I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Morning. The first part of the talk this morning is for the kids, children. Hi kids. Hello. Today we're going to talk about, or we're going to talk about Zazen. Do you know why we come into this building? Why? Good question. We come to do Zazen. I'll tell you what Zazen is. Za means to sit. And zen is something that I'll talk about a little bit. So, did you ever do Zazen before?

[01:04]

A little bit, maybe? I'll show you. See that cushion that you're sitting on? The round cushion? That's called a Zafu. And the square cushion that's sitting under the Zafu is called a Zabuten. So, za means to sit. So, you're sitting on the zafu, which is sitting on the zabatan, which is sitting on the floor. The floor is sitting on the ground. The ground is sitting on the lava. And then I'll die. Yeah. Keep going. And then comes the big pit in the middle. Yeah, there's the world, sitting on the world.

[02:07]

And then the inside of the world, and then the inside of the world. And then the really hot inside. Really hot inside. I know. Inside is hot. So, we're going to go inside. I want you, will you stand up a minute? Come in over here and turn around. Now, I want you to hold your arms out all the way like that. Now, from fingertip to fingertip is the same length as from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. So you can make a circle all the way around And where's the center of the circle? I don't know. Okay, so that your belly button, just below your belly button is the circle, is the center of the circle.

[03:10]

So, Zen is the center of the circle. That's one way of saying it. So when you sit, sit on your cushion, sit more on the front. More, more, more, more. So your knees go down to the, your feet are on the butan. Can you cross your legs? Try crossing your legs. Good. Now, put your hands like this. It's real straight. Like that. Now, cross your eyes. This is Zazen, almost. And then breathe from here. Do you breathe from here? You do because kids breathe from here.

[04:14]

Kids breathe in the right place, mostly. And find the center of yourself. Can you concentrate on the center of yourself, where your breathing is? Good. Now, just don't look at it. Now, I want you to listen. And how far away can you hear a sound? That's too close. How far away can you hear a sound? Without saying it, just hear it. Very good.

[05:59]

So when you sit, finding your center, your center is the same center as the world. The same center as the whole universe. Everything's connected to your center. That's my talk to you today. So now, for the rest of us kids, I want to talk about what's called, in basic Buddhism, the five spiritual faculties and the five spiritual powers.

[08:09]

faculties and powers are the same thing depending on whether they're strong or weak. So basically these five powers, I mean five faculties, they're called various things. Sometimes they're called controlling factors of mind or of our body-mind. So first there's faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. Wisdom in this sense is not the same as what we call prajna in Zen. Usually we're not so interested in this kind of wisdom, which is called paññā, which is ordinary wisdom, like knowledge.

[09:24]

So these five spiritual faculties, faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom, are the five spiritual faculties which are always present in our life, especially in our practice life. And the understanding of how to work with these faculties is how they balance each other. offer control each other. So they're considered in pairs. Faith and wisdom balance each other. And energy and concentration balance each other.

[10:29]

So I've talked a lot about faith in the past couple of months, but I'm going to talk about it again in a little different way, maybe. Any one of these factors which dominates or predominates throws the rest out of balance. Before I talk about that, I want to talk about these factors a little bit more. They're called Indriyas. They're part of a number of controlling factors called Indriya, which comes from the Indian term Indra, which is, Indra was the chief of the gods and the controlling god of the pantheon. So, the controlling aspect

[11:35]

is that each one controls its opposite. So faith is a controlling factor for doubt or skepticism. And energy is a controlling factor for laziness or lethargy. And mindfulness is a controlling factor for indifference or for forgetfulness. And concentration is a controlling factor for scatteredness of mind. And wisdom is a controlling factor for ignorance. So each one of these factors. They're called controlling because Indra exerted control over those factors which would upset them.

[12:49]

So in order to maintain a strong practice given these faculties, it's necessary to counter those adverse conditions. So this is one reason why they call it controlling factors. But as controlling factors, they only are operable when they're strong. So just because they're there doesn't mean they're always strong. Sometimes the opposite will preponderate. So sometimes we get lazy, right? And our energy goes down when we're lazy. Or sometimes our mind is scattered, or we can't quite bring our attention to what we're doing.

[13:53]

And so concentration is weak. So the other side, which is called the Balas or powers, is when those factors are so strong that they can't be overturned by their opposites. So faith can't be overturned by skepticism or doubt. Energy can't be overturned by laziness and so forth. So this is the state of when one reaches non-backsliding, when one's effort is so, and when these five factors are so strong and established that they can't be overturned no matter what. This is what we call a mature student whose practice can't be overturned by anything.

