This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. As Koto just said, this is the first formal talk in the intensive. We've been meeting since Monday on the topic of the harmony of Vipassana and Zen. Fu Schrader, the abbess of Green Gulch Farm, Green Dragon Temple, asked Gil if he would join her in a three-week period of teachings. And he said yes. And then she asked me if I would join too. And I said yes. And I want to say a little bit, somewhat to set the stage, for where I think this inquiry into the relationship, harmony between Vipassana and Zen.

[01:13]

It has occurred to me, especially over the last 20 years, that more and more practitioners of the Buddha Dharma in the West draw on different traditions. And increasingly, it seems that there is many people who find it helpful. Anyway, they read and practice in the Vipassana tradition. We can call it that. and in the Zen tradition. That's my experience, mostly from being a teacher at San Francisco Zen Center, and sometimes teaching in the Vipassana tradition. My early interest in Buddhism was in Zen Buddhism in Japan, and my early practice in Buddhism was in Thailand,

[02:28]

in the Theravadan tradition. And then I returned to, well, I came to the United States for the first time and became more involved in Zen practice. One thing in considering this relationship between Zen and Vipassana, has prompted me to do is look at my own, how I relate to the two of them, you know? And what I find out was that my sense of practice, or to use a Greek word, orthopraxy, you know, that... When I use the term Buddha way, which is common in Zen, I think of the practice of awakening and that that can be picked up in many ways.

[03:41]

Maybe without any involvement in Buddhism at all. In an orthodox way. And I think of orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Orthodoxy endearing to, complying with the principles, the beliefs of a certain tradition. And then orthopraxy, complying with the practices of a tradition. And I have come to think... I only did this reflection quite recently, but without having acknowledged it within myself, I have come to, over the decades, maybe from the very beginning, when I went to Thailand and became a Thai monk, I thought of myself as a Zen practitioner who was in Thailand,

[04:51]

to be immersed in Buddhist training. And then, at a certain point, I came to the United States and I came straight to San Francisco Zen Center to engage in Buddhist practice in the Zen tradition. And it was never for me, well, how do you justify, if you're a Zen person, how do you justify being in a Thuravadan monastery wearing Thuravadan robes and following their tradition? That was never a concern. I was practicing the Buddha way. the way of awakening that Shakyamuni proposed.

[05:57]

And it is my notion to this day that the spirit of the Zen way is exactly that. Maybe it's just the convenience that I would think that the spirit of the Zen way, the heart of the Zen way, is what I'm doing. By wonderful coincidence. But what I'm trying to say is that each of us, whether we do it intentionally or we do it through our own involvement of orthopraxy, the practices we take up, we have structured for ourselves, implied by how we consider practice and how we engage in practice, it implies our notion of what is the Buddha way?

[07:09]

What is the appropriate expression of the Buddha way? So that was my interest in joining Fu and Gil. in this exploration of these two traditions and in how they overlap and how they don't and of course there was the the added benefit of getting to teach with fu and yo you know which i deeply appreciate uh it's it's always intriguing and enjoyable to engage your peers. We've all been practicing for longer than we think. The years just tick by now. And then to listen how each of the three of us will describe the relationship between Vipassana and Zen.

[08:18]

And I would say, underneath that, how each of us would describe the authentic expression and engagement in the Buddha way. Acknowledging the Chakyamuni Buddha began practicing before there was any such thing as Buddhism. And of course, if we wanted to be in a deep constructive mode, we could ask ourselves and each other, Vipassana. Well, this is actually the construct or the strategy, as far as I know, of Jack Cohenfield and Joseph Goldstein in trying to make a particular way of meditating more appealing in the West. So they stripped of it its Theravadan monasticism and just brought it as a meditation tradition.

[09:23]

And then, of course, San Francisco Zen Center was founded by Shinri of Suzuki, who came here... Well, I think he came in the late 50s, but he got involved with Western students in the early 60s. And he created a kind of... orthopraxy for us here in the West. Another question that intrigues me is, is there a Suzuki Roshi Zen-ism? And it may seem like I'm just rattling around in idle thoughts But what I'm trying to do is have you think, and where are you?

