Hi everyone, it's so nice and quiet in here, it's a shame to say anything. I'm thinking about the teachings and writings of Zen Master Dogen, the 12th century Japanese Zen teacher who is the founder of our lineage, because we're working on a new book of translations with Kastanahashi. Dogen was born in the year 1200, so it's 800 years birthday of Dogen this

[01:03]

year, so that's a big deal, and everybody's all over the world commemorating Dogen's birth. And there was a really big conference, international conference at Stanford in the fall, and I'm sure that somebody spoke about it here, maybe I did, I don't remember, but you probably know about it. And it was a really good conference, and it marked a kind of turning point, a moment in which everyone could see that things are really starting to change, and that all the people in the conference, the Japanese people and Western people as well, were coming to a new understanding of who Dogen is, and what Dogen stands for, why he's important.

[02:03]

And to take this one step further, I think that everyone is coming to a point, whether we are followers of Dogen or followers of Buddhism or not, we're all coming to a point, I think, when it's becoming clear that a true and inclusive and really inspired and real spirituality is something important and necessary for everybody. Even in recent weeks, we had presidential nominating committees, I mean conferences, what do they call them? Conventions. Conventions. And everybody was talking about religious beliefs and views and practices and spiritual values and so on. And now this is part of our national conversation for the

[03:13]

next few months. And I think that this to me was something that I appreciated, it seemed like a good thing. It would be easy to be cynical about it, and probably if you were cynical about it, you would probably be right to be cynical about it. And no doubt, people are figuring out that this is a good way to get elected, so let's all be that way. But on the other hand, I do think that there's a lot of sincerity in it and a lot of real feeling, and a real feeling on the part of a lot of people that service and goodness are values that they really believe in. And if it's not true of the top politicians, and maybe it is, it's certainly true of many, many, many people. So that's something to be happy about.

[04:16]

For those of us who have been practicing the Soto Zen style, Soto Zen way for many years, and studying and trying to put into practice the ideas and teachings of Dogen, there's also a new spirit emerging, both in Japan and in the West. In Japanese Soto Zen, the old ideas, the old attitudes about Dogen, that Dogen is an eternal Buddha who never changed and was always right and never wrong, that his teachings are perfectly consistent and clear, the idea that the Japanese Soto Zen establishment always knows best and is the true repository of the holy Buddhadharma, that the timeless truth is safely preserved in the schools, monasteries, and in the priesthood, and that what goes on in the world outside

[05:21]

is not that important. These are ideas that were pretty much firmly held in Japanese Buddhism when I started practicing about 30 years ago, but they're no longer held in Japanese Buddhism. In recent years, the Japanese Soto Zen establishment has changed quite a bit. They have actually apologized for their past mistakes, for their racist policies, which they often pursued, and even more than just merely apologizing, they've actually been engaging in serious internal debates about how they could have done the things they did and how they could have believed things that they believed, and changing that, trying to change. They have also been, in recent years, recognizing the validity of Zen practice in the West as something

[06:25]

deep and original and true, maybe even deeper and more true than what they do in Japan. The Japanese themselves now often say this, and they've also begun to take responsibility in the world at large, not just keep their view in their monasteries, but begun to think about and support important social, environmental issues. So this is really terrific, actually, and 15 years ago, none of it would have been imaginable. And in regard to Dogen himself, I think that we Westerners are also beginning to grow up a little bit. It is true, I think, we could all agree, that Dogen's writings are lofty, difficult, profound, and do represent a great treasure of world religious thought. I think

[07:29]

that's really true. And yet, at the same time, now we can admit that Dogen's thought is also once in a while cranky, shrill, narrow-minded, and fundamentalist, and probably just dead wrong. We can say that. Nothing happened, I just said it. And, you know, it's beginning to become clear to everyone, the obvious fact, and we can say and know that no human being, including the great Dogen Zenji, is perfect, unchanging, or always right, and that there is no person and no institution in this world that is perfect that will remain unaffected by the social and political conditions that form the context

[08:36]

for what happens to any of us. So now, you know, we can know these things and be clear about them, and we're not the only ones. The whole world is sort of growing up somehow. Humanity has maybe finally become about 16, which is good. We're getting there. It's a stormy period in our lives, but we're getting there. A traditionalist religious viewpoint is more often than not narrow-minded, authoritarian, and rule-bound. A traditionalist religious viewpoint is more likely than not to cut off real and vibrant life instead of fostering it. All we have to do is study the record not only of Japanese Soto Zen itself, but of any religious establishment anywhere in

