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. I was noticing at home, I kept bumping things or dropping things. And so when this just happened, I thought, oh, maybe it's that period, that time in Sishin where... And I notice this in other ways, just slightly disoriented, you know. And so this is the kind of thing that happens, and then everybody comes with their tissues and handkerchiefs and everything. So thank you very much, everyone, for help with that. So I thought that, as you know, we're in Sushin, I would talk, about meditation, and this is the fifth perfection, as we were studying the six perfections.

[01:05]

And we don't talk about it too much, because in this school the teaching is shikantaza, just sitting. But I thought, why not? Because I mentioned in my earlier talk the Saripatthana Sutta, the four foundations of mindfulness. And I spoke about the two aspects that we do talk about of the first foundation, which is contemplation of the body and the body. And those two are mindfulness of the breath and the posture. And those are the foundations for shamatha, or calming meditation. And the description of shamatha is, a shamatha meditation practice is one that specifically aims to strengthen the mind's stability and to counterbalance the symptoms of an agitated or depressed mind. There are two aspects to shamatha practice, formal and post-formal.

[02:08]

Formal involves selecting a specific period of time and suitable place to practice, which we've done. The post-formal practice is how you incorporate shamatha practice into your everyday life. And in many ways we're also doing that. So it's possible after establishing stability in meditation to extend meditation techniques into what's called vipassana. So shamatha is the foundation for vipassana and it allows deeper... examination and investigation into the habitual activities and tendencies of the mind. So the title Satipatthana is translated as foundation of mindfulness and the root of the term Sati is Shmurti.

[03:11]

And this originally meant to remember, to recollect, to bear in mind as in the tradition of memorizing sutras and teachings and sacred texts so that you'll remember them and remember to apply them. In the Satipatthana Sutta, the term Sadi means to remember the dharmas whereby the true nature of phenomena can be seen. So this translation of Sadi as to remember has inspired me to think of mindfulness as remembrance. And these are three ways that I came up with to consider this. 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.

[04:18]

A third way is by considering the training of the mind as a method of creating new memories and new memory paths or habits of mind and then remembering and applying them when our habitual personal memories or memory paths arise. So I think it's important when we're studying the teachings to read them as truths and not as judgments about who we are or how we live or have lived. And also not to interpret them as a standard for how well our practice is going or how successful it is. These instructions contained in the various teachings consider our lives and our conditioning, what you could call our karma, as the resource for reconsidering the way we understand and interpret reality.

[05:24]

So often, you know, maybe some of you have people come to practice like looking for a solution or an answer to or escape from human condition, situations of their life, and that's actually what the Buddha did. He examined, you know, several schools of spiritual teaching. And then he determined through, it's a kind of form of surrender, that he would discover the answer or die in the process of looking for it. Pretty extreme for most of us. So after his enlightenment, he taught methods and perspectives that he said would would avoid the necessity of going to the lengths that he did. And so one of the basic methods is the contemplations described in the Satipatthana Sutra. So these begin with contemplation of the body and the body, the vehicle of our suffering and of our release from suffering.

[06:33]

And the foundation of insight is a body that is able to relax, amid the arisings and passings of phenomena and states of mind. In his commentary on the Satipatthana, Ustalananda says, some degree of comfort is necessary for practicing meditation. Though there should not be too much comfort, some is necessary to continue with the practice of meditation. So... The most basic mindfulness practice is to remember when we go to the zendo or wherever it is that we go to meditate, why we are doing it. What is the benefit we seek? And if it's released from stress, how do we apply meditation to address our stress? And another translation of dukkha or suffering is anxiety.

[07:41]

So one of the things we're addressing through meditation is our anxiety, our stress. And if we're searching or seeking realization or freedom from suffering, how do we apply meditation to experience release or cessation, the third noble truth? So the Satipatthana Sutra describes itself as being the only way. And there are five interpretations of only as it's used. So the first is that there is no need to consider other practices. This is the one that will work. The second is that is it applied and accomplished well. alone. The third is that it is the one way of Buddha.

