I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. Well, this is our sasheen and also the first day of the practice period, and there may not be 100% overlap between practice period members and Sashin members, but it doesn't matter. There's something about, such a great kind of sangha energy going on around here. Somebody said, all you'd have to do is post a notice on the bulletin board for some event, and the next day it's full. So I wanted to say a little bit about practice period first and then talk about concentration.

[01:27]

So in a practice period we make an effort to stretch for a limited period of time and on this occasion it's a very limited period of time, I think it's only four weeks. So make an effort to deepen our practice and stretch it during those four weeks. And the basic line of the practice period commitment that everybody who turned in their sheets made was to turn up in the zendo three times a week for zazen. That's kind of rock bottom. and then whatever is added on in terms of session and classes and the dinner and so on is added on. And in fact, we're going to have another, there will be a third session in this practice

[02:37]

and another one on May 3rd because there were a number of people who signed up today but the list was full. So that's the Zendo side of the practice period. And then how else can we use this time ahead of us to sharpen the Dharma focus? A good way of doing that is to take up a question or a particular practice and use it in the next weeks. And the question can be whatever whatever comes up that has some heart energy for you.

[03:41]

I should have said the name of this practice period is Living the Bodhisattva Vows. So, our question together is all kinds of questions about what is the Bodhisattva? Who is it? And what are the vows? and how do I keep them? It's a kind of big question. But then there are smaller questions that are nearer the bone, that each of us have maybe some issues that we're working with. And how do we use, how do we really focus in on those issues and make them practice issues? It can be things as specific as noticing one's impatience and just making a commitment to note it every single time it comes up.

[04:57]

For a week, maybe a month, it's too much to do that. Maybe that would wear us out for a month. But for a week, you know, one can take on most things. And it's very interesting when you take on something like that, and you really do it, what your relationship with it is at the end of the week. If you really do it, I can guarantee that the relationship will not be the same. So finding ways of how we use these next weeks to review our practice and accept it and find out how we can make it brighter. We can find the edges of it and be quite specific, work with that. And then the third aspect of practice period is the Sangha.

[06:00]

It's kind of the first and the third. That do we do a practice period for ourselves? Yes. And it's also an offering. It's an offering to everybody else because we never do anything alone. And so finding ways in this time that we various ways of making an offering to others, making our practice an offering to others in the smaller Sangha and in the large Sangha everywhere. How do we offer up our practice? So And then we are going to have a series of teas, you know, they've been the Tanto teas. Teas are really coming into style here.

[07:03]

And we're going to proliferate them for the next month. And Rebecca and Raul and Alan and I have new tea schedules posted. And the idea is to, if you want to, to come to the T's and to talk about what you're going to do with this practice period, what your resolves are. And if the T happens to be towards the end of the practice period, then you can talk about how you used your resolves. So the teas give us another way of getting to know one another and sharing, offering up our practice. So how do we live the Bodhisattva vows? Uchiyama Roshi says that a Bodhisattva is an ordinary person

[08:09]

who is directing him herself in the direction of Buddha. And in that same place, where he gives that definition of a Bodhisattva, He tells a story of a young woman who came to him with an unwanted pregnancy and asked him what she should do. And it was a very awkward time for her to have a baby. And she was leaning towards an abortion and he endorsed it. And he said he knew that it's not a good thing. to endorse somebody else's taking of a new life and that he would pay for it and he would go to hell with her.

[09:11]

That was all right. So that's the very profound generosity of the Bodhisattva effort to orient towards Buddha and to take what comes in a wide and awakened way. Yesterday, thinking about Bodhisattvas, I went to a conference on the criminal justice system that was sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee. It was in the old YMCA in downtown Oakland. And there were probably two or three hundred people there. And it was a very diverse group.