[14:56]

And these factors also factor in Zazen, both Zazen and our daily life. In Zazen, faith or confidence comes from being able to establish When we establish ourself on the other factors, faith just naturally arises, or confidence naturally arises. And when energy is strong, then we have good zazen, or what we call attentive zazen. And when mindfulness is present, we know what we're doing, and we don't, get distracted. And with concentration, this is called samadhi in this practice.

[16:01]

So concentration is samadhi. Samadhi is what we call shikantaza, actually. Shikantaza is Dogen's term for samadhi. which is to be totally present moment to moment with the mind not dwelling in duality and not rejecting duality, not being attached to either emptiness or form. There are many kinds of concentration, but this samadhi concentration is selfless concentration, not self-centered concentration. Like an athlete can do many wonderful things forgetting themselves, but it's not necessarily samadhi.

[17:08]

And of course, wisdom or understanding is, of course, necessary, so we know what we're doing and why and how. So, if there is too much faith, if faith is really strong and wisdom is weak, or if any of the other faculties are weak, then when faith becomes overbalanced, the other faculties suffer, which you can see in the world of religion. Sometimes I think of religion as a necessary evil, often because it's necessary. The reason why we have religion is because it's necessary, but it easily becomes deformed or corrupted because of the over-preponderance of one or two faculties, usually the faculty of faith.

[18:32]

So when the faculty of faith becomes too preponderant in a religion to the detriment of the other faculties, like particularly wisdom, then it becomes kind of crazy and what we call fundamentalist, which is a total misnomer, because there's nothing fundamental about it at all. It misses the fundamental point, which is balance and equanimity. So without the wisdom to balance the faith, religion usually goes berserk and becomes self-centered and egotistical. and unaccepting to any other forms.

[19:50]

We are it, and everything else is not it. So, it causes more problems in the world than it solves. And when wisdom preponderates, or knowledge, in this sense, paññā, preponderates, it easily becomes cunning. So we have wisdom that's not balanced by faith, and wisdom becomes simply egotistical and ungrounded. And so we have evil geniuses and very science used for the purpose of making war. So when energy becomes too preponderant, it needs to have concentration in order to make it work correctly.

[21:07]

So much of our experience is we see people just going off in various directions with lots of energy but no focus. So concentration is the focus of energy. It pulls energy in and gives it something to do. Sometimes we find ourselves with all this energy and not knowing where to put it. So it's important to have the discipline to focus our energy and concentrated effort, both in zazen and in our daily life. In zazen, samadhi is how we focus our energy so that it balances faith, mindfulness, and wisdom. Our concentration is too preponderant.

[22:12]

It needs to be balanced by energy, because we can concentrate pretty well. If you've ever smoked marijuana, you know that you can concentrate pretty well, but your energy is not there, not necessarily there. you have great thoughts, little body activity. Concentration needs to be stimulated with energy. And when we sit in zazen, it's always the balance between concentration and energy. Sometimes we think, some people feel that, well, zazen is just be quiet and slump, but that's not Zazen. Zazen is to use your whole energy, entire energy, to sit up straight and concentrate. And when you use all your energy to sit up and concentrate, then faith arises, wisdom is there, and mindfulness is

[23:28]

the balance point between all the others. You can never have enough of mindfulness. Mindfulness keeps bringing us back to the subject, keeps bringing us back to what we're doing, and is the controlling factor between all the opposites. So these two, wisdom and faith and concentration and energy, all balance on the fulcrum of mindfulness and maintain that balance so that no one is any more preponderant than the other. So maintaining this kind of balance is what gives us really good practice.

[24:35]

It's not always easy to remember this, but it's important. So if we understand or if we keep in mind these five aspects of practice. When we find ourselves at loose ends, we know that concentration can bring us back. And when we find ourselves too out of bounds with our faith, we bring it back to what's reasonable. But faith needs to be balanced by reason. and reason needs to be balanced by faith. Faith is also an aspect of intuition.

[25:57]

Intuition is very much connected with faith. And that's why faith, intuition needs some check and balance through reason. So if you take someone like Einstein, Einstein had this intuition of a unified field. And his reasoning and wisdom followed that path to try to understand what that is. And he also was very interested in the source of light. So these are both spiritual practices, understanding

[27:00]

the intuiting unified field for universe and the source of light. One is, they're both all-encompassing and they're both aspects of each other. But this is spiritual practice as well as scientific understanding. So when we really have a balanced understanding or make a balanced effort, you find that most divergent truth, true practices, all come together. So there are other factors, of course, that are necessary to make these, to keep these factors alive. And one is interest.

[28:04]

We have to have interest in order to actually practice or in order to make our lives come to life. Interest and joy, these are also associated factors. When we have confidence and faith, then our interest and our joy arises. And when we have good energy, we feel very happy and joyful. And when we're well-concentrated, we feel at ease. And we feel that some settled mind. And when we have interest, our intellect starts working well. So all of these factors influence and balance and energize each other.

