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. Well, good morning, awesome bodhisattvas. You are truly impressive. So let's practice counting for a few moments. And let's practice following for a few moments.

[01:39]

Can everybody hear me? Yeah? Yeah? All the way in the back, yeah? No? You can't hear, Linda? Now you can hear. OK, I keep my voice up. Well maybe you've noticed that the schedule in all of this Zazen kind of mixes up your sense of time. Especially if you're like me and you were here a long time ago, you don't know if it's 2019 or 1979. Part of the plan, I think, is to derange your sense of time by repeating the same stuff over and over again.

[03:27]

Have you noticed that religious practice is really boring? It's so awesome and unexpected. You never know what will happen next in the midst of all this repetition. Every single religious tradition has this. You do the same stuff over and over and over and over and over again. You say the same words again and again and again. That's the plan. That's the method. And it's supposed to kind of give you the idea that practice takes place in one moment. It's always the same moment.

[04:30]

Practice takes place in just that one moment. So all you have to do is practice counting for one moment. follow for one moment and I say this because you may think that you're not doing that well because when you try to count you only get to one and when you try to follow you don't seem to be able to follow very well but all you have to do is count or follow for one moment And one is a terrific number. If the only number you ever get to is one, that's fine. It's a good number.

[05:32]

It's all you need. So right effort is not measured by accumulated linear time or by the results that your ordinary mind would project. Right effort is verified by the effort that you make in one moment. So this morning, I want to go a little further. Still hearing me, everybody? Yeah. I want to go a little further. in our exciting text of the six Dharma gates to the sublime. And I want to talk this morning about the third of the six gates stabilizing. Remember, I said in the beginning that Jur Yi says that every gate is complete and all inclusive.

[06:44]

So counting is all you need. Following is all you need. And each one includes all the others. And life is way too short to really be able to develop counting and following fully. We can't live that long. But it's not that hard to practice them enough to really appreciate them. And don't forget the part about the body, because it's, you know, the body, opening up the body, it depends, breathing depends on the open body. When the body's all crunched, you can't really appreciate the breath. So the part about lifting, being uplifted by your own body is very important. You know, it feels like it's not you sitting zazen. Some other alien body took over your body and using your body to do zazen. That's how it feels when you're sitting on your cushion.

[07:47]

Then when you're practicing counting and following, it's somehow beyond you. And you can be awake and calm beyond your own possibility to be that way. So remember, Jury says that every one of the practices has a cultivation phase and a realization phase. And when you realize, when you're at the realization phase, you start drifting off because you've realized the phase and it loses its pungency for you. And if you're used to evaluating yourself all the time, and always being critical of yourself, you might think when you're in the realization phase that you're falling down on the job.

[08:50]

You don't seem to feel like you're doing it that well. And maybe you're not. I don't know. But it's very possible that you're feeling that way because you've realized the following practice. And now you're ready. for the stabilization practice. So then you should do that next. So let's all drop this phony idea of you're such and so, and this happened to you, and so on and so forth. And let's get serious about ourselves, OK? Let's take ourselves seriously here. Let's stop selling ourselves short. Now it's time to practice stabilization. So when you practice stabilization, you just gently let go of following.

[09:55]

You're still aware in the background of your mind that there's a breath. But now the breath is just like a whisper. And instead of the breath, what fills your heart and your consciousness is the incredible stillness. You feel it with your whole body. And you actually can hear silence. And it is so surprising. Every moment is like a big surprise. Maybe here... it takes the form of the sound of the creek, which seems not to stop, have you noticed? They don't turn it off and on, it just keeps going. So the silence may be heard in the sound of the creek or in some other sound.

