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. In the I Ching, one of the hexagrams of... can't remember the name, I think the hexagram's name is Retreat. But in the commentary there's an image that's brought up of a mountain, a still mountain, and a lake at the top of the mountain. So the The top of the peak of the mountain is not just a vertical upward shape, but there's a bowl shape, a dip, a place in the earth that's rounded and softer and where water collects.

[01:19]

So the mountain sits still and the lake at the top is filled with water and that moisture in the lake evaporates and moistens the mountain and the mountain brings the clouds or the clouds come to the mountain and moistens the lake So there's both receptiveness and fluidity right within stillness and solidness. So let us make of ourselves mountains, keeping still, sitting still mountains

[02:30]

with a wonderful alpine lake at the top, surrounded by, this lake is not above the tree line. There's ancient pines and birds and fish in the lake. It's alive. And this lake of receptivity and being able to hold and hear and allow things to come in as a beginner's mind quality. So our Sashin is not over.

[03:43]

We have all day today, and some of you might be sitting up a little later tonight in celebration and commemorating Buddha's Enlightenment, even though it's not December 8th of the 12th month quite yet, the Rohatsu. It is the last night of the seven-day Sashin. And I just wanted to say something about late night sitting. There is the next day and how one practices the next day. And if you might feel like I won't be able to participate in the last day of Sashin and the final practices and ceremonies and rituals because I'd be so exhausted and bleary-eyed and cranky, you know.

[05:10]

maybe that practice may not be the right fit this time around. So please be clear about whether this is right for you. And if you do sit late, please don't disappear from tomorrow's schedule. I remember sitting up all night at Tessahara for a Sashin, and the wake-up bell person came in, the Shouseau, and saw me there. I'd been there all night, and I was really proud of myself, you know, that I had kind of made it through the night. But I paid. I really paid the next day. I was a mess, you know. I barely got through, and I kept falling asleep on my cushion for that last day of Sashin, which, didn't end after lunch the way we do it.

[06:13]

We end it at night. So please have clear vision about this practice. So in a retreat, A retreat is not a flight and an escape. A retreat, in all senses of the word, is a planned, appropriate response to a situation And for many of you this has been a coming home, a very important time to really collect body and mind in one suchness, to come back to the most important thing.

[07:27]

And many of you have had insights into where you need to make an effort and work and practice. You know, sometimes I hear about strict teachers. Sometimes you hear, this teacher was so strict they had This person had very few students. I mean, nobody could stay. It was too hard. And I think being a greed type, in terms of the greed, hate, delusion types of constitutions, when I hear that, I think, oh, that would be helpful for me, like really strict.

[08:30]

And... I'm not sure that's the case. But I wonder sometimes if there's, and this question came up during the session, what's indulging and what's appropriate response? What's too strict and what's just right? When do we... When is there... granting, granting, granting, granting way and where the hand is stuck open instead of being able to. There's a story that I've always found

[09:33]

And I know some people don't like this story, but it's about being strict, I think. It's a story of monks coming to a monastery and waiting in the tanga ryo, in the room, before you're entered into the monastery, sitting tanga ryo, which is different than we practice it here. It's like a separate room. and the room isn't all that nice. Maybe the tatami are kind of shabby, and it's not really inviting. If you want to be accepted into the monastery and entered into the practice period, you have to show your sincerity. And so it's in the middle of winter, and these two monks have arrived, or more than two, and I think the teacher, the strict teacher, is freezing, and they're in the Tangaryo kind of sitting zazen, waiting to be accepted.

[10:36]

And he comes and he throws water on all of them. And then some of them leave. But, like, who needs this, right? It's already uncomfortable, freezing cold, sitting. And then they throw water on us, you know? We should report them, you know. But these monks say, you know, I have come this far to practice the Buddha way and a little water isn't going to deter me. And that spirit, I really appreciate. And I think that throwing water on them, I think this particular teacher was one of those teachers who, you know, if a little water is going to bother them, fine, go. I actually don't. want you to practice with me in this monastery. So for some reason, I respond positively to that story.

[11:41]

And I know a lot of people who don't like that story. It's abusive and so on and so forth. So for whatever reason, it speaks to me. What kind of deterrence, what's it going to take for me to say, forget this. Because it's not easy. We do get irritated and annoyed and feel that things are just a nuisance and then on top of that we're in pain. and people pour water on me in the Tangariya room and on my hands when I'm holding out my bowls for hot water and oryoki and lots of complaints.

[12:42]

Are those things going to stop us from practicing? So I don't really know what strict is. But I imagine it has to be the appropriate response. It doesn't, it can't be used as a one flavor indiscriminately. But this is a question for me. So I invite you to continue with the forms of practice, especially silence, observing silence.

[13:55]

And one might feel a little more relaxed somehow this last day or so. And then, as I've said many times, then it gets to be like a four or five day sashimi instead of a seven day. So the Buddha on this day received milk rice. He received food and bathed in the river and found a spot under the tree on a grassy earth and gathered the grass to make a cushion just the right height. As one description in a poem says, he folded his legs in a coil and all around him became quiet.

[15:10]

Everyone, the birds and the celestial beings, everybody was waiting because he had made this resolve. And the earth, everything kind of stood still. And I've been talking about the seat, the bodhi manda or the bodhi awakening mandala where you sit right in the middle. And this seat is also called the vajra seat. Vajra is diamond or adamantine, this indestructible and, you know, the diamond thunderbolt. And in this Chogyam Trungpa book where he's... kind of contrasting Zen and Vajrayana. He talks about Zen using emptiness and impermanence to break things open. But in Vajrayana, it's already broken with this diamond-like quality.

