This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. How's the audio? Can you hear me okay? More up? Good, okay. Welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. Is there anybody here for the first time? One, two, three. Welcome to you. So today we're having a one-day sitting. So for those who are not familiar with the one-day sitting, we started sitting at 5.30 this morning and we'll sit until

[01:01]

6 o'clock tonight with a little interruption for some work in the afternoon. And this is about the midpoint of our practice period, which is an intensive period of practice, or a period in which we try to intensify our practice. And usually each practice period has a theme, and the theme of this practice period is... the harmony of difference and equality. Difference being, you know, all the many different things in the world and the way we discriminate about them. And equality meaning sameness, oneness, the absolute, and how do we harmonize these two things. Suzuki Roshi put it, The many and the one are different ways of describing one whole being.

[02:03]

That's San and Do. San, many, and Do, one. And Kai is the relationship between one great whole being. That's Do and the many facets of that one whole being. Kai means to shake hands. You have a feeling of friendship. One whole being and many things are good friends. So... So we have a friendly relationship between the many different aspects of our life and a feeling of oneness in our life. So the first, I'm going to try to weave a couple of things together today. The first two lines of the Sando Kai, that is the harmony of difference and equality, goes, the mind of the great sage of India is intimately transmitted by from west to east. The mind of the great sage of India, the great sage of India is Buddha.

[03:06]

Buddha's mind is intimately transmitted from west to east. And Suzuki Rishi had a comment on that that I thought was wonderful. He says, the mind of the great sage of India, that is Buddha's big mind that includes everything. The mind we have when we practice zazen is the great mind. We don't try to see anything. We stop conceptual thinking. We stop emotional activity. We just sit. Whatever happens to us, we are not bothered. We just sit. It is like something happening in the great sky. Whatever kind of bird flies through it, the sky doesn't care. That is the mind transmitted from Buddha to us. Everybody got that? That's what you're doing today. What did he just say? He said it tried. We just sit. We're not doing anything.

[04:07]

We're just sitting. Whatever happens to us, we are not bothered. We just sit. It is like something happening in the great sky. Isn't that a beautiful image? The great sky. Whatever kind of bird flies through it, the sky doesn't care. Whatever... idea comes into your head, whatever sound happens out on the streets, whatever irritating activity occurs with your next door neighbor on the zendo, we don't care. It's just like a bird flying through the great sky. That is the mind transmitted from Buddha to us. So, of course, the great sky is a metaphor for emptiness or oneness. When we feel completely calm and connected to everything, then whatever happens is just part of who we are already.

[05:12]

I mean, during most of our daily activities, we're so busy with the many things of our life that we have no time to sense that oneness, our inner connection with the bigger self. In sitting, we get a sense that the limited life we are living is a reflection of something much bigger. The limited life we are living is a reflection of something much bigger. Sometimes when you're sitting, your senses may quiet down enough that you actually can see or hear with a kind of clarity. All of you who have sat have had that experience where all of a sudden you're just looking at something and it's just... wow, it's so beautiful the way the light's coming through the window and hitting the floor there. Just the most ordinary kind of thing. Wow, that sound of that car driving by is really something. It's because you've connected, you're sitting in a space that's bigger and quieter than your usual place, something mysterious.

[06:20]

And it's that connection of our many activities, these things we notice and discriminate with a bigger, quieter space, that's the Sando Kai, the harmonizing of that. So the image of the bird in the sky is so wonderful. We love watching a soaring bird in the sky, an eagle. Somehow when we have that thought going through our head, it doesn't seem quite the same. does it? Oh, that beautiful thought going through my head against the backdrop of my sky, my empty mind. It doesn't work that way. Why do you think that is? Just curious. I mean, why wouldn't a human thought? I mean, my God, my goodness. Human beings are marvelous. Birds that are flying through the sky, I don't think they have those thoughts going through their heads.