[08:46]

The fourth is that it leads to one destination, nirvana. And the fifth is that there is no other way to nirvana, the end of suffering and the destruction of mental defilements. So it's recommended and even required that these practices be accompanied by faith or humility, which is a combined combination of confidence and surrender to the approach and the process that these practices offer. So for mindfulness meditation, there are four accompanying qualities. Effort, mindfulness in the sense of remembrance, concentration, and understanding or comprehension. And I wanted to briefly address the part of the only way that is described as something we do alone.

[09:56]

Uslananda comments, nobody can give his or her concentration or wisdom to you, and you cannot give any of your concentration or wisdom to anybody else. There's another phrase in Buddhism, no one can purify another. So it's recommended that you go to a secluded place to practice these contemplations. And in the Bhaya Bharava Sutta on fear and dread, a monk says, remote jungle thicket resting places in the forest are hard to endure. Seclusion is hard to practice and is hard to enjoy solitude. And the Buddha's response is that one is prepared for solitude by purifying one's conduct and applying wisdom. So there are various side effects to deep meditation and I think fear is one of them.

[11:07]

One of the fears is fear of success. For a while, I thought to myself, do I really want to be enlightened? It might be kind of lonely or weird. So that's part of it. And I think that spiritual effort is accompanied by a particular kind of loneliness and disconnectedness that can seem very personal. So enduring this, enduring it... occasionally, I think as a natural part of spiritual effort, is something to cultivate. You know, I have told people, I think of this as learn to be lonely. That is, not sentimentalize our loneliness, but just see it as part of our path. So the four contemplations of the Satipatthana Sutta are... contemplating the body in the body, contemplating the feeling in the feelings, contemplating consciousness in the consciousness, and contemplating the dharmas in the dharmas.

[12:16]

The approach to each of the contemplations is characterized as clearly comprehending and mindful, removing covetousness and grief in the world. So the process, even though I find it very interesting and kind of fun and intriguing, it can seem very tedious. Or Larry Rosenberg describes it as dry and plain, a kind of extended spiritual telegram. Yet I think, you know, that... you can begin to recognize that they describe a process that is intuitive as well as purposeful and defined. And it even becomes familiar over years of meditation practice. So covetousness, it says you approach these contemplations

[13:25]

The approach to each contemplation is characterized as clearly comprehending and mindful, removing covetousness and grief in the world. So covetousness is greed, including craving, desire, and attachment. And grief is aversion, including fear, ill will, anger, resentment, and depression. greed, and aversion are two of the three poisons, greed, hatred, and delusion. And delusion can be understood as selfishness, egotism, vanity, indecision, and belief in a substantial self. And, you know, even in their mildest forms, these, you know, inhibit the realization of freedom from suffering, and you can notice that in your daily life.

[14:34]

When they arise, you grasp yourself. So this inhibition of freedom. So one thing to ask ourselves as we consider these practices and even, you know, from shamatha, moving into vipassana, and these deeper teachings that come up, is whether we really want this freedom. I think that our particular suffering, our particular relationship to the world is very precious to us. And our pain and sorrow and our longings and our desires And our selfishness provide us with an identity or sense of self. You know, we can say, oh, that is like this because I am like this. I am like this because that is like that. And we just can go on forever this way and enjoy it in a certain way.

[15:38]

It gives us a sense of groundedness in an odd way. So we also can resist realization because the exchange requires too much of us. And there's a phrase that comes up again and again in Buddhist teachings regarding who will attain realization and it says only a few. And rather than seeing this as discouraging, I think it just can be a reminder that some of these exercises are not just necessary but beneficial. They're actually, you know, they're repetitive and they seem tedious sometimes. But that's partly because they go against the stream of our tendencies and attachments. And so just like, oh, don't quite want to do it. But very wisely, the four contemplations begin with the body.

[16:47]

Here we are. This is what we have. And that consists of 14 topics. Just in case you haven't thought it was tedious enough yet. Breath, posture, clear comprehension, repulsiveness, material elements, and nine cemetery contemplations. And so we are familiar, you know, with the first two, posture and breath. And the sutra, says that the four foundations are the only way for reaching the noble path. So path consciousness arises at the time of realization and the noble path is the fourth of the four noble truths. And if you remember, the four noble truths and the middle path are the first two teachings of the Buddha. So he's giving you the map. But there at the end, they come up in the Dhamma's

[17:50]

in the Dhammas, kind of playing the Dhammas as the Dhammas. So these four noble truths are sequential, but they're related, and they're all always true. And there are three areas of the Eightfold Path. That's ethics or morality, meditation or concentration, and wisdom. And you see how the perfections and all these other teachings kind of intersperse these. types of teachings, and those are shila, samadhi, and prajna, which are three of the main areas of teaching and practice. And they can be applied by either an unenlightened or an enlightened mind. But I think that an enlightened mind or a mind on the path to enlightenment applies them from the perspectives of a truth. rather than what might be called being good or being a good student.

