Good morning, everyone. So, are there any people here for the first time this morning? Okay, most of them are over on this side. Well, welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. So, the good news and the bad news. The good news is we're having a one-day sitting today, so you're sitting with a bunch of courageous souls who are going to sit all day long today. So that has a nice feeling in the room. And the bad news is that there will be no cookies served after lecture, so that you that are here for the first time will have to come back another time and have cookies and tea with us after lecture, and also lunch, which it won't be served today. And the lecture I'm giving today will be a little bit about sitting zazen, because that's what we're doing all day.

[01:32]

But that's okay for beginners, because that's our main thing. So I have a room upstairs where I meet with students privately to discuss their practice, and on one of the walls there's a Japanese scroll, a calligraphy scroll, and it's sort of rotated from time to time. out of the collection that the abbot has. And the scroll that just came up there recently, beautiful five characters, and the scroll says, was sort of translated by someone, first character, sit, second character, alone, third character, big, fourth character, grand, mountain, peak. So, beautiful scroll that says, sit alone big grand mountain peak. I thought, what a wonderful sort of scroll for a one-day sitting, sitting alone like a grand mountain peak.

[02:39]

And as is usual with these scrolls that are done by Zen teachers, it usually comes from some famous saying or interchange. So this particular saying comes from... Case 26 in the Blue Cliff Records, where a very famous teacher, Bai Zhang, had an interchange with a monk. So the monk came up to Bai Zhang and said, what is the extraordinary affair? And Bai Zhang said, sitting alone on Daishin Mountain. Sitting alone on Daishin Mountain is the answer he gave to what is the extraordinary affair? Daishin Mountain was the mountain that Bajan's temple was located on. So he's sitting here in this mountain temple. The monk bowed and Bajan thereupon hid him. So that's the entire story, as is these stories, which tend to be kind of concise.

[03:55]

So Baijan, just to say a few things about Baijan, was one of Matsu's main disciples, and Matsu was one of the most famous teachers in that period. He had over 100 disciples, and Baijan was one of the three that was most prominent of his disciples. And Baijan established the monastic rules for Zen monasteries, called the Shingi, the Guidelines for Temple Living. And prior to Baijan's time, the Zen monks were sort of following the tradition they'd brought from India, which was to go around and beg for food. And after Baijan's time, the monks in the monasteries started raising their own rice and becoming more self-supporting and independent. And he had a famous saying that is quoted quite often, a day of no work is a day without eating. And that was because at some point in time when he was quite old, the monks felt so sorry for him because he was too old to work in the rice fields.

[04:59]

So they hid his gardening tools, his tools. And he searched around for his tools. He couldn't find them. And he finally said, a day of no work is a day of no eating. So they gave him back his tools. Either he quit eating or was so distracted by looking for his tools that he skipped a few meals. Anyway, I'm going to get back to that because I think... And just to mention that... Simultaneously with finding this marvelous scroll and getting kind of wrapped up in it, I ran into Vicki, and I mentioned the scroll to Vicki, and Vicki sent me an email with the very first lecture that Suzuki Roshi gave in this temple on November 22nd, 1969. The students moved in on November 15th, and on November 22nd, they started a three-day sashin. And in that lecture, Suzuki Roshi quoted this very story. this case from Case 26. So I'm going to share some of his thoughts on the story too.

[06:00]

So that was a pretty good question. The monk walked up to Baijan and said, what is the extraordinary affair? I mean, it's always interesting to think about these interchanges where a monk comes up and asks the teacher something. I remember the question I wanted to ask the Zikiroshi. It wasn't quite so well put together. It was something like, can I be enlightened? Subtext, have I screwed my life up so much that it won't be possible? That was kind of what was on my mind in my first interaction with Siguroshi. Not quite what is the extraordinary affair feels kind of more sophisticated. What is the great matter? In Siguroshi's lecture on this question, koan, his translation was, what is the most special practice? What is the extraordinary affair? What is the most special practice was his way of translating the monk's question.

