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. Good morning. I was surprised and delighted by this shower that we had sometime this morning. We came up from the Zendo. The courtyard was wet, and the back courtyard was wet. Just a simple little rain shower, but very, I found very delightful. So as the Eno read this morning, the admonitions to us, Sesshin starts now, Sesshin started, and the container, the whole container for our Sesshin time is silence, silence and stillness, and the admonitions reiterate that, be silent and still.

[01:32]

and help each other in this maintaining, caring for silence and stillness as we sit together these three days. In our zazen practice, the stillness, finding some stillness in our sitting is it doesn't come, you know, all at once or right from the first. Even though we might have some idea, like I'm going to sit still. I remember I had big plans for my first session. I was going to sit, you know, without moving in full lotus for the whole seven days. And I was, the gap between this idea, the kind of, applied idea and the reality of where I was in my practice and with my posture and my own stability, psychologically, mentally, emotionally, this big gap, but I had this idea.

[02:48]

And then I was thoroughly disappointed. I was, and then I got really mad at myself. And because I failed and, you know, it just caused an enormous, upheaval and anguish. So our ability to understand where we are, what is appropriate for our body-mind, and both work with the edge of that, but also be honest, be completely honest. and not fool ourselves in either direction of indulging, oh, I can't do that, that's too much, I'll hurt myself, with some idea, not based on actual physical feelings, but some ideas, or some other ideas of, I'm gonna sit without moving, that doesn't match either.

[03:57]

So we have to find what's right and then work on the frontier of that, which I think human beings really enjoy exerting, working on our edge, finding out what's possible, and making a big effort. I think human beings are sustained and rejuvenated and aliveness comes out of that kind of work. So I offer that to you as some, maybe an image of frontier where we don't fall away from it and run away nor do we go way beyond

[05:03]

what's healthy. And we create in our posture, we become the upright cauldron, which is an image that I offered during the practice period that comes from Hongzhi, a teacher from the 10th century. And the quote is, despite 100 uglinesses and 1,000 stupidities, the upright cauldron is naturally beneficent. And this is like a Zazen instruction or an image of our practice, our sitting practice. Create this upright cauldron that can take, anything can go in there to cook, and in cooking, change and transform and become deliciousness.

[06:12]

But what creates deliciousness might not taste so good in and of itself, just like some raw foods taste good, but other raw foods, they don't taste so good until they're cooked. So you put in everything, whether it's raw or partially cooked, or from your point of view, ugliness and stupidity, fears, regrets, remorse, confusions. Put it in the cauldron. Put it in, bring it to our... Don't run away from it and push it away. Allow what's there to be there. in the beneficent upright cauldron. I wanted to mention a few things about our Zazen practice.

[07:18]

This idea I had that I was gonna sit in a particular way for a certain time was a mental fabrication. It was something, it was based on some ideal or something I had read or something I thought I understood, but it wasn't, it didn't come from the inside, it didn't come from my own experience. It was some idea that I applied to my life, something I wanted also. There was some greed maybe in there or wishful thinking or something. So to come back to our body-mind and experience our sitting and our practice period after period from the inside, from our actual felt experience, from our breath and our own posture, to feel it rather than an idea applied on top of ourselves of what it's supposed to be, to start

[08:32]

from where we are exactly. And that also means letting go of it should be something else. Or I shouldn't feel this pain. Or that's wrong. Or if I were a good Zen student then. And these kinds of ideas that we apply on top of our really inconceivable mystery of what's arising right now. we narrow it and kind of push it into a small concept of who we are and what our practice is. However, the words that we hear can be helpful to drop that and to come back to this exploration, honest exploration of what is it?

[09:33]

that's arising right now? What am I feeling right now? Can I feel this psychophysical event we call body, body-mind? Where is my bottom on the cushion? Can I feel it on my legs, my spine, shoulders, ears, all the posture points, you know, the The Zazen instructions start out with very detailed posture points. Dogen's Fukanza Zengi, and there's many more that he doesn't mention, and things that we can hear from different teachers that will help us come back from the inside out rather than this idea applied. to who we are.

[10:37]

So one very helpful image for me is to imagine the upright spine to place my attention not on the spine itself but on a column that runs right in front of the spine. And this is thanks to Fujita-san who teaches Zazen and Alexander Technique and yoga maybe as well. In a lecture about Zazen posture, he mentioned not the spine itself, which is a little back further in the body, but in terms of upright and creating the upright and magnificent cauldron, imagine this column running down right in front of the spine. a column of uprightness. And to feel that from the inside, it's an image, those are words, and then to bring your attention and consciousness to what that might be and feel that and feel the breath in relation to this upright column.

