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. Good morning. Wonderful to see you all here. Wonderful to have some sprinkling of rain. What a gift. A gift to be able to sit here in silence and maybe for a brief moment just listen to the space between the raindrops. So my name is David Zimmerman, and I am the head of practice here, known in Japanese as Tomto.

[01:05]

And I want to welcome you all to Beginner's Mind Temple. Are there any beginners here today? Some of you got it. But welcome if you are new, meaning you're here for the first time, and welcome if you are a beginner who has repeatedly returned, moment after moment, to this very place and time. everything is welcomed, everything is included. So as some of you know, we've just begun a six-week spring practice period here, and I have the joy of co-leaning it with my dear friend Tova Green. And the theme of our practice period is Cultivating a Mind of Radical Trust, Zen Practices for Living in an Uncertain World. And part of our commitment to this intensive period of study together, include some of us coming together today in order to sit the whole day, what's called a one-day sitting. And this sitting, we say just sitting, in Japanese the word is shikintaza, we're just sitting, that's all we're doing, nothing else, just sitting, this whole body and mind.

[02:19]

And this is perhaps the most radical activity in that we could possibly do to learn how to trust ourselves. Because it returns us to what is most essential, the most essential expression of our life and the root of our life which is deeply peaceful. So here are some words of encouragement from Suzuki Roshi for our Day of Sitting in guidance on how one might approach sitting. This is from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. And I'm going to just slightly augment a few things just to elucidate a little bit more. We should establish our practice where there is no practice or no enlightenment. As long as we practice Zazen in the area where there is an idea of practice and enlightenment, there is no chance to make perfect peace for ourselves.

[03:22]

In other words, we must firmly believe or trust in our true nature. Our true nature is beyond our conscious realm or conscious experience. It is only in our limited condition conscious experience that we find the concepts of practice and enlightenment or good and bad. Actually, good or bad is not the point. Whether or not you make yourself peaceful is the point, and whether or not you stick to it. Suzuki Roshi is reminding us here of the importance of not having gaining mind when we sit zazen, not having an idea of something called enlightenment, which needs to be achieved, not honing this concept, of enlightenment, because it will get in the way of our being fully present for this very direct, immediate experience of the moment.

[04:35]

So peace is a matter of not striving. We sit in zazen, not striving. Zazen is utter rest, through and through. And so to be at peace, we need to relax. and empty our mind of all ideas, including those of practice, or enlightenment, or good, I'm sitting good now, or bad, ah, that was a bad period of zazen. Drop all those ideas. And instead, just simply rest as open awareness. In other words, forget everything we've learned and just trust our whole being to the space beyond our conscious mind. This space is our true nature.

[05:42]

Vast, open, luminous, awake. the essential foundation of our practice. And as such, it's this mind that we learn through practice to trust completely. Trust is the space to allow something else to happen other than what we think should happen. Trust is the space to allow something else to happen other than what we think should happen. The sitting meditation is training the mind to rest in trust, to trust in what we call in Zen big mind or Buddha mind.

[06:47]

And zazen is the easiest place to convince your own mind, that what you really want to do is to be present. But it's also the easiest place to experience that what we want is a peaceful mind, a quiet mind, a mind that is who we are at the base. It's fundamental, our experience. of this spacious, quiet, equanimous, alert, bright mind. The more time we spend there, the more insight in how to live our lives comes from this quietness, from this deep, settled stillness. Even at times of uncertainty,

[07:53]

when our lives are in chaos, we can still experience what it is to come from this still, quiet, open mind. So in the Soto Zen tradition, we offer this way of non-dual zazen with the faith that Buddha mind is what we are fundamentally. combined with a kind of selfless devotion to wholesome activity as our path. Wholesome activity meaning we take up the precepts, we embody the precepts. We find a way that every activity we do is free of harm, that is inclusive, doesn't leave anyone or anything out in any way. It's wholesome. So this is pretty simple, and it's pretty difficult to do.

[09:06]

But what happens as we practice is that we study what it is that prevents us from doing this. And so when we sit, we can have a real taste that before the thinking, chattering mind happens, before that mind kicks in, there's nothing. There's just quiet, vast stillness. A stillness that doesn't grasp, that doesn't activate around perceptions or objects and so on. But this journey to trust and stillness and peace is not an easy one. Even our esteemed Zen ancestors struggled mightily with this path at times. So I want to share our Zen story with you that many of you may be familiar with, and it's about our first two Zen ancestors, Bodhidharma and Rekha.

