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. Yeah, I wasn't going to speak about tango, but, you know, give me a thumbs up if I'm right and a thumbs down if I'm wrong, okay. But I... I just want to point out that in a form like the form of a dance, like the form of tango, there is a set form, but you're also completely spontaneous at the same time. And it has to come from a place of freedom. It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing, okay? So thank you. Camille is one of the... longest-term members of San Francisco Zen Center, who's been doing tango for, what, 30, 40 years?

[01:01]

Yeah. No, it's okay. So, but thank you. Sorry to, you know, like, expose you in that way. But I'm going to start the talk. Good morning. My name is Shosan Victoria Austin. Thank you, Abbot David, for inviting me. to lead the sitting and speak. Thank you, Tonto Tim, for your support. Thank you, everyone, for your support. This is the first time I've done this in a very long time, partly because I am in recovery from some serious injuries, and it's hard to figure out what to do or how to do it. So I thought I would talk about that today. And I thought I would start by... I started this morning. I was actually going to speak about the posture, and I still may. But I had the inspiration to Google the phrase, I hate Zazen.

[02:13]

This is a phrase that I've actually heard from very, very experienced Zen teachers in the past. including my Dharma grandfather, Hoitsu Suzuki Roshi, who said that when he was a lot younger. Now, of course, he's been in charge of the practice at Eheji. He's the abbot of a district temple, in charge of many temples, and is one of the strongest exponents of zazen there is. And so I take this as my inspiration because... you know, Zazen is amazing. And yet, and yet. Okay, so Zazen, what is it? How many people are here for the first time? Do I have to? Yeah, so welcome.

[03:13]

Za means sit and Zen means act. So it means stopping and seeing or stabilizing and contemplating what's really going on in our lives. And this is a really important discipline to learn because there is always something going on in our lives, a lot of which we do not know until we take the time to actually sit with it and have a way to sit with it. So I want to talk about the ways to sit with it And start with this kind of empathetic, I hate zazen idea. Because doing it is harder than talking about it. Also, much more natural than talking about it. It's both. So on the Reddit forum, it says, this is an old post. Is my true nature only there when I'm quiet?

[04:14]

Is it not there when I'm playing or screaming or on the toilet? Someone said. Somebody else said, meditation is fine, but what do you hope to gain by turning it into a ritual? A third person said, and this is an Insta, okay, not Reddit, so they had less time to think about it. Wah! I hate practicing zazen. My legs fall asleep. My gaze wanders. Wah! Wah! Wah! I lose focus. I forget I'm not supposed to be achieving anything. Wah! I forget to gift the eternal present moment of here, freedom to be what it is. Wah! Wah! I forget self-compassion. I beat myself up over no seeming progress in my practice. Wah! I love this. So...

[05:15]

We have instructions for sitting zazen, and there's a way to do it, and the basic way is to sit down, stop activity, and sit still. Okay, now you know everything I know about sitting zazen. You sit down, you shut up, you sit still. And we have forms built up for the practice. We have forms that are built For beginners, for instance, if you come to the meditation hall, the zendo, for a formal period of zazen, find someone who looks like they know what they're doing and ask if you can imitate them. And just do what they do. And they'll show you the deportment of sitting in the zendo. Deportment? Deportment? Why is deportment important?

[06:18]

Deportment. If you're an experienced practitioner, mid-range practitioner, you'll be sitting and stuff will happen, like the wah-wah person. They'll notice what they really came to do. You'll notice what you really came to do. And you'll notice that your grasp of what to do and how to do it isn't enough to meet the occasion so in practice that's called appropriate challenge if you have enough support and then for the very experienced practitioner there's all sorts of pitfalls like for instance by the time you're very experienced you're old problems in and of themselves right also You can get bored or sleepy or think that you know what you're doing.

[07:22]

These are real problems. So I want to talk about, I want to discuss something that will go with the talks. I've been on a little bit of a talk marathon. So the last week of August, I spoke about night zazen, so how to sit at night and what it gives you if you do. And then Wednesday, we had an eye-opening ceremony for Samanta Bhadra, shining practice, bodhisattva statue that retired Abbot Mary Moseen of Clearwater Zen Center had donated to us for the sewing room. Because our long-time sewing teacher, Abbot, Abbas, Blanche Hartman loved Samanta Bhadra, the shining practice bodhisattva.

