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. Wonderful to see you all. Some familiar faces and many faces that I'm seeing for the first time. Thank you all for being here. I am giving a talk here this morning at Beginner's Mind Temple for the first time. And it's my first time back here in, I think, a few years, certainly prior to the reopening. On this Labor Day weekend, I'd like to acknowledge all of the labor the work that went into the beautiful remodeling of this building, all of the trades, all of the planners, the drafting, the fundraising, the residents who carried everything out in order for the construction to take place and brought it all back in.

[01:24]

It occurred to me when I was reflecting on this that life is labor, beginning with our mothers laboring to bring us into this life. We do depend on so many varieties of labor for our lives, for our needs, as well as for our comforts. to say nothing of our lifestyles. So this is my homage to Labor Day this morning, and really every day is a good day to pay homage to the labor upon which our lives depend. I would like to thank Tonto Tim Wicks and Abbot David for inviting me and supporting me to be here. I know neither of them were able to be present this morning. but I thank them nonetheless.

[02:27]

They are with me. And for those of you who don't know who I am, my name's Kristen, and I have practiced, I was just redoing the math, residentially at San Francisco Zen Center for 10 of the last 12 years. I began my residential practice here in this temple. in I believe it was February 4th of 2014 and I've spent seven years of my residential practice at Green Gulch Farm or Green Dragon Temple. I've practiced at all three centers. Most recently I returned from Tassajara. I left residential practice for two years in the summer of 2022 and then returned for a year and I have left once again for what we tend to broadly call householder life or sometimes we say returning to the marketplace with gift-bestowing hands.

[03:37]

And I'm living out in the countryside right now, very close to the land, so returning to the marketplace doesn't feel so fitting. However, I have been going back and forth from city to countryside and So I feel the country with me when I'm here in the city, and I feel the flow of life still internalized when I return to the countryside. I'm happy to be living close enough to San Francisco to be able to come and spend time here with you in this way. I'll be talking this morning about Buddhism, about Zen Buddhism, which... hopefully will not come as too much of a surprise to anyone. Though some of what I say this morning may sound unfamiliar, different than what you've heard before and possibly surprising, we'll see what happens.

[04:43]

I think that many Buddhist practitioners who've been studying Buddhism for some years, might say that the most foundational Buddhist teaching that cuts across all of the Buddhist traditions, any guesses? Might be the Four Noble Truths. Suffering, the cause of suffering, liberation or freedom from suffering, and of the liberation from suffering. That fourth is often translated as the path to the liberation from suffering. But it has this unfortunate tendency to suggest that freedom from suffering is at the end of a long road. So I've been playing with the path of liberation.

[05:52]

from suffering, which to me is quite resonant with the language of Dogen's teaching, practice hyphen realization or practice hyphen enlightenment, indicating that practice and realization or enlightenment, if you will, are not two, they're not separate. not practice now and liberation later. For anyone who's brand new to Zen, Dogen, if you haven't heard that word before, was the founder of Soto Zen Buddhism in Japan 800 years ago. Soto Zen Buddhism is the tradition in which we practice here. The path of liberation from suffering is also known as the Noble Eightfold Path.

[06:56]

The eight folds are aspects or facets of practice, eight ways of being based on eight ways of seeing, eight views, eight basic intentions. Traditionally, the list of eight these eight views begins with the word right. Right view, sometimes translated right understanding, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. I think that's eight. I myself find it beneficial to substitute for the word right with one of a few words, wholesome, even upright, clear, or wise.