[29:08]

And this is how we, by keeping these factors balanced and energized, we have successful practice. So that's a kind of presentation. If you have any questions, we can discuss all this. What about compassion, or anyway, practice not for oneself, but for motivation and practice? Compassion? How does that fit with that? That seems like an important part of practice, too. Well, there are a lot of things that are important parts of practice. but I'm talking about these five as conditioning each other. Yeah, but if you, what I was thinking was if you don't have your overall sort of direction in practice. Well, compassion is of course necessary.

[30:13]

What? Compassion is of course a necessary component of practice. Well, you can have all these Or without compassion? Without compassion. Without having compassion. Right. Right. Well, first, you know, these five practices create a balance and a focus, and all of those faculties are present, and when that happens, compassion arises naturally from that balance. For example, you could be, like if you're a musician, you could bring all those faculties to your, and probably if you're a great musician, you could bring all those faculties to your musicianship.

[31:28]

Well, a good musician actually is selfless. Selflessness with one of the faculties at all, whether you're doing music or doing zazen. But that's not necessarily samadhi. When we go deeply into ourself, selflessly, then compassion arises naturally. Deep Samadhi actually brings up, although I have to, I understand what you're saying, and this is one of the problems, you know, that the Mahayana had with it, the so-called Hinayana. because the Hinayana could have this. This actually comes from Hinayana practice, or style. And the Mahayana kind of criticized, this is just for yourself, not for others. So your point is well taken.

[32:31]

That's why this practice is called Mahayana practice with a Hinayana, a Hinayana practice with a Mahayana mind. So the Mahayana mind is the compassion, right? I think that gets to what you were saying. Mindfulness is the key. That's right. Mindfulness is like awareness. Well, the awareness will let you know, and then the effort will take you back. So yeah, that's the key. Mindfulness lets you know, I see, uh-huh, I'm aware, and then you have to do something about that.

[33:34]

Returning. Returning is called the practice of recollection. It's like in Zazen, it's exactly the same as Zazen in your daily life. Your mind wanders off in various ways and you become unbalanced in various ways, and then you keep coming back to the balance, keep coming back to. This is why I say to people, when you sit Zazen, you should give yourself Zazen instruction all the time. The whole time that you're sitting, you should be giving yourself, I don't say verbally, but reminding yourself, recollecting yourself as giving instruction, as if you were giving yourself instruction, somebody's instruction for the first time. So that you're always, because your mind wanders, your body wanders, your psyche wanders, everything wanders. and you have to keep coming back.

[34:38]

That's the practice. So in your daily life, it's the same thing. You fall out of balance, you know, one factor becomes more over-balanced than another, then you have to keep coming, bringing it all together again. So it's recollection, recollecting all those factors and balancing them all the time. Yeah. What is the difference between attain expertise in something in the world. The difference between that and zazen is that we aren't trying for expertise in a way, and we are letting go continually. And it tends to... Somehow if you... I'm not that good at all this, but on occasion I can tap into A kinship with other people also. And that's different than trying to be a rod jumper.

[35:42]

And it does make you make up with other people and realize they are doing the best they can. Yeah, that's compassion. Yeah. And I totally agree. It's not trying to be a virtuoso or an expert or something like that. It's simply centering yourself. That's Zen. As I said, you know, just centering yourself continuously on this moment. Shikantaza. Go ahead. Well, I don't know about that. I would say just tapping into it, and let it happen, you know, you can't aim for that angle. Well, let me see, yes, yes and no. Yes and no.

[36:43]

Because compassion has to arise, you can't fake it. Right? It has to arise, and then you can nurture it. How do you nurture it? That's, keep asking that question. Wait a minute, just a second. Yes. Well, confidence, it means confidence in the fact that, confidence either in your practice, your enlightenment, your understanding, your, and what?

[38:00]

Your intention, yeah, confidence in your intention. So this confidence comes through also through the balance of faith with discernment or with knowledge, wisdom. So if faith doesn't have enough discernment or wisdom, then it just becomes blind, as they say. There are different kinds of blindness, but this kind of blindness, which means just, I believe, is not belief, actually. It's not belief in a belief system. It's confidence. So in Zen, we say it's confidence that I am Buddha.

[39:17]

In other words, I am Buddha nature. Buddha is my nature. But Buddha is not some person I believe in some figure 2,500 years ago. If you say I have faith in Buddha, it means you have faith in the enlightenment of Buddha, not some person, which is your own enlightenment, your own mind, your own being. So if we don't have faith in our own being, then we have to rely on something outside. So to rely on something outside is risky. One is in peace, there is a gentle, loving presence within oneself that is not, you know, this idealization, it's an actual experience.

[40:59]

Oh, I think that's right, yeah. That's good, I like that.

[41:02]

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