[11:05]

And it seems not like a sound really but like something eternal, so still, so close. It's inside of you, and yet at the same time, it's coming from a tremendous incalculable distance, and you're just sitting there. And at that time, you realize that all the kinks you thought you had in your body. Maybe you even thought, oh, I'm old, my body doesn't work, this, that, the other thing doesn't work. You realize that all those kinks are conceptual. Because you were convinced of them, they appeared in your mind. But now,

[12:09]

your body is perfectly still. And it's hardly there at all. Time seems to disappear. The bell rings. Then it rings again. No time has passed. Nothing is going on. No time, no body, no mind. It isn't even joyful anymore. It's just still, steady, stable. So I'm sure everyone here knows the theory of meditation practice, not only Buddhist meditation practice, but any kind of intense psychophysical meditation says that there are two modes of practice, shamatha, vipassana, calming, and insight.

[13:24]

So the reason in our practice that calming is so important is because it makes insight possible and it makes insight run deep in the body. When the body and mind are stable, still, you can see. You can know. You can go beyond suffering. You can finally stop doing all the stupid stuff that has been making your life so tough. So usually in a simple and straightforward kind of meditation teaching, first you develop calming practice, then you develop insight practice. And that's kind of the way it's explained in the six Dharma gates to the sublime. But in Chan and Zen practice, in Zazen, is doing both simultaneously.

[14:32]

It's a kind of collapse of a linear practice regime all into one sudden and intuitive practice. And so that's why I so love it when Kathy teaches us that we're all artists here on our cushions. Each one's experience, absolutely unique and fully creative. Your life is a tremendous and sublime work of art when it is inspired by zazen. You don't need zazen. It's true anyway. But zazen helps you appreciate it more. So when we're talking about the six subtle dharma gates, what we're doing is we're looking under the hood of zazen.

[15:39]

We're artificially taking zazen apart to see how it's built in the hopes that maybe this artificial exercise helps us a little bit. Because it is so easy to lose ourselves in a fog of zazen and forget what we're actually doing here. So, once you start to practice stabilization and you are illuminated, stirred and inspired by the breath and you're enjoying the stillness, that is the full development of calming practice. Now we're ready for insight practices, which are the next three Dharma gates.

[16:43]

Here is what Zhe Yi says in his second chapter about stabilization practice. So now picture this. We're in this intense stillness, right? At this time, Zhe Yi writes, The practitioner reflects thus, although this samadhi is unconditioned, quiescent, secure, and blissful, nevertheless it is devoid of any skillful means associated with wisdom. Thus it remains unable to bring about the destruction of the cycle of births and deaths. Then he says, you have a further thought, as follows. One thinks this absorption brings entirely, belongs entirely to the spheres of causes and conditions. Its existence depends on all the same stuff that made me suffer in the past, the skandhas, the senses, and so on.

[17:55]

And so I'm sitting here perfectly calm and I'm enjoying myself, but actually this is a false state. It's deceptive. Now I better bring some real intelligence to bear. You're supposed to think all that. So this is odd, don't you think? You're sitting there in total stability, total silence, and all of a sudden you're thinking all of this. It's odd. You've been trying to develop zazen for like maybe a decade. Finally you get quiet. You're finally quiet, and now you're supposed to think all of this stuff. So how likely is it that you would think those thoughts, right? Almost zero chance, right, that you would think what jury says you're supposed to be thinking. So what does this mean? What's he getting at? He seems to be telling us that when you're sitting there in this intense stillness, you are either

[19:05]

going to spontaneously begin to have these exact thoughts, which seems pretty unlikely, or that you should purposely be having these thoughts or thoughts like these. He seems to be saying that. But wait, isn't zazen supposed to be like getting us beyond all our thinking? Isn't that what we're trying to do here? get a little peace and quiet for a change? A little relief from all this chattering mind? So what's going on here? So I think this is a point of confusion. Now, I think we all do understand that if we're sitting here thinking about the Super Bowl, or the ongoing catastrophe of our life, or we're entertaining little snatches of memory, or pop songs, or idle speculation, seems to be not what we're doing in Zazen, or should be doing.

