Good morning. Can you hear in the back? I think it was just last week I was asked to give this talk and I think this is the first actual public Dharma talk that I've given. Five or six years ago I was a shuso at Tassajara, except for that's like with people I've been practicing with, you know, all practice period, so it's a little bit different to sit down and talk to a group of people, some of them who I don't know, about the Dharma. When Alan asked me, he said, I mean, when somebody asks you to do something and it's in practice, it's basically just say yes. I mean, it's just a formality to be asked.

[01:06]

I was given this caveat, which the talk should be encouraging, and so I thought about that a little bit, and in Dharma teaching, it's not maybe encouraging the way that we think, you know, that it's encouraging. Because usually, at some point in the talk, it feels like something is pushing on us. That's my experience. So it may not be exactly what you think, what we usually think of, excuse me, as encouraging, encouragement. It's not really intellectually graspable. You know, in the Dharma encouragement, there's a part of it that feeds our mind, but then there's another part of it that our mind can't get to, that the intellect, you know, just it's impossible to grasp. So, with that said, I'm going to talk about three things.

[02:18]

and they won't necessarily be separate, but there's kind of three themes to my talk. One is sincerity, and the second one is perseverance, and the third is zazen. So I think in sincerity, I'd just like to start off reading this quote from Master Dogen Shobo Genzo. He was a 12th century teacher one of the main founders of this type of Zen, Soto Zen. And this is from this fascicle or chapter. He wrote 95 chapters and it's collected in this book called the Shogo Genzo, which means the treasury of the true Dharma. The title of this chapter is Prostrating to the Attainment of the Marrow and where it comes from is this teacher Bodhidharma who came from India to China.

[03:29]

He gave transmission or he gave approval to four of his students and his first student he said, you've got my skin. The second student said, you've got my flesh. To the third student he said, you've got my bones. And to the fourth student he said, you've got my marrow. So here's what Dogen has to say about sincerity. He says, when the sole devotion of body and mind to the Buddha Dharma is retained deep in a person's consciousness, the Buddha Dharma always has compassion for the person. Even human beings and gods he says in their stupidity, have the sympathy to respond to sincerity. So how could the Buddhas in their rightness lack the compassion to reciprocate sincerity? A sublime spirit which responds to sincerity exists even in soil, stones, sand, and pebbles. So, you know,

[04:33]

For those who are just starting out sitting zazen, and this is not like a strict rule, we have this form where we're supposed to follow our breathing and our breath. And I think even when I first started sitting, it was almost impossible to do that. It seemed like an impossible task to sit in this form, upright. follow my breathing and keep this posture. My mind was just so used to thinking all the time. But what happens if we keep going with sincerity, even though we don't know what we're aiming at, we don't know what we're aiming at in Zazen, otherwise we wouldn't have to practice. We already know what it was and we could just get up and walk out, but we don't know what it is. So what keeps us motivated to practice?

[05:38]

So I think one of the main themes in my life has been sincerity. And part of that is kind of tied in with perseverance. It's like being able to come back to Zazen time and time again and go through all the conditions of our life, whatever they may be, you know, because sometimes in our life, we're feeling pretty good, you know, we have a good job, maybe, you know, good relationship, our health is pretty good. But then if we keep practicing, those things change, you know, it may not necessarily mean that you don't have a relationship anymore, but then the relationship may not be so good. the job can change or a house can change. So by sitting through all the conditions in our life over a long period of time, this is what I found is eventually we get to see ... we realize the true self, basically.