[08:05]

I personally really feel drawn to the word wise because right tends to carry with it a lot of puritanical kind of maybe baggage in our English language in the modern Western world. It's often heard as dogmatic or dualistic. And dualistic thinking, the kind of thinking that generates all kinds of delusional separations are that we suffer is something that we are practicing to wake up from in Zen Buddhism, to wake up to. I actually won't be really further elaborating on the Eightfold Path or the Four Noble Truths this morning. I'm introducing it at the beginning of my talk because I would like for this basic teaching at the heart of Buddhist practice, suffering,

[09:17]

Liberation from suffering, path of the liberation from suffering, to be quietly pervading Buddha Hall this morning, pervading everything that I say, helping us, helping me to remember that this is what we say sometimes, our primary concern. This is what brings many of us to the path. So it's my hope that everything I say this morning will be heard and considered, reflected on by you, in terms of its implications for suffering and freedom from suffering. You may have noticed that I've used the word Zen Buddhism a few times already. Not just Zen and not just Buddhism. And I've done so intentionally. I realize there are many people who are much more comfortable with the word Zen than with the two words together, Zen Buddhism.

[10:27]

It sounds kind of intense, Buddhism, kind of serious perhaps, maybe religious. You know, unlike some of the more commercial ways of using the word, like Zen Tango, Zen spa. Even Zen meditation is more approachable for many people than Zen Buddhism. So this morning I'm just being explicit about the Zen that I'm talking about, the Zen that flows from a really ancient tradition through many ancestors, through many countries and cultures. And it's a long tradition that many people have wholeheartedly dedicated their lives to over many generations, possibly over many lives, for the sake of liberation from suffering.

[11:33]

So I honor that. I will say at least one more thing explicitly about the Eightfold Path, because it's directly related to something I would like to go in more closely. more deeply with you this morning. It's often taught that the eight aspects or views of the Eightfold Path are interdependent. They are not separate from each other. They actually depend upon each other for their meaning. And really there are eight perhaps different ways of reflecting on and practicing with the same thing. our human activity, our human lives. For an example of this dependency for each other on their meaning, you can't really cultivate wholesome speech or action or livelihood without some roots in some wise view or wise understanding.

[12:42]

Wise intention requires some wise understanding. And it's not really possible to maintain clear or upright effort without clear mindfulness or attention. I like the word attention. I'll be using that a little bit more this morning. This is the nature of interdependence and all conditioned things, all conditioned activities. Basically, everything that you can perceive is conditioned and dependent on so many things, innumerable things for its existence. This interdependence is what in Zen we also call at times emptiness. So that is the interdependence, is the empty ground on which we are all sitting here this morning in this

[13:47]

Buddha Hall, you can reach down and touch it at any point if you're wondering what is it we're really talking about here this morning. Just remember interdependence. One way of talking about what I would really most like to elaborate this morning is maybe one of the eight One of the views of the Eightfold Path, namely right view, or right understanding, wise is the word I'll be using, wise understanding, wise view. sometimes translated understanding, sometimes translated view, but that's really the meaning of view in this context.

[14:48]

I think many people would say that wise view or correct view implies a view that reflects the way things actually are. And some of the basis of The traditional basis for talking about the way things actually are is as impermanent. The teaching of the truth of impermanence, of no self, of suffering, the existence of suffering, and liberation from suffering. And these are often referred to as the basic marks of existence. I'd like to read a quote from the venerable Thich Nhat Hanh. Here he really beautifully summarizes in an illustrative way, I think, what I've been introducing so far.

[15:54]

He says, self and other, inside and outside, are concepts. Concepts are produced by our consciousness. Using the sword of concepts, we cut reality into pieces and create boundaries between things. From the point of view of ordinary perception, things exist independent of one another. We see the cloud existing outside the rose. But using the keys of impermanence and non-self, We can open the door of reality and see that the cloud does not lie outside the rose. Nor does the rose lie outside the cloud. If there is no cloud, there is no rain. If there is no rain, there is no water. If there is no water, there is no rose. As the rose decomposes, the water in it evaporates and returns to the cloud.

[17:03]

Looking deeply this way, our concepts about boundaries disappear and we can see the cloud in the rose and the rose in the cloud. Hearing these words, it's as though I'm looking at the natural world through a kind of kaleidoscope and in which the beads are ever shifting and there is this cascade of images. There's the clouds and the rain and the rose. And it appears as though they're more than just these shifting beads, that they're not all the same thing. It's a wonderful kind of metaphor for me. So sticking with that, I'll just say for a moment, Let's use the kaleidoscope of this wise view, wise understanding based upon these basic truths that I just shared with you in a way that allows us to consider them in terms of how we understand body and mind in the context of Zen practice in this particular tradition.