[20:23]

So then we think, well, I should put thought aside. But here, Zhu Yi is definitely saying, that at the moment of perfect stabilization, you should be thinking a particular thought. Thinking isn't just one phenomenon. There's thinking and there's thinking. Sometimes, yes, when you are thinking in zazen, it's a distraction. But sometimes, as in this case of Jury's talking about thinking a particular thought, it's not a distraction. That's because what we usually call thinking, which is the only kind of thinking that we know about, pretty much, and that we can clearly identify, what we usually call thinking is actually self-thinking.

[21:30]

It's thought. driven by desire or fear or avoidance. It's thought centered around concern for ourselves. And such thought does increase self-clinging and messes up our otherwise perfect life. But Dharma practice actually is not against thinking. If it were against thinking, there wouldn't be any teaching. There wouldn't be any books. There wouldn't be whole storehouses full of sutras. Dharma isn't against thinking. Even if all the teachings and all the books said don't think, that would still be a kind of thinking. But the teachings don't say just don't think. They say a lot of things. A lot of things that are important for us to know about. So when we do Zazen, actually we have to use our intelligence to pay attention and monitor and think about the state of our Zazen.

[22:46]

And this is not self-thinking. This is Dharma thinking. We're told that judgment and discrimination is just a big problem. But it's only judgment and discrimination driven by self-thinking that is a big problem. If I'm constantly judging my zazen and measuring myself, then yes, I'm in a big pickle. I'm going to be tied up in a big knot. But in order to effectively practice, we do need some judgment and some discrimination. We have to ask ourselves, how's it going right now? What is my practice right now? So eventually, we do have to be able to see the difference between thinking and Dharma thinking, self-thinking and Dharma thinking, self-judgment and judging others, which turns out to be the same, exactly the same thing,

[23:53]

and Dharma discrimination, Dharma thinking. And this is what Jury is talking about here. He's saying that when we get to this state of deep stabilization, we can't just stay there. We have to look at our practice and think about what we're doing. Dharma thinking is so important because it makes the difference between suffering and liberation. And in order to do insight practice, we have to have some clear and subtle discrimination that doesn't reinforce the self but liberates it. So we have to pay attention to our thinking. Not only in zazen, but all the time. How are we thinking? We have to know the difference between lazy, habitual, destructive thinking, distracted thinking and thinking that actually helps, thinking that frees us.

[25:05]

We have to know when our thinking is driven by self-clinging and afflictive emotion so that when that happens, and of course it will happen, We can be patient with it. We can meet it with clarity. And we cannot get caught by it and go on and on and on and on like we've been doing all this time. This is not so easy. This takes persistence. It takes time. And the big thing is we just want it to go away finally. But that is so sneaky because... Wanting it to go away is aversion thinking, a special kind of self-thinking, which makes the thought that we want to go away all the stronger. So we might have to do something like use our breath to interrupt our thought so that we can know what it is.

[26:18]

And it will get less loud. It will get less persuasive. After a while, it may even seem funny to you, your ridiculous, cute, little, pet, suffering mind. The human predicament actually is ridiculous, if tragic. This is how every stand-up comic makes her living. She knows this. When we also know this, we can become wise teachers for ourselves. So now we're talking about thinking. Probably that line from Fukanzazengi popped into your mind by now. Because we chant it all the time in service. It's very sneaky, right?

[27:22]

We repeat and repeat and repeat the same thing over and over again. And pretty soon it pops into our mind all of a sudden. That's why they chant religious texts over and over and over again. It pops into your mind all of a sudden. Think not thinking. How do you think not thinking? Non-thinking. This is the essential art of zazen. It says something like that in there. But it doesn't really explain, right? There's another fascicle of Dogen called The Point of Zazen, in which he begins that fascicle with the story that is the source of this saying. We always thought Dogen said think, not thinking, and all that. Dogen didn't say anything original. He didn't. They did it like they ran a computer program. on all of Dogen's texts, and they found out that he says almost nothing that somebody else didn't already say, which means that he's really sound.

