This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. So welcome to our third day of Seshin. Actually, I think this is our fourth day. I think we should get extra credit for finding Heiko. So my talk today is about teachings on Shikantaza, just sitting, which is what we have been doing most of these days of Seshin and what we will be doing most of the days after Seshin.

[01:06]

And in fact, it's really all we've ever been doing our entire lives. It's just that we don't realize it. But before I talk about Shikantaza, I wanted to share with you some additional reflections I've been having about giving talks. Just like the one I'm about to do, or am doing. I am talking. In the Book of Serenity, Case 1, it says that one day the World Honored One ascended the seat. Manjishri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, struck the gavel and said, clearly observe the dharma of the king of the dharma. The dharma of the king of dharma is thus. The world-honored one then got down from the seat. Later on in this case, it says, this poem, the unique breeze of reality. Do you see? Continuously, creation runs her loom and shuttle. weaving the ancient brocade, incorporating the forms of spring, but nothing can be done about Manjushri's leaking.

[02:15]

So being that I am just Fu, I'm not going to get down from the seat. However, I want to share with you some thoughts I had this morning about just what I'm doing here. So before coming into this room, I have spent quite a lot of time putting together these talks, quite a few hours, and weaving together stories. But the other day I called the lyrics to a song that I cannot hear. So having finished this particular weaving, which is about the same length as most of them are, I saw myself as a little bird, you know, gathering bright thread and sparkling paper and feathers and putting it all together, making a little woven nest, which I now have brought here with me. This is my little woven nest. And then I noticed, and I would like to remember, that all that I will be doing for the next 30 minutes is unraveling this nest.

[03:28]

word by word, line by line. Just taking it apart, unmaking it in this room for unmaking things. And the words will simply vanish into air, into thin air, leaving not a rack behind. So here I go, starting with the first thread. And I will keep going. until I reach the last page. So as I said, the talk I'm going to give today, this weaving, is about Shikantaza, which Dogen says is the central practice of Buddhahood itself. And what's more, that through the practice of Shikantaza, we will come to realize that this is so. In other words, that this is Buddha's practice, and we are Buddha doing Buddha's practice. According to the ancient teachings, the best way to practice Shikantaza is to reflect on yourself in the light of ancient teachings, beginning with what the ancestors had to say about Shikantaza.

[04:45]

In English, just sitting. The most important thing they said is having faith, you know, shraddha, heart, in the most important thing they said which is that this very mind is Buddha the mind that you and I and all things are sharing right now the song we cannot hear if your faith is shaky then your Shikantaza will be shaky your whole life will be shaky and you will continue generating a strong desire to escape, or at least to stop shaking. And those two are shikantaza, just shaking, just trying to get away. The true dragon will never stop letting us run and will never leave us alone.

[05:47]

Okamura Roshi tells us that there is a very strong tie between the practice of shikantaza and what is called tantric Buddhism, in which upright sitting is understood as an enactment or a performance of the Buddha's awakening. As one of our ancestors said, if it looks like Yao, it talks like Yao, it dresses like Yao, sits like Yao and eats from Yao's bowls, then it's Yao, which is just like us. You know, we sit like Buddha, we eat from Buddha's bowls, wear Buddha's clothes, act like Buddha and recite Buddha's teachings, than we are Buddha. How does Buddha sit and eat and dress and speak? By not getting caught in one of two pits. On the left side is the pit of ecstatic trance. And on the right side is the pit of self-righteousness, of arrogance. And although Shikantaza, just sitting, is not without thoughts and images, it doesn't get involved in thoughts and images.

[06:58]

It doesn't climb on board the long trains of thought as they arrive, one by one, at the station where we are patiently sitting. Our uprightness allows us to remain stationary and awake as the trains arrive and depart, arrive and depart, arrive. depart like clouds passing through a clear blue sky and just like this talk passing into thin air at the core of Shikantaza at the core of our life itself as solitary witness is silence and stillness nothing is happening the song that we can't hear When we put aside the workings of our karmic consciousness, even for a short while, it's like a train that is idling at the station.