[09:39]

the world, and we can easily confirm that this is so. In the last couple hundred years, there's been a powerful reaction to this history and this fact. Traditionalist religion has been cast in the role of the enemy, and there's been a big tide of secular, psychological, scientific thought that has been liberating for so many people who have found themselves culturally under the thumb of religious ideology. Many generations of people have been liberated by this view that's taken religion to be something old-fashioned, counterproductive, counter-humane. But now that we're growing up a little bit

[10:39]

and we have some freedom from this traditionalist religion, I think we're seeing that a purely secularist perspective is not really sufficient to answer the deepest questions of our lives, and we're getting ready to find a new way to practice real religion, serious religion, not just television religion, but not rigid religion either, flexible religion, and not narrow religion, but wide religion, a way of practice that is loving and not crabby, and idealistic, but in the best sense of that word, not poisonous idealism that makes it impossible for us to live in this world, but an idealism that encourages the best in us

[11:43]

while accepting what is for what it is. Though it seems to me that one of the fundamentals of this kind of religion that we're, I think, all interested in practicing is actual practice, something that we do, daily practice. It is, one can really admire and be moved by people who express the right ideas or the best ideas about our life, the best beliefs, the belief that goodness is really possible and that it can be cultivated more and more, the belief that compassion and not self-centeredness is a more beautiful way to live, the belief that we can be mindful and not mindless in

[12:44]

our activity. So that's great, you know, that people would believe these things and speak of them, but these beliefs and ideals and values, as wonderful as they are, will definitely not be sufficient to get us through the day or the week or the month or the year of our lives in these times. We live in a complicated world that calls for us to come forward more strongly than we can just standing on our beliefs. I think that everyone needs some form of actual spiritual practice that we have some commitment to, some daily practice that will strengthen those good beliefs and those good intentions and help us to see and actually to be able to

[13:46]

work with our daily conduct. And by spiritual practice, I mean something that we actually do, something that we really do, that we have to take time out to do. And my definition of spiritual practice is that it's something that is truly and supremely useless. In other words, something that one does just for the commitment of the doing of it, with dedication to the doing of it, to something larger than oneself. In other words, it's useless because there's no self-interest in it. You just do it because it's something outside of the sphere of self-interest and purpose. So I think we all need, and you know, it doesn't matter what it is, but something like that. In Zen center and in Zen practice, of course,

[14:55]

we have a good practice that we do and it's called Zazen, sitting practice. And this, we're speaking of Dogen, you always speak of Zazen when you mention Dogen because Dogen was very strong on the practice of Zazen and wrote about it. And I've always been impressed by and have not yet even begun to exhaust the Dogen sense of what Zazen practice is. Zazen practice is, on the one hand, extremely lofty and difficult, maybe the most impossible of all spiritual practices. I remember, I often say, when Taratulka Rinpoche came here years ago and saw that we were sitting doing Zazen, you know, non-dual meditation. Ordinary American schmoes who just showed up yesterday sitting in a non-dual meditation, he was

[16:01]

flabbergasted by that. He could not, because in his eyes, it would take 20, 30 years to prepare yourself to begin the first day of such practice. The idea that we were doing it, you know, just struck him as, he never did get it the whole time that he hung around here. He never did understand what we were doing or how, what it was all about. He thought it was either the greatest thing or the most foolhardy thing, you know, you could never figure out which. So, Zazen is like that. It's, I guess, more or less impossible practice. You can't do it. And, you know, at the same time, it really is a practice that is so easy and so absolutely accessible to everyone, no matter what your commitment to it may be, no matter what your belief system may be, that anybody can do it. In fact, if you think

[17:08]

about what Dogen says about Zazen, you might come to the conclusion that nobody can stop doing it. Nobody can not do it, you know what I mean? So, it's a funny thing. This seems to be how Dogen views Zazen. He says somewhere, Zazen is a form of meditation that is so basic and so simple that it would be making too much of it even to call it meditation. It's just the practice of being what we are, of taking the time to allow, to permit ourselves to be just what we are. And in doing that, we enter directly the path of our living, the depths of our living, a depth that goes beyond the individuality of our life to the

[18:11]

heart of all of life itself. Dogen's Zazen really defies description and explanation. That's why Zen teachers seldom speak about it in any concrete way, seldom offer specific instructions. And when they are asked direct questions about Zazen, they tend to answer in paradoxes or in such slippery language that you have to wonder whether or not they are serious or they know what they're talking about. But I don't think this is because of confusion or some trickery, although it may be in some cases, I don't know. I think it's because the meditation practice that Dogen is advocating is neither devotional nor experiential. It's not a describable technique. It's not a means to an end. It's not a form of concentration.

