This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Welcome to Green Dragon Zen Temple. This fine, misty, morning i think there might have been a little bit of confusion of whether the public talk was happening today because we're in a retreat so i'm glad you all made it and anyone online or elsewhere who didn't make it sorry There is a talk today, and this is it.

[01:04]

But we won't have our usual he afterwards because we're in a seshin, a zen retreat. of the people who've been sitting these past four days, it's the first Zen Sashin, and some of them have done many, and some of you just arriving today might have participated before in a Zen Sashin, and some of you maybe not, but you're welcome to in the future in any case, because this one's ending, but we'll have more. will always be more sessions. Hopefully, until the end of time, which is going to be a while.

[02:12]

Just to let you know, those who are just arriving a little bit, what session is like, so you can get in the mood with us who've been here. And for those who've been here, You might have forgotten everything up to the last moment. So I can let you know what it was like also. So this is four days of Sashin, so often they're longer, like seven days or five. But basically, by this time, we lose count of days anyway. So we just know that it's Sunday, so it must be ending. As we dream of the stars in the night sky, suddenly at 4.30 in the morning, a bell starts ringing.

[03:22]

A hand bell. Somebody runs all around the grounds of the temple ringing this hand bell. And the dreams dissolve into... a world of zazen. So we pull ourselves out of bed and like a big funnel, we all step in there and it funnels us all through this door into this room. And we take our seats in the dim light of dawn and uh arrange ourselves somewhat like pretzels and we sit upright and silently usually for 40 minutes or 30 minutes and uh

[04:37]

I have the great privilege of being able to sit facing out, facing the room. Most of the assembly sits facing the wall to celebrate Bodhidharma's practice of just sitting facing the wall of his cave year after year because there's nothing happening on the wall. It's a nice thing to face. So I get to face some stuff happening, which is... watching you all facing the wall, and it's awesome. It's an awesome sight when the room is full of people sitting upright, pretzel-like legs and upright bodies, and very still. Sometimes people come to me and they say, like, I can't stop moving in Zazen, but I think that's like close up, you feel like you're moving. But from my view, everybody's totally still. just that in itself, even if your minds are moving a lot.

[05:41]

It's awesome to watch a room full of people sitting very still, hour after hour, day after day. It takes great devotion to sit like this. And after 30 or 40 minutes, a bell rings, and then we do walking meditation, yin yin. And It's very slow walking, a big circle on each side of the zendo. Almost like a slight breeze in at morning dawn, the slow circles of practitioners drift around the zendo until more bells ring and we sit back down. And then we get up and we turn up the lights and we recite the sutras.

[06:44]

We join our voices in wholehearted chanting. It's also awesome to have a group of people wholeheartedly chanting the words of the Buddhas and Zen ancestors. Expressing the ancient teachings with our present voices, and then dedicating the merit of our chanting to all the Buddhas, offering incense and flowers and light and the merit of our chanting. And after doing that for a while, then we go have some breakfast, But it's not just an ordinary breakfast. We eat in the Zen style with Oriyoki bowls. Oriyoki means just the right amount bowls.

[07:54]

And they're called that because we always get just the right amount of breakfast. Sometimes it's a little, sometimes it's a lot. It's always just the right amount. And we recite more names of Buddhas during the breakfast serving, and otherwise it's silent meal. And some people feel like it maybe goes too fast. But it's more like it's actually just the right speed. Roryoki. Once we get used to it, it's ideally not rushed. But it's also, since we're not talking, there's nothing else to do but shovel food into our... So that's what we do. We don't take lots of gaps and just kind of sit there in between. We eat, we eat, we eat, and when we're done, water is served and we wash the bowls.

[08:57]

We wash just the right amount of bowls with just the right amount of water. And then... We offer a little bit of that water to any hungry spirits who've been lurking around the edges of the dining hall so that everybody, even they, get just the right amount. And we have a little rest. I almost said break, but we don't call it break. We don't have any breaks in Sashin, but we can rest our bodies. a little while until the bell rings again to come back for zazen and it continues like this zazen chanting eating just the right amount rests we have uh 10 periods of zazen throughout the day and and uh then it ends at nine and then uh

[10:06]

Some of us can't get enough. We even come back into the Zen though with the lights really low and sit some more kind of informally into the night. And we also, we have meetings, one-on-one meetings. I've met with maybe most of the people in Sashin and it's been delightful. discussing practice and dharma with you all. It's a lot of talking from my side. From your side, it's a little bit. My side, it's a lot, but I really do enjoy it because it's all about dharma. It's all about practice. That's why I like to come back afterwards and sit a little bit because just rest in the silence. all these words.