[18:26]

Often it's said that Zen is a body practice. because of how much emphasis is placed on the body in our sitting meditation practice, which we call zazen. And possibly also due to the way we emphasize the handling of objects in our tradition, particularly in ritual and ceremony, the careful attention to the detail, and how we inhabit and use our bodies. not only in ceremony, but in our work practice, the way we move through shared space throughout the temple. Suzuki Roshi, this temple's founding teacher, spoke often about the body in the context of Zen, as did Dogen, about a balanced, upright, steady, and open-eyed sitting posture and its breathing.

[19:30]

And so Zazen is often understood as to be first and foremost a body practice. Today, I'd like to invite you to consider the view that Zen is more fundamentally or more essentially a mind practice or more specifically a self practice. Dogen wrote, to study the self, whatever idea you may have about the self, To thoroughly study it is to forget it. To forget the self is to be actualized by the myriad things. When actualized by the myriad things, the myriad things are total interdependent life, everything that comes together to make this body, for instance. When you recognize yourself, to be this codependent arising with everything else, arising together with everything else in the universe.

[20:41]

When you clearly recognize this, your body and mind will drop away and your original face will be manifest, Dogen says. What is this original face? Sometimes in Koan study it said, your original face is your face before your parents were born. This morning I'm saying it's the face before all of your fixed or otherwise delusional views about yourself. Before they become beliefs that you hold about yourself. Our fundamental beliefs about ourselves, never mind our beliefs about others, are deeply and strongly conditioned. And for many people, they are mostly unexamined or unconscious views. There's a whole lot that we could unpack from that brief excerpt of Dogen's, but for now I want to just point to the centrality of Dogen's emphasis on study the self, the emphasis in the Soto Zen tradition on self-study.

[22:01]

Self-study is not as it is sometimes put in a denigrating way. It's not navel-gazing. It includes the whole universe. If you understand emptiness and interdependence, there's nothing that stands alone. How many of you would say just by a show of hands if you're willing, that yourself, the self, is a product of the body. And how many would say it's a product of the mind? I'll ask a few questions, and you don't need to raise your hand. If you would just consider them as I ask them. How many of you would say that the body and mind are inseparable?

[23:04]

And how many of you think that your mind exists in your body and is confined to your body? And how many of you think that your body exists in the mind, a mind that is beyond the physicality of your body? These are questions worth reflecting on. I'd like to consider or offer for your consideration and investigation for your study of the self, the view that both the body as we consciously know it and the notion of self both exist in the mind and are pervaded by the mind. In other words, there's no place in the body or in the notion of the self where the mind doesn't exist. This is another question which just asks you to look for yourself rather than just take my word for it or anyone else's word for it.

[24:16]

With your conscious, I say sometimes cognizant mind, can you engage in any intentional, I'm sorry, without, without your mind? conscious mind, can you engage in any intentional body practice or any intentional self-study? It's the mind that studies the body, that studies the self. Bodies without minds don't study bodies, and cells without minds don't exist. I hope that makes sense to everyone. What I'm talking us through with some of these questions that I've brought into the room for you is just a very simple preliminary investigation of the self that involves hearing questions, understanding their meaning, looking at your own experience, and consciously seeing what you see.

[25:29]

including any feelings that may arise. Many of us are pretty good at recognizing our feelings as they arise, but fewer of us are good at recognizing them without really falling into them. It's the mind that consciously registers the feelings that we're having and that recognizes them as such. These are some of the kinds of questions that arise in the course of self-study. They're valuable questions on the path of practice. Some questions, your own true questions, will arise again and again, sometimes for years, and they're worthy of being looked at directly again and again until you see or experience a true or clear response. or resolution of those questions.

