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. My name is Rebecca Lee. I am a Dhamma heir in the Chan lineage of Master Shen Yan, who is the founder of Dhamma Drum Mountain. So I've been practicing with him since the mid-90s and served as his translator when I moved to the East Coast, to be closer to where his center is, until his passing in 2009. So this evening, what I would like to do is to take this time to talk a little bit about the practice that many of you

[01:00]

familiar with called shikantaza in the Japanese Zen tradition. Shikantaza literally means just sitting in Japanese. And in the Chinese Chan tradition, we practice, we call it... the practice of silent illumination. I want to talk about this practice of silent illumination a little bit and also how it is related to the Buddha's teachings. I remember my very first seven-day intensive retreat, which was my very first retreat with Master Shen Yan. He kept emphasizing that Zen is Buddha Dharma. And I was a little bit confused about why he kept repeating it. Afterwards, when I asked him about it, apparently at that time, it was a very long time ago, that some people thought that Zen is its own thing.

[02:03]

And he kept emphasizing that. And it's important to remember that Zen, Zen practice, here we're talking about the practice of silent illumination is the actualization of the Buddha's teachings. We can understand it as the actualization of the Buddha's teachings as articulated in the teachings of the Four Noble Truths. So, some of many of you will be familiar with it, like the four noble truths. The very first noble truth is there is suffering. The Buddha inviting us to see, do you know? Like we suffer, right? It's not just always suffering, but it's like there is suffering. Do we know? And the second noble truth, the cause of suffering, which can often be misunderstood as something outside of us.

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I just had a retreatant, Last week, two weeks ago, he came to an interview and told me, yes, the cause of his sufferings, my mother-in-law who lived with us. He spent an hour telling me how his mother-in-law made him suffer. And so many of us might have similar story. Maybe my neighbor, my boss, my spouse, my brother. So the Buddha wasn't talking about that. When you talk about a second noble truth, he was talking about... The word that was translated as cause of suffering, the Mandarin Chinese, the Chinese character pronounced in Mandarin is called ji, which literally means the accumulation or coming together. I like the translation of coming together better. The coming together of what? The coming together of whatever is happening in the present moment, whatever it is.

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that's happening in the present moment, which is the coming together of causes and conditions. The coming together of whatever is happening in the present moment and our very, very entrenched habits of reacting by giving rise to vexations. Vexations, we're familiar with craving aversion. What we like, we want more. What we hate, we reject. fight against it, hate it. And it is actually the rising, reacting with vexation that makes the present moment suffering. And the practice here is actually inviting us to see by cultivating moment to moment clear awareness how we generate suffering. How we generate suffering by reacting to the present moment with vexations.

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When we do that, we are realizing the first and second noble truths. Oftentimes we want to skip that. We want to go to the third noble truth, the cessation of suffering. But actually we do need to realize for ourselves that there is suffering and how we are generating suffering. by reacting to the present moment with vexations. When we think about it, some of you may have experienced that yourself. Whatever is happening in the present moment, maybe after some meditation, some soreness in the back or the knee, or today for some of us may feel a little warm, if you're used to air conditioning, or... maybe a busy mind, or feeling a lot of worries, feeling anxious, whatever is happening in the present moment, if we allow each moment to be fully experienced as it is, without any habitual reactivity, then suffering,

[06:39]

does not arise. That is the third noble truth, cessation of suffering. It's pointing to the fact that we don't need to attack suffering and try to kill it and destroy it. All we need to do is to allow the present movement, whatever is happening, to be experienced as it is. Allowing the present movement of body-mind in this space to be directly experienced. as it is, and you can try it right now. Or, like Master Hongzhi, who articulated the practice of silent illumination, they continued to inform the practice of Chikantaza in Zen. One of his most important sentences in his E, that he had taught, stay with this, just as this. Whatever is happening, stay with this, just as this.

[07:44]

That's why we call the practice just sitting. But it's not just sitting because sometimes we're not sitting. It's just walking, just eating, just showering, whatever we're doing. Pointing to the practice at this moment, right now. Allowing the body to breathe as it does. Allowing thoughts and feelings through and to be experienced as they are, moment after moment as they are, and allow them to go on on their own. It's just this simple. when my students do this, just this, yes, it's simple, but we find it incredibly difficult because of our very, very, very entrenched habits of reacting to the present moment with our habitual reactivities, vexations, craving, craving for what we like, rejecting.

