I spoke last weekend at our Sunday all-day sitting and last Monday evening about a particular koan going back to the 800s in China about mind and environment. And I feel there's more to say. So I want to talk about the basic issues that come from it, maybe not focusing so much on The koans are old teaching stories that we continue to study. You may have heard that they're kind of riddles that you have to solve or something like that. They're teaching stories that show us about our practice life today. So the basic issue that I want to talk about related to this story, and I'll just mention some of the things in the story, has to do with the basics and practice of non-separation.

[01:01]

So we imagine the way our consciousness works is that we think there is a subject, me, and stuff out there. and we think that they're separate. And then we also, the way our discriminating consciousness works is that we think that all the different things out there are separate from each other. This might be called the original sin in Buddhism. So what is this non-separation? Of course, each of us, has our own unique position and place, and we could even say personhood. But one of the basic axiomatic Buddhist teachings is the teaching of non-self, or the related teaching of emptiness.

[02:11]

This does not mean that there is no self. It means that there's no... It's a technical term. It means that there's no self that has some fundamental, substantial, separate existence. And this goes back to the historical Buddha around 500 BC in northeastern India, what's now northeastern India, in response to the earlier Indian spiritual teaching, which we now call Hinduism, that talks about Atman, or self, as the ultimate spiritual goal, or entity, that there's this fundamental self in each of us. So the Buddha said, no, there's no fundamental self, that we are each a product of the We could say dependent co-arising, the mutuality of all things.

[03:17]

So it's not that we're sitting on a particular cushion or chair. in very deep ways that we, you know, if we spent all day here talking about, we'd realize things that we have in common and ways in which we are influenced by many of the same things and vice versa. We actually are part of this communion of non-separation, this interconnectedness of all things. And our practice is about, first of all, seeing that, and then how do we express that in our everyday activity, as well as on our cushions. We see it in this Zazen practice through, in various subtle ways, recognizing how our mind is connected to everything else, and everyone else in the room, and everyone else in your life.

[04:24]

So part of the practice of non-separation is to see how we think we are separate, how we think things out there is separate and isolated. But each of us is here this morning because of actually innumerable causes and conditions that we couldn't possibly track or trace. And so we have a number of people who sat their first period of zazen this morning, which is wonderful for all of us. And you might have noticed that as you were sitting, there might have been some thoughts. Any of you have any thoughts while you were during that period of sitting? Well, that's pretty common. Does anybody have no thoughts during that period? period of sitting, nobody will admit it. So this issue of mind is central to Buddhism.

[05:30]

Buddhism has been talked about as a kind of psychology as well as a religious practice. How is it that we see the environment and see things in the environment as separate and primarily see ourselves as separate from our world? So this has to do with the environment in the sense of the things of the world and the environment and our damaged environment in our world today. But it also has to do very fundamentally with how we see ourselves, how we see each other, how we function. on our cushion as we're sitting, but also in our everyday activity. So another way of talking about non-separation is that while you were sitting here, you may have thought of, how many of you had a thought about somebody else who's not here in the room now who you saw in the last week?

[06:32]

Quite a few, okay. Those people in your life are part of your mind sitting here in Zazen. part of your being sitting here in zazen. And we talk about this practice as just sitting, just being present and observing sensations, breath, thoughts, feelings, letting them go, just coming back to our uprightness in our posture, in our inhale and exhale as part of that. This mind we have a rather simplistic idea of, and we can develop a texture of seeing that through Buddhist teaching and Buddhist practice, and seeing the complexities of that. So just to refer to it a little bit in terms of this koan or teaching story, I'm just going to paraphrase. This is a story about a great Chinese Chan or Zen master in the 800s.

[07:36]

named Yangshan, and he asked a monk, where are you from? And the monk said, from Yu province. This is why Yu is a province in China. It's an interesting bilingual pun, because, yeah, Yu, me. He might have said from Mi province. That would have been interesting, too. Yangshan, the teacher, asked the monk, do you think of that place? And he said, I always think of it. And then this next part I want to focus on. Yangshan said that the thinker is the mind. and that which is thought of as the environment. So we could have said subject and object, but our mind is subject. We think in terms of subject, verb, object. We think of things out there. Our whole way of thinking, our whole syntax and grammar by which we mostly think is about dividing subject and predicate, subject, verb, object, and we live our life, our usual human consciousness and our usual human life is about verbing objects out there to get what we want, or get rid of what we don't want, or maybe protecting ourselves from being verbed by subjects out there.