[10:18]

And legend has it that Rekha came to Bodhidharma while he was sitting in his cave and asked for teaching. And Bodhidharma initially refused him. refused to teach Vika. He just wanted to keep sitting, not be bothered. And so Vika stood in the snow outside of Bodhidharma's cave all night until the snow came up to his waist. And still Bodhidharma wasn't convinced. Didn't change his mind about whether or not he wanted to teach Vika. And so to prove his resolve, Vika cut off his left arm and presented it to Bodhidharma as a token of his sincerity. Now, I'm not sure that was a sign of good mental health. I'd be a little concerned if someone came to the city center and said, look, I'm all ready to practice.

[11:24]

You know, part of this tradition of waiting outside of a teacher's if you will, or center, is what translates today as tengario, where people entering the temple for the first time, particularly Pasahara, for example, are asked to sit for a period of time. It could be anywhere from one day to five days. Some days, at times, it's gone even longer. And the idea is to prove your sincerity. This came in Japan, too. You would sit outside the temple gates, proving, as you sat there in the rain and the snow and all the difficult things, circumstances, that your sincerity was that great, that you would do anything to study the Dharma. These days, you know, people come and we have them sit in the nice warm Zendo and we feed them and we let them go to sleep and go to the bathroom. It's gotten really easy around here. So, may ask the abbot if we can change some of this. He's in for it. All right, good. So,

[12:26]

Here's the exchange between Bodhidharma and Vika. So Bodhidharma says, okay, I see you're sincere. So what's your problem? Vika says, my mind is not at rest. Help me to put it at rest. Give me a peaceful mind. Bodhidharma says, give me your mind. And Vika pauses for a few moments and then says, I can't find it. And Bodhidharma says, see, I've already pacified your mind. I've already made it peaceful. So like many of us, Vika came to the Dharma seeking a cure for dukkha, for his mental dis-ease. Dukkha is a Pali word that means, translated in different ways, suffering, disease, anxiety, dissatisfaction, restlessness.

[13:36]

It primarily points to our experience of not being at peace with ourselves, with the world, and with the way things are. If you will, not being in accord with reality, with truth of the way things are. So Bodhidharma offers Vika a particular meditation instruction for how to experience a peaceful mind. He says, find the mind itself. Find the mind itself. So when you sit sazen, for those of you particularly sitting today, you can do this too. See if you can find your own mind. not the content of your mind, not the stories, not the narratives, not the images. I'm not talking about that.

[14:38]

Rather, look for the mind that knows the content is there. What is it that knows? What is it that knows? Study that and become very intimate with that. So Vika spent eight years studying with Bodhidharma. And Bodhidharma would regularly offer him encouragements and pointers, particularly around not grasping at concepts. Here's another exchange between the two of them. Bodhidharma offering an encouragement. Outside, have no involvements. Inside, no coughing or sighing in the mind. When you reach this, you will have no doubts. Vika, after a period of study, eventually claims, I have no further involvements.

[15:45]

In other words, my mind is now still. Bodhidharma, testing him, asks, doesn't that fall into nihilism? In other words, aren't you denying reality? Awaka says, no, I am only just clearly awareness. In other words, I am awake. And Bodhidharma responds, have no further doubts. This is the state of suchness. This is our way in Zen. Practicing suchness. Just being clearly aware of this moment, of things as it is. In other words, practicing just the just. Just the seeing within the seeing. Just the heard within the heard.

[16:48]

Just the experience, experiencing, the experience that is being experienced. And to do this, just avoid activating the discursive mind when meeting experience. So throughout all activity, allow the mind to rest, to be at ease, to be naturally still, quiet, clear seeing. And obviously, this is easier said than done. One of those frustrating things about Dharma, Zen Dharma talks, right? Yeah, that makes sense, but how do you do it? Zen is hard because we give you almost no instructions, no guideposts.

[17:55]

For any of you who ever came to Zazen instruction here, you come in, they say, well, sit like this. And that's it. And you're like, what? Is that basically it? There's not a lot more guidance that's offered. There's no steps and stages, if you will, as there are in other Buddhist traditions. Other traditions will give you more to do with your mind and body. as preliminary practices before you arrive to this kind of practice of just choiceless awareness, if you will. But Zen, we throw you into the deep end of the pool and say, swim. So if there are no steps and stages, and we give you nothing to do in this practice, if we just throw you 100% into life itself, into Zazen itself, then you have to have faith.

