you really and truly say yes to something, what you are really saying is, thank you very much, and I understand that you will soon disappear. In fact, I understand that you are disappearing even now. Thank you very much. So letting go is the same as saying yes to your life, which I brought up earlier. When we practice zazen, we're not making an effort to control our mind. We are just welcoming everything. We are just saying yes. Yes to everything that comes, even if they are things that we don't like. Yes, thank you very much. And because we are really saying yes to it and accepting it, it goes away. and then something else comes. So this way of living is the secret of our practice.

[31:54]

It is the main way of understanding Soto Zen. It is, as we would say, the treasure of our house. It is what Dogen transmitted through the generations to Suzuki Roshi and what Suzuki Roshi transmitted to all of us. That is the way to appreciate everything. And to love everything just as it is. It is an immense thing to be able to love ourselves as we are. Not as we should be. Not as what we would like to be. but actually as we are, as we are being in this very moment, as we are actually living our life. And to love others, too, not as they should be, or as we'd like them to be, but as they actually are, with all their painful behaviors.

[33:03]

and all of their confusion and misery. This is a big thing, if we can do this. And our sitting practice is what allows us to find that place. I'm going to read this section from Zen Mind Beginner's Mind because I love it so much. the way it turns is beautiful in the beginner's mind there is no thought i have attained something all self-centered thoughts limit your vast mind all self-centered thoughts limit your vast mind when we have no thought of achievement no thought of self we are true beginners then we can really learn something the beginner's mind is the mind of compassion Isn't that beautiful, the way he moves from that? The beginner's mind. The beginner's mind is like we would say the ready mind or the Zen mind or the mind that you find when you settle into yourself.

[34:11]

That mind is the mind of compassion. That's where our compassion comes from. And he goes on and says, when our mind is compassionate, it is boundless. Dogen Zenji, the founder of our school, always emphasized how important it is to resume our boundless original mind. Then when we are always true to ourselves, then we are always true to ourselves in sympathy with all beings and can actually practice. And the root to this is what I've been talking about today, to when it's hot, come the heat. When it's cold, become the cold. When the knee is painful, become the painful knee. When you are sitting in great joy and calm, sit with great joy and calm. Settle yourself into yourself and find the mind, the beginner's mind, the boundless mind of compassion.

[35:19]

this beginner's mind this boundless original mind is what we sit in zazen in it is what our bodhisattva practice is grounded in and from whence it springs so i encourage you to take uh make the effort to enter this practice as fully as possible So that is my talk for today, a little kind of basic talk of posture, breathing, and the mind. And it's all stuff you already know. So it was just a kind of refresher at the beginning of a sashin. And I was thinking last night about this sashin being so unusual in a way that... And normally at Tassar or Green Gult or City Center, all 60 of you, all 60 of us would be sitting together down in the Zendo.

[36:33]

And we'd be encouraged by the physical connection we have to each other. We'd be breathing the same air. It would all be circulating through our lungs together. But because of this weird pandemic situation, we cannot sit and breathe together. We can sit and see each other, but we are breathing in our separate places. And so, of course, there's the tremendous power and advantage of that physical being together, which we are replicating by sitting, looking at each other on these waffles together. But it requires a little bit more... initiative on your own to to follow the schedule you know when you're in the building the bell rings and you just get up and go to the zendo and the clackers click and you get up and you do kin in and everybody's doing kin in together so when you're at home and on your own you have to work harder to to or depend on your own initiative to stay connected to all of us here together and

[37:48]

follow the schedule. So this is a kind of great experiment we're entering into. And I really look forward to hearing from you all and seeing how this is all working. Hopefully the next session we sit together, we'll be able to do it in person. But I think this is a kind of wonderful chance to, and there's maybe some advantages to it because, you know, sometimes when you're caught in the rigidity of the schedule when we're together, you don't get the sort of flexibility you might need. This way you might find your own way to settle into the sashin, your own sort of way when you need to take care of yourself better, when you need to push yourself harder. You can sort of make your own way through it. So I think we should look at this as an advantage. Let's find the optimal way to do this particular kind of sashin. And of course, we have all of the standard things. We can have dogs on with each other and we can have chances to talk.

[38:53]

And you will also have a different kind of way of getting angry. Like during a normal session, you would eventually get irritated by the person who's sitting somewhere near you that's fidgeting too much or coughing too much or the server who's not serving you right. But, you know, maybe you'll find... elements in your own environment that will kind of like start to irritate you and you can explore that those are all more opportunities to settle into the various ways your mind manifests itself during seven days of quietness and stillness as a great exploration of the way to find our way into the heart of our life and the heart of our life together so I think with that, I will thank you very much for your attention this morning and wish you a marvelous seven days. Of course, I'll be seeing you throughout the week and enjoy the rest of your day today.

[39:59]

Thank you very much. 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, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[40:28]

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