[08:44]

We think of, in terms of, in a very, very, very deep level, we think in terms of this sense of separation. and this is ultimately a delusion, so I want to talk about that. But what Yangshan said to the monk is, the thinker is the mind, the thought of is the environment. In the environment are mountains, rivers, landmass, buildings, towers, halls and chambers, people, animals and so forth, Lake Michigan, the loop, the L, all kinds of things are what we think of. Other people in our lives too. And then he gave this meditation instruction, which I want to talk about, which is one of the fundamental instructions, the way it's translated in this case, reverse your thought to think of the thinking mind. There's so many things there. So this, again, our basic meditation or zazen in this tradition is just sitting, being present with whatever is, whatever we see on the wall, whatever we hear,

[09:53]

smells, whatever thoughts come up. But this idea of reversing your thoughts to think of the thinking mind, there are various versions of that. In one of the chants we do it says, turn your light to shine within and then just return. So the turning of light to shine within is our meditation. Our returning is our everyday activity. And we emphasize the way in which they're interconnected. Another version of this is take the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate the self. So as we're sitting facing the wall, facing ourselves, we are in some sense studying, yogically studying this body and mind. On your Kushner chair this morning, And the point of that is, one point of that is to get beyond our idea. We have ideas of ourself. We have stories about ourself. Conventionally we have, you know, driver's licenses, telephone numbers, various stories about our personal history and so forth.

[11:03]

We have this illusion of a self, which actually, you know, it does exist. We can't ignore that. and yet turn the light inwardly to illuminate the self. Pay attention to what is going on. It's not that you should think about the thoughts that are coming up, but think about what it is that is thinking. So that's what Yangchen says here. Reverse your thought to think of the thinking mind, to think of the self that is producing all these thoughts. Are there so many things there? So again, this is an actual practice that you can do while you're sitting. And, you know, within the context of this very open, just sitting that we do, there are various specific ways to kind of focus. So in this tradition, we don't, you know, go around hitting people if they're falling asleep or any of the things that sometimes happen in Zen.

[12:03]

The point is just to be, have a time to be present with this body and mind as it is, and to pay attention. So it's a very kind of gentle sitting, just not trying to get anything particularly, but just watching. What is it that's happening here? What is this body and mind really like? Feeling the tension in your shoulders or your knees or whatever, feeling the uprightness of your posture, feeling, having some awareness in your lower back and in your throat. with your eyes open, aware of the wall in front of you. Again, not to reach some particular mental state, but just to see what it is that is going on here on your cushion or chair, in this body and mind, here this morning, apart from our ideas of who we are. So this mind and environment, there's the subject, there's you, and then there's everything else.

[13:10]

So Yangchen asked the monk, when you reverse your thoughts to think of the thinking mind, what do you see there? And the monk said, when I get there, I don't see anything at all. Nothing exists. It's a very interesting answer, and I want to talk more about that and how that is true for all of us in some way. But Yangshan had an interesting response. He said, this is right for the stage of faith, but not yet the stage of person. And I don't want to emphasize these two stages as stages, because both are part of our life. But he talks about the stage of person in terms of our taking on the reality of this. So I want to talk about the process of turning the light within, of thinking of the thinking mind, as something to actually do in Zazen, and then the way in which this becomes alive. That's what Yangshan's referring to as the stage of person, the way in which this becomes part of our activity.

[14:18]

So, think of the thinking mind. It's kind of funny. It's almost like it's very tricky and wriggly. It's hard to, you know. Let's just sit for a couple minutes and see if you can see that which is thinking. Okay, anybody, can anybody say something about what you saw as the thinking mind?

[16:04]

Any responses? Yeah, Nathan. I saw floorboards. Good. They're kind of fuzzy though, because I have 45 degrees below my glasses, so just kind of Okay, good, good. So the thinking mind sees the floorboards, sees other people in the room, sees the Buddha on the altar and so forth. This is the environment that Yangshan spoke of. And part of the trick of this is that anything you think of becomes immediately the environment. So it's floorboards, it's out there. Anything, any thought you have, is a thought of the environment. So, I want to talk about this a little bit in terms of mind, and Yangchen using, you know, defining this as mind and environment rather than subject and object goes back to kind of early Indian Buddhist psychology of Yogacara, which is a kind of yogic study of the self and how the self works.