[28:27]

Nobody can make up something that wasn't already said, you know. Anyway, in this other fascicle, The Point of Zazen, he tells you the original story. A monk asked Yaushan, in steadfast sitting, what do you think? And Yaushan says, I think not thinking. And the monk says, how can you think not thinking? And Yaoshan says non-thinking. I think this is the way it's translated in Fukanza Zengi. Is that right? The version we read, does it say non-thinking? Yeah. That's how Kaz used to translate that term. He changed this translation. He doesn't translate it anymore as non-thinking. He translates it now as beyond thinking. which he thought would be a better, clearer translation. And it is better, but it's also more misleading. Translation, of course, being completely hopeless.

[29:32]

Completely. Any translated text, you know automatically you're a misunderstanding. It's just a given. Anyway, the reason why Beyond Thinking is... because it sounds like it's beyond thinking. It sounds like it's not thinking. It's beyond thinking. Beyond thinking. Oh, I'm beyond thinking, meaning I'm not thinking. But it should be a hyphenated word, beyond thinking. A kind of thinking, beyond thinking. Maybe we could say beyond thinking is thinking that is beyond self-thinking. And that's how you think not thinking. You think thinking that isn't yours. Thinking that doesn't come from your desire and your need and your habit and your fear, but instead comes from your inmost request, your deepest, most beautiful human heart.

[30:44]

That's the kind of thinking Zhuri wants you to do in Zazen. That's the kind of thinking that will arise in your mind when you are not distracted anymore. That's Dharma thinking. The kind of Dharma thinking that Zhuri is referring to here. It comes up in the middle of stabilized concentration. It is your deepest wisdom talking to you. It could take the form of these kind of words that Jury sets forth. Maybe he thought people should memorize these words so that they would have them when it was time. But it doesn't have to be like that, all those words. It could be a feeling, not a word. It could be one word. No words. In the fascicle, the point of Zazen, Dogen comments on that little story of Yaushan, and he says this, in beyond thinking, and this is now Kaza's use of the term beyond thinking for non-thinking, in beyond thinking, there is something that sustains you.

[32:03]

In beyond thinking, there is something that sustains you. Even if it is you who are sitting steadfast, you not only are thinking, but are upholding steadfast sitting. When sitting steadfast, how can steadfast sitting think steadfast sitting? Thus, steadfast sitting is not Buddha thought, Dharma thought, enlightenment thought, or realization thought. So that's Dogen's explanation of the story. And then in the next paragraph, as if it made perfect sense, this segue, he goes on to discuss how important Dharma transmission is. That the Buddha transmitted Dharma to Makashapa, down through the generations, all the way up to Yaushan, who...

[33:11]

said this to the monk. So let's think about all this for a moment. In this passage, the word for steadfast sitting is gozu gozu chi. Gozu gozu is repeating. Again, gozu twice. I guess... If you want to emphasize something in Japanese, you say the same character twice. Anyway, that's what the footnote told me. And this gotsugotsu means high and yet level, steady, immovable, lofty, like a high mesa. Literally, the character means table mountain. It looks like a table mountain, this character. So steadfast is a great... Translation, right? Steadfast, or even you could say mountain-like, sitting like a mountain, mountain-sitting.

[34:13]

And this is how we are sitting when we practice stabilization, steadfast, lofty like a mountain, but at the same time, grounded, level, steady. In Dogen's way of understanding Zazen, he collapses the six gates all into one. So he sees steadfast sitting not just as expressive of the gate of stabilization, it's expressive of all of the gates, awesome and sublime, this mountain sitting. So he says, as I read, it is beyond, he says, in beyond thinking there is something that sustains you even if it is you who are sitting steadfast, you not only are thinking but are upholding steadfast sitting. So when you are sitting in Zazen and you find your seat, which takes a while, you feel

[35:30]

It's not just you sitting there. It's not just you meditating. There is something else that sustains you. Not something exactly outside of you, some kind of supernatural force of some sort. It's just you. And yet, at the same time, it's more than just the you you always thought you were. It's not exactly that you. This is a you who is both you and not you. And if this you is thinking, it is Dharma thinking. As Dogen writes, even if it is you thinking, At the same time, you are not only you thinking, you are upholding steadfast sitting.