[07:25]

So our thoughts are quite marvelous things, extraordinary things, probably invented only in the last, I don't know, somebody in this crowd probably could give me a date for that when human beings came up with speech and thinking. So I don't think we should take our thinking so casually. We should maybe appreciate it like the bird flying through the side. So I thought I would reflect a little bit on that line that I read you earlier where Suzuki Risha said, we stop conceptual thinking. Well, Suzuki Risha doesn't mean we stop conceptual thinking. We don't stop our thinking. Our thinking is something that goes on. It's what is our approach to our thinking? And so I thought I would use a classic koan, a little interchange between a monk and a teacher to explore this a little bit. So Shurdu, who was the author of the Sando Kai, the poem we've been studying, his main disciple was Yaoshan.

[08:26]

So this is a story of Yaoshan and a monk. So Yaoshan was sitting, and a monk asked him, in steadfast sitting, what do you think? It's a good question, isn't it? to his end master. In steadfast thinking, what do you think? I'm curious. Aren't you? What the old master, Yao Shan, the disciple of Shurdu said? Actually, did I say it right? In steadfast sitting, what do you think? Did I say steadfast thinking? Sitting? Isn't that a beautiful word? Steadfast sitting? We're not just sitting here, we're steadfastly sitting here. And there's something about that that's good. You have a kind of capacity to endure anything when you're sitting steadfastly. It means you've made up your mind to sit there and accept whatever's happening.

[09:32]

So a monk asked him, in steadfast sitting, what do you think? And Yao Shan said, think not thinking. Somehow that wasn't exactly clear to the monk. So he had a follow-up question, which was, how do you think not thinking? Okay, how do you do it? Yashon replied, non-thinking. There we have it. This is a fundamental instruction in Zazen. about thoughts and thinking. Dogen loved this koan so much. Dogen was the founder of Soto Zen in Japan. Yaoshan was 8th century China. Dogen was 13th century Japan. Dogen loved this saying so much. He used it in his fukan zazengi, which was his instruction recommending zazen to all people, and he used it in the point of zazen.

[10:42]

So he used this saying in several places as a... informative comment on what you do when you're sitting in steadfast sitting. Well, so there's three words here. Thinking, not thinking, and non-thinking. So let's see if we can deconstruct this a little bit. Thinking. We do know what thinking is. We all spend a lot of time thinking, observing our thinking. It's the exercise of our mental facilities, the mind. problem solving, moving toward a goal. So, of course, one of the things to observe in this regular thinking we do is we're moving towards a goal a lot of the time. What's propelling our thinking? You. Most of the time, it's you. You're propelling your thinking. You're saying, well, I've got to solve this problem.

[11:43]

I've got to think on this. So... So this is an activity of you being here propelling your thinking. Now, there is a lot of times thinking just seems to be going on without our control, but we'll talk about that a little bit later. But this aspect of thinking where you are propelling it, and to be very clear about that, a lot of the time the kind of thinking you're doing is not just problem-solving, but it's also criticizing yourself. You are criticizing yourself. Or you are involved in a story, a marvelous kind of movie in your mind about you. You're usually the starring role in that movie. And some other players, maybe some players that you're not so happy with or some players that you like. There's a lot of activity that goes in the mind that centers around you. And that's one of the hooks in...

[12:45]

in our thinking that drives it. It's a kind of a self-concern. Anyway, that's just a comment to make about that. So we all know what thinking is. And I think one of the comments about thinking is we also should observe there's a fair amount of suffering that flows from our thinking. This is obvious, right? I don't need to explain that at all. So what's not thinking? Not thinking is when you don't think, when there's no activity going on, no thinking activity happening. This doesn't happen very often, but sometimes in zazen it happens, and sometimes when you're very concentrated in zazen, you can be at a place where no thoughts come up, and it's kind of a luxury, because we're tired of the incessant thinking that goes on.