[18:57]

You have to have a very deep and abiding faith that this is your true nature. You have to have confidence in your true nature. And of course, at first, you don't. But little by little, as you sit and sit, and begin to have some experience with the mind of stillness, some direct experience with just being who you are in this very moment, then faith slowly develops. Confidence deepens. Confidence in the way of being itself. Not doing. It isn't about doing. It's about being. So you begin to develop a trust in the functioning of the awake mind.

[20:03]

The functioning of your natural mind. The mind functioning that liberates you. And you begin to trust life in the way that it's become to be without struggling. With no struggling inside and no struggling outside. No trying to manipulate your inner sense of self or manipulating the world. Instead, you begin to relax and you let your life be the way it's become to be, even if it's difficult, even if it's unpleasant. That doesn't mean you take care of what's difficult. You don't take care of what's difficult. You don't take care of what's unpleasant at some point. But you're not doing it from a place of wanting to fix it as if it was bad. Now I need to make it good.

[21:07]

It's a different way of relating to your life. You're not struggling with what is. You're not resisting what is. And over time, this way of just trusting becomes embodied. It seeps into our flesh and bones. And, if you will, rewires our nuance. Our whole system becomes rewired through this practice of trust. And in doing so, we develop a greater capacity, a greater mental, emotional, and physical capacity to tolerate and be patient. and be able to be with what is, even if it's unpleasant. The capacity to hold what is in a larger sphere, not this sphere, this sphere.

[22:12]

Our hearts and minds and bodies become open vessels, spacious and flexible, simply receiving and releasing life as it flows through us. So as some of you may know, the foundational text for our practice period is the 6th century Chinese poem titled the Shinshin Ming. And it's generally attributed to Zen's third Chinese ancestor, Jianxer Sengzong. And the title Shinshin Ming is often translated as trust in mind, or sometimes verses on the faith mind. And in the foreword to a commentary on this particular poem by Mu Song, if you have a chance, it's a wonderful book. It's called Trust in Mind. It's available in the bookstore. Check it out. Jan Chozenbe, who is a teacher at Great Val Monastery up north, suggests that there are five ways in which our personal experience of trust in mind changes over time and through our practice.

[23:32]

And so early in our practice life, trust means belief, that there is indeed a way to end needless suffering. So we get, in other words, an inkling that there's some other way to relate to our lives, to have a different relationship to the psychological, the emotional, and physical pain that we might be experiencing. And we begin to ask ourselves, what would it be like to meet what's difficult and uncertain with the qualities of clarity, insight, flexibility and depth, compassion, joy, equanimity rather than fear? And then we begin to look around and notice that there seem to be others who might have some insight, some idea about how this can happen.

[24:38]

And so we begin to seek out these other practitioners and maybe teachers and maybe even ancestors because they have found a way out of suffering. And we observe them and speak with them and engage them. And we begin to trust them because we trust how they express their understanding of the Dharma. And particularly how they engage their lives. And that was something that drew me to Zen Center, my own path. I wanted to learn how to be presence. To be the presence I never experienced growing up from my family. Having lived in children's homes and foster homes and divorced parents and so on, the sense of no one's really here with me, present. And so when my father was dying, I really wanted a chance to learn to be that presence for him as a healing path.

[25:42]

And in doing so, be a presence for myself. And so I asked a friend, where can I learn how to meditate? Because I heard that that might help. So I came here. I came to Zaza's instruction. They said, sit like this, okay? Just be present. And then over time, the more I stayed, something else began to develop. Relationships with teachers. And then I went to Tassajara and sat among the mountains who themselves were the embodiment of presence, sitting upright, still, steadfast, not moving, peaceful, quiet. Ah, they too are our teachers. How do I embody this peaceful stillness? And so over time, the more we practice, we begin to develop a trust in the functioning of the awakened mind to liberate us.

[26:45]

We trust this greater capacity to free us of our particular habit patterns. And our practice matures and blind faith becomes lived faith, lived experience. It's your own wisdom coming forth in this way. And so eventually, over time, we begin to relinquish old habit patterns of the body and the small fearful mind that's caught in self-clinging. And we begin to experience an embodied sense of of trust, a way in which the mind-body orientation becomes naturally more confident and relaxed. And finally, we come to the point in which trust becomes the all-embracing experience of being home in our life, being at ease in our life.

[27:54]

being peace, as Thich Nhat Hanh would say, giving ourselves over to just this very life unfolding. So as I mentioned earlier, Sang Sanh wrote the poem, Trust in Mind, and he was the third Chinese ancestor's Therefore, he was the Dharma heir of Weka, the guy who cut off his arm. And the poem he wrote, Xin Xin Ming, is usually referred to as the first Zen poem. And it consists of 146 unrhymed four-character verses. And the poem itself speaks to the essential perfection of our awareness and fundamental nature. And how to discover this awareness by freeing ourselves of habitual, discriminating thoughts and ideas.