[26:34]

None of us can resolve these kinds of questions for another person. The proof is in the eating of the pudding. I once heard a teacher put it that way. You know, seeing someone else's pudding is not satisfying. Dogen called it seeing a painted rice cake. It's a rare person who is satisfied by the eating of a painted rice cake. In several of the transcribed lectures of Suzuki Roshi, when referring to body and mind, whoever recorded and transcribed these talks often hyphenated these two words. based on some familiarity with Suzuki Roshi's teaching, I trust, to indicate their non-separation. In a lecture that Suzuki Roshi gave in 1969, he said something that I found interesting.

[27:44]

He said that with regard to Buddhism's emptiness teachings, that Theravadan Buddhism, early Buddhism, places emphasis on the emptiness of the body. while Mahayana Buddhism emphasizes the emptiness of the self. So in other words, from Suzuki Roshi's perspective, self and body are not quite the same, at least on that day when he was giving that lecture, or else he found it skillful to say so. He went on to say that the way to experience the emptiness of the self is to practice zazen, and that in our everyday life, the experience of that emptiness is the experience of the oneness of subject and object. For example, seer and seen, giver and gift.

[28:47]

He went on to say that everything exists in emptiness, in oneness or interdependence. He said, the world of emptiness is the world of oneness, which includes thousands of people's worlds, past, present, and future. Millions of people's worlds, more accurately, the worlds of every living being, past, present, and future, are included here now. In another lecture that Suzuki Roshi gave the following year, he said, and I will quote, Zazen practice represents the whole universe. We should do Zazen with this feeling in our practice. You should not say, I practice Zazen with my body. It is not so. Dogen Zenji says, water does not flow, but the bridge flows. You may say that your mind is practicing Zazen and ignore your body, the practice of your body.

[29:57]

Sometimes when you think that you are doing zazen with an imperturbable mind, you ignore the body. But it is also necessary to have the opposite understanding at the same time. Your body is practicing zazen in imperturbability while your mind is moving. Your legs are practicing zazen with pain. Water is practicing zazen with movement. Yet the water is still. while flowing because flowing is its stillness or its nature. The bridge is doing zazen without moving. Let the water flow as that is water's practice. Let the bridge stay and sit there. Because that is the actual practice of the bridge. The bridge is practicing zazen. Painful legs are practicing zazen.

[31:00]

Imperturbable mind is practicing zazen. This is our practice. Please feel free to move your painful legs at any time. Wow, time flies. Suzuki Roshi said that zazen is this big mind, which you just heard described in the excerpt. Big mind is undivided by the multiplicity of things, by sensations, perceptions that appear within it. With attention to big mind, I recognize that when I see you, you and I and the seeing all arise indivisibly. I say, this language, it cuts it up, I see you. But when I see you, do you actually see this segmented experience that you're having?

[32:03]

I don't think so. It is all appearing at once. Suzuki Roshi also described big mind as calm awareness, like space, like sky. unfazed by whatever moves through it. Unfazed by the birds flying through the sky, he said. Unfazed by the wind, by the rustling of the trees. I recently heard an esteemed Zen teacher, who I won't put on the spot, say that, or suggest, that Suzuki Roshi's reference to big mind is a reference to Buddha nature. The way Buddha nature is understood in the Mahayana tradition is somewhat variable. Not everybody agrees exactly on Buddha nature.

[33:07]

But Buddha nature and Suzuki Roshi's teaching, some of the Mahayana sutras indicate that everyone is fully endowed with this Buddha nature. You could say that this Buddha nature is your original face before your parents were born. So in this Buddha nature, in this practice of Zen, we are studying the self. Studying the self is not necessarily some big, effortful or striving activity. It may be effortful when there is a lot of chaos or pain in the mind or the body, in the environment. But the main effort is to return. I would say it is simply to return moment after moment to this wise view, wise understanding, as frequently as possible.

[34:16]

Particularly when things are difficult, return. to that big mind, that sky-like mind within which everything is arising, occurring, manifesting. We do get lost. We fall into delusion. And with this practice, with this intentional practice, it does take intention, we return more readily, more quickly. return to the immediacy of our bodies, of our breath, what returns? Attention returns. You could say this is the view of wise mindfulness, the returning of attention to what we understand about the way things actually are.