[12:01]

So finding ourselves in space, you know, when we first sit down, the instruction is to rock the body right and left and settle into a steady, immovable sitting position. And I want to remind us to, that's part of ourselves, not just getting onto our chair or cross-legged, but to spend this time from the inside out of finding our center. Because when we rock, we might, and if we're very attentive, we might realize actually there's more weight on one sitting bone than the other. It's not even. Our sitting bones are like two feet standing on our cushion or the chair. If you can imagine your sitting bones like feet, and one may have more pressure on it. than the other and that slight off kilter, off center over 40 minutes is not slight.

[13:14]

We make compensations for it and try to find center in all these different ways that become little mini distortions of upright and creating the upright cauldron. So all the posture suggestions for finding our zazen posture, which is joyful ease, right? It's the Dharma gate of joy and ease. And to not skip over all the helpful ways that teachers have, through the millennia, have suggested things to not forget. So during these days, take time to find your posture. Don't assume with an idea, I know what it is, a kind of concept of your zazen, but find it each period because it will change throughout the day.

[14:15]

There is no such thing as my posture. It's in the morning or on a cold day or after eating or late at night. When we're tired, every single period of zazen is its own fresh, We're reborn, you know, moment by moment, and in our posture, finding what our asasana is. So I'm offering this to find out if we are just assuming we know what it is, and we habitually go into that each time, but to find it fresh. And also I'd like to offer the practice of switching your legs. If you always sit with one leg on top or one leg in front every single period, that is not so healthy yogically.

[15:22]

If you did a yoga posture like triangle pose only to the right for years, only to the right, that makes a difference. What about triangle to the left? Or what about left foot in front or on top or right foot in front? And what that feels like. And if we practice this over time, the two sides become, you can't really tell which is right away, which is front, which is behind, because each are evened out. But at first it feels uncomfortable and doesn't feel right maybe. So I'd like us to have our zazen posture be fresh and alive each sitting. And that means going in with our awareness and consciousness somatically to feel the body, feel

[16:32]

all the different parts of the body. And of course there's practices of body scans, you know, where you mentally bring your attention, your consciousness to all the different areas. And this can be the most minute, bringing your awareness to a tiny little part of your big toe or something. And we have the capacity to find and bring attention to any part of our body. So you might try that or imagine relaxing the body completely and when you find some area that doesn't feel relaxed, instead of you should be relaxed or relax and internally yelling at ourselves, bring warmth and consciousness to that area and just suffuse it with warmth and consciousness and see what happens if the shoulder, or maybe it's one shoulder, lets go or allows itself to let go.

[17:43]

Because these are explorations to find joyful ease in our sitting. And the more relaxed that our body is, upright and relaxed, this upright cauldron, this naturally beneficent posture, the quieter our mind becomes. The racing thoughts and the leaping discursive thinking will also change and calm down, the more relaxed our body is. So we start with posture and body And that, of course, will affect body-mind, right? And our breath. And, of course, our breath mediates its body and mind.

[18:49]

It's affected by our emotions, by our thinking. The kind of breath we have when our mind is racing is very different from a quieted, mind, the breathing. It's all working together, of course. So many of you have heard these suggestions before, practice with them, and I feel they bear repeating for my own reminding myself and to start our sitting together. I wanted to come back to what I brought up last night about the samskara skanda, the fourth that we call formations, and to say a little bit about samskara, the together makers, and in relation to zazen and our practice in zazen, zazen mind really,

[19:57]

So the five skandhas, the first of the five skandhas, rupa skandha, or form, contains 11 different things, including the organs, the sense organs, eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body, or the touch organ, and their objects, the visibles, the hearables, the tasteables, the touchables. So those are... Eye, ear, nose, tongue, body. Eye, ear, nose, tongue, body. And they're objects, they're fields. The eye field is the field of the visible. This is all part of our rupascanda, the first skanda form. This is all under form. And then there's an eleventh in the rupascanda. So there's the ten that are kind of joined, eye and sight. you know, ear and sound, nose and smell, tongue and taste.