[07:05]

And Dogen wrote a commentary on this koan, because Dogen wrote commentaries on most koans, and his was, what is the most excellent matter? That's the question. What is the most excellent matter? What is the extraordinary affair? What is the special practice? That's what the monk was asking. And Tsukiroshi's answer was to sit on top of Mount Dawu. That's the same mountain, only it has a slightly different translation. Tsukiroshi's translation about Mount Dawu was Sublime Peak. And the translation of... Daxin Mountain, which was in Bajan, sitting alone on Daxin Mountain, is Hero Mountain. Isn't that nice? Sitting alone on Hero Mountain, or sitting alone on Sublime Peak. Here we all are, sitting alone on Hero Mountain.

[08:09]

It sounds very heroic. It is heroic to sit a one-day sitting, don't you think? to actually sit all day long with your mind and body, no escape, no distractions. You're actually facing your life. Some people would think, well, you're going to spend all day long? You're not going to talk to anybody? You're not going to look at anybody? You're going to sit in that awkward posture and put up with what's going on in your mind? You must be a hero. That's what you are. So you're heroes. Kind of sounds romantic, like one of those New Yorker cartoons where you're climbing up the mountain peak and finding the person sitting there on the top of the peak all by himself, alone. One of the perfections that we practice in Zen, the Bodhisattva, six transcendent practices, are generosity, moral conduct, and patience.

[09:24]

The first three and the second three are effort, or joyous effort, or energy, and wisdom, and meditation. And sometimes people talk about the first three as the... ones you use most in ordinary life practice, you know, out there living in the world. And the second three are the heroic paramitas that you use when you're heroically sitting a seven-day sashin, which is coming up soon. I hope some of you will be sitting our seven-day sashin that starts, I think, right after Thanksgiving. I actually looked up the word sublime because I thought, what a beautiful word, sublime. exalted, elevated, noble, lofty, awe-inspiring, majestic. While you're sitting there in your pain at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, think about the sublime peak you're sitting on, your marvelous cushion.

[10:27]

Well, in some sense, it is true. I want to talk a little bit about sitting alone. First of all, there's some quality of sitting that's alone, clearly. Only you are living your life there. No one else is having the same experience you're having, and yet you are sitting with 60 other people in a room. So that's not exactly alone. You feel the support of these 60 other people. But you're not just sitting with those 60 other people. You're sitting with all those visitors in your mind, those workers from last week, you know, some of the ones that you didn't get along so well that you're carrying a little bit of a commentary on, and some of the ones that you really got along well that you're thinking fondly of. It says nothing today, nothing, you know, what about the people you're living with, your family? They're wandering around in your brain somewhere too, aren't they? And of course, there's your parents in there, even if they're not

[11:38]

actually talking to you, even if their voice isn't actually there, they're sort of subtly in there in some way. Possibly if you're not doing too well and you're giving yourself a hard time, maybe that came from them somewhere. So we're hardly sitting alone with this incredible conversation that's going on in our brain. And this conversation goes on even when you're sleeping. I woke up this morning. As I was waking up, I realized I was discussing with the teacher I had 30 years ago how I was going to present a certain aspect of the Vimalakirti Sutra next Tuesday in my class. And not only was I discussing it with my teacher of 30 years ago, who I've hardly seen, But several of the monks that were around them 30 years ago, why they decided to wander into my life in the middle of the night last night and help me put together my lecture, I don't know. But this is going on all the time.

[12:39]

And I sort of wonder, you know, whose thoughts are these? Where do they come from? I mean, you're going to be sitting all day long with your thoughts, kind of curious. Are they yours? Did you... invent them? Because not exactly, because these thoughts go back into your long history and your parents' history and the language your thoughts are going on have something to do with the country you were raised in and the language your parents spoke and the way they're phrased and organized. These thoughts are not just yours. These thoughts are part of a large kind of operation happening that your mind just happens to be participating in in some way. Sikorshi used to say it was like listening to neighbors over the fence.

[13:41]

You know, some neighbors are having a conversation on the other side of the fence and you could kind of hear what they're talking about, but you don't know exactly. That was his idea about what this conversation is that's going on. But we're quite identified with this conversation. We think, oh, this is my conversation and it's all true. And so the second question I'd have for you is, What kind of world is this conversation creating for you? This conversation you're having in your head is an entire world that's being created that you're living in. Emotions start getting connected with it and physical feelings, and there's this entire world manifesting out of this sort of conversation in your head. And somehow we actually think this world is the actual truth of where we're living, you know, this world that was created by this sort of collection of thoughts.