[18:51]

How do we approach them just as truths to almost experiment with trust? And so from the perspective of path consciousness, the three is of effort, sila, prajna, samadhi, are logical. And they're not related to ordinary ideas of reward and punishment or success or failure. Mindfulness is mind training. Untraining and retraining the mind from suffering and its concomitant clinging, aversion and selfishness towards freedom and nirvana. So as I study things like this, you know, little stories or things come in from the side. And I read about the four stages of creative process.

[19:56]

And one of them is a psychological and neuroscientific term, incubation. And the four stages of creative process are preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. Almost sounds familiar. Incubation is defined as a process of unconscious recombination of thought elements that were stimulated through conscious work at one point in time, resulting in novel ideas at some later point in time. The experience of leaving a problem for a period of time, then finding the difficulty evaporates on returning to the problem or that the solution comes out of the blue when thinking about something else is widespread.

[20:58]

So I think this is the type of intuitive thinking that Dogen is referring to as non-thinking. So we apply attention and analysis through practicing something like the four foundations. And consciously or unconsciously, we sort of set the effort aside to incubate. And then we return to it again and again, and hopefully refreshed and with renewed commitment. So this is preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. So the contemplation of the breath and the posture, shamatha, go beyond awareness to knowledge or comprehension, which requires deeper effort. Uslananda differentiates from between shamatha and vipassana, describing vipassana.

[22:07]

When you contemplate on the origination and the arising, or on the dissolution and the falling, you are neither attached to nor clinging to anything. This means vipassana and not shamatha. So in terms of the postures of the body, it's a matter of remembering to be aware of how you move through the world and how you come to rest. So how is the body held and ignored in the four postures of walking or going, standing, sitting, and lying down, and in all those kind of subtle movements that are part of those. And Uslananda comments, meditators know there are only intentions and going in the act of going, and nothing else. You do not see a being, or a person, or a human, or an I.

[23:11]

who is walking, who is going. You see only these two things, intention and going, in the going. Meditators come to realize that what is now is not the same as what has been in the past and that it is not the same as it will be in the future. So this... This type of realization through awareness of the breath and the posture and so on through the four contemplations allows for freedom from our habitual actions and reactions, especially recognizing them closer and closer to the point of their origin. There are also factors that lead to dissolution or the disappearance of different phenomena so that meditators see that there is the body only, neither a person nor a permanent entity.

[24:26]

And I think this sense of things can have a kind of emotional aspect of grief or loss, as well as relief. So the process has side effects and side roads rather than, you know, you kind of get it. You have these hints and these intuitions and these senses of things and these little moments where things will be very clear. But those dissipate and then, you know, you sort of keep going and then a different experience will arise and then that passes. And these... They kind of, they don't exactly accumulate, but they inform each other. So the next contemplation is mindfulness with clear comprehension.

[25:32]

So this is... One aspect of clear comprehension is to be aware of what distinguishes mind from matter. And this means becoming deeply familiar with the tendencies of the mind and one's own mind in particular. So the function of the mind is to evaluate Pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. And each person's karmic tendencies or habits get caught up in that evaluation. But even the effort to apply clear comprehension can lessen the strength of those tendencies.

[26:38]

So mindfulness can be understood as a way of slowing down the reactivity that triggers our habitual responses and judgments and allowing the mind and the body to relax in the midst of what is currently arising. So retraining the mind to respond to and in the present time requires patience and kindness. You know, there's parts of all of us that have been stifled or abused in ordinary ways and not so ordinary ways. And these aspects of us need to be nurtured to maturity. Because these parts of us are also our resource for transformation and for wisdom and compassion that we learn. through these efforts. So practicing the four foundations though isn't an egotistical or selfish activity.

