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. So I want to say a few words about Zazen and what Zazen is. What is Zazen as we understand? Firstly, I like to read a small verse by Thich Nhat Hanh. He says, if you truly get in touch with a piece of carrot, you get in touch with the soil, the rain, the sunshine. You get in touch with Mother Earth. And eating in such a way, you feel in touch with true life,

[01:03]

your roots, and that is meditation. If we chew every morsel of our food in that way, we become grateful. And when you are grateful, you are happy. So this practice of Zen, as you can see, for those of you who are new, it is very structured. It's a choreographed practice. And knowingly or unknowingly, it's kind of sensitizing us. We feel sensitized by just the structure and the way Zen is choreographed. So when we translate the word Zazen into Zazen, English, we call it as meditation.

[02:07]

So, but in fact, according to Dogen Zenji, Zazen is not meditation. So then what is he talking about? So that's what we're going to look at this morning. So, it's not about achieving some goal or reaching somewhere, getting somewhere, or any kind of, it doesn't meet any kind of expectation. You don't hear any sounds. And there's nothing supernatural about it. There's no mantra. There's no visualization of anything. You don't see colors. You don't hear anything special. You don't become something special. So what exactly is Dogen Zenji saying? And what does he mean when he says, simply sitting? In Zen, Zazen is considered as just simply sitting.

[03:18]

So let's see what that means. So in the words of Dogen Zenji, he says, the Zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It is simply the Dharma gate of ease and joy, or repose and bliss, some translations. And he says, traps and snares can never reach it. Once its heart is grasped, you are like a dragon gaining the water. You are like a tiger taking to the mountains. These are the words of Dugin's entry. So sometimes, you know, we see the black robes and all this, do this and don't do that. When you come to a Zen monastery, you feel that it's very cultish, like some kind of a cult or a religion.

[04:20]

It does feel intimidating sometimes. So there's a common understanding that Zen practice is a technique. It's a technique for, it's a Misunderstanding that it's a technique for meditation or for training the mind. And also we think sometimes that zazen is going to help us in our suffering. So there's some way of refining or some way of refining the person or attaining some kind of goals or grooming the body or grooming the mind. But Dogen Zenji says, you sit through your delusions, you sit through your disturbed mind, you sit through your fears and anger. You sit through all that. You don't wait for your anger and everything settle and you become peaceful and you sit.

[05:27]

There's no preparation before you sit Zalzen. So... What is that? What does he mean? So there may be, there are different meditations that give you techniques and words or mantras or chants or some kind of refinement through mindfulness practice or something like that. In Dogen Zenji's world, it's a different understanding. So... For those of you who don't know who Dogen Zenji is, some of you are new to the Zen practice and you're listening to his name for the first time. So Dogen Zenji is a Zen master, lived in the 13th century. He was born in 1200 and died at age 53.

[06:29]

He died when he was pretty young, age 53. in 1253. So he introduced Zen. He's the founder of Soto Zen. He introduced Soto Zen in Japan in the Kamakura period. So what his uniqueness was that he integrated shamatha practice, that is calm abiding, shamatha practice to vipassana, which is insight, insight practice. So he kind of blended the two. So, as I mentioned the other day, the collection of Dogen Zenji's works is called the Shobu Genzo, which is a classic text in Zen, which is even studied in the universities. And his works are studied all over the world today.

[07:32]

And just like trying to understand Shakespeare, you cannot really understand Dogen easily. So we need scholars of Dogen who have studied and looked at his words and his works closely, who can unveil what exactly he means when he says certain things. So for Dogen, Zazen is the first and the foremost. That is the first at the end. So that's just dug. It's just Zazen. So what exactly? For him, it is not the state of mind. It does not depend on the state of mind. It doesn't matter what your mind is, where your mind is, at the tact of your sitting. So he just talks about sitting upright. So he goes into the posture. So, you know, if you... Even if you're sitting at home and you're listening to some music, and then something that you like, some music that's inspiring, is playing, and then your posture shifts.

