I vow to taste the truth of the photographer's works. Good morning. This morning, I will continue with Dogen's Fukan Zazengi. This is the point where he starts talking about Zazen, how to do Zazen, which you probably have heard many times. But he says, is this okay? For Zazen, He says sanzen, but sanzen here means zazen.

[01:00]

Sanzen is a term in the Rinzai tradition that means dokusan, but he uses it to mean zazen. For zazen, a quiet room is appropriate. Drink and eat in moderation. Let go of all involvements and let the myriad things rest. Do not think good or bad. Do not judge right or wrong. Stop conscious endeavor and analytic introspection. Do not try to become a Buddha. How could being a Buddha be limited to sitting or not sitting? So not to think good or bad, not to judge right or wrong, simply to let everything come and go. Everything comes up as it comes and goes as it goes. And while it's in its position, just see it as it is.

[02:05]

That's all you have to do. Pretty simple. Just let go of discriminating mind. So, do not try to become a Buddha. So, Dogen wrote a fascicle called, titled something like The Enactment Buddha. The Enactment Buddha, meaning the Buddha who is actualized through activity. It's not something that you become. Buddha is not something you become. Buddha is not something that you strive to be. Buddha here is your intrinsic nature. So we simply practice to actualize what we already have, which is our Buddha nature, to bring forth our Buddha nature.

[03:13]

to not even bring forth, but to manifest. There's a story of a Daitsu Chisho Buddha. It's a koan in the Mumonkan. Daitsu Chisho Buddha sat for 10 aeons without becoming a Buddha. Why did he, after sitting all that time, not become a Buddha? That's the koan. But Dogen says, answers it by saying, he's enacting Buddha, he's not becoming Buddha. He's expressing Buddha, not becoming Buddha. So, and then, of course, this is how he talks about our Zazen practice. Zazen practice, or our way practice, is enacting Buddha, not becoming Buddha.

[04:24]

But if you want to say becoming, becoming is enacting. One never becomes Buddha, because you can't become something that you already are. So we express Buddha's activity in our actions, in our practice. So he says, in an appropriate place for sitting, set out a thick mat and put a round cushion on top of it. sit either in the full or half lotus position posture. For the full lotus posture, first place the right foot on the left thigh, then the left foot on the right thigh. For the half lotus position, place the left foot on the right thigh. Loosen the robes and belt and arrange them in an orderly way.

[05:30]

Then place the right hand palm up on the left foot and left hand on the right hand. lightly touching the ends of the thumbs together. You know, if you see, this is a Chinese style to put the left foot on the right thigh and the right foot on the left thigh. But you may see Buddha statues from India and they have the feet the opposite way and the mudra the opposite way. That's the Indian style. Chinese style is the opposite. So sometimes people say, well, gee, you know, that Buddha statue has gone the other way around. But that's just difference in style. When we When Suzuki Roshi taught us to sit, he taught us to sit this style.

[06:33]

And people would say, well, what about doing it the other way? What's wrong with that? He said, nothing. This is how we do it. Please do it this way. That was always his way. I don't know why. Just do it. He would never answer somebody's question about why we do something. We, of course, try to answer people because we're so kind, we think. You say, oh, I don't know. I don't know why. Just do it this way. Very good. Sit straight up without leaning to the right or the left. bending forward or backward. The ears should be in line with the shoulders and the nose in line with the navel. So I'm always stressing, it's easy for people to sit with the nose in line with the navel, but it's hard for people to sit with the ears in line with the shoulders because people don't like to sit up straight.

[07:37]

It's not that we don't like to sit up straight, maybe. It's just that we often don't know what straight is. Sitting up straight, push the lower back forward, lift up your sternum, keep your head back without looking up. Sometimes they say, put your head back, and then people go like this. Suzuki Roshi called it ego practice. But to keep your ears in line with your shoulders keeps your back straight and so forth. So there are a lot of good indicators. That's one of them. Rest the tongue against the roof of the mouth with lips and teeth shut. Keep the eyes open and breathe gently through the nose. That's a very simplistic, simple explanation of Zazen practice, although there's more subtle stuff.

