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. So, good morning, everyone. Welcome to San Francisco Zen Center, City Center. My name is Kyoshin Wendy Lewis. And today I'm going to continue an examination of the teachings of the Satipatthana Sutra, the four foundations of mindfulness. Today is the last day of our spring sishin, which ends the winter practice period. And our topic for the practice period was, as some of you know, the six perfections or paramitas. And those are generosity, morality, patience, energy, meditation, and wisdom.

[01:02]

And for this Sashin, in my talks, I've been concentrating on the four foundations of mindfulness or the fifth, Paramita, meditation. So in some ways, this may seem pretty obvious, but we don't talk about meditation that much in Zen. It's... It is an abstract, one of the abstract paramitas. In other words, there are the first three that are pretty straightforward, generosity, morality, and patience. We can understand those in a very conditional way. But energy and meditation and wisdom are a little more abstract. So how do we study them? How do we understand them? In Zen, what's emphasized is shikantaza or just sitting. And I think this is a wonderful introduction to meditation and a way to meditate in general. And at the same time, what is just sitting compared to?

[02:06]

What are we not doing? Or what was the just sitting a response to? So I think that that's one of the reasons to study something like the Four Foundations, to find out that. In my last talk, I spoke about the first three, there are four foundations of mindfulness, and they are the body in the body, the feelings in the feelings, consciousness in consciousness, and dharmas in the dharmas. So I spoke about the first three contemplations of the body in the body, which are posture and breath, which most meditators are familiar with, and clear comprehension. So this is Uslananda's description of clear comprehension. Clear comprehension means seeing precisely, seeing everything in its entirety, seeing it by evenly using all mental faculties.

[03:15]

When you apply clear comprehension, it means you observe or take note of the object, paying close attention to it, trying to see it thoroughly, precisely, and with all mental faculties, confidence, effort, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom in balance. So these kind of specific mindfulness exercises can seem sort of boring or at least not stimulating in the usual way that we think of our mental activity. But during a sashin, you have a lot of time to sort of consider what is coming up in your mind. How is it passing away? What are the sensations in the body and the thoughts in the mind? What are their qualities? So in the next 11 contemplations that sum up the first of the four foundations,

[04:24]

are reflections on the repulsiveness of the body, reflection on the material elements, and the nine cemetery contemplations. Doesn't that sound like fun? So I think one of the most important instructions is to learn to be bored in an interesting way. How do we do that? So it's... learning to be interested in examining these details rather than only in sort of exciting goals like realization or enlightenment or even self-justification. Here I am, a meditator, aren't I? And there's nothing wrong with that. It's kind of encouraging to think that way. But what about these details? So David quoted one part of the Genjo Koan yesterday, and this is another part from there, also about water and boats.

[05:27]

When you sail out in a boat to the middle of an ocean where no land is in sight and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular and does not look any other way. But the ocean is neither round nor square. Its features are infinite in variety. It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time. So when you consider what that might actually feel like, to be in a boat in the middle of the ocean, there's no islands, there's no other boats, there's no land that you can see, it might be a little disorienting and disconcerting out there with nothing to... kind of project on or relate to or long for and there's the height of the sky and the depth of the ocean beneath you. And that's it. And I think this is the type of boredom that Zen is trying to encourage or cultivate.

[06:37]

Because it's kind of our fear of boredom, our fear of being somewhere where we can't sort of orient ourselves and point our finger that way and that way that sort of prevents us from experiencing our freedom. And instead, we project our egotistical selfhood onto ourselves and other things. So the contemplation of the body and the body is asking us to look at what we're projecting and what is doing the projecting from that perspective of a boat in the middle of an ocean with no land in sight. So one of the qualities of the body is its constituent parts and their functions. So I would recommend viewing the body in this way with honesty and compassion.

[07:42]

And Uslananda said, comments on this. For many Westerners, the meditation on the repulsiveness of the body is difficult to understand and to accept. This difficulty should be a reminder to look at this kind of meditation with an open mind. With an open mind and a firm dedication to freedom from suffering, you may come to understand why this meditation was praised by the Buddha. And the benefit that comes from this kind of meditation, according to the Four Foundations, is that it can conquer boredom in secluded places. That is, the place where one meditates. And another benefit to contemplating, in this contemplation, is that the concrete of fear and dread is related to recognizing the impermanence of the body.