[08:49]

You sit upright. Something shifts. So... And even if you're... If you want to sit down to do something creative, even if you're sitting in a laid-back way, the moment your mind decides to do something creative, you find your body shifting. You sit upright. You hold your body and your breath shifts. When you hold your body upright, your breathing shifts and your retention shifts. So there's something that is in the posture. So he focuses on the posture. It's not about intellectual understanding. So you cannot have a preconceived idea about meditation and think that this is what it can be or this is what it should be and I should have this in my meditation today.

[09:53]

In my meditation, I'm going to do this and I'm going to practice this and I'm going to get here. So there's nowhere you can get. So that again is a conditioning of the mind. So Dogen Zenji is not talking about conditioning an already existing conditioned mind. He's not giving you a technique. It is not a psychological activity of thought or visualizations or intentions or perceptions. Nor is it a stimulation of the functions of the cerebral cortex, like reasoning or emotion or thought, memory, language, nothing like that. It has no focus on the head. Because we're in the head all the time. I, me, me, me, me. The world according to me. This is what I need. This is what I don't like. I like this. I don't like that.

[10:54]

So it's not about that. And again, for me, it brings me back to the roots of my tradition. Somehow, having practiced Zen for several years, I thought I was going to become a Zen person. But somehow, Zen has taken me down to my own roots of what I heard and taught from my first Zen master whose face I looked at when I was three years old. That's my traditional, the teacher that I studied with. So time and again, it goes back to that. But somehow, the old tradition and Zen seems to just blend so well that I'm able to find the bridge to reach that. So even oriental medicine, And even Ayurveda, interestingly, understand well-being as harmony among the internal organs.

[12:03]

So according to Ayurveda, the very definition of good health is... Excuse me for speaking Sanskrit again. So it goes like this. It says... This is from the Sushruta Samhita. It is an Ayurvedic text. So what does it mean? It says, Sama dosha, that is, there are three doshas in our body and the balance of that, the vata, pitta and kapha. Some of you may be familiar with that. So these are the three doshas in the body. So we are born with a particular dosha, balance of vata, pitta and kapha.

[13:10]

So that is called the prakriti, then we are born with it. And then when that goes out of balance, it's called as vikriti. So the definition, the very definition of good health is that your doshas have to be balanced, which is not the same balance for everyone. Each person has a balance of their own. You have a unique balancing of vata-pitta-katha. Because you are who you are, which is just unique to you. You cannot be like somebody else. So balance of the vatas. of the doshas, of the three doshas. And the balance of your digestive fire, that is, your digestion, assimilation and metabolism. So there is a balance that comes when you balance your vata, pitta, kapha. That's all in the body. And the tissues, the body tissues and components are called the dhatus.

[14:16]

So, That will be your blood, your muscle, your bone marrow, everything included. So there are seven thathus. And the balance of your excretory functions. So when there is balance in this, then your mind is pleasant and you feel contented. You feel a sense of contentment. So when your mind is contented, your senses are contented, and the spirit of energy in you is contented. So, he says that, Samadoshya, Samadhatu, Agnishya, Malak. Agni is the fire, so the fire is the fire of digestion, assimilation, metabolism. Malakriyaha, that is your excretory functions.

[15:19]

And also in the underuse and misuse of your senses also can create an imbalance according to Ayurveda. So all these actions of what we do is usually associated with the head and something merely... And when the mind is disturbed, it means there is some imbalance in the body. So they say that in the underuse or misuse of body, senses, mind, lies the root cause of disease, where the ease and joy are dis-eased. So that's what Dobhyam Zenji was just telling us, right?

[16:23]

He was just telling us Zazen is to sit upright in a stable posture and allow the breath to settle down, to calm down. To sit Zazen even in a confused state of mind. Even with that posture, just sit, simply sit. So when you settle down, your body will naturally sit upright. And breathing will start breathing you. So, and when that happens, you are no longer doing zazen. You are not doing zazen, but zazen is doing you at this point. If you settle down and without your narratives, without your controlling, you just effortlessly just sit. So this is not just on the cushion. It's on the cushion and outside the cushion. So you can carry your practice of Zen, of simply sitting, of simply being.