[10:31]

And what's your position in terms of Buddhist practice? Not so much to reify it, not so much to place yourself in a narrow range of practice. but to just be able to recognize and acknowledge for yourself, what is your notion of appropriate practice? And then, of course, there's the interesting question. What do we consider to be appropriate practice? And then what do we actually do? That question, I think, folds into practice.

[11:32]

I mean, anybody who's meditated for more than 10 minutes knows that the intentionality with which you sit may not be reflected in what's actually going on in your sitting. And then when Gil... And Fu and I started to talk. We discussed various ways to come at this topic. And the one we settled on was a classic early Buddhist three-phase teaching. Not to say that they happen sequentially, but there's three aspects that can happen simultaneously or sequentially. The first one is sila. the ethical conduct that supports practice. Samadhi, the state of consciousness that realizes the buddha nature, to use that term, the essence of practice, the awareness.

[12:54]

the awakenedness, and then tanya, the wisdom, the insight, how as we engage consciousness and our behaviors that express what's being revealed and engaged, when that's engaged, It creates a state of consciousness that's capable of experiencing the human condition in a way that enables a lessening of suffering and an increase in the joy of liberation. Sila Samadhi Panya. And then when we reflected on it, we thought, well, actually, most of us in the West, our main attraction, especially in the Vipassana schools and the Zen schools, I would say this is probably not true for the Pure Land schools and other schools, several other schools.

[14:10]

But in the Vipassana and the Zen tradition, the primary interest, the gate through which we all enter in, and start to engage is meditation, is the practice of samadhi. And so we thought, let's engage in this way. We'll start with samadhi, then we'll go to paña, and then we will go to sila. And it somewhat reflects the path of practice that many of us take up. If you just think about the extraordinary popularity of mindfulness now. When I came to the US, you more or less kept it a secret that you meditated.

[15:16]

It wasn't... a polite thing to do in common society. Now, if you don't meditate, you're considered to be one of those backward people who hasn't quite realized what's important in life, or who hasn't realized that mindfulness can also help you with your mental... and emotional distress. So we started with samadhi. And that's what I would like to talk about tonight. The first short talk, and I know some of you were there, but I suspect many of you weren't on Monday morning when I gave a short talk on this.

[16:25]

And what I said was something like this. Pretty much everyone who sits down to meditate discovers how extraordinarily messy their mind is. You sit down, usually by this time you've read several books and they all seem very appealing and appropriate and rational. And then you sit down with the intention of being present, of letting thoughts come and go, of sustaining awareness of the breath, and letting that awareness anchor you in the here and now as the thoughts come and go.

[17:28]

And then for almost everybody, there are glimpses of that. And then there's all sorts of other stuff that happens. It's as if we sit down and the unsettled issues of our life, some of which we know of and many of which we don't. And the way those unsettled issues have been encoded into our bodies, creating this intriguing, mysterious, psychosomatic being And we sit down and somehow that psychosomatic being takes the opportunity to speak loudly to us.

[18:29]

As if to say, finally, I've got your attention and you're going to stay here and you're going to listen to what I'm going to express. in ideas, lots of it's in emotions, lots of it's in somatic experiences, lots of it is in fantasies, anticipations, bitter memories, joyful memories. And so the straightforward challenge of the Buddha way of discovering and realizing what it is to wake up. The straightforward challenge is, okay, how do I relate to that state of being in a way that will help alleviate the distress, alleviate the recklessness,

[19:47]

of my thinking, the intrigues of my psychological, psychosomatic being. This is the challenge of the Buddha way. And I state it like that because usually when we read the books, when we look at the sacred literature, we're presented with the pristine jewels of awakening of the great ancestors. And they are exquisite. And they are inspiring. At least I find them inspiring. And then sometimes they seem remote to what happens in our own sitting.

[20:53]

And so that's what I'd like to talk about. And by the way, Gil gave a beautiful Theravadan, early Buddhist analysis of this this morning. And I'm going to give my own analysis, but I would strongly recommend you, if you can, at some point it'll be on the web. I'm not sure when. But I would recommend listening to it. The first notion I would offer you is, rather than think, okay, this pristine, illuminated consciousness is what I'm aiming for. But rather than that, to sit down, maybe with humble acceptance, but with acceptance that what's going to pour forth is the very staff...