[08:50]

And I think, and the attachment to the body. And this is kind of supported by a retreat because we're kind of cut off from our normal comforts and strategies for taking care of our anxiety and all those things. When I first lived at Tassajara, there was very little heating anywhere. And we happened to have some very cold winters when I was there. The odd rule, I can't remember exactly what the temperature was, but if it was below 30 something, they would turn on the heaters. And the heaters were kind of horrible. kerosene heater, so they smelled, and they only warmed up one half of the Zendo. Anyway, so here I was, very, very cold, and there was nowhere to get warm. So one of my ways of coping with this was I allowed myself to kind of whimper in the early morning when it was cold, you know, because I'm very stoic, you know, you don't see me crying very much, but I allowed myself.

[10:05]

And another way I coped with it was to ask, who said that I should be comfortable? And I don't know if that was completely healthy, but, you know, it was, I think it was kind of intuitive way of, you know, seeing the body in the body, and what are our needs and our desires, and what balance is that, and, you know, to be more curious. Yeah. about hunger and cold and heat and all the other discomforts. It's raining and raining and raining and you just washed your clothes and it started to rain and now your clothes are never going to get dry. And then you put them in this room and they smell like smoke. Yeah. So I highly recommend it, by the way. So. Who said that I should always be comfortable?

[11:08]

The four material elements, which is the next of the contemplations, I'm just going to briefly say, so they're earth, water, fire, and air. And the earth element refers to hardness, softness, and to foundation, very important. and it manifests as receiving or accepting. So I'm just gonna ask you to sort of let these go into your mind intuitively. The water element refers to fluidity and it functions to intensify and as holding things together. The fire element matures or ages and it refers to temperature, and how the application of heat softens things, as in cooking. The air element expands or extends, and it functions to support and to cause motion.

[12:13]

So you can just, as you experience yourself, earth, water, fire, and air, what ones are active? How do they relate to each other? And next are the nine cemetery contemplations. And this might seem unusual in our culture, but I think it's maybe a little closer than we think. When I worked as a chaplain for a year, I saw many dead and dying people from infants to the very elderly. And one of the... responsibilities of the chaplains were to accompany people when they wanted to view someone, a relative who had just passed away. And so you'd go to the morgue and the body would be in this bag and all that was showing was the head and it smelled bad in there and there was no, you know, fixing up.

[13:26]

And what was interesting about it is that The first time it was a little bit of a shock, but it wasn't depressing. There was something very real and unusual about it that I didn't expect. Oh, this is it. Something like that. And I think, you know, our fear of that experience of seeing someone who is dead or dying is different than the actual thing. Like a lot of our fears, I think, are like that. And some of you may have seen this Japanese film called Departures, where this cellist who loses his job in an orchestra and ends up working for an undertaking business. And the film presents this preparation of bodies with this combination of compassion and practicality and humor and ordinariness.

[14:30]

And it's... worth seeing just as a hint at these cemetery contemplations. I also think that images come up in meditation related to death and corpses and violence and things that we've seen in films or photos. When I was in high school, someone had a brother who was in Vietnam, and somehow he smuggled out some photographs of what was happening there. This person showed them to me. And I can still remember that sense of this isn't real. This isn't real, you know. But those photos haunted me for a long, long time. So this is a contemplation and these images arise and they can be part of this meditation. You don't actually... need in a certain way to go to a cemetery.

[15:31]

So it's this contemplation is about impermanence and there's a little bit of still that sense of kind of Why am I doing this? Why am I thinking about these things, you know, as you're sitting in meditation? But there's also, I think, a lot of compassion and sympathy that we can feel towards even the images and not just the experiences. And they can allow us to observe ourselves and others with more patience. Because that's where we'll end up, I think. I think all of us will die. So next are the second and third contemplations. They are contemplation of the feelings and the feelings and contemplation of the consciousness and the consciousness. And the first contemplation of the body and the body has the longest commentary.

[16:43]

These ones are a little shorter, the next three. So contemplation of the feelings and the feelings is not about our emotional state, but it's the observation of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. And these in Pali are called Vedana. And this is before the conditioned mind begins to grasp at them or interpret them. And Venerable Analayo, in his commentary on this Satipatthana Sutta, describes this. Thus, to contemplate feelings means quite literally to know how one feels. and this with such immediacy that the light of awareness is present before the onset of reactions, projections, or justifications in regard to how one feels. Systematic development of this contemplation will strengthen one's more intuitive modes of apperception.

[17:46]

So our emotional states and reactions originate in conditioned responses to this pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral contact. And the tendency with pleasant contact is we want it to continue and we look for it. We want to create it. With unpleasant, it's to avoid it, be afraid of it, and feel this aversion. And with neutral contact, it's to be kind of indifferent, maybe a little annoyed with it, or just misunderstand. the contact itself. And so these unpleasant and neutral contact lead to the conditioned responses or the activation of greed, hatred, and delusion, which are called the three poisons. So the contemplation of the feelings in the feelings is addressed to noticing and acknowledging sensations as they arise in meditation.