[09:08]

hating what we don't like. In other words, we are habituated to getting in the way of ourselves, to fully engaged with life as it is, moment after moment. And in case you're sitting here thinking that I'm making this up, I'm going to cite Master Hongzhi, like I said, who articulated the practice of silent illumination, Shikantaza. And he is also the great, great, great grandmaster of the Dhamma brother of Dogen. So, very related. And I'd like to share this quote with you. I'm trying to see if I can read it. Here it is.

[10:13]

Master Hongzhi wrote, or said actually, the field of boundless emptiness is what exists from the very beginning. You must purify, cure, grind down, or brush away all the tendencies you have fabricated into apparent habits. Then you can recite in the clear circle of brightness. The first sentence here points to the fact that silent illumination, the practice that we're doing in Solo Zen, is the natural state of being. It's already here, right now. Right now. You don't need to go looking for it. or try to create it, or try to cultivate it. It's already here.

[11:19]

All we need to do is to reconnect with our natural state of being, silent illumination. And in case you're wondering, but I don't feel it. I'm not seeing it. And the second sentence gave us the clue. So here, Master Hongzhi is pointing out that, well, yes, silent illumination is already here. We don't need to create it. Yet, the practice is not about just doing nothing. It's not about sitting here spacing out or waiting for... realization to happen. Sometimes some practitioners assume that, oh, sudden enlightenment will sit there and everything will just happen to me. And people do imagine that.

[12:19]

I think, is it Master Hongju said, no, that's not what it is. The second sentence gave us the clue. He was pointing out the fact that the practice of silent illumination, shikantaza, is the process of recognizing our habitual reactivities, all these conditionings that become our habits, so that we can stop perpetuating them. We can unlearn them. We can release them. That is the work. So when we do sitting meditation, it offers us an opportunity to gain insight into our habitual reactivities. What do I mean? What do we do in sitting meditation?

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We practice to recognize these habitual reactivities. In sitting meditation, your neighbor's not there to bother you. It's like, it's just sitting here letting the body breathe. Yet, these habitual reactivities do show up, so we practice recognizing them, how they show up. And oftentimes, they show up with this compulsion, this quality that pushes us to believe in it right away, even though we rationally knew that wasn't right, and we follow it. This compulsive quality of promising us all the happiness that we are hoping for if we're just following. And how to recognize it. How we feel this urge to believe it and act it out. We also practice to become familiar with how this habit unfolds thought after thought in very quick successions.

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And how do we do that? By maintaining moment-to-moment clear awareness ceaselessly. Then we'll be able to catch how these habits show up thought after thought. Then it will allow us to catch ourselves in the act. When we are about to act it out, we are about to believe in it, that we can stop and release it. And in this process, we slowly unlearn and reduce the power of these habits. So in other words, this is the work or actually the gradual cultivation that Master Zhongmi, an important Huanian master, talked about in the practice of silent illumination. So it is not about creating or maintaining some kind of mind state because some practitioners, they tell me they have this idea of what meditation is and they try to maintain and create it.

[15:49]

This is not what the practice of silence illumination is about. It is about maintaining total clear awareness of body-mind in this space. each moment, moment after moment, to recognize and unlearn our habitual reactivities. Oftentimes, we move through life in ways so habitual that it feels like air. We just do it so much, we don't see it ourselves. Maybe other people see it very clearly, but we do it. We don't see it. We don't notice it at all. We've just followed these, what I call, modes of operations in our life without even recognizing that there are some form of vexations, craving, aversion, subversions of that, these habitual reactivities.

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And because we live through life like this without being aware of it, as a result, we often just feel this unsatisfactoriness of what suffering is, dukkha. We don't even need to be in pain. Just a sense of unease, unsatisfactoriness, without knowing where it comes from and how we have been perpetuating it. And we bring these habitual reactivities into our meditation. Many practitioners assume that once I sit down this cushion, I'm a different person. Or I only do this in meditation. No, no. Like actually what we do in meditation is a reflection of what we do in life. And so when we look into what we are actually doing in meditation, not what we should be doing, but what we're actually doing in meditation, will give us an opportunity to discover and reveal our habitual reactivities.

[17:59]

Actually, that is the main reason why. We practice meditation. And when we recognize these habitual reactivities, we'll be able to see and recognize how they show up in our daily life so that we have a chance to stop perpetuating them in our daily life as well. And you may be thinking, I still don't really know what you're talking about. This seems very abstract. Perhaps I'll take some time to offer a few examples about what I'm talking about briefly that I elaborated in my book to perhaps help you recognize them in your own experience. I will share a few examples that is... quite common, meaning usually practitioners in retreats would tell me, I do this.