[06:41]

We see what mental phenomena and external phenomena are in their true essence. And I don't know if there's any other way to do it, but there may be. But I know by sitting zazen with perseverance and sincerity, eventually we can get down to the bottom of our life. It's not only in the zendo. We have the precepts and so we can take zazen into our daily life and for me it's been a process of refinement by being aware of

[07:43]

Actually, it's not so much aware of the feelings, it's more aware of the effect of my thinking and the effect of my volitional action in my daily life. It's being aware of a cause and effect. And I think, you know, sitting in Zazen, we learn that really closely, what cause and effect, what happens. If we sit Zazen and pick up our thoughts, we can see what happens. If we sit Zazen and let go, you know, not move with our thoughts, not get carried away with some emotional thought pattern, we can see what happens. So the awareness that is gained or maybe the realization in Zazen, for me, slowly it's been transferred into my everyday life. So it's not just the Zendo where this awareness works, that eventually if we keep practicing, persevering through the difficulties and the seemingly impossible obstacles that come up in daily life, eventually those are not so impossible, not so difficult to deal with.

[09:07]

So what I've seen in my practices through observing this cause and effect is that I let go gradually of what is not helpful. So I can see, you know, if I do something, I can see what the effect of that is. Or if I hold on to a thought about something like about some person is a certain way, And then I meet that person, and that thought goes into action. The thought takes, it has a karma, or action, and then what's the fruit of that action? By holding onto some fixed idea of a person. Usually, right away, I see that my fixed idea, which I want, my intellect wants to encompass a person, and just put him into a certain place. It's easy to deal with, right? Simplify life, and just don't have to deal with it. What happens when I meet the person, that thought comes up to what the actual person is standing in front of me, and I can see right through the thought that that thought really has no validity.

[10:18]

I mean, it may have two weeks ago, and it may have some fractional validity, but in the whole being of the person, it doesn't encapsulate a person. There's where I can observe cause and effect, like trying to encapsulate life through the intellect doesn't work because a person is basically ungraspable. A person's Buddha nature can't be grasped. put into a box. Even though we have our character, our personality, and we have our good side and a bad side, still what shines through that, what I see more and more what shines through all that is our Buddha nature. So that's why I'm talking about awareness and the precepts are like a guide. We can use them as a guide because we can turn away from what's not helpful and turn towards what's helpful by being aware of the precepts.

[11:20]

So, I want to talk a little bit about perseverance. I mean, I first mentioned sitting zazen. When I first started sitting zazen, it was rather difficult to sit for even 15 or 20 minutes because, I don't know why, but I just started sitting at home. A friend of mine at college, way back in the 80s, gave me a book. He'd been to Tassajara, and I read it, and I said, okay, I'm going to do this, because it resonated in me something deep. It was very difficult to do. And I gradually got into it, you know, and I started staying with a group. And I remember in Oregon, I was up there for a while doing some work, and we would sit like once a week, and then like on Friday evenings, once or twice a month, they'd have this three-hour sitting. I'm not gonna do that. That's way too much, you know, and I would always find something else to do on Friday night, you know, besides go to that three-hour sitting.

[12:23]

But then I came back here, actually to Davis, and I was doing some graduate work there, and I started sitting at Green Gulch, and I did a one-day sitting. and a number of one-day sit-ins, and then eventually, the next thing on the horizon was Sashin, seven-day Sashin. So, did that. What I'm sort of getting to here is that there's always going to be difficulty in our life, and Zazen, the difficulty in Zazen is actually a catalyst. We don't want to avoid difficulty. We don't want to create more, but we don't have to become aesthetics and wear sackcloth or whatever they do, sleep on nails and sleep in the cold. There's enough difficulty in everyday life. The problem is we don't see it as beneficial.

[13:24]

I think, you know, I think, I know from my personal experience, I tend to try to get away from difficulty. I don't want to say that other people do that, but... So, especially in Sashin, you know, I think one of the great values of sitting a long Sashin, a five or seven day Sashin, is that we see the benefit of difficulty. You know, we actually can experience that in our bones and experience what the value of difficulty is. And then, you know, when we walk out of the zendo into daily life, we have that determination you know, from sitting, you know, long periods. I mean, they seem like they'll never end. You know, it's like time has dropped away, and it's like maybe we fall into some black hole. It's like infinity. You know, some of these periods of Zazen are like infinity. You know, they never end.