[13:47]

Our thinking is a very exhausting activity, so it's kind of nice to have none of it going on. And sometimes it can be kind of seductive. Sometimes people really crave after that. But there's a kind of denying life in that not thinking. So, Yaushin's not saying, don't think. He says non-thinking. And non-thinking from English is kind of very close to not-thinking, but the way he's talking about it here and the way Dogen interprets it and the way we usually interpret it is non-thinking is essentially both thinking and not-thinking put together. The merging of thinking and non-thinking. The essence of thinking and non-thinking. And this is our basic Zazen instruction. When a thought arises, be aware of it but just don't pursue it. That's what we all were taught when we did zazen instruction.

[14:49]

So don't put any energy into it. Let it come in, let it go out. That's non-thinking. Or as Suzuki Roshi used to say, if a thought comes in, welcome it, but don't invite it to stay for tea. Okay, it's great. Thanks for dropping by. So you just appreciate the thoughts as they come up as they are. It's a kind of thinking that goes with the flow of life. You're not denying your thinking mind. That's what minds do. They think. Just like ears hear and eyes see. So it's a kind of giving up that ego-driven feeling self-centered version of your thinking. You just let the thoughts come in.

[15:51]

You don't grab onto it. You don't make it yours. We let it be free. It's a way of being in our lives without thinking or not thinking. Letting things unfold without grasping or denying them. It's not so complicated, is it? Seems pretty straightforward. Just be there. Now, of course, we know that sometimes we just compulsively can't stop incessant thinking about a problem we have because we have a problem that is significantly occupying our mind and life. So we don't just go, oh, that's a thought, and then... Let it drop. We go, oh, that's a thought. And boy, I really got to fix that. And it's really important. And on and on it goes. And that's okay. Because if that's where your life is today, that's what's happening with your life today, then be with it.

[16:58]

Sit with it. Be aware of what's going on in your mind and in your emotional life and in your body with that. You may not solve the issue you're trying to solve. Probably you won't, because most likely that's an issue that has something to do with something in the outside world. And you may not even be that much clearer about how to deal with it when you get back outside of this temple today. But you'll feel somehow steadier and more grounded in relation to that problem for having sat here today. for having spent some time with a vast sky, having let a little bit of the vast sky surround that problem that is constricting you and making you so small. You'll remember that you are really sitting in a vast sky of life and that you are much bigger than that problem, and that will help.

[18:09]

Giroshi goes on, he says, we observe things without saying good or bad. We just sit. We enjoy things, but we have no special attachment to them. We have full appreciation of them at this time. That's all. So let's even fully appreciate our mind as it's spinning along. He says, After Zazen, we say, this is after we get through Zazen, we say, well, this is Zazen in the morning. After we finish Zazen, we say, oh, good morning. So we say, after you finish Zazen tonight, you can say, oh, good evening. And that way, one after another, things will happen to us and we can fully appreciate them. That is the mind transmitted from Buddha and that is the way we practice Zazen. It's very nice. sit quietly in the big sky. We finish with our sitting and we say good evening and go on with our life.

[19:22]

As usual now I get to the part of the speech I was supposed to give that I wrote. That was my brief introduction of course which took Whatever. 25 minutes. So this is two lines from about the middle of the Sandokai. Sights vary in quality and form. Sounds differ as pleasing and harsh. Refined and common speech come together in the dark. Clear and murky phrases are distinguished in the light. So... This is a quote from Suzuki Roshi. Everything has its own nature and form, and when you hear a voice, it is either agreeable or disagreeable. Here, the Sandokai is talking about sights and sounds, but the same is true of all the senses as well as the mind. There are good and bad tastes, good and bad feelings, agreeable and disagreeable ideas.

[20:41]

It is our attachment to them that creates suffering. When you hear something good, you will enjoy it, and when you hear something bad, you will be annoyed or disturbed. But if you understand reality completely, you will not be bothered by things. That's pretty much the way it is, right? Pretty much almost anything that comes up either seems agreeable or disagreeable. A sound, a sight, a thought in the mind. especially those thoughts in the mind. Even the food sometimes, even the great food we have here, sometimes you think, well, it may be a little too salty, or oh, I took too much, I won't be able to finish it in time. So, this is the incessant activity. But, if you understand reality completely, you will not be bothered by things. This is the promise Suzuki Roshi is putting forward, you will not be bothered by all of this.