[14:53]

And one of the things I've been, one of the things I notice in my life is when the world I've created is causing me a lot of suffering, that's when I invoke the famous phrase from Suzuki Rishi, Not always so. Maybe this story is not really true. Maybe this idea, this sort of world I've created in my mind is not really a description of the world I'm in. Just a suggestion for you to pay attention to while you're investigating this process that you're in today. Anyway, I managed to find this marvelous poem by Kay Ryan. Kay Ryan is one of my favorite poems. He was a poet laureate of the country and lives up in Marin and gives talks around here from time to time. This is one out of her new book, Erratic Facts. The mind must set itself up wherever it goes.

[15:55]

And it would be most convenient to impose its old rooms. Just tack them up like an interior tent. Oh, but the new holes aren't where the windows went. I'll read that again. The mind must set itself up wherever it goes. And it would be most convenient to impose its old rooms. Just tack them up like an interior tent. Oh, but the new holes aren't where the windows went. So that's our problem, of course. We carry our old rooms, our old life into this new room, and we can't see very well because the windows don't fit with where the new holes for the new room are. So what kind of hold does this old world have on us?

[17:04]

We believe it's so true and it affects the way we interact with other people and carry on. So at some point you're just going to say, I want this internal dialogue to turn off. I'm just going to turn this off. I've heard of this emptiness thing. It's been floating around for a while, this emptiness thing. I think I'll just empty my mind of all my thoughts, all my feelings, all my reactions, and I shall sit here in some transcendent state of calm and equanimity, impervious to anything. How's that sound? I know it sounds pretty good, but I don't think it's going to happen, first off. I don't think it's our idea of zazen.

[18:08]

I don't think it was Zikiroshi's way of zazen. I think we try to sit with some composure that allows us to accept whatever is happening. Accepting whatever is happening means you're vulnerable to life. You're not sitting in some transcendent equanimity, impervious to anything. You're actually open to life. You're not warding it off or escaping from it. You're willing to experience whatever comes your way. And if you can get into some place where you can experience whatever comes your way, you will find out who you are. Not who you are in some sense that you could write a book about it, but of course you could write a book about it or try to understand it intellectually, but you'll actually be who you are in this moment.

[19:10]

And who you are will be changing and experiencing many different things, some of them pleasant and some of them unpleasant, because that is what human life is. Our effort is to find the depth of our life as it is, not trying to find some special experience, but to see in every experience we have the depth of human living. So what is our basic approach to this? Our basic approach is to pay attention to our posture and our breathing. Breathing is such an amazing thing. And just to sit and actually feel your breathing, it grounds you in your living moment-by-moment living.

[20:13]

It connects you with your physical grounded body. It brings you into the present moment. And you can just let your thinking go as it goes. Comes in, goes out. slows down, stops, calms down, whatever. I'm still sitting here breathing. We had an event on Wednesday, this last Wednesday at the Grace Cathedral. It was titled Old Age, Sickness and Death. I love us Zen guys, such great marketing titles. What a draw, Old Age. sickness and death. Anyway, a few hundred people showed up, so maybe we have a particular niche there. Anyway, Grace Dahman, who is Damon, who is an old Zen friend of ours and lived for many, many years at Green Gulch.

[21:16]

And then she runs the pain clinic at Laguna Honda Hospital, the pain clinic and rehabilitation center there. And she was talking about the difference between pain and suffering. Physical pain sometimes just can't be avoided. And it's quite possible today that some of you will be sitting with some physical pain. And feel free if you need to move to move. But what's useful to do is to observe some layered suffering on top of the physical pain. And that suffering is related to your thinking mind, which has all kinds of issues with having your physical pain. And you can have some control over the suffering you layer on your physical pain. And one of the things she mentioned was the incredible curative value of breathing.

[22:23]

This is from a medical doctor who runs pain clinic. Breathing actually... I mean, it's like sitting in this posture and breathing is like a healing thing. I think it probably actually heals the pain in some way. I've certainly experienced that if you breathe into the pain. But if nothing else, it certainly grounds you in the reality of your life, which is beyond the particular... problem you have at that time. So I would recommend that if you're not sure what to do, investigate thoroughly your breathing today. I have this case 19, ordinary mind is the way, thrown in. I'm not sure why.