[17:25]

Now, this may seem kind of theoretical and abstract, but I hope I will come back to show how it's very practical and how it's, as part of our practice, it helps us in our lives. But this idea of think of the thinking mind, what do you see there? Well, what Nathan saw was the floorboards out there. Now, that's not, that's the environment, that's not, the one who saw the floorboards. What was that like, Nathan? I didn't see that. Good, exactly. So anything that, if we try and think of self, if we try and think of that which thinks, if we try and think of mind, as soon as we think about it, it becomes part of that environment that Yangchen talked about. We can't actually In some ways, by definition, anything you think about is an object, including yourself.

[18:29]

So any thoughts we have about ourself is just part of the field of objects around us, like the floorboards. You can make yourself into an object. In fact, we all do that. write resumes, or talk about ourselves, or say good or bad things about ourselves, or think good or bad things about ourselves. Ourself becomes an object in that way. The question that Yangshan asked the monk was about getting back to what is the subject. Yes, Nadav. Is that a question about the vocabulary when using the word thinking? Does that include It could be understood either way, but that's exactly, that's the right question. What is thinking? So going back to this early Buddhist psychology, they divided consciousness and awareness into eight aspects, and I won't go through all of them, but particularly the six.

[19:41]

The first five are our sense objects, so sense consciousnesses. So Nathan saw floorboards. That's visual consciousness. That's the first, and we have consciousness of light. sounds, and smells, and taste, and touch, the physical sensation, warm or cool, or pressure, you know, in our shoulders, or on our butt, or whatever, as we're sitting, our knees, those are the first five, the five senses. But in this idea of mind, they said there's also mind consciousness. And so even those of you who were sitting for the first time had thoughts arise. One of the eight aspects of consciousness is that we are aware of thoughts, and we see this very clearly when we meditate. we see that, you know, to-do lists or, you know, pop song lyrics or something somebody sent us yesterday or something we have to do tonight or whatever, it all, you know, it appears.

[20:42]

One of the great 20th century Japanese Seto Zen teachers, my translation partner, Shohaku Okamura's teacher, said that when you sit, your stomach continues to secrete digestive juices. Does that make sense? In the same way, your brain continues to secrete thoughts. So what are thoughts? What is thinking? Going back to Nadav's question. One aspect of it is just that we are aware that there are thoughts. So as you're sitting, you're aware of thoughts floating by, just like maybe we might hear sounds or have physical sensations. So it's kind of a sense consciousness. And a lot of what we think is what our thinking is, is just that. So one of the things that can be most unsettling when we first start to sit is that you see that you aren't what you think, or that you don't control all the thoughts that come up. We think that we are the one who's thinking.

[21:44]

This is part of what this story is getting at. And yet, thoughts arise. So in the story, the monk said, when I get to there, when I turn my mind back to think of the thinking mind, when I look at what is it that's thinking, who is it that's thinking, there's nothing at all. And in some ways, yeah, that has to be true, even though it's a kind of advanced yogic feat to actually see it in such a thorough way as this monk did. there is no mind aside from the things that we see or think or hear or taste or touch, aside from our environment. That is the content of our mind. Maybe we could say there's no environment aside from our mind, and this branch of traditional Indian Buddhism kind of focused on that, well, it's the mind we see, everything we look around, which isn't to say that there isn't some

[22:48]

shared objective reality, did anyone not hear a sound when I thumped my stick? Or twice? Well, there's something out, there's some, and actually in Yogachara thinking they got into all kinds of questioning about, you know, what is mind, what is environment, and there's a whole philosophy and psychology built on this, but the basic point is that There's no separation, ultimately, between ourself and all the things we think, all the things we experience. That is what our mind is. And our mind is anything you could think of, even if it's from some other galaxy. If you think of it, it's part of the environment. We can't possibly separate the two. reality that we start to actually, not just hear about intellectually, but actually start to feel as we do this practice.

[23:57]

And I do recommend doing this practice regularly at home in your spare time. It's okay, you know, several times a week if you can. It doesn't have to be 30 or 40 minutes. It can be 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 10 minutes. But just to have some space in your regular activity where you stop and feel what it feels like to just be this body and mind, apart from your idea of who you are. Now, part of what will come up in terms of thoughts and feelings and so forth, as you said, is stuff that has to do with your idea of who you are. So we don't try and run away from that either. Another one of our chants says, don't separate from this skin bag here and now. just to be present as you actually are, not trying to run away from yourself or any part of it, is this practice of non-separation. So to say that, but then, well, so this is complicated.