[21:42]

By reality, he's talking about the sandokai, the merging of emptiness or the absolute with the relative that's bothering you. If you understand all of this as part of something much bigger, you will not be as disturbed by it. And he brings forward this famous koan. This is the second koan for today. We're lucky, we get two koans. This one's much easier. The monk asked Dengshan, when heat and cold come, how can we avoid them? That's pretty straightforward. It's too hot. What do I do about it? And it's too cold. What do I do about it? And Dengshan said, why don't you go to the place where there is no heat or cold? It's pretty straightforward. The monk said, what is the place where there is no heat or cold? And Dengshan said, When it's hot, the heat kills you.

[22:47]

When it's cold, the cold kills you. That's that twist. You weren't exactly expecting that, were you? Dengshan was a good guy. He was the founder of our Soto sect in China, and he was the grandson of Yaoxin. So we've got Sirtu, Yaoxin, Yunyan, and then Dengshan. So we've got several stories from that same general area of Zen. This is a great story. Well, when heat comes and cold come, how do we avoid them? We want to avoid the discomfort. We're not just talking about hot and cold. We're talking about emotional discomfort, all kinds of discomfort. This is generally following that line of all the things that are disagreeable to us.

[23:48]

What do we do with them? And Dung Chan said, why don't you go to the place where there is no heat or cold? So what is that place? Do we go to a numb place? I'm just going to sit here in Zazen and numb myself out. Do I go to a distracted place? I'm annoyed enough by this. thing that's going on, this pain in my knee, this thought in my head. I think I'll just daydream for about 20 minutes. I've got a really good movie I could star in. Well, that's maybe a place you can go where there's no heat and no cold or where there's pain, but no, that doesn't really work. We know that doesn't work. That's some version of procrastination. No, I think what I'll do is I'll go to a bliss state. I'll just bliss out. And maybe if you can do that, that's okay, but usually that's not so easy to do and isn't where Dungshan is heading.

[24:53]

Dungshan said, when it's hot, the heat kills you. When it's cold, the cold kills you. So Suzuki Roshi's comment on that is to kill pain or cold means to become one with it. To kill heat or cold, to become one with it. You should become one with your pain. He was referring to the pain we have in our sitting. Your body pain. You should become one with your suffering. That's how to kill... He actually does it more sort of poetically. You should become cold Buddha or hot Buddha. That is a nicer feeling. That means that, you know, when you're becoming one with your, when you're becoming suffering Buddha, you're not just suffering, but you're suffering as Buddha.

[26:01]

You're suffering with a depth and breadth and great mind of Buddha. When you're suffering with a great mind of Buddha, you understand suffering at its core You understand suffering isn't just a matter of you suffering. Suffering is something you share with everybody. And when you know suffering in that way, you can actually be helpful to people. I think the drama of suffering This is mostly the idea of killing has a dramatic element to it, but it also points up when you're actually one with something, if you're one with the cold, you're not outside of yourself observing how cold you are anymore. You're just coldness. When you're one with your suffering, you're not standing outside of yourself observing your suffering, or mostly usually complaining about your suffering.

[27:07]

unmaking up a long story and reason about why you're suffering. You're just feeling it. So in some sense, you have killed that observer, that person that's separating yourself from your experience of life. You're not limiting yourself your life by your preferences and desires for it to be one way or another. And this is really an example of preferences. I would prefer it not to be cold. I would prefer this thing versus that thing. I would prefer my life to be just a little bit different than the way it is right now. It's pretty good, but if it could just be a little bit different, then I would be fine.

[28:10]

Then I could be a great Zen student. If I didn't have this cold, if I didn't have various other things that are going on, then I could be okay. But those preferences are really limiting for us, and life is much bigger than those preferences. So we should hold them more lightly. Nothing wrong with all these desires and preferences. It's the energy of our life. Our life energy pushes us forward. The problem is not so much that we desire something. The problem is that when we don't get what we desire, we get upset. If we could just enjoy whatever the energy of our desire led us to, we'd be in much better shape. Usually it almost always never turns out to be what you desire. It almost always turns out to be something different.