[08:45]

So having adjusted your body in this manner, take a breath and exhale fully. That doesn't explain exactly, take a breath and exhale fully, but it's like take a breath, a full breath, and In order to, of course, we don't always do this, right? But then we don't always breathe deeply either. When I ask people, where is your breath? They say, oh, I don't know. You should always be aware of your breath down here. So when I say, take a breath, it means take a breath and expand your abdomen, like a, ah, that kind of breath, and then go, ah, and let all the air out, push all the air out. And that primes your pump.

[09:46]

It primes your breathing. Sometimes when I really want somebody to get the point, I'll say, like a balloon, you expand the balloon and then you let all the air out and push all the air out till your front meets your back. That's exhaling. And then you know where that spot is. take a breath and just breathe naturally. But it allows you to breathe naturally from here. So this is where our breath should always be. Always. When we get fearful or when we get anxious or whatever, our breath tends to go up here. When we have pain, you know, breath tends to go here. So in all circumstances, you keep your breath down here.

[10:47]

And then when you have trying circumstances, your breath naturally goes to that place. When you find yourself in difficulty, that's where you go to, automatically, because you're used to breathing there all the time. And then you find yourself being centered. And then you can take care of things much more easily without getting off balance. So this is what takes you through all circumstances. So when you have fear and you feel ego, instead of going, you go, and push the breath out, and then start breathing from here. So this is called the sea of ki. Ki is like breath, but it's the vital place.

[11:53]

Breath, ki means the vital spot where vitality issues forth, where light issues forth. It's the center of your universe. So you want a calm sea. So when everything else is agitated, the sea, the bottom of the ocean is very calm. This is also called Sagura Mudra Samadhi, the Great Ocean Samadhi. Great Ocean Samadhi, walking on the bottom of the ocean while you're swimming on the top. Your feet are on the bottom, always on the bottom of the ocean. So he says, having adjusted your body in this manner, it's a little bit backwards, I'll tell you why.

[12:57]

Having adjusted your body in this manner, take a breath and exhale fully, and then sway the body from left to right. So, you want to do this before you get into your posture, actually. You don't want to get into your posture and then sway your body. You sway your body and then adjust your posture. So, I was always taught to do this. When you get into your posture, you make a wide swing, and then you make a wide swing, and then you make a narrower swing, and a narrower swing, and a narrower swing, until you're sitting upright, and then you put your hands in the mudra, and adjust your posture, and do all those things you said. And then when Zazen is over, you make a narrow swing,

[14:00]

And wider, wider, just the opposite. Wider, wider, until your body starts loosening up. And then you uncross your legs. I do more radical stretch. That's the basis, but I just do a more radical stretch. I do 30 seconds this way, 30 seconds that way, as far as I can go, and then 30 seconds this way, 30 seconds that way, and then 30 seconds this way. So that takes a minute and a half. Two minutes and a half. But then my body, it just feels loose and adjusted. and open. So I highly recommend this. And I say this periodically, but nobody, almost, does it.

[15:04]

So, then he talks about Having adjusted your body in this manner, take a breath and inhale and then exhale. Inhale fully and exhale fully. Then sway your body to the left and the right. Now, sit steadfastly and think not thinking. Think not, this is the great koan. How do you think not thinking? Beyond thinking. This is the essential art of Zazen. Now, This is the essential art of Zazen. So thinking is one side, not thinking is the other side. Non-thinking is funny, because non-thinking seems like not thinking. People think it doesn't fit right.

[16:26]

So people come up with the beyond thinking, which is okay. But the reason non-thinking is off is because it's not expressed correctly. It's the not's thinking, or it's the non's thinking. It's the who's thinking. It's the how's thinking. This is Dogen's way of thinking, which is not easily expressed, and most translators don't express that subtlety, which shifts the whole thing to, it's not my thinking, it's not not my thinking, but it's the true thought True thinking, which is not dualistic thinking.

[17:32]

It's not non-dualistic thinking. It's true thinking, which sometimes, you know, if there are three, Dogen points out three kinds of thinking. Thinking, not thinking, that's a duality. and the non's thinking. So he uses these non, who's, how's, which doesn't point to, they're active words. It's the activity of thinking itself, which is independent of It's the universe's thinking. But how?

