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. Thank you, everyone, for being here. The mic sounds good. Hello, online folks over there. Glad you're here. And thanks to the tantos, Ana and Tova. Ana for inviting me, Tova for hosting the space. And as always, thank you to my teacher, Yushin Paul Haller, for guidance. I'd also like to thank Paula. who were helping to arrange the Bodhidharma exhibit in the hallway.

[01:04]

And Linton, who collected these beautiful scrolls. Thank you. I'm going to look tonight at just one phrase from Phukhan Sazengi, which together with others I've been looking at. And sometimes for me, one phrase can be read in different ways. And so I'm going to explore the phrase... Although it is said that there are as many minds as there are persons, still they all negotiate the way solely in zazen. In the face of it, it's a pretty straightforward sentence.

[02:11]

We are all different and yet here we are in the Buddha hall. But I actually find it to be fundamental to practice. responding to genuine questions and struggles that people experience. It's quite rich and drives home a contradiction that cracks open our lives. In our contemporary world, and when I say our here, I know that I'm speaking to... a Western culture that identifies as inheriting very strongly a modernity that is predominantly white and speaks through a history created in a university setting.

[03:16]

So in a substantial way. It's not a we at all. It's the dominant culture. And what mind is in this dominant culture adds to the complication and the fascination with this phrase. So I'm going to begin by just noting that it's been measured in the modern world. that by the age of the six children generally understand that what we call thinking is going on up here and I grew up and still have this feeling that thinking is up here in my mind even though I know from more recent research that it's coursing through my whole body and is not separate from the environment that I'm in.

[04:21]

But still, there's this kind of strange cognition that thinking is up here in my head. Other cultures... either in the present or in the past, have located thought in different parts of the body. The Homeric Greeks thought it was in the diaphragm, the lungs, where our wits were held, and activity was in the exhalation of the breath. In the European Middle Ages, it was the blood and the veins, and in other cultures, the stomach or the heart. But I would... venture to guess that for most of us here today, even though science has told us, and we get it, you know, that thought is running through our body, there's still the sense that the brain is an inert object that nonetheless, as one person describes it,

[05:37]

is a space behind the eyes, that when we speak to someone, we're speaking to this kind of space behind their eyes. We're continually inventing these spaces in our own and other people's heads, knowing perfectly well that they don't exist anatomically, and the location of these spaces is indeed quite arbitrary. The modern Western localization of the brain was most profoundly expressed by Descartes, who established thinking in the brain, but he was dismayed that it had two halves. And so he went even further to say that sitting in the middle of it all was the pituitary gland, this small, whole seed.

[06:40]

integrated and complete, and that as such, the brain was also the seat of the soul. So this, you know, connection with the pituitary gland being the soul and this kind of walnut in two pieces being the seat on which the soul is sitting as a thinking mind. So it's just kind of curious and funny even. that there's this really strong intent to make local the mind. So the soul is not so much a thing in Western science, but the thought of the localized brain is. And this only underscores for us even further the first half of the statement. although it's said that there are as many minds as there are persons.

[07:45]

It's as though without the Buddhist check on rupa formations, modernity has spread itself over the entire globe, naming absolutely everything it comes across and claiming it its own, including and especially the brain. There are so many ways in which the dominant culture establishes an independent thinking mind. For example, most of you probably are pretty convinced that your thoughts are private. And whether or not we have private languages is actually debated. And many of you have felt the gathering strength of your own opinions and placed such an investment in them that you might use the power of persuasion in order to bring others on board, even though it may become a shared opinion, we can still taste the ownership of it in our minds and the satisfaction of winning opinion. I offer these examples just as ways in which thinking becomes very localized in the brain and in the activity of a person.

[08:54]

And you might be able to think of some of those ways of your own. I offer them just as examples to make the point. So what's being said in the second half of the phrase, although it is said that there are as many minds as there are persons, still they all negotiate the way solely in zazen. If we focus on zazen as a formal practice, it can be understood in many ways. And of course, this is from Fukan Zazenki. This is Dogen's Fukan Zazengi, and so the emphasis on this one practice is, one could say, biased. Indeed, one of the translations puts it this way. Although it is said that there are innumerable ways of understanding Buddhism, you should do Zazen alone.