[19:02]

And they recognize it right away. So the first example of what practitioners might find themselves actually doing in sitting meditation belongs to what I call my book, The Trans Mode. It is the creating of a hazy fogginess in our mind when we sit in meditation. And it is often related to the motivation that brought us to practice meditation. Often it has to do with the practitioners coming to meditation to get away from unpleasant thoughts and feelings. You heard he's very relaxing and calm in meditation. Yes, I'm in. I signed up. Related to it is the desire for the calm and peaceful feelings that one may be able to find in meditation.

[20:11]

Also, for some practitioners, it may have to do with some misunderstanding, incorrect understanding of what The practice of shikantaza or silent illumination is believing, misbelieving that it is about cultivating a blank mind, a mind with nothing going on, related to often the wish for experiencing this peaceful mind. And of course, you can see if they have encountered Master Hongzhi's teaching, they were ignoring the second sentence of Master Hongzhi's teaching here. And also actually ignoring the first one. He said, actually, silent illumination is a natural state of being. There's no need to try to create it or cultivate it. But a lot of practitioners are busy sitting there trying to cultivate what they believe is this peace or silent illumination, their idea of it.

[21:14]

So how does this show up? Basically, practitioners, every time they sit down, what they do is sort of like dull down their awareness. So oftentimes it's related to this feeling of drowsiness in sitting meditation. It may not feel drowsy to you, though. You can feel this... calm because when we dull down our awareness it will just create this sort of almost like put down a layer of veil in front of us or for some it may be sort of create a little layer of fog of smoke in front of us and this creates this illusion of peace if you've ever driven in fog I think sometimes happens here. Then, you know, it feels very peaceful. And it is that illusion of peace. And so the telltale sign is that every time we sit down, we can reliably go to that happy place.

[22:17]

Like sit down after a while, I'm going to enter this peace. And then, which may make one believe that I'm a very good meditator. Every time I go to that happy place. And so that's why it can be quite difficult for practitioners to recognize it and actually let it go. And you might think, isn't that a good meditation? Remember. Every moment is brand new. Every moment is the coming together of constantly changing causes and conditions. That means every time we sit in meditation, it's a new you sitting down. There might be things happening in your mind that cause some activities in your mind. It may be a period there's not much going on. So relatively few thoughts coming through. Every time is different. So if we find that every time we can reliably go to that same feeling, chances are we are manufacturing, we're creating that mind state.

[23:24]

And the mind... It's very powerful. If we come to experience that peaceful feeling, we can go and create it. And you may think, that's exactly what I want. Can you tell me more about how to create that? I've already talked about it, so you can go try it if you haven't been already doing it. But the question is, what is the problem? Why am I talking about it? I mentioned we are creating illusion of peace because we may believe that there is nothing going on. There's no thoughts in our mind. But what is actually going on is that we are obscuring using this layer of fog in our mind to obscure activities in our mind. What kind of activities? These habitual reactivities, agitation. It may be some kind of hatred, resentment, jealousy. You name it. You are allowing them to roam free in your mind, being obscured by this layer of fog and being perpetuated, strengthened without your awareness.

[24:37]

Meaning you will not have the opportunity to interrupt it, to stop it from being acted out. Some of you may have that experience. that when such thought habits have been perpetuated without our awareness, obscured by this foggy mind, maybe it's resentment. You really, really hate that person. You don't know that. And then you just keep going on and perpetuate it, and you really resent that person, maybe because that person's better than you in something. And then when you talk to someone about that person, some really harsh criticism blurted out, or some hateful comment blurted out of your mouth, and if you actually catch yourself, it's like, what? I didn't mean to say that, but Yudo is like, I don't know where it came from.

[25:41]

Well, it's been percolating, percolating, percolating, gaining momentum in our mind all this time. So when we do not allow these thoughts into our awareness with clarity, then they just get acted out without our knowing and can cause pain. serious problems. The question is, if this is what we're doing in our meditation practice, sitting meditation, we can check to see how this habit shows up in our daily life. Don't assume that we only do it in sitting meditation. For example, I have a practitioner recently who told me that I didn't know it has anything to do with me. I don't do, like, foggy mind. That's not what I do. And then he realized, that's exactly what I do, actually, in my daily life.