[18:37]

Because you can't really name it, so you… Isn't he quoting a story here? I mean, is that the original meaning to him? What? What do you mean? Isn't there a story where somebody said, how do you… That's right. So this story comes about, a monk asked Yakusan, Yoishan, what do you think when you're doing zazen? And Yoishan said, I think not thinking. He said, what do you think about? I don't know about the word about, but what do you think about? The question is okay. But I think the answer would be, I think not thinking. I don't think about not thinking, because that would be thinking about something. I think not thinking. And the monk said, how do you do that?

[19:39]

And the Oishan said, non-thinking. The nots thinking. The nons thinking. So this is the way Dogen interprets it. It's the non-thinking. And this is explicated far further in Dogen's Zazen-shin fascicle. That's the subject of Zazen-shin. So it includes thinking. It includes not thinking. but it's not attached to either one. So the way I think about it, the way I non-think about it, is when your thought and your activity, there's no gap. You're not thinking about something. The thought and the activity are the same. So people say, well, what should I think about in Zazen?

[20:41]

I say, think Zazen. Think the thought of Zazen. Or how do you think the thought of zazen? Don't think about something else, right? Zazen is nothing but zazen. Sitting is just sitting. So when you sit, your mind and your body are just sitting. Sometimes you say, Well, yes, that's what I, you should, every time you sit, you should give yourself Zazen instruction, which is directing the mind toward Zazen, but it's also practicing Zazen, because the thought and Zazen is the same thing. So all the time you're coming back, the mind wanders, right? So that's thinking. That's okay. Nobody said the mind should not wander. The mind wanders, that's thinking. You let go of thinking, you let go of your thoughts, that's not thinking.

[21:49]

Then you come back to zazen and you think the thought of sitting, the thought of zazen, that's non-thinking. It's the non's thinking. Because there's no gap between the thought and the activity. When there's a gap between the thought and the activity, that's called thinking. So I'm always, it's pretty easy for like 20 seconds. that's around you? Well, to be open to whatever sounds are around you, to whatever sounds are coming in, you just let the sound in. You don't stop the sound from coming in.

[22:51]

In the same way, you don't stop the thoughts from bubbling up. To hear the bird sing is Hearing's hearing. It's not me hearing, it's hearing's hearing. Hearing is hearing a sound. Mind is saying that's a bird. So that discriminating mind says that's a bird. So that's discrimination. But simply to let the sound be the sound, you may know that it's a creature called a bird, but a bird is just a name, right? So the bird is not a bird, therefore we call it a bird. This is the Diamond Sutra.

[23:54]

So when we let go of the appellation, we can actually experience the bird without the word. So the sound is heard by hearing. The sight, the bug, is seen by seeing. And the pain is felt by me. No. By feeling. This is just feeling. So, I remember Suzuki Roshi used to say, it's just painful legs sitting on a black cushion. Just painful legs sitting on a black cushion. Well, this is my pain and I'm feeling it, blah, blah, blah. You do think that, but we can let go of that. When we let go of that and just let the thing be the thing, then there's no self.

[24:58]

I mean, there's true self. It's the non's thinking. Although it's true that this pain hurts me, you know, that's also true. But it's a flawed truth. It's not absolutely true. It's just our discriminative truth, but it's not our absolute truth. It seems like between me and that absolute truth is this tsunami of boredom. It's like, you're like, oh, okay, this is not so boring, like, it's like, ah, it's so fearful, like, I mean, I'm going to have to be right here, you know? It's just like, ah, what do I do with that?

[26:01]

Right, that's because of separation. When there's no separation, there's no boredom. Boredom is because of the gap. The gap is isolating. So when we feel at one with everything, there's no gap and there's no boredom. So when we really let go, there's no gap and there's no boredom. But there's plenty of boredom in Zazen because it's hard to let go and just let things be. Because who is it that's bored? That's a good koan. Who is it that's bored? Tamar?