[14:28]

And then, but what comes, for me, what comes through that is, determination to stick with it, to stay with the difficulty, whatever it is, like at work. Especially in the afternoon, we start early in the morning, it's a long afternoon, and I have a number of tasks that have to be done, and I can start to think I can start to think myself into a corner thinking, oh, this is too much, I can't do it, but I just come back to the present moment, like in Sashin, just come back to the present moment and just be right there with the difficulty and not try to get away from it. There's a transformation. There's something that turns. The conditions turn, and instead of being outside of the situation, it's like I'm inside the situation, and that sense of being separated with the self in facing something difficult that I don't want to deal with, that boundary dissolves and there's a release, easing of tension, and kind of a joy that comes up from being able to just stay with it and be in those, what previously, just a few minutes earlier, might have seemed like a very difficult condition, are actually joyful conditions.

[15:53]

So this happens in Sashin. We sit with a pain, whatever it is, the emotional pain in our life, a lot of times physical pain, and we watch that transformation. Well, we don't watch it, actually. We become the transformation. So I think perseverance is very important. If you want to do Zen practice, you have to be able to persevere. through whatever it is. And I find the more I do that, actually the easier it becomes. Because at some point, I mean, I guess, you know, conditions can be so difficult we die, you know. I mean, like Scott going to the South Pole, he came back, you know, he ran out of food and he died. But we can practice right up to that point, you know. But usually we're not pushed, you know, I mean. It's a sheen. We're not going to die. We get three meals a day. But we can practice.

[16:56]

I find that I can practice through things that I thought were impossible. We just persevere. Just have that determination to stay with it. It takes commitment. It has to be the number one thing, at least for me. I drift away from it. So I think that's what I want to say about perseverance. My temporary roommate, we live here at the Berkley Zen Center, we're talking about modern life a little bit, about how it's trending towards, you're alive but you don't have to do anything. Maybe we'll have a program to think. We'd be wired up to a computer chip and we can just plug the program in to think for the day. And when we walk into the house, all these computer chips do everything for us, turn on the lights, cook. We won't have to do anything. We'll just kind of sit there and do nothing and be alive.

[17:58]

I think that's kind of like, what's the point? We can't really understand what the point is, but it seems there's that tendency in American modern life to be alive and really do nothing. You know, like The Matrix. I don't know how many of you saw the movie The Matrix. It's kind of like that, but a little bit twisted. But what Zazen does is ground us in our life. We see the value of putting effort into our everyday life because life is like a boat. This is Dogen's analogy. The boat is sitting there. say it's a sailboat at the dock, and it's not a boat until we get into it and raise the sail and hold on to the tiller and sail the boat. That's the same with our life. If we try to stay away from the conditions in our life, try to stay on the dock and look at the boat in the water, it doesn't work.

[19:05]

And what Zazen does is put us right in the middle of that with no separation. And then our life comes alive. It's like a flower blooming. When you look at a flower, there's no separation there. The flower isn't thinking, well, I don't really want to be a flower today. The flower is just the flower. There's no thought of anything else. There's no hindrance. And so a zazen is like, that's what I find zazen does. It makes the present moment okay, pretty much. You know, I mean, there's still things that rub me the wrong way, or I let them rub me the wrong way, but it, like, life unfolds. You know, it's like this constant unfolding, and each moment of unfolding, it's... It has a sense of wonder to it that I probably lost, but I think I can remember thinking back when I was a child, I had that kind of wonder. That's the closest I can get to describing it.

[20:07]

If I try to put it into words, it's not easily put into words, but it's a sense of wonder, a sense of gratitude, a sense of indescribable beauty. And like, even the most simple things seem to have a really deep quality to them. Things that, you know, just simple objects are just wonderful to be around, to be with. So, I should see what time it is. Okay. So... Well, I'd like to read something else from Dogen. I've been studying Dogen almost exclusively for the last couple of years. Because when I first started reading it, it was such a mystery, but now I'm starting to understand, going through the Shobo Genzo, what he's talking about.