[10:13]

It was one old lady who was so old she couldn't hear anything that was said. And then there was a college professor and there were some people who do lobbying work in Sacramento and there were a lot of service workers who do one thing or another in jails and there were a number of former consumers of the prison system. One of whom was a man named David Lewis who lives, comes from East Palo Alto and has started an organization there called Last Chance which is aimed at people who are getting out of prison and who have been prisoners for a long time and addicts for a long time. How do they get out? And he's not only, he not only started that as it turned out but he has many other projects and his

[11:17]

budget is now something over a million dollars. He himself spent 17 years in San Quentin. And he's not a very old man. I mean, I would think he's, that's probably close to half his life. He's probably somewhere in his 40s. Large, strong man. And he was asked to speak for a while at this panel. So his point was that one has to, that the people who have done the suffering are the most authentic helpers. and that there's nobody who can move closer to a person who has been in jail for a long time and is an addict and so on and so on than somebody who has already been there himself.

[12:22]

And then he told a story about going to San Quentin. He's done a lot of work in San Quentin. And seeing busloads of young black men arrive at the gate. and seeing himself arrive at the gate. And here he said he was surprised at how emotional he was getting. And this big man had to struggle silently for several minutes with his tears. And then he said, but the work, the work is to be open-hearted and to feel this tremendous grief and then just pull myself together, pull oneself together and deal with the system and talk to the guards and talk to the administration and

[13:37]

lobby in Sacramento and do all the things that one has to do, playing within the system that is such a grief-ridden system. He continued to be emotional and to be surprised by it and to refer frequently to another man who was the moderator of the day who also had been in prison. And they have a weekly support group every Monday night of people like themselves who have spent a long time in prison and also now are devoted to helping. So a real bodhisattva effort, feeling the pain and then organizing oneself so that one addresses it skillfully and dispassionately and freely.

[14:57]

So, living the Bodhisattva vows. You know, when I first heard Bodhisattva vows, it sounded like a magnificent enterprise, but one that was quite external. Not feeling myself either like a Bodhisattva or one who could take on such a grand vow. And that was a misunderstanding. The maturing of our practice is how we take these large ideas on and how we personalize them and ripen them within our own experience. So, Yes, we are all bodhisattvas. We are all orienting ourselves in the direction of Buddha as a life enterprise.

[16:10]

And remember when I was a little girl I was not very good and my mother would call me in and ask if I could try to turn over a new leaf and would I be willing to take a vow not to lie anymore. And I kind of shrugged and smiled and said, sure. So there's that kind of external understanding of vow. But then in fact, I think all of us here are involved in a very deep kind of vow. And do we direct the vow or does the vow direct us? What is the interplay between oneself and the vow?

[17:17]

And where does the vow begin? Where did it begin? You know, we all have our different histories of suffering and becoming conscious of the suffering of the world, the suffering of our parents, the suffering that impinged upon us when we were young. For most of us, that's where the vow begins. For someone like David Lewis, the vow probably... the vow may have begun there, but it was tremendously strengthened in jail, in the prison. And our lives, usually, are less dramatic than that, but... somewhere we met suffering in its particular forms and we embodied particular forms of suffering that compose us partly and so our vow begins there and then gradually we clarify it and our life begins to reveal the direction of the vow

[18:33]

and we do whatever work we do which is informed by that early and lasting vow and connection to the suffering of the world. So, We can look at our vows and examine our courses with ourselves and with one another and examine how we practice the Bodhisattva vows. And when the subject of Bodhisattva vows arises,

[19:37]

The usual list that's pulled out is the list of the paramitas, the perfections, the basis of which, the Prajnaparamita, we chant about every day. So these paramitas are perfections because informed as they are by prajnaparamita or emptiness, they don't leave traces. They don't, they are not, don't attach to them. They remain pure qualities. from the point of view of ordinary people we make vows and we want to stick to them and we try to do that and we do our best and we fall off and then we come, we try again.

[20:42]

But from the point of view of a bodhisattva there's something about the vow that does remain pure that isn't sullied and if in trying to practice the first five, generosity, we're stingy and notice it, yet still that there is that sense of always being able to come back and try it again. The possibility, the potentiality of the Paramita is always there. So the six, and Akin Roshi calls these six paramitas, these six perfections, process. That the word perfection is a little bit loaded. So it's better to think of these qualities as part of our process.