[08:00]

The engine is on, but the cars are no longer moving. Just a rumble. Inside the cars, no one's sleeping or caught up in thinking. A mind on idle is nowhere and everywhere at the same time. And yet when the bell rings, when the whistle blows, we know what to do. And if we forget, we can watch and see what our friends are doing. Oh, it's time for service. It's time to move. So this sounds easy, and yet we all know how often we go for the ride. You know, sometimes getting off again, sometimes not. The main trick for staying upright and still is not to try any tricks with the trains, such as trying to stop them from arriving or pushing them off the tracks when they come, and especially not trying to become the conductor or the engineer.

[09:05]

At least, not yet. Concentration is what allows us to avoid playing tricks, allows us to relax in the present moment, and clearly observe whatever this way comes. The deep blue sky never obstructs the white clouds. So in Soto Zen, this practice is called silent illumination, mokusho zen, meaning to silently illuminate the scenery of the mind. Dogen says that sitting is the practice of reality itself, the reality of our one, human life and that the true form of the self is like a clean sheet of paper or like a wall at the station waiting patiently for the next train full of guests to arrive welcome welcome outside of silent illumination there is nowhere to search for Buddha silent illumination is the practice of life as one total self

[10:16]

our big mind, that includes everything. So the spirit of just this one total self is the same in our work practice as it is in the hall of silent upright sitting. There's a story that I read and that Uchiyama Roshi tells about himself in a collection of talks called The Art of Just Sitting, Essential Writings on the Zen Practice of Shikantaza. At the time that he tells this story, Uchiyama is a young monk who had ordained the very day that the war broke out in the Pacific. For many years, he and all the other monks lived in harsh poverty in Kodo Sawaki Roshi's temple up in the mountains of Japan. And in fact, all over Japan, food was so scarce that many people were starving to death. Eventually, Uchiyama became the tenzo at his teacher's temple, which he thought was really great.

[11:18]

so he could steal food for himself. And during that time, he had little else to do other than cook, dream of food, and read stories. So one of the stories he read was about a monk named Wu Zhao, who had also been the tenzo way up in the mountains of China. One day while Wu Zhao was preparing the noon meal, Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, the very Bodhisattva enshrined in our monk's hall here, suddenly appeared above the pot where he was cooking. Wu Chao beat him with his wooden spoon. And later he said, even if Shakyamuni were to appear above the pot, I would beat him too. So Uchiyama then goes on to say, having read this story, I was deeply ashamed of myself. Here Wu Chao simply beats Manjushri when he appears above the pot and goes on with his cooking. I can't imagine that I can do the same thing, even though what is appearing above my pot is a hungry ghost.

[12:20]

So from then on I worked even harder to chase away the ghosts whenever they appeared. I stopped stealing food and I devoted myself to preparing meals for the real hungry monks. He then shares teachings from the Tenzo Kyokun, which I know our kitchen monks have been reading before beginning their day. in which Dogen says, the three treasures of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha are the highest and most worthy of respect of all things. When given the opportunity to prepare meals for the three treasures, our attitude should truly be one of joy and gratefulness, which is certainly what I've been tasting in the food that's been served from our kitchen. But it's not only the kitchen that's making us delicious offerings, so too the shop. The bathhouse, the doan ryo, the senior leadership, our sheikah and our treasurer, one and the same, the children, the blue jays, the cats. Each and every being in this valley is bringing the blessing of their sincere effort and kindness and making the very best of the situation that they're in, including its limitations and its pain.

[13:36]

Could we use a few more people in this practice period? Maybe. Personally, I don't think so. I think what's here right now is perfect. This is the 108th Tassahara practice period, of which we will leave not a trace. And it's just this no trace that Dogen says will go on endlessly. We might think, when we take up thinking again, that we can ponder the meaning of zazen while doing our work, or the meaning of work. while sitting zazen. But Ushiyama Roshi says this is not the case. While cooking, just cooking. No time for magical thinking, like there's a bodhisattva hovering over my soup pot. And while sitting, just sitting, without dreaming at the smell of baked apples. Again, it's the spirit of just sitting and just working that is common to both zazen and to the work of this temple and of our entire lives.