[21:02]

And then there's the 11th, which is called Avishnapti Rupa, which is subtle rupa, and it's what happens over time that you can't notice. Like, one way to think of it is... We smile hundreds and thousands and hundreds and thousands of times, and eventually, and we don't see any change, but eventually there's a line in our face that shows our smile lines. And this, it's very subtle how that happened over time. So Avishnaptirupa is subtle, very subtle, and also vows come under Avishnaptirupa. in the form skanda. Our vows have a physicality to them. Rupa skanda is the only skanda that's in the material, that's material realm.

[22:05]

All the other skandhas are mental. So the other ones, feelings, pleasant, unpleasant, and indiscriminate or neutral is a mental, is mental. It's not an actual kind of form thing that you can touch, that pleasant or unpleasant is a mental event. As is perceptions and samskara, or the formations, the karmic formations, these are mental. And I tried to bring it up last night, when I was talking about that siren, those of you who weren't here or didn't hear the talk, I was saying there's some sound like a siren or could be anything. And it's a sound that would be in our first skanda.

[23:09]

It's a hearable that our ear organ hears. Ear and sound. And it's perceived. And there may be a pleasant or unpleasant due to, there might be a loud siren that actually hurts the ears. That would be unpleasant. I think pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral is also mental, but it doesn't have a lot of baggage with it. It's like you touch a stove and that unpleasant means we draw away. So I think evolutionarily, samnya or, excuse me, not samnya, vedana is, you know, protects us because it's unpleasant. The taste of something is unpleasant, so we don't eat it because it's actually poison for us. So these, in samskara skanda, it's also mental.

[24:12]

And what happens with that siren, not only is it harsh and unpleasant, within that unpleasant there may not be a like or dislike. It's just pleasant or unpleasant if you can kind of unhook those. They're so hooked, linked together that if it's pleasant we like and if it's unpleasant we don't like or hate. However, the thing itself, like this siren, we may have a very positive, it may hurt our ears and be unpleasant as an auditory event. However, we might love to hear it because, you know, we have good friends who are firemen or who are, you know, paramedics, and it means they're coming to help somebody, and we have, I love that sound, or that you were saved by an ambulance that came. So it's, we give it this meaning of, I like it,

[25:18]

or I want more of it, or I don't like it. The audible itself doesn't have any of that hanging onto it, or that kind of baggage. So in the samskara skanda, which is a mental consciousness, the fifth, the sixth consciousness, excuse me, the fifth skanda is consciousness, and so with all of the skandhas, you know, then we're conscious of it, which is, they all work together. So we're conscious that we love it, or hate it, or are frightened by it, or this comes in the samskara skanda. Now, why am I bringing this up? Someone might be wondering, why does she keep coming back to this? So, in our practice, the samskara skandhas are like before they arise.

[26:24]

They arise when conditions are ripe. And this is a kind of image. There's the... Wendy, last Saturday, gave a talk about the Alaya Vijnana, which is the eighth consciousness. And just to say something about the eighth consciousness, it's called also the storehouse consciousness. And what is stored in the storehouse consciousness are what are called bija, or seeds. It translates as seeds. Many different kinds of seeds. Whatever happens to us, whatever in our childhood experience or our education or experiences we've had of all kinds that are wholesome or unwholesome or... the full range of experiences. The teaching of the storehouse consciousness is that there are seeds that are latent, you might say, in the storehouse consciousness.

[27:39]

And when conditions are ripe, they germinate and come up as chitta-samskara, or mental formations. And in Zazen, I would say that these mental formations will come up. Not only are we sitting and practicing awareness of posture, and out of that awareness of posture comes awareness of breath, and the unifying of our body, breath, and mind in Zazen, and just sitting fully aware, and that's all. That's shikantaza, just sitting. And while we're just sitting, unbidden, with no kind of calculation on our part, or calling forth necessarily, although we can do that, there will be something that will arise in our mind stream.

[28:47]

And it may be pleasant, or unpleasant or it may be which arises and vanishes or it may be fraught with lots of emotion and fear and remorse and regret, confusion, some remembrance of something that we did that hurt somebody or that or we were hurt, all these things may arise in our consciousness, and these are these formations, these samskara, chitta samskara, chitta as mind, you know. So what is our tendency often when something unpleasant or scary emotional in the unpleasant realm comes up, we often want to get rid of it. push it away, run from it, or repress, suppress, just I don't want that.