[16:20]

Even when you break it, it's indestructible. So I don't know that much about Vajrayana, but I feel the two go together. The myriad things are just one single body. So that's... that image of the vajra seat sitting on an indestructible spot to make your effort. Each moment is vajra seat. Please don't

[17:25]

fall into Oh, but not me. You know, my seat isn't a Vajra seat. I've got I don't know what the opposite of a Vajra seat is. I've got just some old deck chair, some old beach chair that I found in Goodwill. I'll sit on that, it's okay. That's all I deserve, really, is some old ratty... It's okay, just I'll sit in the dark, it's all right.

[18:33]

Anyway, that kind of attitude, as if that were real humbleness or humility, is, I think, misunderstood. With humility we sit on the diamond seat, grounded, humble, close to the earth, touching the earth, on an indestructible spot. And so the Buddha sat and sat into the night, and the descriptions of the four watches of the night, these different hours, he entered into very concentrated absorption and was able to clearly observe and clearly see dependent core rising.

[19:38]

the whole wheel of birth and death and how beings, through karmic activity, move through the six realms. And he began these meditations after he had really settled, after Mara had given up. Mara was drawn, Mara got constellated, was drawn to that adamantine seat because here was someone who was going to overturn Maher's realm by realizing the truth. And it says in this poem, this is the Buddha Karita, this long poem called the Acts of the Buddha, and the last part is you know, the enlightenment, and it's all in verse.

[20:43]

It says the Buddha put on the armor of his vow. So he's sitting there on the Vajra seat in armor. The armor isn't defensive armor, it's the armor of vowing out of compassion to wake up for the benefit of beings. This is what a Buddha's vow is. So that's a kind of armor. How can you be hurt when every act, when all your thoughts are directed towards helping beings? So Mara was drawn to this and tried to move him from his seat with various assaults. we've read about perhaps. And the assaults are really the assaults of being pulled into something, leaning into something, grasping after something, or leaning away and pushing away and running away.

[22:05]

So anything that will pull you off your cushion forward or push you off your cushion from either grasping or turning away. And for each person, it's different things. And I'm sure everyone's been, or I imagine, I propose. that probably everyone has been, has felt that pull, you know, forward, leaning forward or backward. So we take the upright posture that's balanced, neither leaning to the right, nor the left, nor forward, nor backward. That's the posture, and it's a posture of body-mind. And Mara tried to

[23:06]

adjust the Buddha's posture, pull them and push them one way or the other. And the Buddha was upright and transformed those energies into just grounded uprightness. Even the last kind of trick of Mara to... Underminer's resolve by being very, really getting in there with some, knowing how to touch the Buddha's buttons, you know, push the Buddha's buttons. Just the right thing to say. It didn't work, but knowing him well, you know, he brought up just those things that really get where we get triggered. And we can each reflect on what those are for us.

[24:18]

But the Buddha was calm and found his composure in the middle of that. What he was composure. And then he really settled in for the rest of the night after that encounter. And what helped him, as you know, especially during that last pushing and pulling and prodding, was calling on the earth to witness him, touching the earth, just like our statue on the altar, that mudra And the word mudra means you take a posture of body or mind and that both evokes and invokes.

[25:34]

It shows something and it calls for something. So the Buddha asked the earth to witness is that he deserved to just sit there, just sit there and do his work. And in the form of the earth goddess, there's a wonderful drawing of her coming up out of the earth and the two hands touching. And she shook in eight ways. The earth trembled and moved and rocked. And in acknowledgement, you, have done your work and you have, you have the, this is your birthright to sit here. And that gesture of touching the earth is this relatedness

[26:51]

You know, he was alone sitting there with the whole earth supporting and saying, yes. So this is a poem from Dogen about after the Buddha sat through the watches of the night and reviewed the way things are. And then he just sat, and when he saw the morning star, he was fully awakened with all beings and the great earth. Marvelous, marvelous.

[27:53]

All beings without exception are completely and thoroughly awake and enlightened, except for their confusion and delusion and attachments. They don't realize it. And Dogen's poem is, When the morning star appeared, Buddha accomplished the way. In the snow is a single branch of of plum blossoms. On the great earth, sentient beings together with grasses and trees attained joy as never before at this time. This is a kind of mystery, right? And this image of plum and snow, you know, the plum is the tree that blossoms first in the spring, and sometimes it actually blooms in the snow, in Japan, perhaps, and other places.

[29:03]

So it's known for not only beauty and fragrance and the delicacy of its color, but the strength and perseverance and ability to come forth still in winter. to bloom in adversity and difficulty in the snow as a single branch of plum blossoms. And, you know, the Buddha practiced this way wrapped in a vow of compassion for all beings. This is what makes Buddha's not only wisdom, Prajnaparamita as the mother of awakened ones, but compassionate vow.

[30:04]

And another poem from Dogen. Each moment, waking, sleeping in my grass-thatched hut, I offer this prayer. Let Shakyamuni Buddha's compassion envelop the world. And I feel these two poems are these two, you know, this is almost like a prayer. It is a prayer. Let Shakyamuni Buddha's compassion envelop the world. And this awakening born of wisdom and compassion, not just for himself alone. May it envelop the world. Picture that. Picture compassion enveloping the world, the world wrapped in it. May we be instruments of that. May that vow arise in us so strongly that we cannot be moved off our vajra seat.

[31:13]

So let us sit these last hours together, re-consecrated, re-dedicated to this practice, not thinking about anything else, not leaning into the future or reviewing some past. I've been greatly, greatly, greatly encouraged by your practice and by the enormous care and love that people have been showing to each other. And I don't feel it as contrived or

[32:35]

In any way, it feels like it flows from a deep vow. Maybe so deep, we don't really even realize it ourselves. And I've been very, very touched by that. Thank you very much. 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 sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[33:34]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.63