[14:41]

Concentrating wholly on one thing is the cornerstone of Dogenzenji's teaching. And which one thing is that? The one thing that you are doing right now. In Japanese, the word shikan has its origins in a Sanskrit word, two of them, samadhi and jana. Jana is the word the Chinese monks pronounced chana, and the Japanese monks in turn pronounce zena. or just plain Zen. Samadhi means to hold things equally, not picking and choosing from among the many ingredients that we are offered for our soup pot. And that is because the subject, me, and the objects, the ingredients, are not separate. They are non-dual and they are equal. Carrots and beans, saws and hammers, computers and paper are all equal. in the minds and the hands of the ones who are caring for them.

[15:43]

The word sesshin derived from the Japanese word setsu, meaning to nourish, to gather, to embrace, to sustain. And the word shin, meaning heart-mind, is what we are doing here together for these few days. Nourishing the mind by holding things equally and gently. It's like holding a baby bird that's just fallen out of the nest. So that's us, for the most part, baby birds that have fallen out of the universe and landed here on the hard ground of planet Earth. And yet, if we mistakenly use our precious time gathering our confused minds and training them into a strict form of silence, for example, don't bother me, confused, angry, lustful thoughts, I'm busy sitting, then we will withdraw. We are withdrawing from our life. And this is not a good understanding of Shikantaza. Zazen is not about making me a more satisfactory person.

[16:48]

It's not about improving ourselves. Zazen is about opening our minds, the ones transmitted from the Buddha ancestors by means of their teachings, the mind that extends through all things and through all time, the big mind. that Suzuki Roshi talks about again and again. Sometimes we think about our small mind, the one that we inherited from our parents and from our culture, and we do our best to make that mind healthy and capable of working for the benefit of others. That's a good thing for us to do, but that is not the mind of the triple treasure. The Buddha mind is as vast as space and as small as a blade of grass. That mind has no separate selves. Simple, total, non-dualistic, all-inclusive study. Narao. The study that becomes intimate with all of our parts and all of the parts of which we are made.

[17:49]

Stars and jellyfish and COVID-19. As I mentioned in class the other day, a monk famously said, the greatest pilgrimage of my life. has been my body. So again, zazen, shikantaza, is not a method or a trick for stilling your small mind through some kind of psychic concentration, such as jhanic trances. Zazen is a ritual performance in celebration of the basic oneness of the universe, the oneness of the mind and the objects of conscious awareness. But not just the objects that we like. Wouldn't that be nice? All the objects that pass through our train station. Our job as students of the Buddha Way is not to grab hold of those trains as they pass. You know, that's just plain dangerous. And it's not to prefer the freight train to the bullet train. Zazen is sitting in the midst of our busy minds as our busy minds neither chase after thoughts or are chased by them.

[18:54]

Whatever arises is merely the scenery of your life. In the shop at Tassahara, the scenery is neatly arranged and well-oiled tools. And in the shop here, in the Zendo, neatly arranged humans with well-oiled mines, which allow whatever arises to fall away, all on its own. As Dogen Zenji says in the Fukanza Zengi, body and mind of themselves drop away, and your original face, the faceless one that has no features, will manifest. If you want to attain suchness, you should practice suchness. Just this is itness, without delay. Another one of our great ancestors, Oka Sotan Roshi, 1860 to 1921, was a major inspiration and teacher for Suzuki Roshi's teachers and their understanding of the Buddha Dharma. He wrote, Reality is not for ourselves or for others.