[21:45]

Dana, generosity, giving, and etherea, energy, zeal, devoted action, and shila, morality, or discipline, or somebody says the natural order of life, and kshanti, patience, acceptance, constancy, and then jhana, concentration, that I'm going to talk about, and prajnaparamita, wisdom. So in this practice period, we'll be coming back to these paramitas as the how-tos of our effort. And Alan and I will be giving a class, which will take up four of them,

[22:53]

and then Concentration Today and then Taigen Leighton is going to talk about Sheila on the Saturday that he talks. So they'll be, the Paramitas will be in our environment and hopefully we'll be working with them. So I want to talk now the rest of the time about the next to the last paramita, concentration, which is a good one to talk about on a session day. And all of these paramitas, like all of the Buddha's lists, each quality depends on the others. And concentration also needs to be modified and informed by the other qualities. Senzaki Nyogen Sensei says that Zazen is concentration and Zazen is not a difficult task.

[24:08]

It is the way to lead to your long lost home. So concentration is a way of coming home again and again and again. Now we live in this enormous welter of inexplicable and unrelenting experience and again and again are drowned out by it. And then from somewhere attention comes, the gift of attention. John Kobek says of attention, you don't know where it comes from and you don't know who it belongs to but whenever attention comes and is full, it's non-dual, it's home. So we're lost and so on, and then attention comes, and then we have this opportunity of coming back home.

[25:15]

There are a couple of Pali words that talk about the movements of attention, vittaka and vichara vittaka is like a bug sighting a flower and beginning to focus in and then vichara is the hummingbird that just goes right in so there's something about concentration that just hits the mark throwing a stone and the stone hits the fence and the sound of the stone hitting the fence comes home. So concentration is very necessary to our vow, to our homecoming. again and again, bringing us back to the center, to the way things are.

[26:22]

No fooling around, no messing around, no confusion, just this. And when we talk about concentration, there are two kind of main Buddhist kinds of concentration. One has a broader focus, vipassana. So the broad, and we naturally, and the other has this kind of absorbed single focus, one-pointedness. So when we sit in sesshin, we naturally fall back and forth between these two kinds of wide focus and narrow focus concentration. Except when we're not concentrating at all. So...

[27:28]

You know, a one-day sitting is hard work. It's kind of the gymnasium of Sesshin. You sit one day and it's hard work for almost everybody. You just have to arrive. And then the second day, you know, maybe it's not quite such hard work. And then the third day, there's some concentration gravity that begins to hold. And then the effort that we make doesn't have to be quite so arduous. Anyway, when we sit, one day sitting, we begin sitting, our minds are pretty busy. So, how do we find this broad focus concentration? Somebody said it's like an innkeeper. who allows all of the guests to come whoever they are and watches them come and watches them go.

[28:36]

So the seat of this concentration is the observer, the innkeeper the one who is watching. And so all the thoughts and feelings and whatnot that come up, come up And little by little, as we settle down, we're more able to let them go. And the observer gains a little bit more weight than the random contents. That balance begins to shift. So that increasingly, we're identifying with the observer. And then we can wonder. And who is the observer? Who is it? Who is the teacher? So this is a very important grounding and integrating aspect of concentration.

[29:49]

Noticing what comes up moment after moment. And this is how we get to know what our patterns of suffering are. You see them often enough so that you really begin to recognize them. And something happens in that recognition. Again and again through Buddha's life, Mara appeared. Right up until practically Buddha's last breath, Mara was appearing. And Buddha would always greet Mara, then here you are again, Mara. And Mara would turn away, tail between legs, and slink off and say, oh, I am known, the Blessed One has seen me. So, something happens with this concentration when our difficulties and hindrances come up again and again and are greeted by this very, this passionate

[30:56]

kind observer there's a releasing that happens and some kind of transformation so not only how do we see and acknowledge what comes up but how do we actually use it So that when the energy of anger arises, we use it. And when the torpor of boredom arises, we meet it and use it. So that nothing is wasted. It's kind of wide concentration. And then there is the samadhi, what we call samadhi concentration, the one-pointedness.