[27:03]

When my thoughts are really busy, it sometimes helps to count my breath and focus on some small part of my body that is moving when I breathe. And I find if I do that for a while, then I can you know, I can let go of counting the breath and not have to do that, but it seems like when my mind is really busy, I need something else. Yes, that's right. So you need to have the handle on your cup. Yes. So that's what counting breaths is. We always teach people, I hope, when we do Zazen instruction, to learn to count their breaths from one to ten. and then start again from one to 10. And when you get to 100, you come back to one.

[28:05]

When you get to 10, you come back to one over and over again. And we always recommend that to people when they begin to sit zazen. And sometimes we forget to tell them that it's okay not to do it after five years. But if you learn to count your breaths, if you do that, that really, that helps you to, you see where you're off and where you're on, right? And then you can forget, as you say, forget counting the breaths and just be. But every time you need it, it's there because you practiced it. So, you know, when I, if my mind is wandering too much and I need to get back, I'll start counting my breaths. I just do it because it's so available. It's right there and it just happens. I just do it without thinking by myself counting my breath.

[29:07]

So it's good to learn to do that. I agree. The mind is always producing thoughts. That's its function is to keep thinking about something. So we keep, and so it spins out all kinds of stuff. And then you realize that that's happening and you let go. You don't push the thoughts away. Pushing the thoughts away is too assertive. You simply let them go. Come back to posture and breathing. Posture and breathing. That's it. That's all there is. So if you're continually working on your posture, and then you can allow your mind to follow the breath subtly, you won't be bored. If you're really working on your posture, you can't be bored.

[30:11]

To work on your posture the whole time. There's nothing else. So we go into our stories, right? Who wants to work on posture? We just keep going into our stories. But that's okay, because that's the mind's function. So you don't blame the mind for doing that. It's what it's supposed to do. But it's not what we're doing. We're not thinking. We're not taking up thinking. What we're doing is posture and breathing, being one with posture. The body sits as in, the mind sits as in, and the breath sits as in. That's all. Zazen is Zazen. There's no past or future. No past or future. So this is just pure activity. And it's boring. Who is it boring to? It's boring to the mind that wants to grasp something.

[31:15]

So we let the grasping mind spin out stuff, but we're still sitting Zazen. People say, well, my mind is so full of stuff. But the body is sitting Zazen. That's okay. The breath is sitting Zazen. The mind's just busy. But let it go and come back. So we give Zazen instruction to ourself all the time. It's not just when we sit down for the first moment. All the time during Zazen, we're giving ourselves Zazen instruction. Constantly. That's thinking about Zazen. That thinking Zazen. and we fall asleep and then we wake up, and then the body starts sagging and we straighten it up. And then to keep going over the body, over the points of Zazen all the time is our practice. You rotate. How is the mudra? How is the spine?

[32:18]

How is the lower back? How is the teeth? How is the tongue? How is the eyes? How is the head? And you just keep doing this continuously throughout three days. But you have the wonderful possibility of following the breath. That's an added perk. You get to watch the breath. But posture is first. Breath is second. Posture is first. Posture is the main thing. because that's the foundation. Chinese people, Buddhists, often don't worry about posture. They kind of have different, slumpy. It's okay, that's their practice. Japanese practice is really to sit up straight with the body.

[33:18]

It's a really body practice. And I appreciate that. I really appreciate that. When I slump, and I see people do this, old students. I can only correct people so much, and then the rest is up to you. Old students are really resistant to correction. Yeah. If one were practicing the Chinese style, would the Chinese teacher then correct you to slump? Would he correct it? Why? If you're sitting up straight in the Chinese style, is that not what they're looking for? I don't know. You know, I just see what I observed, you know, when I was in China.

[34:20]

And I practiced a little bit with To Lan, with Master Hua. When I went to Sokoji for the, you know, 64 and about 65, you know, Master Hua had a, you know, he was the teacher of the 10,000 Buddha Monastery, you know, and he started out on Sutter Street with a, you know, gold mountain, but a house on Sutter Street. It was about a block away from Sokoji, which is on Bush Street. and he didn't have very many students. So we started out with Suzuki Roshi at Sokoji, and it was a very different atmosphere. Suzuki Roshi always came up and adjusted our posture, all the time. He never let us slump, always adjusting our posture. And so there were three guys and myself, and we said, they said, well, let's go sit a sesshin with, let's ask To-Lun, his name was To-Lun then, changed it to Master Hua.