[29:02]

And it presents this from various perspectives to help bring out both how persuasive our judging mind is and also how profound the transformation is when we liberate ourselves from conditioned habit patterns. So this poem, Trust in Mind, Xin Xin Ming, essentially addresses the dis-ease of the mind and how to cure it. And the main point that this poem makes over and over again, reiterates, is don't make opposites. Don't make dualities. Because opposites are concepts. And a concept is always relative to something else, to other. The minute you have one thing and cling to this, you've created an other.

[30:06]

So throughout this poem, Seng San lists 34 pairs of opposites. And he uses them as examples of what not to think. And these opposites include things such as love and hate. like and dislike, right and wrong, for and against, subject and object, gain and loss, illusion and enlightenment, and so on. Are any of these familiar to you? Could you add any more? We could probably go on for days listing all the opposites that we hold in our minds and through which we see the world. Male, female, straight, gay. black, white, republican, democrat, do they really exist in that way? Later in the poem, Seng San goes on to talk about the mind of equanimity, the mind of peace that lies beyond these dualistic mind comparisons.

[31:16]

And then he offers practice instructions about how to live a life free of So I'm not going to go into the poem so much today. It's a long poem. It's very dense. It's beautiful. It's a very beautiful poem, and it's a lifetime of study. So throughout these six weeks, we'll continue to delve into different parts of the poem and share them and explore them. But I wanted to share with you the opening lines of the poem. The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth, and I want to focus on these next few lines, if you wish to see the truth, meaning suchness, things as it is, then hold no opinions forever.

[32:20]

or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind. When the deep meaning of things is understood, and this deep meaning is that we understand that things have no own meaning. There's no separate solid thing here that we can grasp. And as such are dependently co-arisoned. Everything is co-created at the same time, arising together at the same time. When the deep meaning of things is not understood, the mind's essential piece is disturbed to no avail. Isn't that beautiful? We could spend weeks on just those opening lines. So Musang, in the book Trust in Mind, in his commentary, has the following to say about this particular stanza.

[33:23]

Ever since we started using our neocortex and its associated language-based selfing, we have carried on chatter within ourselves. The nature of the internal chatter is to proliferate itself in over more and more complex ways. Degrees of sanity, or insanity depend on the volume and intensity of the internal chatter. In the case of a person untrained in the Dharma, this internal chatter, especially when chattering about what I like or what I don't like, is the disease of the mind. The internal chatter creates a feedback loop in which selfing feeds upon itself and creates an ever more complex proliferation, like a virus infecting all parts of the system. Buddhist meditative practices have found ways of transcending the internal chatter and clarifying those aspects of mind wisdom that have not been infected by the disease.

[34:40]

When we transcend the internal chatter, we enter silence. in which the heart-mind becomes illuminated by the inherent wisdom of the mind itself. This silenced wisdom doesn't make distinctions, does not dwell in dualities of this or that, for or against, and yet is aware of itself as a purified state. So listen to yourself when you talk or when others talk. Ninety percent of the conversation consists of us telling one another or telling ourselves who we are, creating an identity. I like this. This is what I think.

[35:43]

This is who I am. This is what I like and don't like. And most of the conversation is about creating your identity over and over again. And most of the time, this creation of our identity is suffering. So why do we do it? We're addicted. We're addicted to suffering. It's become a habit for us. We just continue living out this habit of suffering, grasping for something again and again. So the small mind experiencing the fundamental wideness of our life goes, oh my God, that's too much, I can't take it. And suddenly contracts and goes, I need something solid to hold on to. And so it keeps grasping, clinging, contracting. And so our practice is to study contraction in the mind-body. How are we selfing?

[36:45]

How is that grasping? How is that contraction? exhibiting itself in our lives. Study that, and then study how do we relax? How do we ease that contraction? How do we open and soften just a little bit more deeply this habit pattern of grasping, clinging? So our way in Zen is to cut off the small self's grasping at things, as a way to try to make itself real in some way. You know, Huayca didn't need to cut off his arm. He just needed to cut off self-clinging. That's all he needed to do. This is a hard practice, but it's a profound way to live. And so as Musang points out,

[37:51]

This restless activity of selfing drives the engine of internal chatter. And it disturbs, if you will, our original stillness. And it leaves in place, if you will, the cause of dukkha, the grasping. On the other hand, stillness is the mind's essential piece. It's our primordial experience, if you will. It's before words, before even the description, stillness. So we can only be the activity of stillness. Thinking about stillness is not stillness. We can only be the activity of stillness in order to truly express it. And so the activity of zazen, of still sitting, in which we simply abide as an awareness that doesn't engage or grasp or feed the internal chatter.