[25:03]

To say that nothing exists at all, Yangshan said to this monk, was the stage of faith. This is not faith Obviously, like we think of that in terms of Western religions, where you believe in something out there. He uses the same Chinese character that's translated as faith, but it's not about faith in some idea, faith in some Buddhist teaching, faith in Buddha who lived 2,500 years ago. Maybe it's better to translate it as deep confidence or trust. To see that there is nothing separate from our environment. To see that we are part of our environment. It's not that there is some environment out there and we're separate from it looking at it like it's on a movie screen. We are a product of this planet, this world.

[26:07]

We are not just a product separate from, but we are, each of us and all of us together, living beings, expressions of everything. So, Seeing this and coming back to just sit again and again, we start to see, feel, hear, touch, taste this in deep ways. And it takes a while to really settle in, to really trust this reality of our connectedness and non-separation. And Yangshan says that's the stage of faith. And I would say, you know, that's great. Please hang out in this stage of faith.

[27:10]

It's not about one stage being better than another. Please learn to trust yourself, which is to say to trust the world, which is difficult now because we live in a really difficult world and a very corrupt, militarized, violent society. How do we see, though, how we are connected with all of it? And that's where, and when we really, really start to feel that and trust that and see that, it's okay to be, you know, part of the stage of faith is that it's okay to be the body and mind on your cushion or chair right now. Has to be. We have all kinds of thoughts of, we'd like to have more of this, we'd like to have less of that. There's endless aspects of what we think we need to be happy. If I could only have that, or if I could only get rid of this, then I would be happy. This is how our mind works, so we need to see that.

[28:10]

But fundamentally, when we see this non-separation, we see that it's okay. that there's a wholeness to who you are right now on your cushion or chair. So don't dismiss this stage of faith. It's very important. However, Yang Shun said that's okay for the stage of faith to see that there's nothing at all that the mind has other than the environment. It's not yet right for the stage of person, he said. Then the monk asked if there's anything else that Yangshan can give him as guidance. Yangshan said, I can't say that I have something else to give you or not. Just please go and sit. You have this mystery. Take your seat. And then see on your own.

[29:12]

So our Zen practice is about in all kinds of ways, studying this reality of non-separation, seeing how we are connected. And then, Yang Shun says, it's not yet the stage of person. We also have to take responsibility for it. It's not enough to see how wonderful and interconnected the world is. Okay, it's not out there. Reality is not yet another object. The environment is not just something that you can watch on a movie screen. You are it. It actually is you. Maybe you're not it in its entirety, but actually it is you. So we have a responsibility to take on this body-mind on your Kushner chair right now. How do we do that? How do we appreciate? Each of us, each of you, has wonderful talents and interests and abilities.

[30:21]

Each of you have many things to offer to the world in all kinds of various ways. Sitting and settling into being present in this body and mind, we may start to see those more clearly. How do you, as an expression of everything, offer your expression of everything to everything? This is what the stage of person is about. we each have the ability to respond to this. So our practice is not to kind of settle into some awareness of non-separation and just dig that and feel cool. It's about then, okay, how do I take that on? And Sangha community, whether it's the Sangha or community of Ancient Dragons Zen Gate or the various other communities that you each are in, you know, are a way of doing that together.

[31:25]

We're not separate from each other, actually. And yet each of us has our own way of contributing, of sharing, of encouraging and inspiring each other in all of your communities. And how do we appreciate that? Without turning away from the difficulties. A part of the Yogacara consciousness is one of them is about seeing our habits and patterns and conditioning and all the different particular ways we each are caught by greed and hate and delusion or can be. Part of the sitting, what's difficult is not getting your legs into some funny position, but actually being willing to just be present and upright and not run away from the skin bag here and now. To not run away from yourself. To be willing to face yourself. And it takes a while to see the wholeness of that. And when we see those patterns, we don't have to react based on them.

[32:29]

But just to see them doesn't get rid of them. This is very deep. our tendencies, our particular qualities of grasping or anger or confusion. And yet, if we're willing to face them, then we don't need to... We can become friendly and intimate with ourselves, ourselves as the whole thing, as everything we can think of, and that is the environment. In our own particular pattern of relating to that, then we don't need to react based on our habits, and this takes a while, and a kind of the nobility and courage of just being able to stop, sit down, sit upright, face the wall, face ourselves. This also has in it the stage of person, because by being willing to do that, you are taking responsibility. You are taking on this piece of everything that is on your cushion or chair right now.

[33:35]

So maybe that's enough for me to say about this. Please, if you have questions or responses or comments, feel free to share that. Can I say something? Sure. I just wanted to share that this was very helpful for me. One teaching that I have struggled with for a long time is to be present, be in the moment at all times. As human beings who aren't in monasteries and live in the world of our householders, a certain amount of planning or thinking into the future is necessary for survival. Absolutely. And I have struggled with that. And by talking about the mind and the thinking body, is an aspect of the mind to be the planner, and it is also an aspect of the mind to come here on a Sunday and to be present. And all those are okay.