[35:36]

Let's go sit with To-Lun and see if he'll do a sesshin for us. We'd never had done a sesshin before. So, He said, OK. So we went there. We sat in his living room. And he kind of left us alone to just sit. He didn't tell us how to sit zazen or anything. We just learned what we learned from Suzuki Roshi. And he said, well, you just keep sitting, and maybe one of you will gain enlightenment. It was wonderful. I'll never forget the smell of the incense. It was so, Chinese incense, just wonderful. And then at noon, we had one meal only a day. That's Chinese monk. But it was a sumptuous, these women were in the kitchen all morning preparing the lunch. And it was just a sumptuous vegetarian feast.

[36:38]

It just filled its whole table. And then we sat around the table and ate and laughed and talked. It was a totally different kind of experience. But it was wonderful. I'll never forget it. It was just wonderful. No gruel? Well, we didn't have breakfast. All we had was lunch. I mean, it was wonderful Chinese food, you know. Feast. Yes, so I'm talking about posture. But it's just a wonderful experience. And then when I went to China, we went to Mount Jing. And there was, well actually, we also went to Ru Jing's temple. And there was a monk in the Zen Do, and he was sitting like this.

[37:43]

And he was totally out, you know, totally absorbed. But it was like, there was no, you know. And that's okay. I mean, I don't know what to think of that exactly. But it's like, posture was not stressed. And when Suzuki, when we went back to Sokoji, We were so happy to walk into this sparse, bare zendo and Suzuki Roshi smiling, coming up and straightening up our posture. And I just thought, boy, I so much appreciated that kind of practice where you're just putting all your energy into sitting up straight and energizing You know, when you sit up straight and put that energy into your posture, you just draw all this energy to your sitting. So in sitting, it becomes energized. It's not just kind of passive.

[38:47]

It's active. Active and passive. The passive side is that you accept everything. And the positive side is that you are offering yourself with all your energy. total energy as an offering to the universe. Sometimes I think the Chinese would think that the Japanese posture is a little arrogant. You know, I remember my friend Rick Levine, who was sitting Zazen back in the 60s, 70s, but he was Jewish. And he went to a Hasidic get-together where they had the famous rabbi, and everybody was just an adulation of this person.

[39:55]

And they all were wearing hats, and they were all like this. And he was like this as his end student. And this guy slapped him on the back. He said, humble yourself. You're too arrogant. Humble yourself. That was very interesting. But they wear hats to humble themselves, and they have this kind of posture. And Zen students shave their head and have this kind of posture. It's interesting. You can be arrogant either way. Or you can be humble either way. And you can hide your arrogance under your head. So anyway, my experience is if we really put all our energy, it's called total dynamic activity.

[41:00]

That's what Zazen is called in our tradition. Total dynamic activity. Nothing left out. And you put all your energy, all your effort, into sitting up straight. And you draw energy. The more energy you put out, not too much. There is a too much and a too little. But you find the right balance between ease and effort. That's the trick. so that it's really easy. It's easy, it's, Tony calls it the gate of ease, right? It is easy when you find the right balance between ease and effort. And then it's like this morning, I was talking about Shashu and Kinhin. And when I was doing Kinhin, you know, sometimes, early in the morning, you know, you're kind of sleeping, you get off the cushion, then you start doing Kinhin, and you're kind of wobbling around and maybe, you know, feeling this way or that way.

[42:09]

And you find, how do you find your ease and posture when you're doing that slow walk? And the Kinhin is just like, it's just walking Zazen. So I was holding my hands like this, and I realized that there was this square. The shoulders are horizontal, the lower arms are horizontal, and the upper arms are vertical. And if you hold your back straight, it's total ease. There's no effort in it at all. the only effort is holding your back up straight. And if you do that in Zazen, it's very easy in Kinyin. And so there's no effort. It's simply gliding along the floor. And you, instead of raising your foot like this, you just raise your foot just enough. It's like it's gliding on the floor so that you're not really standing on one foot, but you're just moving.