[29:51]

Or the opposite. If it's something pleasant, we want to go lean into it and have more of it and get involved and think about it more. So both of these going towards things or running away from them can happen to us and our practice is to come back to upright. So we have this image of leaning, but it's also our posture itself can lean into things or lean away from things or, you know, try to avoid by making a posture of protection of the heart because we It's too painful, so I'm gonna hide from it with our body, with body-mind. So coming back to both upright in this very body and also upright in the mind of neither pushing things away nor grabbing hold.

[31:04]

And what is that like to neither push and avoid and run away? or grabbing something and wanting more and more and more of it. What is that? We may not even know what that is. I would call that upright sitting. The upright cauldron. Doesn't matter what's in there cooking. It just sits naturally beneficent in this. The cauldron, this Chinese bronze cauldrons, they're on these legs. You've probably seen them. They stand on these legs. But it could be an image of one just sitting on the fire, maybe. But there is fire there. So we want to bring our attention when these things arise. Because without mindfully being attentive to what's coming up,

[32:07]

the tendency might be what we've always done before, which is grab on or push away. And then our sasana just becomes pushing and grabbing and pushing and pulling and, you know, maybe even rocking kind of back and forth physically even. And the breath is involved and more things are involved in our whole body. various secretions, peptides, and all sorts of stuff goes on when we're in this pushing and pulling way. And the mind, also the limbic brain, especially if we're bringing up memories of terrible things and it can't tell really whether this is happening now or happened before. It doesn't distinguish. And so there may be whole reactions triggering in the body and activating parts of our body where we want to run or freeze.

[33:27]

So in the samskara skanda, there are these seeds which we can work with in different ways. One way is, and we've been doing this all practice period, I think, taking up practices which bring wholesome states, which bring peace, which bring what the fruit of actions that bring calm and joy and compassion. So we can actively, in terms of this image of the seeds, plant these seeds and care for them and water them, wholesome seeds. And those seeds become deep-rooted seeds of joy and peace in our life, wholesome activities, connecting with one another, caring for one another.

[34:44]

Those are seeds that flower. And they are in amongst the other seeds that are in our life as well, in the storehouse. they become nurtured and cared for with our conscious effort to live upright and aware. And that counters these other seeds. So that's one way of working with these unwholesome seeds or the seeds that bring such suffering to ourself and others is cultivating, caring for the wholesome seeds. Another way of working with them is whenever these things come up to let go of pushing and running and trying to get away or suppressing and meet them honestly with great care and mindfulness and I would say our breath as well.

[35:54]

and acknowledge anger is arising in me. Anger has arisen. Anger is coming forth. And neither try to get rid of that or chastise ourself. Hold it with our awareness and see what happens. So this is a second way of working with these samskaras kanda. And they could be all sorts of things, you know. They could be occasioned by something happening in the zendo or a server not seeing your little bit sign and they give you a big giant scoop of something that you're not sure you can even finish. And so not getting what we wanted which is one of the sufferings, occasions irritation, frustration, anger, and it could be blame.

[37:01]

The server's not being trained right, and nobody's trained right. So to take good care of ourself right then and there with noticing, mindfully, frustration is arising in me. This is painful. Caring for that, breathing with it. rather than adding to it with maybe our habitual way of trying to find someone to blame and getting more annoyed, defeating it, getting, you know, fanning the fire. Staying very close to this was painful. Pain is arising in me. Frustration is arising in me. And this brings wholesome activity to these afflictions. Another name for these unwholesome states that arise is affliction.

[38:05]

We are afflicted by these things. Mental affliction. So we can bring our presence, our consciousness, our whole practice life to bear on these very things which are tiny. They could be tiny. And we have a chance to work with them in a very fresh and bringing wholesome states to bear, bringing mindfulness to bear on these afflictions that come up and caring for them. and we can put anything in that cauldron to cook. There's a third way of working with these seeds, these afflictions, which is not recommended really unless we're very stable.

[39:15]

There's certain practices that are recommended for us at different times in our practice life, and certain things are not recommended unless you have a lot of stability. And one of those is these suffering, seeds of suffering that are in the alive, that do come up according to conditions. And one other way to study them is to actively bring them up. But we have to be very, very stable and centered, I would say, and calm. to be able to call them forth to study them and work with them with our own presence. But I don't recommend that. They will come up by themselves. Sadness, remorse, jealousy, all these kinds of things. They will come up.