[23:25]

I think I will not discuss that. That's a whole lecture in itself. But merely to say, again, ordinary mind is the way. Whatever is happening in your mind is the way, is your practice, is your practice today. And it is not subject to knowing or not knowing. If you truly reach the genuine way, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. So, I wanted to get to this marvelous lecture that Suzuki Roshi gave on November 22, just because I like to revisit his words from time to time. So this was given 1969, so that's almost, what, 37 years ago? 40, yes. Good thing I didn't finish my PhD in mathematics.

[24:25]

That thesis escaped me. Anyway, whatever it was. What did we decide? 47. I just missed 10. What's a decade among good friends? How did that happen? I was here. 47 years. No, that's not possible. I'm so grateful to have a chance to practice zazen with you in this magnificent building. I think we must be very grateful for Buddha and our successive patriarchs. Isn't that nice? I mean, we must be grateful that we can practice zazen together in this magnificent building, that this practice was brought to us from over 2,500 years ago, nurtured, cultivated, worked on for 2,500 years and brought here so that we can do this. I think we must be very grateful for Buddha and all of the ancestors that brought us this practice.

[25:34]

First, I want to express my confidence in practicing with you. Isn't that nice? He was confident. To ask whether we will be successful or not, is for me out of the question. If we are bothered by that kind of idea, we cannot do anything. Because our practice is always concentrated on the present moment, if our practice in this moment is good, then the next moment we'll have good practice. If we continue in this way, we will naturally have good practice forever. This is how, as you know, we create confidence in our practice. very nice, very simple. If we practice good in this moment, which is the only moment we have, then we don't have to worry about our practice in the next moment, because it'll be good too. Because if we're practicing in that moment, it'll be good.

[26:35]

So all we have to do is practice good in this moment. I love it. And this is how we get confidence in our practice, by practicing good in each moment, moment after moment. That was the thing about Suzuki Roshi, of course, in our practice, is this is not something we do for 20 minutes a day. And then, oh well, I put my practice on the shelf and I go out and do the rest of my thing. This is a moment by moment by moment through the day having good practice. When we're sitting zazen, we're doing zazen practice. When we're out in the world, we're doing zazen practice out in the world. So anyway, he does have a paragraph where he talks about how Yakujo set up the guidelines for practice in his temple, Yakujo's temple, 9th century, I guess, China. And those guidelines actually were carried through temple practice in China, and then Dogen worked on them and wrote a whole book about the Shingi, the guidelines for practice, and then it came to America, and Suzuki Roshi in this talk

[27:45]

talked about how it was important for us to find our own American guidelines for practice. And he said, he talks about, you know, precepts are the core of our guidelines for practice, our bodhisattva vows, our bodhisattva pricta. And he says, precepts have two sides. One is the negative, prohibitory side, and the other side is generating our spirit doing something good or positive. positive side is doing something good, and the negative side is to do no evil. There are these two sides. I think we will naturally need some way of life as a group. It may be difficult to set up all at once, but if we try hard, we will find our precepts, which include both sides. This is a very important point in practice for our practice to help others and to help others to help themselves. So they were That was at the beginning of setting up the guidelines, the practice guidelines for this temple.

[28:49]

And of course he picked two of the pure precepts, which are really wonderfully simple and clear. Do good and avoid doing evil. If you can just sort of like keep that in your mind, you'll... So we have a very long Shingi, about eight or nine pages here that we read. We read it at the beginning of this practice period on a Wednesday night. We sat down as a group and each person read a paragraph and we went around the room reminding ourselves of what the guidelines that we have adopted are American guidelines for living in this place. So now we get to Siguroshi's comment on the koan I brought up. On this occasion I want to introduce you to some words of He used Yakujo because that's the Japanese pronunciation. Nowadays we are getting more appropriate and we use Bai Zhang because Bai Zhang was Chinese and that's his pronunciation.

[30:02]

So a monk asked Bai Zhang, what is the most special practice? And Bai Zhang said, to sit on top of Mount Dawu, to sit on top of Sublime Peak is the... It is the name of the mountain. After all, all the various ways of practice are just sitting on top of Mount Dawu. If you want to sit well, you must organize your life. So Baijan tries to help people organize their lives so that they can sit on top of Mount Dawu with him. He tried to help them organize their lives so they can sit on the sublime peak with him. Then he ends with, let's practice hard. Let's concentrate our life on zazen practice and organize our life so that we can sit well. End of lecture. Let's practice hard. Let's concentrate our life on zazen practice and organize our life so that we can sit well.