[11:07]

And we have talks like this too every day. And that's a little portrait of Sashin life. And I think most people find it challenging and wonderful and mysterious to sit that much. It's usually physically challenging to sit so much. But we often come back for more to do it again. Because sashin means to gather the mind. And our mind gets kind of scattered in daily life. So it's a time to really settle and gather it back together into this spacious space. One moment of zazen could be one moment of spacious presence, but we do it all day for some days.

[12:21]

We can really appreciate that spacious presence even more. And this particular session, we've been exploring a little bit. Platform Sutra of the Sixth Ancestor of Zen. One of the very early Zen teachings in China. Sixth Ancestor of the Zen lineage in China. Bodhidharma was the first ancestor who brought so-called Zen from India to China. And six generations later, this teacher appeared whose words were recorded in what we call the Platform Sutra, because he sat on a platform to teach it. And it's one of the great classics of Zen. It almost like defines the style of our Dharma gate, our lineage of Zen.

[13:28]

And all the Zen lineages from then on, through China and Korea, Japan, America, and Europe, they all sprout forth from the sixth ancestor. So... This is kind of like the style of Zen. And it can get expressed in many ways, but this is like the original way of expressing it. And there's a lot of talk in this platform sutra about Zazen. And that's one nice reason to... Take it up and look at it during Sashin because there's a lot of Zazen. And there's some sections that are really specifically about Zazen. And I'd like to share one of them with you today. This is very specifically about Zazen.

[14:33]

The sixth ancestor way known. while sitting on a platform. What do we mean in our school or our Dharma gate? This Zen is, I think he's implying that his Zen lineage is a particular Dharma gate. And Dharma gates are boundless. There's many, many of them. But the Zen gate is the one that he's speaking of. Dharma means It's a gateway to truth. And what do we mean in this Dharma gate of ours? By this word Zazen. He says. So he's going to define the term Zazen. And for those of you who've been here.

[15:36]

We have a schedule posted outside with all the daily schedule, all those things I mentioned. And over and over again, it says Zazen. And it has some time on it. And then it says Kinying, the walking meditation. Then it says Zazen. And I don't know why, but it's a longstanding Green Girls tradition that for some reason on the schedule, Zazen is capitalized. You notice that? All the other words are lowercase. But Zazen is the only thing in capital letters. I guess it's our lineage Dharmagate to capitalize Zazen. I think it's actually kind of cool. I don't know the origin. I think it's kind of maybe making the point that like... There's some other things, like there's breakfast and lunch and stuff on the schedule, but the important thing is zazen.

[16:42]

In case we miss it. Or if we're looking for lunch on the schedule, all we see is zazen! Lunch is written really small. So... You might be wondering whether you've been sitting here for four days or for 30 years or for a few minutes. You might be wondering, what is this zazen, this capitalized thing we're supposed to be doing on the schedule? The sixth ancestor will now tell us. In our Dharma gate, what do we mean by zazen? Maybe before I read his answer, I'll tell you, literally, it's a Japanese term, right? Zazen, it's two characters. Za means to sit.

[17:45]

Sitting. Some of you are sitting on this fluffy thing called a zafu. It's a sitting cushion. And underneath the zafu is a zabutan. It's a sitting futan. So za means sitting, literally. And zen is a Japanese way of saying dhyana. It's a transliteration of a Sanskrit term, dhyana, which often, if we had it translated into one word, it's often translated as meditation. meditation presence but uh in the Chinese characters they don't um try to find a character that means meditation there's a character that just means zen um so it uh

[19:02]

It's hard to define that one. That's why the six ancestors are going to do it for us now. So Zazen, we often say sitting meditation, but here's how he's going to say it. What do we mean by Zazen in this school of Zen? Zah, or sitting, means to not be obstructed by anything. And not to activate thoughts about objects or the objective world. That's what la or sitting means. Sitting means to not be obstructed by anything and to not activate thoughts about the world of objects. objects uh is kind of zen word for uh that which is which the mind it uh knows particularly that which a subject knows a subject relates to objects a subject knows objects so if there's a subject like me or you a subject like a person

[20:31]

that knows objects like colors and sounds and feelings and bodily sensations and emotions and thoughts. Those are objects of mind because the mind knows them. Subjective mind knows these objective experiences. But if there's a sense that There's a subject that knows these objects as something external to itself. That's what we call duality. We call split mind. A mind that seems to be divided into a knowing subject and a known world of objects. So in this case, the sixth ancestor of Zen says, what is Zazen? Well, za, he breaks it into two halves.