[19:56]

There is nothing that should be grasped. and nothing that should be abandoned. Delusion and enlightenment, sentient beings and Buddhas are one. Furthermore, everything is born of delusion. Setting delusion before us, we should not think that with the famous sword of Manjushri, we will cut them down. This is a fantasy of changing delusion into awakening. Changing delusion into awakening is a mistake. Liberation... is the realization that both truth and illusion are ungraspable. This is the true path of the Buddha Dharma. This is the ultimate purpose of our school. Studying the Buddha way is always to contemplate our self-nature, and this is to be identical with all Buddhas. So what did the Buddha see when they studied their self-nature? they saw a dependent co-arising, just as Shakyamuni Buddha did at the moment of his own awakening.

[21:04]

I and all beings on earth together attain enlightenment at the same time. These words that he spoke at the moment of his awakening are called his lion's roar. And from that time on, as Kezan says in the Transmission of Light, for 49 years he helped people by teaching, never staying in seclusion. With just one robe and one bowl, he lacked nothing. After 360 assemblies, the Buddha entrusted the treasury of the Eye of Truth to Mahakashapa, a transmission that has continued to the present day. And even though, as Kezan says, what the Buddha pointed out and explained in all of those 360 assemblies was not the same, the stories he told, the parables, the metaphors and the instructions... did not go beyond the principle illustrated in the story of his enlightenment. I and all beings on earth attain enlightenment at the same time.

[22:07]

And since that time, those who have sought the way of his teaching have done so by imitating the Buddha's form and his manner and in all of their endeavors have considered the assignment of self-understanding to be foremost. I heard a story... A number of years ago about several of the newly ordained priests who were in the Buddha Hall at the city center, Page Street, with Suzuki Roshi. They asked him to teach them again how to put on their okesa. So he got up and he walked away. And they thought maybe they had said something inappropriate. And then one of them pointed over to where he'd gone, and they saw that he was putting on his okesa. Modeling the way of practice that had been modeled for him in his own training years in Japan by watching. I was really fortunate years ago to begin the study of the Japanese tea ceremony. For a number of years, my teacher was Suzuki Sensei, Suzuki Roshi's wife.

[23:13]

And then since my Japanese was minimal and her English was hard for me to understand, I could really only learn tea by watching what she did. So week after week and year after year, as one of the guests, I would enter the tea room, sliding on my knees, and then after bowing to her and to the other guests, I would watch as she refreshed the charcoal fire, offered us her handmade sweets, and then whisked us a bowl of green tea. After many years as a guest and of watching how it was done, it became my turn to make tea. And when the guests were ready, I would open the door, slide in, stand, enter the room, and take my place by the fire and the hot iron kettle. The Japanese word for tea ceremony is cha no yu, which means hot water for tea. Cha is tea, no possessive pronoun, and yu is hot water. After taking a few deep breaths, I would completely let go of everything I had ever learned.

[24:21]

and that is because there is utterly no way to remember what you are supposed to do next. You have to rely on your body, the body which has been carefully taught over many years of repetition, this unique pattern of intricate linked movements of your eyes and your hands. If you miss one step, usually because you're thinking, you will quickly discover there is no place left to go, and you become frozen in your tracks. train tracks. Tea is, in fact, a very tightly woven net of highly visible consequences from which there are only a very few elegant ways to escape. Mostly, your fellow students will giggle when you drop the whisk or forget to add the water. Sensei, however, never giggled. She just glared. And once one of us had frozen while making tea, kindly or not, Our teacher would remind our bodies what we needed to do next.

[25:22]

I can still hear her voice ringing in my ears. Fusan, many times I've told you, little front, saido, saido. Referring to the placement of my fingers on the t-bowl. One of the most basic and simplest of all the instructions. Fusan, many times I've told you. And I would say, hi, sensei. Sumimasen, I am so sorry. Please forgive me. So if all went well, which it rarely did, it takes about 40 minutes to navigate all of the tiny instructions required to produce three tiny sips of green tea. And all the while, your knees are on tatami mats at levels of discomfort that it's very hard to imagine you would voluntarily put yourself into. And yet, for some unknown reason, you stay there until you're done. And it's especially at times like that when the famous saying, which is written on the scroll in the tea room, would come to life.