[26:44]

And he discovered what he does was that largely because of fear. So when something happened with his children, he would just go into this... And it's like, everything's fine. I'm calm. Everything's okay. And he just completely dissociates from what's going on. And so he realized he was letting his wife to deal with the whole situation when his children got into trouble at school, for example. And when he realized that it was, he was very ashamed because he realized he hadn't been fulfilling his responsibility. to his family. And he was able to catch himself doing it recently when his daughter was rushed to the emergency room and he realized he was completely freaking out. But he was feeling all the fear instead of hiding in the fog. And he felt he was able to be really there for his daughter and support his wife.

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And so that was what happened The practice allowed him to recognize. And oftentimes, by the way, this show up in our life is that a practitioner who, engaging in this funky mind, just willfully, willfully overlooked problematic behaviors of other people. Her partner, actually. I can stay with him for... Long time, very long time. And some people do it by staying in the job or a situation for a very long time, allowing themselves to be treated in ways that you wouldn't allow if you weren't in a farm. For example, I have practitioners who find themselves allowing themselves to be belittled, manipulated,

[28:52]

gaslighted, devalued, and sometimes abused. And I had a practitioner recently who told me that that's exactly what she did with her former partner who belittled her for years and years and made her feel like she couldn't do anything. And she's still working to pick up her self-confidence again. So do not take this mode lightly. It can cause a lot of damage in our life. And of course, it's very painful for people who loved us to watch this happening to us. So if this is not your mode, maybe this one is. So this other mode, what I call craving mode in my book, one of the many ways this shows up, I share a little bit about one way it shows up, is that when we have a good meditation, like all of you have that experience, like a sitting meditation and night sit, and...

[30:09]

however you describe it. And it's like, this is great. I finally got it. This is how meditation is supposed to feel like. So, this is great. And then, the next time we sit down, we try to feel it again. And inevitably, you don't feel that again. Why is that? Because every moment is brand new. That is like a new moment. You won't be feeling that exact feeling again, even though that might be a good meditation session. The main reason why you won't be feeling that again is that what we do is we use our memory of that wonderful meditation experience to And we can take a snapshot of it or create our idea of it based on memory and our idea of the perfect meditation right here in our sitting meditation and use that to evaluate and judge and criticize and compare the present moment experience of our meditation.

[31:28]

And so how do we know that we're doing that? The telltale signs when practitioners come into the interview, I ask, how is your meditation? I said, not very good. Hmm. For it to be not very good, you must be judging it from some reference, right? How do you know it's not very good compared to what? And inevitably, I said, I don't know why it's not good. And then it's like, oh. they will confess finally. It's like, it's not like that one I had two years ago, or last month, or yesterday, if it's in a seven-day retreat. So this is a very, very common habitual reactivity. And so if you find yourself doing that, maybe not trying to recreate and experience it, but just like this This sense of like, this is not very good. And really, actually, you are comparing it with some past experience of meditation.

[32:34]

Check it out. Because if this is what we do in our meditation, do we have similar habitual tendencies in our daily life? Remember, what we do in meditation is a reflection of what we do in our life. So oftentimes when I ask these practitioners, like, does this sound familiar? You know, it's like, they're like, oh, yes. Like they started telling me all the things they do in their life. Like, so for example, like, yeah, like I have this idea of me when I was 25. And for those who are younger than 25, maybe like. I don't know, when a few years earlier. And then when you were like perfectly healthy and energetic, you can like just work and do everything really quickly. You can remember everything that time, a long time ago. So, and that was, and we, without our knowing, believe that's how I'm supposed to be.

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Me, that's the me. Now, like, I forget things. I just, like, I get tired after a couple hours. That's not my real me. Like, that's the me. So we use that snapshot of who we were sometime in our past as this idea who I am supposed to be to judge the present moment. Experience. So it's always not good enough. Not how I'm supposed to feel today. So how are you doing? could be better. So it is that feeling. So you can see this is the classic definition of what dukkha is. Whatever is happening, it's not how it's supposed to be. Even though what's happening is pretty fine. Or we might find that besides doing this to ourselves,

[34:38]

We keep feeling that somebody in our life is not very good, meaning they are not how they are supposed to be. How do we know? Because every moment is brand new. You right now is not how you're supposed to be. Well, guess what? We do the same thing. We took a snapshot of that person. I don't know. Our spouse, you know, when we first met and that was that perfect, I don't know, date, you know, like when like, I'm just using my husband, like he was like this super, you know, romantic, nice, awesome. He still is. And the, but like, so it's like, but you're not like that, you know, when we were going first going out, like, you know, you're just a little distance today compared to that or children. If you have children, there was that time when they were this perfect, cute, amazing person.