[36:39]

So to me, this is such a joyful and gorgeous teaching. Even your self-thinking is Dharma thinking. This is Dogen's beautiful genius. It is not necessary for you to cut yourself in half the good, wise you and the stupid you, the dharma you and the undharma you. You don't have to do that to yourself. There's only one you, but it's more you than you thought. Even your worst nightmares have wisdom in them.

[37:43]

The trick is to be able to see through them, to be patient with them, not to be frightened of them and run away. One of my favorite lines in all of Zen literature is a line in Tore Zenji's Bodhisattva's Va, where he says... At the end of every thought, every thought, is a lotus flower. And on that lotus flower, a wise Buddha is sitting. Not some thoughts. Every thought. Every thought is a miracle. Every thought is like a flower or a storm. If you go, thoughtlessly crashing around on the earth and you don't pay attention to where you step, you will crush down beautiful flowers. You'll never even notice them. So they won't be beautiful for you.

[38:49]

If you get caught up and spun around by your thoughts, they can seem like your worst enemies. But if you can appreciate them, even the terrible ones, and follow them all the way out to the end, you'll fall off and land on a lotus petal where you'll be eye to eye with a Buddha giving you comfort in wise teaching. And all you have to do is uphold steadfast sitting even if you're thinking. Dogen says, when sitting steadfast, how can steadfast sitting think steadfast sitting?

[39:49]

Thus, sitting steadfast is not Buddha thought, Dharma thought, enlightenment thought, or realization thought. He's saying, steadfast sitting needs you. Without you, You, the person that you are, the unique person that you are, each and every one of us here in this practice period, uniquely, without you, there cannot be steadfast sitting. Because without us, without our body, without our breath, without our thinking, our wise thinking, our dumb thinking, there is no steadfast sitting. Steadfast sitting can't think. Steadfast sitting. You have to do it. Even Buddha can't do it. Dharma can't do it. Enlightenment can't do it. Realization can't do it.

[40:51]

It all depends on you. The whole of steadfast sitting, the whole of the Buddha Dharma, the whole universe and the triple treasure needs you. And then, as I said, in the next paragraph, Dogen starts talking about Dharma transmission. Buddha to Mahakashapa and down person to person to Yawshan. Why does he say this at this juncture? What does it have to do with this question of thinking in Zazen, which is what his subject is here? It's relevant because the you upon whom all Dharma depends and the whole world depends isn't you alone. It is you as illuminated by all things.

[41:54]

You as expressed by all things. For Dogen, face-to-face transmission, not as a spiritual phenomenon, but as actual people, imperfect people, facing one another until... each face disappears and there is only Buddha face shining through each person's face. For Dogen, this face-to-face loving connection between actual people is the only way we realize our humanity and the only way we can be free from suffering and replace our suffering. with compassion. So this face-to-face transmission is more than a careful ceremony of full ordination as a Soto Zen priest. It's the germ of what each one of us is doing on our cushion when we practice steadfast sitting.

[42:59]

For Dogen, Zazen is face-to-face transmission. That's why he mentions that here. Anyway, I'm working my way up to talking about the next gate. I'm getting there. Contemplation is the next gate. Dogen says this all the time. He says, investigate this. Contemplate this. I wonder whether when he says that in his Dharma talks, whether he doesn't stop talking. for about an hour, while everybody sits there and investigates this, and then he goes on after that. He says all the time, investigate this. So specifically, in terms of the six gates, investigation, contemplation, means looking into the details of the breath.