[08:22]

So what's that shining practice? So how do we create an environment inside and outside that allows us the appropriate challenge of the day without going overboard and without underdoing for whatever's going on with us today? so that we don't have to sit there and regret what we've been doing all day. And we don't have to have our head in the clouds about what we should be doing or what we hope to be doing. But we can just do what we're doing. We can just sit and absorb the texture of our lives and let the life of our life come forth. So how do we do that? So I want to talk about some prerequisites and preliminary practices for good zazen posture. Okay, so first of all, let's practice a little bit of good zazen posture by bringing ourselves onto the buttock bones.

[09:29]

Okay, and balancing ourselves on our buttock bones and putting our feet under our knees so that there's a feeling of solidity. and stability. Okay, and then if you rock a little bit, you'll be able to feel that one buttock bone is wide and flat, and the other one is pointy and sharp. Right? They're different. And that has to do with how you've used your hips your whole life. But if you want to sit upright, you can take the pointy one and move it slightly to the side by leaning to the other side. And you can take the flat one, and move it slightly backwards by leaning slightly forwards. And then see what happened to you inside. If you took, suddenly took a spontaneous, complete breath, you've just developed your Zazen pose.

[10:34]

Right? You've just brought your Zazen pose from a let's clunk ourselves down into what is upright sitting. Where does it come from? What is its base? Base, not space. So if we want to find a good place to sit, we can create a good place in our own home. We can find a good place where the resources are available. Or we can create a good place through insight and patience with what we have. So there's three ways to create a good place to sit that are available to us. So the first is, is the place resourced? Do you have things like, oh, I don't know, dharma talks and robes and zazen and programs and abbots and people doing maintenance and cooking food and all those things, right?

[11:41]

Do you have a variety of people so that it's not a monoculture? Do you have books and sutras and people who care about them, who love them? So this can be built. So a place like San Francisco Zen Center Beginner's Mind Temple, we bought the building. in 1967 for $300,000 with mostly like one to five dollar donations. So you can think about how many one to five dollar donations that was, and how many people have taken that building which was old and run down to what it is today. How many people have had zazen instruction in this room? Almost a million, I think. How many people have done practice periods? How many people have cooked?

[12:43]

How many people have swept? All of those people added a resource for us. But if you're home, if you're online, how many people have done that to bring this? How many people have done that to bring this lecture? How many people have decided to... kind of let you close the door for 45 minutes so you could listen to the talk. How many people have fed you in your whole life? How many people have created the building in which you live and the surrounds? And a lot of the stuff that we have doesn't seem like it would be resources. But let's say there's something bad in our environment. That's a resource. for truthful, kind assertiveness. It just depends on how we see it and how we practice with it.

[13:45]

So the place is classically thought to have few disturbances. So again, in this meditation setting. We have double-paned glass. We have filtered air and water. We have conventions of quiet that everybody upholds. And it's bodhisattvas or awakening beings who uphold them. For instance, somebody who only had an allergy might wear a mask so that everybody feels safe when they sneeze. That is a gift. That is a person thinking what might actually give other people concern and taking care of it proactively. So that's the act of a bodhisattva.

[14:51]

Somebody else might see a cushion that's torn and think, I'm going to fix this. Or some... might give a gift of lemons from their garden, so that there are actually organic lemons instead of conventional lemons in the temple, so free of disturbances. Somebody else might hear something that's happening out on the street and go outside to resolve it or call paramedics. if somebody needs help. So again, few disturbances. But we can also create few disturbances. One of the ways that we create an environment of few disturbances, let's say in a noisy place, is by sitting one moment at a time.

[15:52]

If we sit one moment at a time, we only have to handle one or two disturbances instead of millions of disturbances. So that's a way by narrowing our sphere of influence and concern, narrowing our sphere of concern to our sphere of influence, we can actually reduce the number of disturbances we have to deal with in any moment. The third way is that the environment would be pleasant, for instance, not inhabited by enemies. So for instance, if your environment is inhabited by enemies, you might be adrenalinized all the time and not be able to quiet down. You might be in a state of anguish. And so we can deal with that by addressing enmity. We can also deal with that by practicing forgiveness. Is there anyone else here besides me who read the new book, The Science of Revenge?

[16:58]

I really thought it was a very interesting book. It was written by a, I think his last name is Kimmel, and he is a former very, very high-level attorney who talked about his profession as kind of promoting the art of revenge and talked about what happens to people who are on a steady diet of revengeful thinking as an addiction because of the way that revenge promotes the secretion of dopamine in the brain, that the circuits are very like what happens if you drink or use. And so anyway, it was a very interesting argument and one that I hadn't really thought of before. But not inhabited by enemies, he suggests that one of the ways to practice with this and make it an internal environment is to practice forgiveness, to recognize that forgiveness is about us, not them, and that forgiveness doesn't mean that we have to tolerate evil or collaborate with evil or do evil ourselves.