[26:26]

Tea and Zen are one. You stay until you are done. And just like Zen, tea is all about our feelings. The feelings that lead us to know how wonderful it is to be alive, to be standing once again, to be walking and eating and visiting with our friends. Feelings that are all too easy for us to forget. And so we practice them again and again. We practice having feelings, all kinds of feelings. So I decided after nearly 30 years of studying T that the entire enterprise is designed to challenge and thereby to re-educate my neural pathways. The pathways of form, feeling, perception, impulse, and consciousness. the very five heaps that make up the Buddha's teaching that we call a self, the illusory self. And although not truly there, it is the one and only thing that we have that can be educated.

[27:30]

When I first decided to ask Suzuki Sensei if I could study tea with her, my motives were less than pure. I had no idea what tea was, nor was I particularly interested in finding out. I just wanted to get close to Suzuki Roshi. who had passed away, and whose memory and reputation at the Zen Center was a living basis for everyone and everything that happened here. And everyone was grieving who had known him. There was his wife who had known him best of all, so I decided, I think I'll study tea. I want to hear her talk about her husband, which I don't think she ever did. And she didn't have to. Suzuki Roshi, as with the Buddhas before him, wasn't gone. He was embodied in those who had loved him, and he still is. And so is she. Wow.

[28:33]

Feelings. It's all about feelings. And that's how it works. You love your teachers for all the things they have given you through their selfless practice. I love Suzuki Sensei because she was my teacher. And the parts of myself I love best have come to me from people like her. Years later, after Suzuki Sensei had returned to Japan, one of my tea friends said to me, it's funny to watch some of your gestures, Fu, because you do them just like Suzuki Sensei, which made me very, very happy. So this is how all beings are enlightened at the same time as Shakyamuni Buddha. And as Kezon comments, because the I of I and all beings is not Shakyamuni Buddha speaking. The I that gives birth to Shakyamuni speaking is the same I as all beings on earth. And for this reason, we shouldn't think of Shakyamuni Buddha as having become enlightened outside or separate from all beings on earth.

[29:38]

There is no Shakyamuni Buddha separate from all beings on earth, and that is exactly what Shakyamuni Buddha saw and what he said for the next 49 years. However immensely diverse the mountains and rivers, the lands and all forms and appearances may be, all of them are in the eye of the Buddha. And you too, and me too, Kezon guarantees are standing in the eye of the Buddha. And it's not simply that you are standing there, The eye has become you. Buddha's eye has become everyone's whole body, each standing tall and still. While seasons come and go, and the mountains, rivers, and land change with the times, we should know that this is Buddha raising his eyebrows and blinking his eyes. This is the unique body of the entire universe, revealed in her myriad forms. And still, we may ask, as I often do, so what is Anyuttara, Samyak, Sambodhi?

[30:44]

What is Buddha's awakened wisdom? Naizumi Roshi, in his talk on the Fukanzazengi, says that wisdom is our life itself. We not only have wisdom, we are constantly using it. When it's cold, we put on more clothing. When it's hot, we take some clothing off. When we're hungry, we eat. When we're tired, we sleep. Being sad, we cry. Being happy, we laugh. That's perfect wisdom. And clearly, it's not just the humans who are perfectly wise. Birds are singing and dogs are howling. Spiders are weaving. Stars are shining. It's all perfect wisdom. And whether we know it or not, we are always in the midst of the way. More strictly speaking, he says, we are nothing but the way itself. In our school, Soto Zen, the emphasis is on this fundamental truth that we are already Buddha and that whatever we do becomes the actions of a Buddha. And so we should take good care of ourselves as awakened beings, asking ourselves over and over again, what would Buddha do right now?

[31:54]

Stop talking. maybe better yet, leave the last word to one of the greatest magicians of all time. The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1, by William Shakespeare. Our revels now are ended. These are actors, as I foretold, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air. And like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve. And like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

[33:00]

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 sfcc.org and click Giving.

[33:23]

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