[39:06]

Zazan is a radical act that dismantles the self-constructing behavior. It's deconstructing grasping when we sit and do nothing. And so, trust in mind, the poem is both a practice instruction and a pointer to the nature of the mind. How do I practice this nature of mind and what does it actually look like? And so when you take up this practice, you will be fully expressing this mind. When you take up trusting, you will fully express the trusting mind. So his verse helps us to settle into the space of not to, which is peaceful. It's a oneness beyond oneness.

[40:11]

To even say one has already created a duality, because then you think there's something other than one. I think one of the things that this poem does is keeps pointing us back to the space between words. And not only the 34 opposites that Zeng San highlights in his poem, but between them. There's a verse by the poet Rumi that echoes the Suzuki Roshi quote that I read at the beginning, in which he's encouraging us to rest in the space beyond ideas of practice and enlightenment, beyond the ideas of good zazen and bad zazen. Rumi says, out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the heart-mind lies down in the grass, the world is too full to talk about.

[41:17]

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the heart-mind lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. So trust in mind is pointing to that field, to that space, between the clutter of ideas and opposites and comparisons and judgments. beyond the concrete jungle, if you will, of our reified ideas, and into the lush grass of life itself, which is gently flowing in the breeze of change, being held by the gaze of the wide, open, spacious sky. So what would it be like to see and experience your life through this spaciousness? in the space between words and thoughts, even in the space between your breaths.

[42:24]

So when we sit in zazen, we can actually take up this practice of noticing between the inhale and the exhale, at the bottom of the breath, there is a space when one breath ends and the other begins. to rest the mind there for a moment in that space. If you haven't tried this before, maybe you might want to take it up. And we can notice that the space between the breaths as well as the space between the thoughts and the space between the strong emotions. And what we notice sometimes between these in the space between, is that something else arises, some awareness. And yet, don't grab onto this awareness. The minute you grab onto it, the minute you try to make it into a thing and hold onto it, it escapes.

[43:34]

It's like water, it's elusive. It'll just flow right through your hands. So all you can do is simply rest Rest in that open space. Rest in a way that you soften and begin to widen and include all of your experience. Include the inhale and the exhale. Include both the joys and the sorrows of your life, the pain, the ease. the thoughts, the feelings, the body sensations. Everything is included in that space. Nothing is discriminated against. Everything is radically included and nothing is left out. Everything is whole. Everything is worthy. It's a story we tell ourselves. I think it's a fundamental story that most of us have. At least I do. Some way, I'm not worthy.

[44:37]

That's a lie. It's the lie of the self. That's the self-grasping. It needs to have a lack there to tell you you're not enough in order to keep you striving, to keep it in place. But it's a lie. It's a delusion. How do we let go of that delusion? We are worthy. We don't have to even be worthy. We are alive. We are enough. We're whole and perfect just as we are. one mind at peace already. So in closing, I want to just share the following, which is apparently a poem on the tombstone of the third ancestor. Simultaneously practice stillness and illumination. Carefully observe, but see no dharmas, see no body, see no mind. For the mind is nameless, the body empty, the dharmas are a dream, nothing to obtain, no enlightenment to experience.

[45:48]

This is called liberation. And this is Zazen instruction. It's very strict. On one hand, it's very strict. On the other hand, it's actually quite a gift, a wonderful gift to allow yourself And the minute you take your seat to simply rest in stillness and illumination, to sit not moving, not turning away, not avoiding, not contracting, opening, seeing clearly what is and softening into that as best you can, little by little, just a little bit more. And over time, it becomes easier. And over time we discover that we are faith. We sit in faith that we are already Buddha. So thank you for sitting here in faith that something would come out of my mouth.

[46:54]

In faith that this day is here, this moment now, complete as it is. So may you enjoy your sitting. If you are sitting today, And may you enjoy whatever other activity you do the rest of your life. And do so, if you will, living it from this space of vast luminous heart-mind that we already are. Reb Anderson apparently once said that to be an elder in a Zen community means that one embodies stillness and inspires others. towards stillness. And stillness is another word for peace. So as our practice matures, can we embody stillness in order to encourage not only ourselves but others to be at ease and at peace, to be one with our true nature?

[47:57]

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, visit SSCC.org and click giving.

[48:21]

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