[18:56]

So the sound of a bird may be pleasant. The sound of shouting or construction, which we've had a lot of, may be unpleasant. And the sound of, you know, passing traffic, sort of, maybe neutral. And then body states, such as, you know, a moment of relaxation or periods of relaxation may be pleasant. hot, cold, and pain, unpleasant, and sleepiness may be neutral. You're just kind of lost in this quiet place or something. So when we've grounded our meditative awareness in the body with stable posture and breath, then you can start to acknowledge the feelings. And Usala Nanda offers acknowledgments such as Good, good, good. Pain, pain, pain. Angry, angry, angry. Sad, sad, sad. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Interesting.

[19:59]

And then you notice when you become distracted or cling to these sensations. And you return to the posture and the breath. And pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. Feelings are also divided into worldly and unworldly. There are those that arise based on our conditioned lives and those that arise relative to our meditative efforts. So in this way, pain can sometimes be a support to our meditation. Pleasure can be a support to our meditation. Neutral, neutrality... Not one or the other can be a support to our meditation. And so, you know, is it worldly pleasure or unworldly pleasure? There's, you know, many quotes from the Buddha.

[21:06]

We don't know if he actually said them, but one of them was he said, I have two, what is it? Anyway, I think it was something like there are two things, types of pleasure that I have, and one of them is meditation. And I can't remember what the other one was. Sorry about that. It wasn't in my notes. But the pleasure of meditation, I know we all have experienced it, but we don't often give ourselves credit for it, that it's actually nurturing and not worldly pleasure. It's conducive to freedom, realization, insight. So, you know, a lot of us have been told, you know, to let go of our anger or sadness or meditative joy or our elation.

[22:08]

But I think that the instructions of Buddhism point a little more deeply to examining these worldly, from both a worldly and unworldly sense of what these feelings states, what their function is, and to do this with attention and compassion. When we're not compassionate towards our negative emotions, they usually get bigger and more destructive. But if you say, oh yeah. I know this feeling, or that's familiar. Somehow it's almost like I often think of this, and I've told other people this. It's like, what would you say to a child who's angry? Shut up. Yes, you might. But there's another way, you know. Is there a way to respond to that anger with, hmm, I know what that feels like.

[23:10]

I've been angry. So what does this anger need? And you might not be able to provide it, but it's a different way of responding to it. So with our own emotions, to see them as having that almost raw, immediate sense. And can we offer them some space? So the third contemplation is of the consciousness in the consciousness. And the word for consciousness here is citta, or mind. And some of us are familiar with this through the term bodhichitta, the mind of enlightenment. In Japanese, bodhichitta is bodhaishin. And Dogen has a chapter in his shobogen, so it's called hutsu bodhaishin, or establishment of the bodhi mind. And it begins. In general, there are three kinds of mind. The first, chitta, is here called thinking mind.

[24:14]

The second, Hridaya, is here called the mind of grass and trees. The third, Vrita, is here called experienced and concentrated mind. So citta is the reflecting or an observing aspect of mind. Hridaya is the feeling and sensation aspect of mind. And Vrita is the aspect of mind that is prajna or wisdom. So Dogen continues. This isn't one of the more poetic ones, by the way. Among these, the Bodhi mind is inevitably established, relying upon thinking mind. Bodhi is the sound of an Indian word. Here it is called the truth. Citta is the sound of an Indian word. Here it is called thinking mind. Without this thinking mind, it is impossible to establish the Bodhi mind. This mind is not innate and it does not now suddenly arise.

[25:18]

At a place where there is mystical communication of the truth, establishment of the Bodhi mind occurs. Establishment of the mind and attainment of the truth rely upon the instantaneous arising and vanishing of all things. So in this fascicle or sermon, Dogen, quotes Abhidharma and other Buddhist texts, and he refers to the hindrances, the four elements, the aggregates, and so on. And so it's pretty clear from this and other teachings that he studied and taught from the Four Foundations of Mindfulness as well as other Buddhist teachings like them. The Dogen scholar Hee Jin Kim wrote Dogen on meditation and thinking, a reflection on his view of Zen.

[26:20]

So in this study of Dogen, Kim questions the interpretation of Zen as a school that rejects thinking and mental effort. And he says that this view has resulted in thinking having been almost incapacitated in the Zen tradition. And I think there's a reason for that. And that'll be clear as I continue. In Kim's view, Dogen's thinking or intellectual astuteness should be located in a larger soteriological context. So in other words, thinking is applied towards realization rather than towards digressive analysis or analysis for analysis sake or delusive discrimination as opposed to discrimination focused on enlightenment and realization. So what is this type of thinking?