[21:32]

Za, or sitting, means not to be obstructed by anything, not to be obstructed, obscured, blocked by anything externally, and not to activate thoughts about objects. So we do see and hear and think about objects. there's that kind of setup in our mind, but something about this activating thoughts, activating more thoughts about objects, not getting really involved in objects, the objective world, not, as the ancestor said earlier in this treatise, he said, encouraged us not to think about thoughts, is one way he said it, or not to think even while involved in thinking, which is kind of like we're not trying to stop our thinking, but we're not activating more thoughts on top of the thinking or about the thinking.

[22:48]

Or another way to say it, I mentioned the other day, is not reifying thoughts. Reify means to attribute more reality to something than it actually has. So there can be thoughts flowing through mind and then activating thoughts on top of that is kind of not sitting according to the ancestor or reifying thoughts to unconsciously usually attribute more reality to them than they have because what they are is just thoughts. But what we usually do is attribute more reality to them than they have. We predict more solidity and validity

[23:54]

onto our just flowing thoughts, the stuff that the mind is churning up. Instead of just letting it flow through, we solidify it, reify it. And for some reason, I thought of this story recently that I heard a long time ago, and I don't remember where I heard it. But It made me smile when I thought of this story, so I'll tell it to you. I don't know if it's a true story or not. It's kind of about this point. Once upon a time, there was a woman on a Sunday, so she was free from work that day, and her friend had given her a bag of her favorite cookies.

[24:56]

So she's apt to relax on Sunday. I'm going to take my favorite cookies here and go to the cafe and get a cup of coffee and read the morning paper. What a delightful thing to do on a Sunday morning. So that's what she did. She went into the crowded cafe and got a cup of coffee and the daily paper. sat down at the counter and had a sip of coffee and picked up one of her favorite cookies and ate it and started reading the paper. And then a little while later, the person next to her at the counter also had a cup of coffee and a paper. And while he was reading the paper, he just kind of reached over and to her bag of cookies and picked one up and ate it. And she thought, huh.

[25:59]

That's kind of a word of him. It's kind of strange, but okay. Kept drinking her coffee and reading the paper. Have another cookie. So good. And then after she had that cookie, he While still reading his paper without talking to her or anything, he just reached over and also picked up a cookie and ate it. And now she thought, wow, again? This is pretty weird. But I'll just see what happens. So every time she picked up a cookie and ate it, just afterwards he would pick one up and eat it too. And now she started to kind of get annoyed because these are her favorite cookies given by her friend. And he didn't even ask her. She might have given him one if he asked, but he's just taking them without saying anything about it.

[27:03]

So it keeps going like that until actually there's only one cookie left. And the sky next to her reaches out. picks up the cookie while still reading the paper, breaks it in half, eats half of it and kind of slides the other half over to her. And at this point, she's just like actually really kind of upset. This is so rude. And like, I don't even want the other half. She picks up her paper and coffee without ever saying anything to him and just goes, leaves. I'm done with this. And I'm so like, people are like, crazy and annoying. And so she gets in her car, totally annoyed, and she reaches into her purse to get her car key, and she sees this bag of cookies that her friend gave her. They look just like the same ones that

[28:16]

She was eating. Oh. Those weren't her cookies. He happened to have the same cookies at the table. They were his cookies. And he was just like letting her eat them without saying anything about it. He didn't even seem to be so upset. Not only that, he even like shared his last cookie with her. So of course she felt very embarrassed and humbled and saw that she had just assumed that her thoughts were true. She had reified her thoughts unconsciously. That's what we do. We just assume everything we're thinking is true. And it actually...

[29:18]

caused a lot of upset too. There were good reasons for assuming it was true, but it wasn't. So I just really enjoy that story about reification of thought. So in Zen, we can remember this kind of example of like let's be careful not to assume anything completely and because it's painful to reify stories and it gets us into trouble and then we go even further and we say not only do we have stories about like you know I'm a bad person or they're a bad person or I'm a good person or they're a good person but we explore more and more subtle stories like I'm a person.

[30:24]

They're a person. Even that is kind of a story in our Dharma gate where we're up for questioning all stories. What do you mean? Of course I'm a person. Well, let's not assume this tentatively. We, call each other people, but, um, what is a person anyway? Like a thing. It's a, it's a, it's a body. Well, there is a body, it seems like here, but, um, but, uh, is that really who I am? Is that really what a person is? They're not just a body. Oh, is there a mind? They're not just a mind. This is a body. And what is a body? Is it really such a thing as a body? So these are like subtle kinds of thoughts that we reify. So in this case, the ancestors saying, what is zazen?