[19:18]

It's not a relaxation technique. It is simply sitting freely in the midst of what is with full participation, which is both the same as and utterly different from what we are doing in every moment of consciousness, whether we're sitting on a little black cushion or not. So, this morning I thought I would read for you a short, Dogen's most terse description of Zazen practice, which is newly retranslated for this new book I was mentioning in the beginning. It's just about a page long, so I'll read it for you, just to give you Dogen's own words on this crucial subject for all of us. It's called Zazengi, Rules for Zazen. Practicing Zen is Zazen. For Zazen, a quiet place is suitable. Lay out a thick mat. Do

[20:31]

not let in draughts or smoke, rain or dew. Protect and maintain the place where you settle your body. There are examples from the past of sitting on a diamond seat and sitting on a flat stone covered with a thick layer of grass. Day or night, the place of sitting should not be dark. It should be kept warm in winter and cool in summer. Set aside all involvements and let the myriad things rest. Zazen is not thinking of good, not thinking of bad. It is not conscious endeavor. It is not introspection. Do not desire to become a Buddha. Let sitting or lying down drop away. Be moderate in eating and drinking. Be mindful of the passing of time and engage yourself in Zazen as though your head were

[21:31]

on fire and you were trying to put it out. On Mount Huangmei, the fifth ancestor, practiced Zazen to the exclusion of all other activities. When sitting Zazen, wear the robe and use a round cushion. The cushion should not be placed all the way under the legs but only under the buttocks. In this way, the crossed legs rest on the mat and the backbone is supported with a round cushion. This is the method used by all Buddha ancestors for Zazen. Sit either in the half-lotus position or in the full-lotus position. For the full-lotus, put the right foot on the left thigh and the left foot on the right thigh. The toes should lie along the thighs, not extending beyond. For the half-lotus position, simply put the left foot on the right thigh. Loosen your robes and arrange them in an orderly fashion. Place the right hand on the left foot and the left hand on the right foot, lightly touching the

[22:32]

ends of the thumbs together. With the hands in this position, place them next to the body so that the joined thumb tips are at the navel. Straighten your body and sit erect. Do not lean to the left or right. Do not bend forward or backward. Your ears should be in line with your shoulders and your nose in line with your navel. Rest your tongue against the roof of your mouth and breathe through your nose. Lips and teeth should be closed. Eyes should be open, neither too wide nor too narrow. Having adjusted the body and mind in this manner, take a breath and exhale fully. Sit solidly in samadhi and think not thinking. How do you think not thinking? Non-thinking. This is the art of zazen. Zazen is not learning to do concentration. It is the dharma gate of ease and joy. It is undefiled practice

[23:34]

enlightenment. That was written in 1243. So it's a wonderful mixture, isn't it, of lofty, almost ineffable philosophy and very practical, down-to-earth advice. Very simple practice. There's no way to do it wrong. And there's only one requirement. Simply that you do it. Just that you do it. That you nurture in your life the intention and the diligence necessary to actually do the practice. And you can see from this text, it almost, in a way, seems funny, the attention to physical detail. You know, one thinks of meditation practice as some inner cultivation, you know. But Dogen speaks only about where your toes should be

[24:40]

and how your thumb tips should touch. It's mostly what it's about. And zazen really is a very much a physical practice. You don't usually think of spiritual practice as physical. And yet, our life, our soul, our spirit is something that only ever exists for us in close association with our body. No body, no consciousness. No consciousness, not too much else. In Dogen's way of practice, body and mind are not two different things in some hierarchy of importance. So to sit, to actually sit down, paying close attention to the body, not as something, you know, an object, as a something. The body isn't really a something. The body is an endless, ineffable process. And that's what we do when we sit. We pay

[25:47]

attention to that endless, ineffable process that we call the body. And we're unifying our consciousness and breathing with the process of the body until we can enter into the body, mind wholeheartedly and without holding anything back. To do this is to return to the ground of our being, to what we most fundamentally are, which we are always anyway. Whether we try to return to it or not, it's always there as long as we're alive. This process, this unified wholeness must be present. But when we do zazen, we return to it, we give ourselves to it. The rest of the time we're not particularly aligned with it or aware of it or concerned with it, but in zazen we make the effort to give ourselves back to ourselves, wholly, to embrace this fundamental ground of our being.