[22:09]

that has accumulated through being alive. I think now, especially in the last five to 20 years, as we've become more familiar with the notion of trauma and secondary trauma and generational trauma, we see that something in the process that we call meditation, in Zen we call it Zazen, quickens the opening of these distresses. And to approach them with an intentionality that accepts. So it is.

[23:13]

This is the first noble truth. The truth of dukkha. That human life has a capacity to create situations, experiences, emotions, interactions, relationships that cause distress. Both in an agitating way, and then also in a deeply winding way. And as we enter in, entering in with the heart and mind that's willing to enter that exploration, like that door and the gate, that place where we are, in our being is where we're going to sit it's where we're going to find our dharma seat as we say in zen it's where we're going to find our truth it's where we're going to become ourself which we always are but we don't quite recognize it or realize it

[24:35]

And that initiation, that initiation into a willingness to be now is a very significant event in the path of the Buddha way. It's the beginner's mind. It's the beginner's heart. It's the heart of compassion, and it's the heart of trusting something within yourself. And in the Zen way, often you can read admonitions. There's a classic... fascicle written by the finder of Soto Zen, this kind of Zen, in Japan.

[25:48]

And in one of his seminal works, The Mendoba, he said, all the Buddhas, all the ancestors, without deviation, without accepting, practice this way, practice this mysterious way the Japanese word is myo, which translates as wondrous, mysterious, or I would offer you this addition to those which are the usual translations, non-linear path of awakening. And he calls it ji ji yo zan mai, The samadhi of engaging the self and letting the workings of the self teach the dharma. So that's the initiating point.

[27:03]

And then I'd like to talk about it in a certain way which I have come to consider the way to engage it as a practice. And it's interesting because Gil offered this morning in his Dharma talk the way he engages as a practice. And it's interesting, there's some overlap and some difference between what has come up for me. what has come up for me is a fourfold process. Notice, acknowledge, contact, experience. That in any moment we can notice. And I'd offer you this exercise right now.

[28:06]

This experiment. Maybe it's a better word than an exercise. And here's the exercise. Stop breathing. Now. And now let yourself breathe and notice if you're in the middle of an inhale or the middle of an exhale or in between. Here's the deep teaching of noticing. We're noticing what's already happening. We're not making something that's not happening, happen. We're noticing what's already happening. The practice of awakening is not asking you

[29:11]

to be someone else. The practice of awakening is to discover the person you already are. And each time we practice noticing. I would say to you, if you made a practice of stopping ten times a day and counting to three or maybe five, And then notice, are you breathing in or breathing out? After a couple of weeks, you would start to see, this is really influencing my state of consciousness. Noticing. And then noticing can initiate. Am I breathing in or am I breathing out?

[30:15]

And then, what else is happening? What's the state of mind of now? What's the content of mind? How is that... expressing itself through the breath. The breath is extraordinarily sensitive to our state of being. And that's what makes it such a wonderful object of meditation. Because not only does it reflect our state of being, but as we engage the breath and work with allowing the breath to just happen, it influences in a helpful way the state of mind, the state of emotionality, and helps something within us.

[31:41]

to start to settle. So noticing. And then in Zazen, one thing I didn't mention about myself was that in the midst, after I did the Vipassana training, the Theravadan training, And I started in the Soto Zen way. I also, first of all, by coincidence, I just ended up living in a household of Rinzai Zen practitioners. But I also, over the years, have practiced with several Rinzai teachers. And what I learned there was another reason point of emphasis, which was to work with the breath intentionally.

[32:45]

And so I'd like to offer you this, this intentional way of working with the breath. That as you breathe in, can you breathe in in a kind and tender way? I wouldn't recommend saying this, but maybe that would help too. But can you have this kind of attitude? Can you have this kind of disposition? Like you're breathing in as if you're saying to yourself, it's okay. You're going to be okay. You're okay. It's going to be okay. Just like that kind of tender inhale.

[33:48]

And then, as you breathe out, it's like a sigh, like a letting go. You're not trying to force anything at all, either with the inhale or the exhale. You're trying to breathe in a way that nourishes your being. And what I learned in Rinzai and in Hatha Yoga was all sorts of breathing techniques that support that. And it is my own understanding that these breathing techniques, especially in the process of Zazen, are much more common in Japan than they are in Soto Zen in the West.