[29:12]

And that something different, if we could appreciate it, is usually something very useful. I have many stories I could tell about things I imagined and hoped for that didn't turn out the way I'd hoped they would. And then when I faced what really turned out, it was much better and turned out to be a wonderful new direction for my life to go. But I'll summarize all those stories in a famous saying by the Dalai Lama, which we can all know is something we can take to the bank. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. Quote, unquote, the Dalai Lama. So this is one of those wonderful koans that's fairly easy to understand and quite difficult to do.

[30:36]

So that's why we are sitting zazen today, is to find the present moment of our being and sit in it, the true ground of ourself, and practice. Practice with these preferences that come up throughout the day. It's a lifetime practice. So I think I do need to say something about the fact that sometimes you need to change what's going on. You know, I mean, it's one thing, yeah, if it's cold, maybe you need to put a jacket on so you don't catch a cold. If it's hot, maybe you need to move under the shade of a tree. So this instruction of dungshans does not mean that you don't act. It means that if you experience where you are completely, you'll know how to act better than if you don't.

[31:39]

If you really feel how cold you are, you'll know how big a coat to put on or what to do. A lot of times when we have a problem and we want to solve it, we do it from the head. And this is an instruction that says, oh, don't just think about solving the problem. I mean, you can think about it. That's part of it. But really enter deeply into the problem. Feel it. Experience it. Stand in the ground of your being with that problem. And from there, you will know how to act. And you might have to do something dramatic. wrote something down there. We can make a choice. Every moment is a moment of appreciation and acceptance and also a moment of choice.

[32:43]

We accept, embrace, and go forward. It's a much better way to go forward than to resist and complain. So, oh, we get a third koan. This is our lucky three koan day for our sashin. Because obviously in the commentary on the koan of no heat and no cold, there were several other koans, because that's the way they do these things in the book. A monk asked, Sui Wei, what is the meaning of the patriarch coming from the West? This is one of the most famous questions that's always asked of a teacher. What is the meaning of the patriarch coming from the West? What is the meaning of Zen? And the way he said, when no one comes, I will tell you. And then went to the garden. It's like you walk up to some Suzuki Roshi here and you say, what's the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the west?

[33:45]

And he walks out into the courtyard. He says, when no one comes, I will tell you. And then walks into the courtyard. And the monk followed him in the garden and said, there is no one right here. Please, teacher, tell me. So this is obviously an accomplished monk. He said, I've dropped myself. I've let myself go. I'm not here anymore. I'm present with you. Wei pointed to the bamboo and said, this stock is so tall and that stock is so short. Well, obviously with that answer, the monk was suddenly enlightened. I mean, we do have to end these with an enlightenment story, right? Being no one, being willing to live with full engagement wherever you are does not mean you lose track of what is good and bad. In the present moment of being alive, there is a truth.

[34:48]

We know this is ethical and this is not. These are the necessary judgments and our guideposts for going forward. I mean, there's a big difference between needing long bamboo and short bamboo depending on the job. We know that. Of course, we don't have to be too dramatic about it and say, you know, evil... sinner bamboo and righteous bamboo. We just choose the right bamboo for the job. And having that kind of centeredness when you make your decisions is a way of kindness and empathy and acceptance. The last two lines of the Sandokai are refined in common speech, come together in the dark.

[35:54]

Clear and murky phrases are distinguished in the light, and we are not going to get to that today. These are basically a couple of lines that talk about the fact that words can be very confusing. We shouldn't get too hung up on them. a comment that a lot of your thoughts in your minds are problematic. Hmm. You know, life is a great mystery.

[36:55]

Being a human being is an incredible gift. Taking the time today to actually feel and experience what the meaning of your life is, what the meaning of this unusual practice is, is a wonderful thing. I encourage you all, take care of yourself and take this valuable time and explore who you are. Thank you very much. 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, please visit sfzc.org. and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[37:58]

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