[44:06]

So when we're stable, then we rouse the thought, wait a minute. This is great, but if I stay here, I'm going to get sleepy. I'll get little by little by little. Before I know it, I'll be in never-never land. So I better pay attention. I better apply a little wisdom and intelligence here. So that's when you start investigating the breath in its detail. You rouse your energy and begin looking more closely because the rhythm of breathing is going to make you drowsy and sleepy. It's so nice, you know. So maybe if you're stable and you start getting distracted, it's not because you're distracted. It's because you're ready to practice contemplation and you don't know it's time to do that. So now you know. Now it's time to practice contemplation.

[45:14]

contemplation. How would you do that? Well, you could pay attention to the breath in a lot of different ways. There's a lot going on there with every breath. You begin to watch the entire breath, from the very beginning, to the middle, to the next to the middle, to the next to the next to the middle, to the end, to after the end. The inhale, the exhale have a beginning, a middle, and an end, right? Is that right? Is there a beginning? Is there a middle? Is the ending of the inhale distinct? Or does it just sort of like slip away and then before you know it, there's an exhale? It's hard to catch it, you know? So we're looking very closely at the breath. We're using our intelligence, our brightness.

[46:15]

And we're noticing so many things about the breath. And in case there's some thinking associated with this, we're quite aware of that. What kind of thinking is it? Where do these thoughts come from? In our ordinary state of mind, we might have a lot of speculations. One thing might lead to another. We might go off in many directions. You might make up a million interesting stories. But in the practice of contemplation, there's not that much discursive thought. There's just the feeling of investigation, just this piercing looking with a sense of wonder at each and every breath. And we begin to notice that the whole thing is a little ungraspable. We see that. We realize that the breath and everything else, thoughts, memories, feelings, are produced, they arise, they pass away, and you really can't grab hold of any of it.

[47:33]

The illusion that you can, the illusion that you're someone, the illusion that your thoughts add up to something, that your breathing is something, is clearly seen to be an illusion. Everything just comes and goes in a gorgeous way. And even your misery is gorgeous because it comes and goes just like everything else. It barely exists. And yes, if you were jury and you were ordained as a monk when you were eight or something like that and you were drilled into all the Buddhist texts and memorized them, maybe you would have all these Dharma thoughts. All Dharmas are empty and so on. Maybe the entire heart would run through your mind. But whether it does or not, you know this. You feel it. You feel it in your bones.

[48:39]

And when you do, This is the realization stage of the practice of contemplation. But we're not done yet, right? Because then you start to think, but how do I know this? What is knowing anyway? Who's knowing something? which occurs to you because you've studied the six gates and you know this is the sixth gate, the next gate, I mean, turning. So that's for next time, turning. We'll stop there because I'm yakking on long enough. But I have one last poem for you. I'll end with a poem. This short poem is by a contemporary Chinese poet. Yuxin Zhao, who was pretty famous, I guess, in China.

[49:47]

He had a tough life, has had a tough life. He's still going. He was born in 1968, so pretty young fellow, as far as I'm concerned, anyway. He dropped out of school, at middle school. He didn't get any further than that, and so he's self-taught as a poet, and they say that, although I wouldn't know, but they say that his writing in Chinese is quite amazing. He turns the Chinese language inside out, they say. Anyway, his poem that I'll read for you now is called, I Seldom Socialize With Myself. I Seldom Socialize With Myself. In the old photos, love no longer seems so terrifying. Valiantly, I attack it along two routes, from heaven and hell.

[50:59]

Returning to humanity, I can now face friendship, though I'm clueless, when facing myself. Knowing so many, I cannot say I know myself. Looking in the mirror, I feel this person is somewhat familiar. Returning to Wine God Bridge, I have stopped hanging out with old pals. Better yet for the sake of solitude I seldom socialize with myself. Okay, so ends our period of distraction and fun.

[52:20]

Back to the salt mines. Thank you very much for listening. 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, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[52:51]

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