[34:58]

It's somehow they have... I think initially they were sort of described... Zen has this notion of it's a samurai practice. And you breathe in this intense way and become deeply concentrated and energized like a good samurai. And I think that notion didn't fit so well with our culture. I think most of us just wanted to suffer less than become a samurai. I think the ones who wanted to do that went straight to martial arts. And I don't mean to put martial arts down. It's probably a wonderful practice. But this is also a yogic breath, allowing the inhale and releasing the exhale.

[36:01]

And as you do it, notice. Notice how the inhale feels. Notice how the pause feels. Notice how the exhale feels. And I've come over the years to teach that, to recommend that rather than counting the breath, You know, when I was in Thailand, and I was in the monastery of Achan Fung, and during the day, the people would come up from Bangkok, and he would just sort of, we'd sit for five minutes, and then he'd congratulate them on sitting for five minutes, and give them all medallions. which supposedly just brought you great fortune.

[37:08]

And then in the evening, after dusk, the rice farmers would come, and they would sit, and we would sit for an hour. And he would tell them, you're going to die. If you want to practice, do it right now. And don't be half-hearted. Give it everything you've got. And I think for a whole set of reasons, that there's a skillfulness in offering ourselves the nurturance of kindness as we start to sit. In the Thai tradition, you would start with sila, and you would develop your generosity.

[38:11]

You'd develop the stability of your life. You'd develop the ethics of your life. And then you would come to meditation. But somehow our tradition is to jump into samadhi. So that's why I would say to you, the yoga, of gentleness and nurturing well-being with the breath. And now I have five minutes for the other three. The second one is in a rudimentary way, it's acknowledging. And dependent upon the state of mind, you know, when the mind is quite busy, you know, there's still the capacity to interject a concept, you know?

[39:18]

Oh, I'm getting really wind up about this, you know? Or... and I heard that verdict yesterday. Something in me just couldn't help but release. This is our world. This is how we're influenced how we're so capable of hearing the news from the Midwest in minutes after it's happening, or even live as it happens. I think such is the world we live in now, that nurturing kindness,

[40:29]

with the inhale, releasing distress with the exhale. It's appropriate. And then as we attend to the world, we can acknowledge, even intellectually, even conceptually, oh, distress, oh, relief. Oh, preoccupation. Oh, gratitude. And then as the mind and the heart settle, the acknowledging starts to move from being a concept to being a felt event. Like when the mind starts to settle, the breath becomes more... of a sensate flow through the body.

[41:33]

And that's what's acknowledged. And then we start to see allowing the abdomen to soften is a kindness that we can offer ourselves. Letting the exhale happen has its own generosity and its own forgiveness. And then excuse me for rushing, I have one minute. Then the third quality is turning attention towards these sensate experiences. turning towards them, and the fourth quality is experiencing them. And as this settles, and even before it settles, this is entering the realm of samadhi.

[42:52]

There are many ways that the word samadhi is used in the Pali canon. And the one I would offer you One definition of samadhi I would offer you is continuous contact. And with the word contact, hassa in Pali, it's a little bit what we might call light touch. That's what noticing is. Noticing is a light touch. And as we make contact, we make contact with a light touch. It's sensate. And as we open to it, the impact of that light touch becomes an influential experiencing.

[43:54]

And as we open to it, as we open to experiencing, It's less about ideas and more about the activity of the moment. And the classic notion of samadhi is dwelling in momentary, continuous contact. And I would say to you that the same process Notice, acknowledge, contact, experience. It can also, we can bring it forth. Like you can experiment when you're having some kind of intense experience. Just try it on. Notice, acknowledge, contact, experience. The key...

[44:57]

is the willingness to return to now, to rediscover what is happening now. This is the key. This is the Dharma gate. This is the entry into samadhi. Thank you. And I'm sure Gil and Phu will have something to say about all of this. And Gil and I will be taking up this on Saturday during the public talk. And of course, you're welcome to attend and listen in. But please, ask yourself, what is my practice?

[46:12]

And is that admonition, notice, acknowledge, contact, experience, is that appropriate for me, given my way of relating to practice? It is said, the Chakyamuni said, here's what I'm offering, but please don't just take it. Test it. Take it, try it out in your own life. Discover if it is or is not useful. The finder of the Buddha way. That was his style. 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.

[47:16]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[47:29]

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