[31:10]

Organize our conduct, our patience, our practice, our way of living together. so we can sit well. So we have to get back to our koan because we've only talked about the first two sentences. We've talked about what is the most special practice and sitting on top alone of the sublime peak. But then... the monk bowed, and Bajan thereupon hid him. So I looked up, Dogen has something called the Ehe Koroku, which is kind of a large collection of informal talks he gave in the Dharma Hall and various other things, and it was translated by...

[32:14]

Taigen Dan Layton and Chohaku Okamura, and it's a quite beautiful big book called The Extensive Record of Dogen's Talks. So in one of the Dharma Hall discourses that Dogen gave, he gave a Dharma Hall discourse on this koan, and he said in that Dharma Hall discourse, Suppose someone were to ask me, Ehe, that was his name, Ehe, What is the most excellent matter? And I would simply tell him, giving a Dharma talk, a Dharma Hall discourse on Mount Kichijo. Mount Kichijo was the name of the mountain where Ehe is located. And its translation is auspicious mountain. I would say, simply telling him, giving a Dharma Hall discourse on this auspicious mountain in this temple. I would say just giving a Dharma talk.

[33:17]

Here, right now, what I'm doing. So this is a little sort of direction that he takes us in in looking at this case. What is the most excellent matter? What is happening right now is the most excellent matter. If it's giving a Dharma talk, that's what the most excellent matter is. If it's... hanging out, having ice cream with your friend? Ah, that is clearly the most excellent matter. And are you sitting on the sublime peak at that moment, the auspicious peak of your body and mind? Whatever you are doing, wherever you are addressing the most excellent matter and sitting alone on sublime peak, that is what you're doing. So, the monk bowed. So this bowing is interesting.

[34:20]

What kind of bow was it? Was it a very grateful, oh, I understand, Master, thank you very much, I'm completely in accord with you. Or it was, I have no idea what you're talking about and I'm so pissed off at you, but I'm going to bow because I know I'm supposed to do that. And we have those bows, don't we? I was talking to my friend Lou Richmond, who was down at Tassara in the early days of Suzuki Roshi, and we bow to each other when we're passing each other in the paths at Tassara. We do that all the time there. During one-day sittings, of course, we bow to each other when we pass each other in the hallways. And he was very angry with a student, so when he bowed to that student, he felt very angry. And he asked Suzuki Roshi, Zikorshi, when I bowed to that student, I was very angry. What do you think? And Zikorshi said, perfect.

[35:23]

Anyway, it was perfect. He bowed to him, because that's what our form is. And he was angry, and he was angry. But I think that... Anyway, I just thought I'd throw that in there. So I think, and you can ponder this yourself, and there's 10,000 different answers to this, but I suspect maybe the monk, when he bowed, didn't actually get it. I think the monk probably thought, oh, in some future Sashin, in this marvelous temple, I'll sit like a peak, like a sublime peak. He didn't realize that at that moment he could meet his teacher. At that moment, the most excellent matter was at hand. At that moment, he could sit alone with Baijan. And so Baijan struck him, kind of woke him up.

[36:30]

You know, in the old days, we used to carry a stick at Tassar, and if people fell asleep in the zendo, we might hit them, or if they felt like they were falling asleep, they'd put their hands up, and we'd give them a sharp rap on the shoulders. This is a tradition that came from Japan. We don't do that anymore here because I think in American culture it gets misinterpreted and so it's hard to know what, you know, one might think he was being abusive hitting this monk. But I think in the culture, old times of China at that time, this was just a way of sort of like waking him up. I'm here. This is the most excellent matter. Meet me. So I think I'll end this talk with Sigurishi's words.

[37:37]

Let's practice hard. Let's concentrate our whole life on zazen practice and organize our life so we can sit well. It will change your life and we will be able to carry this practice into the world, this bodhisattva practice we're developing and certainly The world needs all the help we can give it. So sit well today. Thank you very much.

[38:12]

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