[18:21]

Forgiveness is just about settling ourselves. The next one is that the place would be good, that it would be non-toxic. For instance, it wouldn't have poisonous fumes or dusts, that there wouldn't be nuclear testing going on in that area, or it wouldn't be right over a garage without any air filters and that kind of thing. And we can create a non-toxic environment by the choices that we make about where we sit or where we settle. Even if it's less toxic, that already is an improvement. And no crowds or night noise. Again, we can settle with crowds or night noise by sitting one moment at a time. So those are the five virtues of a good environment for sitting.

[19:24]

And then the other prerequisites to being able to sit still and sit for a long time are that we're willing to tone down the level of our desires and hatreds. That we're willing to be content with a situation that's good enough instead of always trying to go to the extreme of the best. that we are willing to dispense with a lot of extra activities and concerns. So it means putting down doom scrolling, if you want to sit zazen, at least for the day. And it means practicing pure ethics and not ruminating. Now, what is pure ethics? how do those factors that seem to be internal create an environment in which we can sit still?

[20:28]

So I just want to give an example of pure ethics. So this morning we did the full moon ceremony. So many people were here for that. And it starts with an offering, all my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion to Born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. Okay, I want to ask you, if you're trying to sit sazan, if you're like, you know, diligently trying to sit still for this lecture, for instance, how are your knees? How is your ability to breathe? Are you forcing down? the life and health of some part of your body for an idea of sitting still. So nobody's gonna look, everybody can close their eyes if you want, but break time, rest your leg if you need to, refresh your sitting posture if you need to.

[21:37]

I'll close my eyes, I won't see you. There's no terrible consequences to refreshing your posture today. Okay, so can you breathe again? Okay, so as we become more experienced with zazen, these moments of refreshment can become very, very subtle. For instance, Darlene Cohen, who lived with rheumatoid arthritis for many years, suggested where she was marching on her buttock bones to refresh her nervous system. So she would march from the left buttock bone to the right buttock bone three or four times, and then she could breathe again. She could sit upright again. She could breathe again. So we don't think of that as ethical. But let's say one of the ethical precepts we vowed not to do harm, are we harming our knees?

[22:46]

at the very moment when we're trying to do good. And how does harming the knees or the back limit our ability to do good? Well, it does that by making us less sensitive to what is harmful and what is helpful. So if we want to stay sensitive, we have to really take up the practice of not harming ourselves. We have to practice nourishing ourselves in the place where we formerly harmed. And then if any good comes of that, we have to practice spreading that feeling throughout body and mind. And then we'll find that we're able just a little bit more to sit and sit well. Now, I found the traditional Tibetan preparatory practices for meditative stability to be really helpful. So I just want to go over them. particularly for anyone who was here to hear Samantrabhadra's Ten Great Vows on Wednesday.

[23:52]

So the prep is to have a clean space and an altar or some place of devotion that's set up. You could do this at home to make offerings there, like flowers, a candle... If you're living in the building, not a candle, but a little electric candle. And then to bring yourself into a comfortable posture with the practices that create mental comfort, such as taking refuge in the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, which we did this morning. Positive forces that can help us wake up in various ways. that we're devoted to wake up for the benefit of all beings. If we have that intention, then we won't be fooled by other intentions. Like, I want to wake up for the benefit of all beings. Oh, that itches.

[24:56]

Right? I want to wake up for the benefit of all beings. That itches. Let's wake up to that. Does it really itch? Do I need to do something about that right now? Can I give it a rain check for... 12 minutes from now. Okay, and then the third one is Brahma-viharas. So waking up helps our mind. The Brahma-viharas help our heart. So the Brahma-viharas are practices of friendliness. Friendliness is the main one of the Brahma-viharas or divine abodes. And then you get progressively more friendly as you practice it. You can become friendliness with pain. You can become friendliness with pleasure. And you can become friendliness with everything. And that's the subject of another talk. But for today, what I'm saying is that the posture is the container within which you take care of your heart and your mind equally.