[40:16]

We don't have to beckon them and invite them. necessarily, unless that feels like it's time in your practice to more actively work with them. So I just mention that as a third way, but we don't have to invite. They will come. They will come. Believe me, they will come. So just something else about the samskaras skanda and our practice. we have a sense that when these things come up, it's me. It's I, me, and mine. This is my mind that comes up. However, one thing about these seeds is that they're individual in our own kind of mind stream, and there's collective seeds. There's things that have come from others, our culture, society, that also are seeds within us.

[41:20]

And those things that we feel are very individual, this is just me, are completely conditioned by the collective. And there's nothing actually that is separate like that, that's me. It's everything, everything we are is codependently arising, codependently produced. And I went to the DeYoung Museum to see the Summer of Love. Maybe some of you have gone to see that exhibit. And I was in San Francisco the summer, after the Summer of Love, 1968, but it was probably pretty... and I remember very strongly, I have these memories of what it was like in San Francisco and Berkeley and San Francisco Zen Center and Japantown.

[42:24]

And I was really, I was kind of looking forward to see this exhibit of the Summer of Love. And when I went, there's, I am in a very different place now than I was then. But I kind of forgot that, you know, I was thinking, ooh, this will be fun, you know, to see. And what I found in the exhibit was that there was a lot of loud music going on, you know, and strobe, sort of these flashing lights and color stuff that I did not find very enjoyable, although back then I remember being transported by, whether I had smoked anything or not, just transported by the colors and the, there was a, a big event in my hometown in St. Paul or Minneapolis, one or the other, where Buffalo Springfield, the band, came and it took place in a department store. Dayton's department store had an auditorium and it was, I think it was free, and this band and there was kids and dancing and strobe lights and it was so much fun.

[43:35]

It was the funnest, it was the greatest. But when I went to the de Young Museum where they had this room where you could go in there and it was like too loud and kind of boring actually. And I was thinking, what's happened over 50 years? And also they had a number of these fashions from the time, these outfits and bell bottoms. embroidered things and these dresses that I know at the time it would have been so cool, these dresses. I remember a friend of mine had gone to Morocco and they came back with a leather purse that had beads all over it and these long fringes and it was just the coolest, you know. Anyway, so in thinking about Samskara Skanda, thinking about seeing these things now that at one point were exciting and fresh and cool and thinking that it was my taste buds that thought this, but realizing everything contributed to that, what I thought was my own individual sense of fashion.

[44:58]

This was a codependently arising event within many, many people, all connected and interrelated and creating, each creating one another. And this is the same thing with the Samskar Ascanda. There's the collective and the individual that are creating together. What we tend to think erroneously is my my own individual. So even with these painful things that come up that are very individual, if we look deeply enough and study it deeply enough, we see how that came to be codependently. How it was in our family was not just those individual people, how they acted that way.

[46:00]

depended on how they were treated and how that went back in time. And so the more you study, the more you see there is nothing that you can hold on to as a separateness or that's I, me, and mine. This is our main ignorance that we get caught in. I wanted to end this with a little I guess it's a little Zen story or koan a monk asked the teacher Shui Feng who was a

[47:04]

lots of stories about Shui Feng. He was Tenzo or a rice cook at Tozan's temple. Anyway, a monk asked Shui Feng, the ancients said that if you meet Bodhidharma on the road, speak to him without words. I'd like to know how one speaks this way. And Shui Feng said, drink some tea. So here's another story about words and actions and did he answer him? What was his answer? I want to speak to Bodhidharma without words. I want to convey myself without words. How do you do that?

[48:07]

And Shui Feng said, drink some tea. The words and phrases of the Buddha are the ordinary rice and tea. Drink some tea. So today this story is reverberating as take care of your life. Be completely here with your life. And in silence, speak to Bodhidharma without words. Bodhidharma brought the teaching from India to China And that question of why did Bodhidharma come is another way of saying, what is our practice? So we meet Bodhidharma on the road, and we want to speak with him. This monk wants to speak with him without words. And this is our seshim practice, speaking to Bodhidharma without words.

[49:09]

And Shui Feng said, drink some tea. Or other teachers have said, Jaujo says, have some tea. Enter our life, simply. So let's return to the Zen Dome, silence and stillness, working with everything that will arise. everything that's there without pushing or pulling and honoring ourselves completely for the mysteriousness that we are. That is not separate from any one or anything or any

[50:15]

Thank you 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.

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