[21:10]

So, this is a little story about intellectual understanding and true understanding. So this comes from Another fascicle or chapter is called the Voices of the River Valley and the Forum of the Mountains. So this is how it goes. Another case, Zen Master Kyogen Chikan was learning the truth in the order of Zen Master Daiyi Daiyan. These are from the Tang Dynasty in China. And learning the truth means sitting zazen, in Dogen's vernacular. So, on one occasion, Dai Yi, as the teacher says, he says to Kyogen, he says, you are sharp and bright and you have wide understanding. Without quoting from any text or commentary, speak a phrase for me in the state you had before your parents were born.

[22:14]

In other words, what he's saying there, on the basis of the reality which transcends past, present and future. So what can you say from that point? Kyogen was a scholar monk. Kyogen searches several times for something to say, but he is not able. He deeply regrets the state of his body and mind, and looks through books that he has kept for years, but he is still dumbfounded. In the end, he burns all the writings he has collected over the years and says, a rice cake that is painted in a picture cannot stave off hunger. Upon my oath, I shall not desire to understand, I shall not desire to understand the Buddha Dharma in this life. I only want to be a monk who serves the morning gruel and midday meal. So, In Buddhism, we say that existence has three marks.

[23:19]

One is impermanence, things are impermanent. Things don't have a substantial self. And the third mark is dukkha, which can be translated as suffering or maybe unsatisfactoriness. things don't quite get to the satisfaction that we want. So under Dukkha, we can look at Dukkha, three kinds of suffering and maybe unsatisfactoriness. And one is physical suffering. We all go through physical suffering. And the second one is the second way that are maybe characteristic of Dukkha, or unsatisfactoriness, is the emotional, mental stress that we go through, whatever. And then the third one is just the pervasive nature of suffering in the Saha world, or what Saha world means, world of suffering, I guess you could say, the human world.

[24:28]

But what the conventional human world, that's the Saha world. So, you know, for me, the first two, you know, physical suffering and emotional mental suffering, I can kind of rationalize those two. Not so difficult. I say, well, that's just the way life is. I mean, you know, we're born, we'll have some diseases, and then, you know, we may get cancer and die. I mean, that's just life. And then, you know, emotional, mental-emotional suffering can kind of say the same thing, you know, like, well, what to expect? But, I mean, this is me, you know, so, you know, I can get around those, you know, but the third one, it's not possible to get around, because the third one is something internal. With the pervasive nature of suffering comes from what we hold onto internally, and what we, you know, that's a sense of, excuse me, a sense of, You know, where that comes from is that we think there's a substantial person inside our body somewhere.

[25:30]

There's something substantial. When we sit Zazen, we confront that. We can't really escape it. And I think that's another value of sitting Zazen. We can't get away from the pervasive nature of suffering as long as we're holding on to a notion of a self. It's going to be there. And then it's a great realization to let go of that. We don't necessarily let go of it, it just lets go on its own. At some point, mysteriously, the clinging lets go, especially deep in a long session, I keep saying five or seven days, you know, but it could be three days, it could be one day, it could be one period of zazen, or even one minute of zazen, but for me, you know, the long sessions, that coming up constantly against myself clinging, eventually,

[26:33]

I'm worn down, there's just nothing that works, no mental gyration that works, and then eventually, somehow mysteriously, there's letting go. I guess we all have to decide for ourself if a painted rice cake is gonna do it. Is a painted rice cake good enough in our lives? Can it really satisfy hunger? So, there's another quote I want to read here. This is about realization, what Dogen says about realization. This is, you know, when we have the painted, when the painted rice cake actually becomes a concrete rice cake. It's no longer a picture of something painted. So he says, when we each get rid of our husk, we are not restricted by former views and understanding.