[27:49]

Self-understanding and self-knowledge in the midst of complexity is the key to freedom. So though this freedom doesn't have any rewards, we can keep asking, do I really want enlightenment or realization. Not as a judgment, but as an aspect of self-understanding because it requires this huge effort. You know, clear comprehension asks something of us. And Usainanda, you know, again, these lists and lists and lists. So he mentions five mental faculties that are applied. Confidence or faith, effort, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. So these five faculties inform and balance each other. Clear comprehension means seeing precisely, seeing everything in its entirety, seeing it by evenly using all mental faculties.

[28:56]

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 there are four kinds of clear comprehension to which the five mental faculties are applied, and these are clear comprehension of what is of benefit, clear comprehension of what is suitable, clear comprehension of the meditator's domain, and clear comprehension of non-delusion. So the first two, what is a benefit and what is suitable, can be applied to any ordinary activities. What is a benefit is what cultivates positive mental states that are conducive to practicing the four foundations.

[30:07]

So engaging in beneficial activity without being suitably mindful just means that it won't be of as much benefit. So not judgment. So the third kind of clear comprehension, the meditator's domain, means meditating in seclusion. Once again, this only thing alone. And I think many people experience meditation as a kind of coming home. And when you move into a new room or a new home, you bring your own living habits with you. And that's the same with our mind in meditation. So mindfulness practice offers the opportunity to examine the internal habits and the external habits related to our domain of practice. In Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, I'm sure many of you are familiar with this, Suzuki Roshi describes a general house cleaning of your mind.

[31:15]

And he says, you must take everything out of your room and clean it thoroughly. If it is necessary, you may bring everything back in again. You may want many things, so one by one, you can bring them back. But if they are not necessary, there is no need to keep them. So domain can have this sense, you know, of being the state, the home, or the house of the mind. So what is its usual state? And how do we apply mindfulness to eventually experience true existence, as Suzuki Roshi describes it? And Uslananda describes domain as always practicing meditation. Usha Ananda describes two bhikkhus who do this clear comprehension of domain meditation or contemplation for 20 and 23 years, respectively, and then they attain arhat hood.

[32:25]

So there's no rush. And it takes a lot of effort and patience. So we return to mindfulness again and again. Particularly by remembering, you know, as these monks did, to keep our meditation intention wherever we might be, coming and going and at home. So the fourth kind of clear comprehension is of non-delusion. Remembering that delusion is ignorance, selfishness, egotism, indecision, vanity, and belief in a substantial self, a meditator who is engaged thoroughly in the first three comprehensions, what is of benefit, what is suitable, and of the meditator's domain, has also engaged the fourth of non-delusion.

[33:27]

So there are patterns, there are paths, there are intuitive, methods. And Usainanda describes this as not confusing the different acts when going forth and when returning. Because what these monks did is they would go out to get their food. And so they would have to do, you know, get ready to do that. Wash their hands, whatever they were doing, and get... and then take their bowl, and the whole time they're going and doing these things, it's in mindfulness, and so they have to be mindful of the steps they're taking, how they're holding things, getting the food, returning and eating it, these moment-by-moment awarenesses of mindfulness. So that's what he's talking about there. And he says that the third clear comprehension of the meditator's domain is important.

[34:28]

because it means that the practice of meditation has been brought to maturity. And that's another word that comes up a lot in Buddhist teachings, the word maturity. And can think about what does that mean. So often, oddly enough, the word maturity is brought up negatively. You should be more mature or that sort of thing. That's a better way to be. But I think what it means in Buddhism is to see clearly. Not finding any permanent entity, soul, or self that is going out and returning, but only the phenomena, the intention, and the going caused by intention. At the end of this section, Uslananda reminds the meditator, Don't bother about penetrating the nature of things. When you are mindful of everything that is present, insight will come to you by itself.

[35:34]

And I think this is similar in the section where Tsukiroshi talks about the house cleaning of the mind. He says, if you are concentrated on your breathing, you will forget yourself. And if you forget yourself, you will be concentrated on your breathing. If you continue this practice, eventually you will experience the true existence which comes from emptiness. 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.

[36:35]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.61