[32:02]

And this kind of concentration depends very largely on one's relationship with one's body. In my experience of giving practice discussion and talking with people about zazen, The most common difficulty is getting stuck from here up and just forgetting body. And when our teachers get older, now it's both Mel and Robert Aiken, they come back to posture. And I did used to think, well, posture, it's boring. But it's the Zen, it's the Zen treasure. You know, of all the meditations, I think that Zen is the most yogic, because we are spending a lifetime examining this posture.

[33:14]

And the posture is the treasure. I think I'd like to do just a little guided meditation together for a minute. Just going down into the body and exploring this together. So, lengthening the spine and then pushing down with the hips and the sacrum and the rear and simultaneously lifting up with the sternum. So there really is a sense of opposing motion that is very invigorating, this energy when you get the pushing down and the pulling the chest up.

[34:19]

And if one is feeling kind of dull and torporous and vague. Just to come back to this pushing down and lifting up and of course letting the shoulders relax is a new start. And then finding where one's head is balancing on the neck So that there's a sense of a very clear line of energy going from the top of the head and the back of the head, right down the backbone to the sternum. And putting your attention on your lower belly, a couple of inches below the navel. Noticing if the lower belly is released or holding.

[35:23]

Very subtle. Lower belly is usually a little tense. And seeing if you can identify a particular place just a couple of inches below the belly button. The hara. Our Japanese ancestors talk a lot about the hara. And still keeping the focus of the lower belly as well as the opposition between chest and hips. See if it's possible to feel the place in the middle of your forehead between your eyebrows. Another place where there's a lot of anxiety and holding often.

[36:27]

And to really feel that center of the forehead, to really be aware of it as you breathe. So if you're sitting with this kind of live body focus, belly, forehead, breath, you're well involved in the present. There's not room for much else. And then noticing what the body energies are doing. Noticing what parts of the body are lively and what parts of the body maybe are just tuned out.

[37:38]

what parts of the body you notice and what connections the body is making. Still with a focus on the forehead and the lower belly. And now if it's possible to just feel your heart area, just feel the physical sensations. What does the heart feel like? The front of the heart and the chest and the back of the heart. and still with the focus on the belly and the forehead, is it possible to imagine opening the heart?

[39:06]

And as you breathe, noticing the heart is open or not open or closed just noticing that quality and then if you do have some questions What is the heart's longing? Or who is it? Or what is it? Or some other question. If you have a question like that, just noticing whether you can put it in your heart without thinking about it. And still with the focus on the belly and the forehead,

[40:30]

if you can just breathe that question from your heart out and in just noticing what happens So this deeply concentrated practice is the Bodhisattva practice of coming home, of being home. Where the home includes everything. And moment by moment we leave it, we fall off into our smaller worlds and then

[41:40]

because of the generosity of the universe we can come back, repeatedly come back. And so this is our Bodhisattva effort. And I would like to just end by reading a little piece from the latest Zen quarterly by a student, a 17th century student of Dogen's. It kind of sums up what I've been trying to say. The practice of the six paramitas of a Bodhisattva and all of the 84,000 Dharma gates of the Buddha are without exception included in this Zazen, in this GGU Zamai. GGU Zamai is our ancestors' word for this concentration of settling the self on the self, or G-Self.

[42:55]

Jew, receive, you, use, samadhi, oneness, using one's whole self. The practice of the six paramitas of a Bodhisattva and all of the 84,000 Dharma gates of the Buddha are without exception included in this GGU Zama. This is why it is said that as soon as you clarify the Tathagata Zen, the six paramitas and all the other practices are complete within yourself. It is also said in another sutra that when you sit in the upright posture and are aware of reality, all evil is like frost or a drop of dew. If you settle in this samadhi, all evil will disappear as promptly as frost or a drop of dew disappears under the sun.

[44:00]

So, this is our process. Happens again and again. And as we sit deeply, settling the self on the self, we become the process. and we awaken with all beings.

[44:25]

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