[26:07]

And then... in the context of the resources that you've made offerings to, you can have them become real to you. Like you can visualize those, let's say we said the names of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, you can pick one to visualize as your particular visualization. Because all of those drawings and statues are actually meant as visual reminders of qualities, like, for instance, this statue right here is Amitabha. Amitabha came from a princess's quarters in Japan. I have no idea how legally it came, because at the time that it came, we didn't check the lineage of our

[27:11]

artwork as diligently as we do now. But you'll notice that Amitabha, the Buddha of Light, is doing this. So not only is it gold, which reminds us of beauty and shininess and purity, also the face is serene. There's an upright posture. And the hands are like this, which means, don't worry. Don't be afraid. Light shines everywhere. So we can visualize our objects of devotion and those shapes help us understand the qualities. We can perform acts of devotion as well. And this is where it ties in with the shining practice bodhisattvas practice.

[28:11]

So we can pay homage. We can make offerings. We can confess our stuff. We can rejoice in virtue when we see it or hear it. We can request teaching. We can request Buddhas to be around. And we can dedicate what we do for the benefit of beings. So I'm not going to repeat this too much, but if you... if you want to catch the recording later, the conditions for establishing a good place to practice and for doing preliminary practices. So do a scientific experiment, okay, if you want to. So try sitting and clock how it is for you, and then try doing those things. in ways that make you feel right with the world, and then sit and see what happens, see what the difference is.

[29:16]

Because I could talk all day and all night, and that won't be as good as you doing it yourself. Okay? And so we can ask for those qualities, which are universal qualities. We can ask for their blessing. for our effort and I think this element of asking or being open or vulnerable to the many resources and blessings both the ones that are kind of legit traditional traditionally named and transmitted and also the blessings from all beings like the many beings who created this place or this seat or me. Think about me for a second. When I say me, I mean me in all of these forms like you.

[30:22]

When you think the word me and you think about what is not me, one of the things we can do when we sit is to recognize how not me is the shape and the blessing for me. All of it. Each and every not me. The shape and the blessing of me. And that's something that's possible if we have a safe, steady, upright, open, deep posture to contain. Like, what? That's a blessing? What? I can forgive this? No. You know? Wah! Okay, but if we create this environment inside and out, it will hold even that. And it doesn't mean that we have to think that bad things are good.

[31:23]

It doesn't mean we have to collude or tolerate evil or harm. We don't. So, but we can see... We can name evil or harm in friendly or neutral ways that allow us to do something about it. And that is the active side of practice. And that's what's trained by these preliminary practices that we can do. It expands the scope of our zazen practice and allows us to practice it in many different conditions. So another time I will discuss the difference between different people's zazen instructions. But for today, I just want to say a beginner's instruction.

[32:25]

Excuse me while I check the time. 10.50, I have a little bit of time. Okay, so... Is it okay with you if I, even for very, very experienced people, if I say beginners level instructions, I do want to say that 55 years after I began to practice, which is now, I am still trying to understand and assimilate these beginners instructions. I don't think it's because I'm particularly stupid. I think it's because these instructions go all the way through a human life. So this is a document I wrote about, I don't know, 15 years ago when I was learning, maybe 25 or 30 years ago even, when I was learning how to give zazen instruction.

[33:27]

Well, no, it was more than that. Sorry, I'm not going to tell you how long ago it was. Okay. So I was trying to figure out how to say what zazen is in like 30 words or less. So correct me if I'm wrong, okay? Zazen, seated contemplation, is an ancient meditation practice that unites physical, physiological, emotional and spiritual stabilization with the ability to see deeply into one's life. In Zazen, practice and realization are one. I did my best. If you want to give a... If you want to try defining Zazen and what's important about Zazen, you could send an email to...

[34:30]

the city center off, to me, care of the city center, you know, contact us page, okay? So I dare you to write something about what zazen is and do that if you want. Preparation. Set up a clean, quiet place. Use cushions or a chair that give you a stable posture. You might also want to place a Buddha or inspiring picture A candle or flowers, oh, if you live at city center, not a real candle, okay, or flowers close by to set the tone. Use the toilet if necessary. Wash your face, hands, and feet. Arrange your clothes and your body so that you can sit comfortably upright. Legs. Any balanced, stable, and peaceful position of the legs is suitable. You may sit on a chair with your feet under your knees in a simple cross-legged position.