[35:43]

Usually five years old. That's the best. They do not talk back. They always want your attention. You feel very needed. Like, that's my perfect child. And then they grow up. And so they... Not like that. You know, they're not talking to you. They're just looking at the phone and they don't really want to do anything with you anymore. Something's wrong with my kid because it's not that. Sound familiar? So that is that habit of whatever is happening. It's not how they're supposed to be even though they are just being themselves and doing what you want. really wish that they would do, which is growing up, becoming their own person. But we manage to create suffering by this habit.

[36:46]

We also tend to do it in groups that we are part of, that we take a snapshot in our mind about how... the group, the community is supposed to be and generate this unsatisfactoriness. I remember practitioners in my master's community, Dhamma Drum, they would say, yeah, it's like, you know, it's not like how Master Shen Yan was around. And so people was pretty, you know, I thought they were really practicing harps, but not like that, you know. So whatever's happening, not like that. not like our idea of what it was like. Or you may find yourself experiencing a little bit different, something different, doing something different in meditation, what I call aversion mode.

[37:50]

I had a practitioner sharing in an interview with, saying that this is what I do in meditation, work very hard to, you know, create a calm mind. And what you do is you carry, you know, whack-a-mole, you know, you carry that giant hammer-looking thing. So in meditation, the thoughts show up, whack, whack, and then whack. Like that's what they did, whack-a-mole during the meditation. And, you know, if you've done whack-a-mo, this is not a loving-kindness kind of exercise. It's like, whack. It's like, I hate you and I want to kill you. And so, instead of cultivating loving-kindness and compassion, we are cultivating hatred each moment if we meditate this way.

[38:56]

And those of you who think I don't whack them all, so I don't think it's my issue. Well, like there are less obvious ways of engaging, activating this mode, such as like pushing away, just pushing away, ignoring, dismissing a thought. A practitioner at the time is like, oh, it's like, oh yeah, like I just have the, I just, those are just random thoughts. They're just nothing. ignoring, dismissing them, or calling the feeling that show up silly feelings. The just random thoughts for this practitioner happened to be thinking about, thoughts about two most important things, painful things going on in her life. The silly feeling spelled like the very strong feeling she had still towards her ex-partner that she was trying to dismissed painful painful so the practice of recognizing practice is recognizing that this is what we are doing in meditation and what we are doing is perpetuating the habits of reacting to the present moment with aversion vexation we are perpetuating suffering and

[40:24]

Don't think that that's all. We only do this in meditation because what we do in meditation is spill over in our life. This practitioner I was practicing with a couple of weeks ago in a retreat, he told me, you know, in meditation, I just do this. I just try to like push away everything, like push away everything, like his feeling about his... He believed evil mother-in-law and his not-performing son and his daughter, everyone in his family, actually. And then he found that one day he completely lost it and started yelling at his mother-in-law and creating a real problem. And there's also a student who told me a number of years ago saying that, like, I'm so confused that, like, I thought, like you said, like meditation helps us cultivate compassion and wisdom.

[41:30]

But my grandmother loves to meditate. And she's the nastiest person in the world. She was always yelling at us. I said, yes, because some practitioners, when they meditate by meditation, hating, dismissing all thoughts as distraction. They're cultivating hatred and aversion in their heart. And so when they come out of meditation, they see everyone, including her own grandchildren, as distractions for her and yelling at her at them. So instead of freeing from suffering, we are strengthening the habits of suffering. And if we're not careful... like this practitioner who started yelling out at his mother-in-law, we can really cause a lot of issues in our life. So the practice of silent illumination is not about making the mind a certain way, always feeling a certain sensation or being in a particular mind state.

[42:34]

It is about fully experiencing body-mind in this space, each moment as it is, recognize our habitual reactivities so that we can unlearn them. As we unlearn these habitual reactivities, then we suffer less. When we suffer less, then we cause less harm to other people in our life, and also we can be more available to bring benefit to others. And this is also the practice that practitioners continue to do after Kensho, after enlightenment in Chan practice. So you may as well start now. So I encourage you to pay attention to what you're doing in meditation to see if you can recognize some of these modes of operation.

[43:37]

And in my class tomorrow, I will talk about the practice of silence illumination and how to transition into this method of meditation. Thank you very much for your attention. 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.

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