[31:35]

Za, or sitting, is to not be obstructed by anything and not to activate thoughts about objects. So sitting means to not add extra thoughts about the thoughts of our objects. We might say not to reify the thoughts, but let them flow through. Just see thoughts as like a kind of river flowing through this space of essence. They don't actually obstruct the space of presence when they're just flowing through. But when we start to reify them, they do almost kind of like dam up the presence. Kind of obstruct it more and more so we lose touch with this presence. So that's a little bit about what za or sitting is.

[32:38]

What about zen? Zazen. So... If sitting is not to be obstructed by anything and not to activate thoughts about objects, Zen means to see original nature without being confused. This is a Zen center, a Zen temple. So if someone were to ask you, what is Zen anyway? You could say we're the sixth ancestor of Zen who kind of defined early Zen. He said Zen is to see original nature or foundational nature, the basic nature without being confused.

[33:42]

And when we hear nature in zen it's usually referring to buddha nature the nature of reality itself original nature before um before human nature was thought up original nature before any thinking originally even before our parrots were born, original nature, and to see our original nature. So to see nature is, in Japanese, this term Kensho, and here, original is added in there, see original nature, Kensho, but this term Kensho is strewn throughout, this platform sutra of our Dharma gate, and yet our Japanese lineage founder, Dogen Zenji, as I mentioned the other day, really didn't like this term, seeing nature, Kenjo.

[35:00]

And maybe partly the reason he didn't like it, even though his ancestor, his sixth ancestor, liked it, is because... they might confuse us into thinking that this nature, this Buddha nature, our original nature is something that we can like see. But it's just, it's not really something we can see. Or we could say what we mean by seeing our nature is seeing that our nature cannot be seen. And maybe that's too complicated. Dogen's like, let's not even say see nature, because people might not assume that seeing nature means seeing that it can't be seen. But I would propose that's what it means. Our original nature is this spacious, present openness.

[36:05]

It's invisible. It can't be seen. Everything that appears within our nature, this spacious presence, everything that appears within it, or the visual things that appear within it, can be seen. And the sounds that appear within it can be heard. And the bodily sensations that appear within it can be felt. And the thoughts that appear within it can be known. But the space, The bright, aware, knowing space of presence in which all these experiences appear, that one cannot be seen and it cannot be heard and it cannot be tasted and it cannot be felt and it cannot even really be thought of.

[37:07]

We're kind of thinking about it a little bit now, but these thoughts don't really reach what it is. well then, it's not anything. Then we're not talking about anything. It must be nothing if you can't see it or hear it or anything. But it's actually, to say it's nothing goes too far, doesn't it? Because we are present and aware and alive, aren't we? It's not nothing. This is certainly not nothing. But what is it? Well, we can't see it. So we know that we are present and aware right now. And we also know that we don't know what it is. We know that we can't see it. We can't deny it, but we can't get a hold of it.

[38:11]

Isn't it like that? We're just talking about our ordinary. ordinary, present being right now. This spacious awareness in which all our experience is happening. We can know all the experiences, all the content. We know it and we try to get a hold of the content and we engage with the content. But the space in which it's happening, we usually neglect it. We don't notice it. because it can't be noticed, it can't be seen, yet it can't be denied either. It might sound paradoxical to say, but isn't it so that the space of presence cannot be found, cannot be found as another objective thing, but also it can't be lost? That's the kind of thing our original nature is.

[39:17]

That which can't be found, but also can't be lost. It's always here. Is it not? If we're alive, that's the proof that there is a present, open, knowing space in which our experience appears. So Zen is to see this original nature. And then I would add in the footnote in parentheses. To see our original nature means to see that our original nature cannot be seen. And then a little sub-footnote. It cannot be seen, but it cannot be denied either, right? because here we are. So, that's what the six ancestors says.

[40:26]

What do we mean by Zazen? Zah, sitting, is to not be obstructed by anything, not to activate thoughts about external objective experiences. And Zen means to see our original nature without being confused about it. So sitting is not to, um, is not to reify the content of the spacious knowing. And, uh, Zen is to just appreciate the spacious knowing. At the same time, if we combine them, that's called Zazen. So, if you might have been wondering what Zazen was, that's what it is.

[41:44]

Thank you for listening to this podcast. offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[42:16]

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