[09:58]

This gives it a kind of sectarian emphasis. There's all these different kinds of Buddhism. Pay them no mind. Our way is this way. And Dogen Zen emerged at a time when there were a variety of single practices, each established by a single founder and with a particular emphasis, such as chanting Buddha's name, reciting the Luda Sutra, Tantric Rural, Or in the case of Soto Zen, Zazen. And so in a founding document of practice, it makes sense to see Dogen emphasizing that while there are many former Buddhisms, Zazen is the only way. I'm sorry, many formal Buddhisms, Zazen is the only way. But Fukan Zazengi is not something like a political pamphlet. He's not throwing the gauntlet down for people in that sense.

[11:07]

I see this sentence as an affirmation of practice generated by deep aspiration and inquiry. How is it that Buddha's way is understood when, being that as we are so many different minds, there must be as many different ways? And what is zazen if this is the case? There are several different moments in Buddhist literature that, for me, bring this together. The first I'll mention is that the Buddha is a very skillful brain surgeon in the Surangama Sutra. And I just want to highlight this book by Robert Rosenbaum, which came out last year. which is Reflections on the Surangama Sutra. This is not your mind. I won't be referring to it a whole lot, but I did want to just kind of bring it forward as helpful, very helpful.

[12:15]

This sutra is largely understood as an 8th century Chinese translation of an Indian text, and I'll be mentioning another one, the Mahaparana Vana Sutra, which is similar to a very strong Chinese Mahayana text interested in Buddha nature and one that Dogen refers to a lot. Dogen doesn't refer to the Surangama Sutra. It has a more Indian flavor with the kind of logical argument that kind of goes poof at the end and a lot of stories, you know, once upon a time, stories, parables. So in this Indian text, the Buddha asks, Ananda has come. And Buddha asks, how is it that you've come?

[13:26]

Why are you here? What is it that... What do you want? And Ananda states that he came for the Buddha's teachings because of what he saw in the Buddha's department. And responding to what Ananda saw in him, the Buddha turns away from an identification with his own form and deportment and asks Ananda, precisely where are your mind and eyes? What is seeing? What is it that is you seeing? Precisely where are your mind and eyes? Ananda struggles with the question. And there's a lengthy debate.

[14:26]

Ananda wants to find the mind here. and then wants to find there, but each time it slips away and he's finally brought to say that maybe it has no specific location at all. To which the Buddha responds, does the mind that you suppose has no specific location exist in some place? Or does it exist in no place? And so it goes from there. Such that the concept of an independent mind is undone, and something has been turned for Ananda. So even in India and China in the 8th century and long before that, the location of mind has been a pretty fundamental query. This human form gravitates toward a fixed location for mind, and the brain is our modern representation of this, I think, therefore, I am. It's only an expression of our human ways and why frequently in our literature, in our Buddhist literature, there is a distinction made between mere persons and Buddhas.

[15:40]

You hear Dogen doing this a lot. Conventional people do this and realized people expound. So this distinction between mere persons and Buddhas, persons who always act as though they have a brain that isn't their own and that from here is true authority, and those who at least live in the questioning of this very premise. This story from the Surangama Sutra may have been a surprise. for some of you, only because it is also familiar to you as a dialogue between Bodhidharma and his student, Vike. And we don't know so much about this earlier teaching from the Sarangama Sutra, but it's interesting to see.

[16:48]

So here's case 41 of the Blue Cliff Record, Pacifying the Mind. And together with looking at the end of the Fukanzazengi, a group of us have held this beside it. As the founder of Zen faced a wall, his future successor stood in the snow, cut off his arm, and said, My mind is not yet at peace. Please pacify my mind. The founder said, Bring me your mind and I will pacify it for you. The successor said, I have looked for my mind and I cannot find it. The founder said, I have pacified your mind for you. In this story, where Ananda was the Buddha's cousin and probably had a great deal of affinity,

[17:56]

with Shakyamuni Buddha. Wike is a stranger and has traveled far with great determination and standing in the snow. In this depiction of Wike standing in the snow, we can see an urgency of request and perhaps also a demand in this trial, a demand that becomes undone. in the final giving over of an arm, representing a giving over of self in the completeness of deep and open request. And people will read this, um, in varying ways, um, um, dark night of the soul, um, uh, despair, um, There are ways in which we can see our own life in this story.

[19:03]

When Abbott David gave a talk about loss, for example, that complete feeling of loss and the exposure that comes from that. I think it's the feeling here of Wike. As someone in our group discussion said, being at the end of one's rope would be a good description of the feeling of this. But there are also gentler expressions of it, and I think Tungaryo at Taksahara, people sit for five days before they actually are entering the monastery. And it has a nonetheless close effect in that sitting for five days, one's individual determination kind of turns on its head, softens into a juiciness. And it's really not until that's happened that you can enter the monastery in the same way that it's not until Vike has offered his arm that Bodhidharma turns away from the wall and actually faces him.