[35:33]

You can kneel using a bench or cushion. You can place one lower leg in front of the other or place the legs in half or full lotus. If you cannot sit, find an experienced teacher to show you a reclining position for your zazen practice. But all of the leg positions share a torso practice. In all zazen positions, maintain an erect spine with tall and natural curves. Balance on the points of your buttock bones. Do not lean. Once height is established, maintaining the support of hips and shoulder blades, open the front chest. Finally deepen the areas of your breath. Eyes half open, enough to see light. Gently lowered gaze.

[36:34]

Ears neither listening nor shutting out sounds. All your sense organs quiet and calm. Lips gently touching. Tongue tip at the front roof of your mouth with the rest of the tongue resting to open the airway. Mudraha. The whole posture is called Buddha mudra or Buddha seal. Your hands make a mudra called dhyana mudra, concentration seal, which is this. It goes here. So someplace between your belly button and your pubic bone, if your hands are not only doing the mudra but feeling, the circular space inside the mudra, you'll be able to feel that there's an area of greater energy someplace down here.

[37:37]

Where is it? So with your little fingers firmly touching, encircle that energy and let that energy support the shape of your pose. Sorry, I got carried away. That wasn't a beginner instruction. Sorry. Okay. Breath and mind. Breathe gently through your nose. Count or follow your breaths to enter concentration. Letting breath follow breath will introduce you to the mind and to the self. Awakening. Just sitting upright. with perfect attention on posture and breathing and great pure effort. That's Suzuki Roshi. Just sitting upright with perfect attention on posture and breathing and great pure effort is zazen.

[38:41]

It's a rare opportunity to become yourself. So great pure effort. Pure effort means you're not forcing. You're not underdoing. You're not overexcited. You're not under-efforting. Your mind is not zizzing, and it's not dull. Stay right in the middle of yourself. That is the place to create it. I want to end by reading you a story, and this is from my Dharma brother, Hozan Alan Sinaki, who passed away a few months ago. And Hosan was a former leader of Buddhist Peace Fellowship, a world advocate for peace, and a really great bluegrass musician who found so much joy in music and raising his kids and in the world. So this is his story.

[39:45]

At midnight on February 9, 1999, Jetirun Siripungs was executed by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison in California. He had been convicted of robbery and double murder at a small store in Garden Grove, California, where he had previously worked, and his nickname was Jay. So Jay Siripungs was a Thai national. who had briefly been a Theravada monk in Thailand. While legal efforts were underway until the last moment, California Governor Gray Davis rejected the defense's plea for clemency, which had been joined by two jurors, a former San Quentin warden, the government of Thailand, and the husband of one of Siripong's victims. In his final week, Jay was visited by Ajahn Pasano, co-abbot of Abhyagiri Monastery in Mendocino.

[40:52]

Bhante Pasano wrote about that final evening. So he and Alan talked about, he and Hozan talked about this. We spent the whole evening meditating, chanting, and talking Dhamma. So in the last hour, Jay was peaceful. He was able to establish his mind firmly on his meditation subject. Towards the end, we took the time to do a ceremony of sharing merit and offering blessings, even to guards. At the prison entrance, cold rain was falling. There were about 200 people, I was one, gathered in front of the tall steel gates. I'll keep going. huddling on blue tarps where the rain pooled about 75 meditators from several Buddhist traditions, sat in the midst of the whole catastrophe. I sat on my black cushion in the rain for hours until we received notice of Siripong's death.

[41:56]

My robes were soaked through. I was shaking with cold and damp. On the other side of the Iron Gates, about 15 to 20 California highway patrolmen in helmets and gear stood in the same downpour, rotating every hour. There was radio and TV coverage with several reporters on the flat roof of the gatehouse. One reporter stood there with his mic while his cameraman panned from him to the sodden meditators. It was really cold. and really wet. In a stage whisper, I heard him say, they're sitting silently. After about a minute, a minute is a lot of dead air on radio or television, he said. They're still sitting silently. They're still sitting silently.

[43:01]

At the heart of Zen, this is what we do. We sit upright in rain and cold, in loss and uncertainty, in sorrow and in joy, sitting silently, then arising to offer appropriate response. Okay, appropriate response. That's for 6.01 p.m. for the people who are sitting, the sitting. So let's sit silently through rain. What's the post person's read? Rain and snow. Dark of night. What else is part of that anyway? Sleep, dark of night, anyway. Yeah, the mail from all beings except us has to be delivered, okay?

[44:07]

So let's sit. If you're not sitting, thank you for supporting our sitting. Your sitting, your sitting really helps. Thank you for your attention, for your presence, for your practice, and please have a Have a good day. 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.

[45:00]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_98.46