[27:25]

So there are varied types of consciousness addressed in this contemplation, and they're particularly concerned with greed and non-greed, hatred and non-hatred, and delusion and non-delusion. And the attitude of this contemplation is to remain receptively aware rather than to make efforts to suppress or oppose unwholesome states of mind. And I think this is the thinking Dogen is referring to. It's nonjudgmental, but attentive. You know, aware of the rising and passing away of states of mind. And this is towards the kind of intuitive insight that's allowed to develop through that kind of attention. And that's what I think he means by that, how did he say it? At a place where there is mystical communication of the truth, establishment of the Bodhi mind occurs.

[28:33]

And I think that's what he's talking about, that intuitive. So the fourth contemplation is of the Dhammas in the Dhammas. So we settled into shamatha calmness, examined the body and the body in terms of impermanence, examined the feelings and the feelings as pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral, and examined the consciousness and the consciousness through mental factors or states to develop meditative thinking. And now we can approach the dharmas in the dharmas. And these are the five hindrances. the five aggregates of clinging, the six internal and six external sense bases, the seven factors of enlightenment, and the four noble truths. Now those of you who might be a little newer to Buddhism, as you are around for a while, you'll hear these teachings over and over again.

[29:35]

Very basic teachings. So the work of the first three contemplations undercuts the conditional interpretation of the teachings and of the positive mental states. So where as you go into the Dhammas and the Dhammas, you've sort of cleared out your conditional thinking. So as you study them, you're studying them from this place of what Dogen calls the truth. And the purpose, actually, of the four foundations is to reveal the conditionality of our existence and our interpretations of it, and to provide a kind of the strength of humility, which we've heard...

[30:41]

talked about, thought about in relationship to the paramitas. And this is a kind of openness to transformation, you know, to see things differently. Not exactly differently, as more widely. So we can, through this type of humility, you know, we can study things like The five hindrances, which are sense, desire, aversion, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, and doubt, which come up a lot in meditation and certainly in a long meditation retreat, as factors rather than as failures. Uthana Nanda calls them the negative factors of meditation. They hinder or obstruct the gaining of concentration. So, okay, so you say, oh, I see, well... As long as I'm in this, I won't be able to establish concentration.

[31:41]

So I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here. And that attention actually can shift those states. So Anilayo summarizes this fourth contemplation. Based on a sufficient degree of mental stability through overcoming the hindrances, contemplation of Dhammas proceeds to analysis of subjective personality. in terms of the five aggregates, and to an analysis of the relation between subjective personality and the outer world in terms of the six sense spheres. These two analyses form a convenient basis for developing the awakening factors whose successful establishment constitutes a necessary condition for awakening. To awaken is to fully understand the Four Noble Truths as they really are, this being the final exercise among the contemplations of dhammas and the successful culmination of satipatthana practice.

[32:48]

So the Noble Truths as they really are, without our conditioned sort of ideas about them and our relationship to them. And the last of the five hindrances is doubt. This is often difficult, you know, like there's healthy doubt, there's kind of hindering doubt, there's all types of doubt. And one of the ways to consider this is to think of its concomitant sort of state or understanding, which is called faith. And Edward Cons has a whole chapter where he talks about... these different aspects, and one of them is faith, and he talks about it quite a bit. And he describes it as the seed without which the plant of spiritual insight cannot start growing. Those who lack in faith can do nothing worthwhile at all.

[33:50]

So what do we mean by faith? Well... even just one period of zazen is kind of an act of faith. It's not the kind of faith we usually think of in terms of what I think of as faith as law, like you have to believe this. It's more faith as a condition or a process or a surrender. And it's not a passive surrender, but it's an act of surrender. So I think that's what Kahn's is describing there. And the five aggregates, you'll hear this a lot, or you already have. And it's in our basic everyday chant, the Heart Sutra. Form, feelings, perceptions, formations, and consciousness. And these qualities are just the barest foundation of an idea of self or a sense of our personal identity.

[34:52]

And so as you contemplate them, You could think of this as a deconstruction of our idea of our self, our sense of our self being permanent and abiding. And this is one of the primary teachings of Buddhism, that there is no permanent abiding self. So I'm going to go through a few lists, so you can just relax. Buddhism is lists. The six internal and six external sense bases or ayatanas are the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind and their objects, forms, sounds, smells, taste, tactile function or touch, and mind objects or perceptual inactivity at the most immediate precognitive level. Interactivity, sorry. Perceptual interactivity.