[20:19]

My mind is not yet at peace. Who here has never been even lonely in their own experience of despair and confusion? Even in the depths of practice and probably because of it, as Huike is by far no stranger to the teachings, he is trapped in his mind. The founder said, Bring me your mind and I will pacify it for you. The successor said, I have looked for my mind, and I cannot find it. What has been discovered here is that nothing is hidden, not even mind. And in this non-hiddenness, a complete letting go, as there is no one place to find it. This is a teaching story, and so I can't say much more than this in any direct sense. The point is... that Bodhidharma has asked Vike to thoroughly examine mind through his own significant effort, and that this task is very much alive for each one of us here today.

[21:37]

That there is nothing hidden, that there is suchness, that there is entirety of being, that there is Buddha nature, has been expressed in a variety of ways through time. The inquiry of what it... the inquiry of it is what matters, and that one must discover it for oneself. I find it helpful here to share two parables from the Mahapara Nirvana Sutra to illustrate this point. And I'm interested in these two parables because the second is so unusual to hear. And yet, for me, It unpacks a little bit the difficult questions then we ask when we understand completely that while there are as many minds as there are persons, that there's a question about that.

[22:46]

And it has traction in our life. And so the second parable, we'll get at that. So this is from the Maha Paranirvana Sutra. And the first parable is a simple one. And you've heard probably some version of this. I can even tell it in one sentence. There is gold buried under a woman's house. And it simply needs to be pointed out to her for her to realize her true nature as always already present. The second parable is more complex. A mother's baby has become ill and she calls the doctor. The doctor prepares a medicine. and explains that until the child is healed, the mother should not feed the child.

[23:52]

To help the child, she covers her body in a bitter oil so that her child will stay away and be healed by the doctor's medicine. The child becomes healed. However, they still think of the mother as having a bitter taste, even though she's washed herself clean. So the idea that there's bitterness there lingers, even though the fact is that this is not the case. And so it takes some time before the child realizes on their own that it's simply impossible that Buddha nature cannot exist. And only then are they able to respond to the mother's call to be fed. So a part of the agency in our well-being is to overcome the clinging to form that can sometimes define our life

[25:18]

within its hindrances. I find this tale really curious. It's a necessary tale of the need for separation and individuation. I mean, that's the language that would come from the study of maternal infant bonding relationships, right? It comes from contemporary psychology, object relations theory, and yet here it is in the Maha Paranavana Sutra. I find that really compelling. And it's a skillful means that also acknowledges the suffering in our, at times, unskillful lives. And I was thinking of Leanne Schutt's talk last Saturday where she described the need to step back and heal in order to discover her own belongings. and the strength that can be found there, and the strength of return that can be found there in that belonging, the profound belonging.

[26:34]

And with the same curiosity about the story, I'd just like to point out that the Dencho has these bumps on the top that go all the way around. Those are udders. It's milk. It's mother's milk. So when we hear the denture, we hear the call. There's something about this story that kind of establishes for me why those udders are there on that bell. Each one of us is following a calling that is only heard. by having tasted the milk of our underbeing. If we are truly living our lives, there's no way that this can be taken for granted. So I just discovered that story, and I really find it helpful as a way of examining that there are as many minds as there are persons, and what...

[27:47]

What is Zazen in the context of that has a kind of richness through the skillful means of acknowledgement. Although it is said that there are as many minds as there are persons, still they all negotiate the way solely in Zazen. In Zazen, we learn, I love that, we learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate yourself. And at the same time, Weke says, I have looked for my mind and I cannot find it. What does this mean to you? In the hallways of this building, we are surrounded by Bodhidharma's eyes.

[28:49]

With so many Bodhidharma scrolls in the main hallway, it is as though the walls themselves are looking back at us. Sometimes, in the stories of the teachings, his eyebrows are lowered as if to demand from us, what is Zazen? burrowed look that we see in the hallway. In the depictions of Bodhidharma, he's kind of fixed like that. The pictures don't change a whole lot. It's always like this. But let me propose to you that maybe in Bodhidharma's life sometimes His eyebrows were raised as if he were saying, look, look, Buddha, Buddha.

[29:59]

There is a wisdom that sees beyond the coverings of form. A wisdom that runs through all things. And where nothing is hidden. There's one sentence from Robert Rosenbaum that I enjoy as a kind of expression of this. Awareness is not a thing, just like you, just like me. And I see Bodhidharma in our hallway saying, look. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[31:12]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[31:15]

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