[17:29]

If you make it a practice to do this morning and evening, you find that your whole day is taken care of by your Zaza practice. So... You notice even in your mind when you have to make a decision, you see that Zazen is with you. Your practice of awareness is with you at that time. It brings the clarity and sensitivity and awareness of practice. So Thich Nhat Hanh goes on to say, meditation can help us embrace our worries, our fear, our anger, and that itself is healing. We let our own natural capacity of healing do the work. So which means in the midst of suffering from our emotional narratives and self-constructions, from greed, hate, delusion, that arise from the projections that our mind creates, and we are

[18:42]

sometimes even thrown up against the wall. And that's when we feel that we need some practice. We turn to some kind of practice to be liberated. And what are we getting liberated from? And from what do we need freedom from? From our own projections, from our own self-created projections. So when the body and mind are depleted, from self-created suffering, we have no other option. But firstly, to acknowledge that we are suffering, to accept that, yes, I am suffering, without denying it. You know, when an alcoholic has to give up alcohol, he or she has to first acknowledge that, yes, I need a solution, I need to find a way out of it. So without acknowledging, you cannot get anywhere. So Thich Nhat Hanh had this unique ability to bring Buddhist philosophy and practice of mindfulness and compassion.

[19:56]

He turned Buddhist practice into focusing mainly on compassion and mindfulness. He says meditation can help us embrace our worries, our fears, our anger and other toxic situations that we get into. Now, I've been studying with Tenshin Roshi for the last year, and he often says, can you bring compassion into your anger? Can you bring compassion into your fear? How can we do that? And then he says, he has a very unique way of saying, then you become an angry Buddha. or you become a fearful Buddha. So, Dogen Zaiji says, when we cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following after speech, then we learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate yourself.

[21:11]

body and mind of themselves will drop away and your original face will be manifest. So without using your own conditioned ideas of how you can set yourself in order, when you let, it's not actually letting go, it's actually not grasping. Not grasping onto anything. So then something else will take over. Your breath will breathe you and zazen will be doing zazen. Not you doing zazen. So Dovin Zenji's words resonate. The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It actually awakens the sensitivity of unveiling the humanness of a human being.

[22:17]

You become sensitivized to the humanness of being human, which means, like the Buddha used, according to Gil Fransdale, when Reverend Gil gave a talk at Tassahara, he spoke on just one word that the Buddha talked of mostly, and that was anukampa. He says the Buddha did not use the word karula, as we understand compassion. But he used, according to Gil Fronsdale, he says that the word anukampa has been used in most of his teachings. So anu means near. In Sanskrit, anu means near. Kampa means to feel the pulse. So when you're close to a person and when you feel the pulse of the person, there is a kind of empathy mixed with your compassion.

[23:19]

So that is anukampa. So, you know, when you're not stuck in your own narratives, then you feel the pulse of the other. And your pulse, you connect with the pulse of the other. With no idea of doing good or being good. It's not that I am being good, I am being compassionate. There's no me there. There's just compassion that flows from one person to the other. And that sensitivity is aroused by practice of Zen. There was somebody from Germany who came here in one of the summers, and she said that... She was practicing, she was looking to practice DBT. And I asked her, what is DBT? She says it's called dialectical behavior therapy. And they had packages of DBT in Germany.

[24:23]

And she said to do the course was very expensive. And so she felt that it was cheaper to reply herself to the United States and to practice then in the monastery here. So I said, oh, wow, that's interesting. She comes all the way to practice DBT by doing Zen. And then I reflected back and I said, oh, my life with my teacher was DBT. So the practice of Vedanta was DBT, dialectical behavior. I grew up listening to this word dialectical frame of mind, dialectical methodology. This is like a common thing that I grew up with. So I'd just like to end by telling you, is it time, Inasa? Yes. So I'll end with the story of my teacher. So he was in Las Vegas with his students.

[25:28]

His students, some of his students, one of his main students is Peter Oppenheimer, who was... He would travel with them a lot, so he's here with us today in the Sunday. So some of his students were traveling with him and they were walking in Las Vegas together. This was in the 70s. So the TV reporter found them and took them to the TV station. He said, he can view you and he took him there. And then they put all those lights and everything flashing on him. And then he said, what is it that binds you and your students together? He was expecting some reply of some religion or something spiritual. So he said, what is it that binds you and your students together?

[26:29]

He said, it's our love for avocados. So, he was my first Zen master. Thank you so much. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

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