[35:56]

So in his description of these, Usala Ananda expands on definitions of the ten fetters. And these are ten fetters related to the sense bases. Sense desire, these will all be familiar. Ill will or anger. Pride or conceit. False views. Doubt. Superstition. desire for existence, envy or jealousy, avarice or possessiveness, and ignorance. And again, I think these states, rather than trying to get rid of them, you recognize them, you see how they unfold, whether they are useful or not, and how. And I think superstition is an interesting one because we do engage in some superstition, I think.

[36:57]

It's what I call a form of bargaining. Like we make an offering and we hope there'll be a good sort of outcome to that. So it's not like we shouldn't do it, but how are we engaging that? What is our bargain that we're making? If I do this, what will I get kind of thing. So these fetters are abandoned when meditators attain path consciousness. So if you feel them fall away, you may have a moment of path consciousness. And this is the understanding that there's nothing to grasp or cling to in the five aggregates of clinging. And then we get to the seven factors of enlightenment. Mindfulness, you don't get to get rid of that. Mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity.

[38:05]

So all of these are qualities, living qualities. They have vitality to them. So enlightenment is full of vitality. And that's, I think, a good thing to remember rather than it's a coming to end of our engagement with things. So all of these, including these, the seven factors of enlightenment, we will first experience them in a conditional way. And probably for a long time. Maybe always. But I think especially because the seven factors of enlightenment are considered to be positive, they can actually be hindrances as well as supports. So you're always looking, you know, am I saying, oh, see how mindful I am, you know, am I, you know, that sort of thing. How concentrated, how tranquil, how joyous. So I think this is a paradox, but it's a kind of necessary paradox, um,

[39:10]

when we're applying these practices, like the Satipatthana Sutra, Paramitas, and so on, our very desire to attain realization or enlightenment is also hindered by that desire. So we just, because we're projecting our idea of what it's gonna be, so we just have to, or we can, keep just questioning our projections, is a lot of what we're doing. And keep doing it. So the last of the Dhammas in the Fourth Contemplation is the Four Noble Truths. And as I said in my earlier talk, this is one of the two teachings, the first teachings of the Buddha after his enlightenment, was the Four Noble Truths and the Middle Way. And so... If you always keep those two teachings in mind, they will inform your practice and your understanding of yourself and others.

[40:19]

It's very subtle and kind of wonderful how that works. So there's the Four Noble Truths, and then the middle way is between self-torture and self-indulgence. And the Buddha sort of experimented on both ends, and he decided that the self-torture was not so useful, even though he did find it useful. I mean, that's, I think, what I was experimenting with, and who said that I should always be comfortable? Can I step back from some of those ideas of being comfortable and work with discomfort and fear and hunger and all those kinds of things in a different way. So the Four Noble Truths, suffering, truth of the origin of suffering, cessation, and the Noble Eightfold Path also have to be contemplated through the middle way.

[41:31]

So that means all four noble truths are always true, and that it's the depth of the meditator's insight and practice that gives them the potential for allowing and supporting realization. The Satipatthana Sutta ends with an assurance of enlightenment. Through contemplation of the body, of feelings, of consciousness and the dhammas, the meditator reaches purification, the overcoming of sorrow and lamentation, the disappearance of pain and grief, reaching of the noble path, and realization of nirvana. So accepting this assurance is another matter of faith, you know, in the teachings and in the methods. And in Kahn's commentary on faith, he also describes it as faith as determination which consists in acting with resolute confidence after one has judged, decided, and definitely and unshakably chosen an object and is opposed to slinking along like an irresolute child who thinks, shall I do it, shall I not do it?

[42:51]

So I think this kind of slinking along is familiar. to me and maybe it is to you. And as I said, you know, I've asked myself, do I know what enlightenment is and do I really want it? You know, what will it mean? But I think, you know, investigation of teachings like the Saripatthana Sutra and the Six Paramitas, they take effort, but that effort gives us strength and stability. Like... You know, when we do physical exercises, we gain strength and endurance and all kinds of things. So in my earlier talk, I proposed three ways to consider mindfulness, and that's what I'll end my talk with today. One is to study and reflect on the teachings by memorizing or keeping them in mind during meditation and daily activities. Another is to remind oneself that the intention of meditation is training the mind towards clarity or seeing things as they are.

[44:01]

A third way is by considering the training of the mind as a method of creating new memories, new memory paths, or new habits of mind, and then remembering and applying them when personal habitual memories or memory paths arise. very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[44:52]

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