[34:41]

Yeah. Great, yeah. So what we're doing here is fairly audacious, you know, to have a meditation place in the middle of a big city. It's easier to do all of this, you know, and some of us have spent time, for example, at Tassajara Monastery in the mountains in California, just spending all day in an environment that was designed, and a structure that was designed to support us to pay attention to this. Of course, there are many distractions and entertainments and so forth, and fears and all kinds of things, so-called out there, when we step out of are sitting, but the point of this isn't to reach some state of purity or to reach some higher state of consciousness. It's about how do we bring our awareness, our own willingness to be present, present here, into all of our activity.

[35:45]

So yeah, we do have to think about schedules and all that stuff, but how do we be present in that process? And this is what Zazen trains us and gives us an access to. So welcome. Please come again. Other questions, comments, responses? I was going to add, you know, to what, to respond to you, the verse comment on this, this koan, this old story talks about, when the wine is always sweet, it lays out the guests, though the meal is stilling, it ruins the farmers. This actually is talking about this practice more as it's done in a monastic context, where it's possible to kind of get complacent when you're doing this in a place where everything supports that and where everyone else is doing that.

[36:48]

It's possible. It's possible to settle into this sense of non-separation. When we are practicing in the city, It's pretty hard to do. It's pretty hard to get, you know, saturated and drunk with Samadhi. You know, the world is right here and we have to interact with it. So in some ways this is, there's an advantage to practicing like this. Yes, not enough. For some reason today, I'm stuck on vocabulary. That's one of the ways that we work with this stuff. I'm just curious whether both uses of the word thinking, are they the same character in the original text? Is it actually the same word, or is it a translation of two different languages? I think in our language, in English, there's not as much subtlety about what the mind is as there is in

[37:52]

both Sanskrit and Chinese. But as it happens, in that case, reverse your thought to think of the mind that thinks. Thought and think are the same character, amo, amoebas in Japanese. just ordinary character for thinking. There's another word that's used for character that's used for mind. Going back into Sanskrit, they have, in early Indian Buddhism, there's a much more subtle appreciation of the aspects of thought and mind. There's discriminating consciousness. Again, that's the... what we're doing all the time, that's our human mind, is to make distinctions. And yet that's how we get caught up in separation, not seeing the non-separation that underlies it. There are also other Sanskrit words that look at various aspects of thought and mind. There's a whole early Buddhist psychology called Abhidharma, where they divide up qualities of mind, and there's like 50 of them.

[38:59]

So they actually look at the different aspects of mind, attention, awareness, application of thought. So it gets much more subtle in terms of the Sanskrit vocabulary. But I think we can do okay with just thought and thinking and mind. Any other comments, questions, responses, please feel free. Douglas. I just wanted to talk a little bit about the being the moment. And a lot of what happens, I think, is what we frequently do is walk around in a sort of distracted, abstracted condition where we're sort of dwelling or fantasizing on what's happened in the past, or what's going to happen to us.

[40:01]

Sort of drifting, you know, barely in touch with what's going on. And that's, I think a couple of things happened, and I think we, you know, we're not really aware of the thoughts and sensations and feelings we're having then, or sort of they're in the background. We lift them out. And those are almost always, when we start doing that, bad has happened to me, or I should have done this, or what if this happens, or God, I'm really pissed off this is going to happen, or how am I going to do that? It's not really planning, it's almost fantasizing, and that carries over then when you interact with the world. You're interacting from a sense of neediness or defensiveness. Rather than being aware of those thoughts, you're sort of living them out, impacting them out. or turn around and become aware of the mind.

[41:03]

It's not that you stop having thoughts or feelings or sensations, but the perspective has just changed, and you're having them, you're engaged in them, but you've sort of opened up, and you are aware of them, and you can act out of those feelings. Well, you know, I need to do this, or this could happen. Then you can make plans. You're not acting out of, you're not just reacting from those. Fantasizing is kind of closed in. You almost feel physically stepped in. And we can step out of that. A lot of it says that. It's taking that step and letting that work itself out. It's like driving a stick. You step on the clutch pedal, all the emotions keep going, but they're not driving you. And it becomes different. You can act. you feel differently, maybe you certainly can act differently.

[42:06]

Thank you, Jonas.

[42:10]

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