[26:50]

I guess the most widely quoted and the most widely misunderstood aspect of Dogen's idea of zazen, the one that always brings a little laugh in the audience when you recite it, is this line about think, not thinking, how do you think, not thinking, non-thinking. This is the art of zazen. People hear that and they always think, what? And I spent many years pondering this line, not only thinking about it but trying to figure out on my cushion, what could he mean by this? And it turns out to be something that's not so difficult to understand at all, and not even that difficult to practice either. And I'm sure that nowadays, even though it took me many years of racking my brain and body to try to figure this out, nowadays I think most people who show up pretty much on the first day already know it, because

[27:56]

everybody knows more than they did then. So, to think, not thinking doesn't mean to stop thinking, or to try to stop thinking. Because Dogen says, think, not thinking. So, not thinking, think, not thinking, is a way of thinking, it's a particular style of thinking, an alternative way to relate to your own thinking. Usually, in our thinking there's two ways we relate to our thinking. Either we're most of the time sleeping, you know, in the midst of our thinking. In other words, our minds are producing all sorts of thoughts that we are pretty much not aware of. So, it's all kinds of subliminal or even dimly formed thoughts.

[28:56]

That's one way we relate to our thinking, or don't relate to our thinking. And another way is we have a kind of what I would call propelled thinking, thinking under propulsion. To be propelled within our thinking is to be pushing our thinking towards something, and therefore to be pushed around by our thinking. When we do Zazen, we remove the energy from that kind of propulsion, and we just let the thinking fall. We let every thought that would arise just fall. We let it come, if it comes, and then we just let it fall. Propelled thinking, basically the energy for the propulsion of the thinking is me, my meanness, my I-ness, my self-centeredness. But in Zazen, we make a commitment to gently and repeatedly set

[30:08]

aside the meanness, the I-ness, the self-centeredness of our life, which is quite natural in our lives, and return instead to a mere consideration of a presence with breathing and posture. So there may still be thinking going on, but that's just what it is, thinking going on, rather than I am thinking this or that. It's just simply thinking going on. So this is called non-thinking. Dogen calls this non-thinking. And this is not any problem to think non-thinking, just return over and over again to our posture and our breathing, letting our thinking fall naturally moment by moment. And sometimes there might not be any thinking at all, or

[31:09]

very little thinking, and this is nice also. But my favorite line in the text is the one that comes at the end, because I think it expresses the real secret of Dogen's Zazen, and I would say of all spiritual practice. At the end, when he says, Zazen is the dharmagate of great ease and joy. It is undefiled practice enlightenment. So what does he mean by this, these words? In my experience, the most wonderful fruits of spiritual practice do not become apparent right away. I believe that if you do almost any kind of authentic spiritual practice, even for one day or one weekend, if you really do it, you will see that the

[32:10]

do the practice thoroughly for one day or one weekend, that you will see some powerful effects for your life, even just in such a short time. And I don't think it's at all unrealistic to imagine that someone could have a life-transforming experience in one retreat or even go to church or synagogue once. I think one could have, but I don't know. And often it happens. People have life-transforming experiences just in a short time. But I would say that the real fruits of spiritual practice grow on you over a much longer period of time. As you go back every day, day after day, to your cushion, through all the times when you like it and all the times when you don't like it, through the times when it is very

[33:14]

difficult to keep it up, when you're so busy and so on, through the times when your body aches or your soul aches so bad that you can't imagine being able to sit there for even a single moment longer, but you do it anyway, the times when your mind is raging, the times with anger or bitterness, or your mind is so peaceful and so blissful that you can't believe there could ever be another troubled moment again in your life. When you go through all of these colors and changes, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, even decade after decade, I think you begin to find that there is something subtle and much deeper feeling of appreciation and satisfaction in your practice, and this

[34:18]

means in your whole life. You really begin to feel as if the cushion and the mind that is with you all the time, even when you're not on the cushion, that that place is your home, your true spot of safety, and that when you sit within that spot, no matter what it is that is going on, everything is all right. If you are a Buddhist, maybe you will say, when I sit on my cushion, I feel like I'm sitting in the palm of Buddha's hand, and I feel that way no matter what shape my mind is in. If you're a Christian, you might say, when I sit on my cushion, I feel Jesus' love floods my whole heart. But however you say,

[35:21]

I think that you will feel that deep sense of satisfaction in your life, because you will know that you have truly come into contact with what is most basic and most fundamental in the human heart. You've come into contact with love, with letting go, and with silence, and that no matter what's going on in your life, even if you're busy and running around, those things are never too far away, and you can touch them any time you need to. And even when the day comes when you lose everything, all your possessions, your friends, your body, your mind, even then, there will be some serenity knowing that the big mind, the larger mind will always be present and will carry whatever you are to become exactly where it needs to