[35:24]

And then the mind falls into past and future thinking again, as it will. And then again we return, particularly in the practice of sitting meditation in zazen. When the mind wanders, suddenly we realize it has wandered, and we can return. But when we say return to breath and body, to get back to my earlier point, It is only provisional. To do so is an aid to returning to big mind, which fully includes body and breath and self, but is not confined to the small separate personal self. I'd like to say one more thing about our Zen practice, about studying the self. It's not necessary to track everything that's going on, everything that arises in the mind, bodily sensations, et cetera.

[36:36]

It's enough to notice what comes to pass. Everything arises and subsides. We notice the coming and going. That is our practice, noticing the coming and going. If you have a tendency to track things, you can notice the tendency and you can return to the immediacy of the present experience to the body, to the breath. I'm bringing this up in order to address what might be misleading about the teaching study the self in our modern Western scientific kind of worlds. But in the context of zazen, while sitting, walking, standing, lying down, It's not an intellectual analysis of yourself. It takes practice and this returning to actually begin to feel more and more at one with everything that is arising in the mind without frequently falling into a divided kind of consciousness, a consciousness that splits.

[37:54]

This word split is often used as a psychological term. And within the psychological context, it means a kind of dissociation. This bignined practice is not dissociation. It's not spiritual bypass. It's total inclusion. Total dynamic inclusion. What we refer to in Buddhism as unattached is not dissociation in the psychological sense of the word. I think it's important to understand that. I am moving ahead in my notes because I realize time moves more quickly in this temple than I'm accustomed to. So I'm just going to pause and have a drink of water. I once studied with a teacher, a founder of the School for Body Mind Centering, who said, when I realize I cannot do all of the things that I have scheduled, I stop and I just sit for 10 minutes.

[39:13]

So counterintuitive. I've already said everything that I think it is important to say. I was going to further elaborate on some of these points. And I'll spend the last few minutes saying a few more words and perhaps reading another passage from Thich Nhat Hanh. The attitude of our zazen practice, I would say, is one of allowance, allowing, allowing things to be as it is, to quote Suzuki Roshi. Things, plural, to be as it is, singular. It wouldn't mean much if I said those words and then I tried desperately

[40:21]

to achieve what I had in mind to achieve. This doesn't mean that you become dysfunctional or like a zombie. In fact, you may find when you, as a result of this cultivation of our practice, that you are better able to respond with sensitivity appropriately to circumstances that previously were much more challenging. Our practice is not just for sitting in the zendo, for chanting and bowing, for formal ceremony. It's not just for chopping carrots in a very, or making soup in a very meditative and harmonious kitchen. It is for all of life and for all beings.

[41:25]

I will end with another quote of Thich Nhat Hanh. The notion of self relies on the notion of non-self. Both ideas are concepts produced by the mind. He wrote, Reality is free from notions. In Buddhism, non-self is a crucial teaching, an instrument to help us explore reality, to help us liberate ourselves. It is an antidote to self. We need it because we cling to ourself and are victims of the notion of self. But that teaching is not something to worship. Self is a product of the mind. Non-self is also a product of the mind. When we are able to touch reality, both notions will be removed.

[42:32]

When we are ill, we need medicine to neutralize the illness. Once we have recovered, the medicine is no longer needed. He goes on to say, many Buddhists and non-Buddhists talk about non-self in a way that shows they are still caught in ideas. Their talk about non-self does not lessen their idea of self in the slightest. Even though they endlessly discuss the teachings of non-self, they have not been helped by them. They are still imprisoned in ideas, and they continue to suffer in their everyday lives. To free themselves, they must put an end to the idea of non-self as well as to the idea of self. And see that self and non-self inter-are. The teaching of non-self is possible only because there is the idea of self.

[43:37]

Self and non-self are not two. Thank you very much for your kind attention this morning. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[44:18]

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