[27:39]

And things which have for vast kalpas, that's a very long period of time, been unclear suddenly appear before us. In the here and now of such a moment, the self does not recognize it, no one else is conscious of it, you do not expect it, and even the eyes of Buddhas do not glimpse it. How could the human intellect fathom it? Basically, my point is, even if we try to get to it through the intellect, that's a form of self-clinging and it's impossible. So, if we really want to see the true nature, if we want to see our Buddha nature, we have to find a way to let go of self-clinging. And the tradition that's been handed to us, and this is the Siddhāsan. So I think that's the reason we sit. Practice is like, there's a saying at Soto Zen, practice is like walking in the fog.

[29:08]

You know, someone's walking in the fog, a light mist. walking for a while and you know the outer layer of our clothes are wet and we keep walking longer pretty soon it soaks through the clothes and you know we keep walking and walking pretty soon we realize you know well we're really wet here. So Sazen is like that. It's kind of like we don't know what's happening you know until it's already happened. It's like we keep walking in the fog and eventually life opens up, you know, it's like these veils drop in, or I eventually realize, you know, I'm just here, or life is just here, and there's not so much an I interposing, an interpretation of that life, it's just life as it is, you know. And it's like we want to have some reference point You know, always looking for a reference point, someplace secure, someplace that we know.

[30:19]

But in reality, life is like a boat moving on the water. And if we put a mark on the rail, you know, to say, oh, this is a nice place, well, you know, we can't go back to that place because it's always moving. It's like the fishermen, you know, that goes out and they're fishing and they catch a lot of fish and they go, oh, this is a good place to fish. And so, you know, they put a notch on the rail so when they come back, you know, but when we come back to that same point, everything has changed. So we can't, you know, we can never, there's nothing secure as much as we want to hold on to. So where is the true security? And the true security is just in the present moment, just this right here. It's not wanting something else than just this right here, you know. And so, you know, by constantly sitting Zazen, it really helps to make a commitment to it. Like, okay, I'm going to sit two days a week, or I'm going to sit one day a week. And just constantly doing that, walking in the fog, we'll get wet.

[31:25]

You know, sitting, taking this posture with sincerity. Eventually, what we're seeking will be there right in front of us. It's always there anyway. It's clouded over. We have a projection onto the world from clinging to itself. And eventually that gets worn down and we just see what it is. I can't say what it is, but it's there every moment. Shakyamuni Buddha, who started this whole ball rolling, his last words were, monks, all compound phenomena are impermanent. Basically, compound means anything in this world, any physical mental object, because it's all

[32:26]

You know, it's composed of different factors. And so, it means there's nothing here. There's nothing in the human world, what we conventionally call the human world, that can be held on to. It's all impermanent. It's all made up of factors that sooner or later fall apart, and what we want to hold on to is not there any longer. You know, it doesn't take a whole lot of reflection to realize that if we just look at what's happened in our life up to this point. And so, Shakti Muni's Buddha's last words were, seek your own salvation. So I think, you know, sitting in Zazen, we're seeking our own salvation. And there is, at some point, a certainty, a certainty that this is what we're looking for. And with that, I just want to read one more quotation from Dogen about that.

[33:30]

So, he starts off, this is again from Voices of How does he put this? Voices of the River Valley in Form of the Mountains. That's the title of this chapter. Okay, another case. Zen Master Ryun Shigan is a seeker of the truth for 30 years. That means sitting Zazen for 30 years. One day, while on a ramble in the mountains, he stops for a rest at the foot of a hill and views the villages in the distance. It is spring and the peach blossoms are in full blossom. Seeing them, he suddenly realizes the truth. He makes the following verse and presents it to Dai Yi, his teacher. So, for thirty years, a traveler in search of a sword. How many times have leaves fallen and buds sprouted? After one look at the peach blossoms, I have arrived directly at the present and have no further doubts. So, I think we can all do that. We can all arrive at the present moment and have no further doubts.

[34:39]

It's not impossible to do. It does take some time and effort. So, I think with that, I pretty much said what I wanted to say, include my talk, and there's about 10 minutes if anybody has questions. Well, for me, it's returning when I realize I've drifted off into thoughts. or thinking about the past or thinking about the future, it's returning to my intention, which is to, or maybe returning to my effort is a better way to put it.