[36:33]

go. By undefiled practice enlightenment, Dogon means that our life is always undefiled. Our life is always perfect. We are always, and have been from the start, enlightened. We are enlightened beings. This is and has always been the actual nature of our minds, the brightness, the light of our cognizing consciousness. But the fact that this is so doesn't get us off the hook. In fact, it means that we are responsible. We have a responsibility, a joyful responsibility for our own living. And Dogon uses the word practice enlightenment in English. They translate it as a hyphenated one word, practice enlightenment, hyphenated. In other words, it's not that we practice and therefore we get the good fruit of enlightenment. Rather,

[37:39]

because we are enlightenment itself, we have to practice. A human being, I think, can't really rest easy without some form of spiritual practice and activity. Because we are enlightenment itself, we have to practice. And the practice that we do is the expression of our enlightenment. Enlightenment sounds, you know, very lofty, Asian concept. But I think the enlightened person is just someone who actually isn't selfish. Not just they think they're not selfish or they try not to be selfish. They're not selfish. They actually, like they say, they don't have a selfish bone in their body, the enlightened person. It's a person who sees things as they are and therefore loves things and always acts out of that love. So with

[38:45]

our Zazen practice, we will see a world like that, a world that is lovely and that in its loveliness it calls out to us to participate in it. And we're glad to do that. We find that we can't not do that. Now it is a very curious thing. We must note at the end here, make a little sociological footnote. It is a very curious thing that this wonderful practice that I've been speaking of, that Dogen writes of so wonderfully, became in his lifetime even, and certainly in centuries that followed him, this practice became identified with a rigid and formalistic style of severe monasticism. No doubt about it. We have to say that that's really true. And we could breezily dismiss this and say,

[39:46]

well, it's a mere degeneration and confusion, a diminishment of this wonderful idea. But I think if we did that, we would be missing a very salient and important point. We would be missing seeing the power and the importance of the monastic life. Monastic life is a very, very strong way to live, a very powerful way to live. And it completely revolves around dedication and total participation. This is the essence of monastic life. In a monastic life, as anyone who's ever practiced at Green Gulch or Tassajara or City Center will tell you, there's no place to hide. That's what makes it difficult. In a monastic life, there's no place to hide and no time that is not sacred time. In the monastic life,

[40:51]

monastic life is always led according to a rule, and the essence of the rule is this. Always think of others and always act with others in mind, because there's no life without others. So one of my pet ideas over the years is that we need to honor this monastic life and to realize that we all need somehow to bring this monastic life into our lives, even though we don't live necessarily as monastics, somehow to bring the spirit of monastic life into our life and find out how to do that. I think it's important for us. It seems as if one of the casualties of modern life that I hear people complaining about all the time is that we've lost a sense of coherent community. It seems important for everyone to feel that

[41:59]

they belong to each other. When you don't have that in your life, when you don't feel you belong in community, really there's something missing. A lot of people tell me that they feel like that nowadays. So many people, lonely, isolated, needing support. So many people who need support, who need just some friendship. We imagine that in the past or elsewhere people had such things. Maybe somewhere else they still have community like this and that we don't have it and we can't get it unless we could go back to the past or move to the country somewhere far away, in another society. And even though we have so much freedom, I was thinking today, I live a little ways from here and I drove here and I was thinking, what an amazing thing, I saw all these people

[43:01]

passing by me in their obviously rented cars, zipping around to Muir Woods or something and I was thinking, boy, it would have been unimaginable a few hundred years ago the idea that you could go, come from Cleveland, Ohio and spend a week in the Bay Area and go home and go to work. Unbelievable, it would be your whole life to come to the Bay Area. You'd have to stake your whole life on it, as people did. So we have so much freedom and so much capacity to do things, yet our hearts are aching for some kind of real sense of belonging to one another. But I feel that with real, daily spiritual practice as our basis, that we can build on that and we can find ways of creating real

[44:11]

community, genuine community in our lives. They won't be the ways that we're looking for, the ways that we're used to, because the world is different now. But I think if we open up our minds and do our practice with full commitment and integrity, we're going to find ways, and we already are finding ways, I think, of building true community, true feeling of belonging. And I think that that is the essence of the monastic practice, the monastic life, that Dogen lived and constructed in his lineage, with a real sense of belonging Zazen practice as its centerpiece. So, that's my speech for today. I have nothing else to say, so let's chant together. Thank you.

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