[43:16]

It's like, almost not moving, moving, gliding. It's kind of like gliding very slowly across the floor. And it's effortless because you have your balance and all the parts of your body are harmoniously balanced. And if you practice Zazen that way, all the parts of your body become harmoniously balanced and you can accept everything more easily. I don't say we don't sit that way. I think we do. Sometimes we don't. I keep reminding because it's easy to fall into bad habits. Could you say something about how we take care of our mudras as a way of finding the right balance of energy?

[44:27]

Yes. Mudra, you know, is the left palm inside of the right palm. And I put the tip of the long finger right in the center of the palm of the other hand. And then make a circle feeling with the tips of the thumbs touching. But the mudra, you know, it's a little oval, but not perfectly round, but it's roundish, right? And the tips of the thumbs should be just barely touching so that if you held them apart just a little bit, you'd feel a spark jumping between them. snap that feeling. And then when, mudra is kind of like a, it's called the cosmic mudra, which is form and emptiness.

[45:42]

It's like a barometer and it tells you how you're doing. So when you can hold the mudra easily, with the thumb tips just barely touching, almost not touching, touching and not touching, then that helps your concentration. And also helps the ease of your body, because when that is held easily, your body becomes more relaxed. And when you have a lot of tension in your body, then the mudras start, your thumbs start pressing together. And then they start pressing together, and uh-oh, I think there's a lot of tension in my body. Then you go like this. This is not correct. Well, I want to say something else, but I'll say it in a moment. This is not correct. So to keep the mudra against your abdomen, It depends, you know, like where your feet are.

[46:44]

Sometimes, if you're sitting in a lotus position, you can keep your feet on your heels or in the half lotus. But if you have some other position, it's like up here by your navel. You can hold it a little high, it's okay. Not up here, it's not good. I don't think you should hold it any higher than your navel. But I hold it down a little bit so that I don't feel a strain. And so you pay attention to that and don't let it collapse. When your thumb starts to collapse, you know that you're getting lax. And when they start pressing together, you're getting tense. So when you really pay attention to the mudra, you feel the difference, where the difference is between laxness and tenseness, and then you find the balance. The other thing is, when we bow and put our hands together, we put our fingers together and our thumbs.

[47:50]

Not like this. Don't let your thumbs stick up like that. And don't let your fingers, sometimes people bow like this. That's a little too scattered. So we put them all, fingers and thumbs together, and don't let anything escape. And we hold our hands, fingertips, even with the bottom of our nose. Some people hold it up like this, which is more different kind of style, but the bottom of our nose, not about 10 inches. And then bow from the waist. It's very elegant. The little arch in your hands, right? Sometimes, yeah. There are different kinds of ballads. You can have a little arch in your hands, yeah. I hold mine together, but you can do a little bit.

[48:55]

Sometimes it's too much. But pushing palms together is not what you've instructed, right? Is not what? What you've instructed. It seems like that's too much. Well, it can be flat, or there can be a little bit of space, a little bit of space. As Jamiroshi says, a little bit of space is good, as usual. But sometimes it's like this. I don't know. This is just the way we do it, you know. You can do it any way you want. Because it should be a feeling coming from you, not a command from somebody else, right? But this is the style. There seems to be a Tassajara style to it. Yeah, well, this is extreme Soto Zen, which they teach the monks.

[49:58]

But when you get out of the novice stage, you can put your hands down like this. I always teach to do like this, you know, more like, not like this. This is clinging to your body, but open, you know, your arms are open and your body, and your feeling is open. This is pinched. Sometimes you go. I'll give you just so much. One said that sometimes you kind of whisper into your hands. I said that? Yeah. When you're making your vows, you're kind of just telling your hands a secret. I said that? I'm paraphrasing, yeah, a couple years ago.

[50:59]

I don't remember, but... I might have. Might be. I don't know when to put it past myself. Well, you know, there's the monk in Japan who plays the reed. He plays the blade of grass instrument. He goes... Yeah, kids do that all the time. Well, I didn't have a chance to finish. Let me see if there's something else that's relevant here. Well, there is, but I think that's pretty good. Beings are numberless.

[52:29]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