[35:49]

Just bringing the determination to come back to following my, being aware of breathing and following posture, or being aware of the present moment without We can't push away the conditions that come up, you know, thinking's going to come up, things from the past will come up, but what we can do is not put energy into that and just come back to the stillness, the still point of the present moment, just always kind of maybe aiming for that still point. you know, or putting effort, you know, more effort into going for the still point rather than energy into creating these scenarios about life, you know, or thinking about things that have happened. So it's a little bit difficult to describe, you know, because it's this internal process that doesn't really

[36:50]

that I don't really put into those words, but I know when I'm sitting and drifting off, I come back to my mudra, and I watch the breathing, and I just try to come back into feeling my body just as it is. All right, so. Okay. I think you mentioned three kinds, you talked at one point about three kinds of suffering, mental, physical, And then another kind, which I wasn't clear on, the first two being easily rationalizable as being just the way life is, but the last one was more of a riddle to you, and I didn't really understand what kind that was, what something that was. Yeah, well, this is something, you know, that's just a kind of classical Buddhist characterization of suffering. It's called the pervasive nature of suffering.

[37:51]

The first two, physical suffering and mental emotional suffering, it's difficult to see because we really can't see it because we create the delusion. by having the self already. And to see out... It's like we have a world view, and to see outside of the world view is impossible as long as we're holding on to the self. Holding on, you know, have this tight notion that there is a person, you know, that can control things or whatever. So to be able to see outside of that global view that we created, we have to let go of the self. And then we can look back You know, from the non-dual world, from the world where there's no separation between what we usually think of as self and the external objects in our world, or the world. When that separation breaks down, that's the non-dual world.

[38:55]

When that separation is not there, that's the non-dual world. Then we can look at the world, the dual world, we can look, you know, we're still in the dual world. But we're looking at it from a non-dual perspective. Then we can see how we've trapped ourselves. And we can also see how other people have trapped themselves. So then, with a non-dual understanding, we can jump back into the dual world and help other people, you know, just by being open to what's there, you know. So, anyway, Ellen. Another way of putting that, I think this is the same set, is just to think of, it's the suffering of conditionality, that everything is conditional, including your own mind and perception. But that's, as you were saying, you can't grasp.

[40:02]

Yeah. Yeah, thank you. Oh, there's another question back there? Okay. Did you have your hand up? No? Okay, yeah. Maybe both you and Alan helped answer this, but I find myself struggling a lot with integrity. I can't make myself integrated. It seems that you're saying I shouldn't view things that way.

[41:05]

I think when Suzuki Roshi said something, even though there's no self, there's still rules. The way that we have these rules given to us is precepts. And so what I'm trying to say is that even though there's no self, there is a moral side to practice. There is a morality. you know, morality is actually integral to understanding Buddha's teaching. So, you know, integrity. Integrity means being true to what you believe in or true to your intention or true to our intention, right? So, there's nothing wrong with that, you know. In fact, we need a foundation like that to proceed, you know. It gets to a point where there's no longer a need to hold on to an intellectual understanding of what integrity is, because integrity can be realized in the present moment.

[42:17]

So it's no longer necessary to have an idea about what it is, because it's just manifesting right there in the present moment. Or if conditions, if something comes up, we can rely on our true nature to know which way to go. So it's not so much having a rule or some idea that we try, okay, here's the condition, and here's maybe what I think integrity is, so I should act this way. It's more spontaneous than that. It's like, it's very quick. You know, there's not a lot of rationalization or intellectualization that has to go on. You just realize what to do, then do it. So, I don't know if that answers your question. Is that your question?

[43:32]

Yeah. I don't, you know, I can't remember what the specific definitions of integrity and sincerity are, but they seem very close to me. You know, there's probably some nuance there that, you know, the two words are not exactly the same, but it seems to me that they're almost interchangeable. Anyway, it's 11 o'clock and we have one day sitting going on here, so I think we need to stop.

[44:17]

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