Good morning. It's a wonderful, bright, crisp winter morning here in Berkeley. Hopefully our practice and our bodies are warming this room. So what I'd like to do for this lecture time is give you a taste of This Sazen instruction that I mentioned, I've gone through quite a number of the particular details and there's aspects of it which are more philosophical and generally instructive rather than particularly instructive. And this comes from this monk who's in the photograph, it's not a photograph actually, they didn't have photographs in the 13th century.

[01:05]

It's a drawing of Ehei Dogen, who is seen as the person who brought Chinese Chan or Zen to Japan and was really the founder of our tradition or our style of practice. And we do, if you hang around here for any length of time, you will hear him cited a lot. We study Dogen a lot. This is sort of, it's kind of the cult of Dogen, but don't tell anybody that. And he's quite a remarkable writer and philosopher and sometimes very accessible and sometimes difficult. But the root of this practice that we get directly from our teacher, Sochin Roshi, and he got from his teacher, Suzuki Roshi, goes back, traces itself back to Dogen.

[02:21]

So I wanted to give you a little flavor of Dogen, and then we'll have time for, certainly time for questions, and questions about what I present, but also anything else that may come up to you or occur to you in relation to our practice, to Zazen practice in general, to Sishin practice in particular. This is a time we'll have some chance to talk and there'll also be tea and discussion later in the day. Yes, more perhaps free ranging discussion. I want to read you from this piece. This is called Fukan Zazengi. There was quite a number of Zen instructions, and this was one that Dogen put together shortly after he returned from China in about 1225-1226.

[03:27]

The way is basically perfect and all pervading. How could it be contingent upon practice and realization? Okay, so right there I have to say something. When Dogen was in his early days as a monk, he came up, the driving question for him was, a lot of the Buddhist doctrine at the time and still saying, our nature is the nature of enlightenment. So we're already enlightened. And Dogen's question, which he challenged his teachers with, well, if we're already enlightened, If we're already realized, then why do we have to practice?

[04:41]

And that's an essential question that's a philosophical discussion within Buddhism. The answer, I'll say, that Dogen came to is that we don't practice in order to attain enlightenment. We practice because we're already enlightened. It's our enlightened nature that got us to this room and got us, gets us to sit down. And that our sitting, I would say, our sitting in this cross-legged posture is an expression of our Buddha nature, an expression of our enlightened nature. My friend, teacher Taiyan Leighton says, this posture, sitting cross-legged, however you're doing it, is what he calls Buddha mudra.

[05:47]

In other words, you're putting yourself, you're putting your body in the position of Buddha as an expression of your Buddha nature. So Dogen is asking, The way is basically perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent on practice and realization? The dharma vehicle, that's your body and mind, is free and untrammeled. What need is there for concentrated effort? Indeed, the whole body is beyond the world's dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It is never apart from one, right where one is. Your true nature is never separate from you, even though sometimes it feels like it's very far away. But he's asserting, it's never far apart from one, right where one is.

[06:55]

So what's the use of going off to dusty realms to practice? In other words, you don't have to go anywhere. You don't have to go on. You don't have to go on some huge pilgrimage to holy places because those places are more enlightened than where you are right at this moment. Right here. right here, if we can wake up, if we can see where we are right here, this is sufficient, this is the place. And the interesting thing is that we come to, like all of us in this room are here, Why are we here today? How did we get here? We have to drive here or walk here.

[08:04]

We have to come and sit down and meditate and do walking meditation. We do this ourselves. There's something in us that has led us here. And I would say there's something also mysterious and beyond us that we really can't understand. Yes, we had to get ourselves physically to this place, but what brought us here? What encouraged you to do that? Maybe you have some idea. I confess, ultimately I don't. You know, for, were any of you born into a Buddhist tradition?

[09:08]

Right, so this is outside of our, it's not like our cultural envelope has led us here. And yet there's something that at least has said, I ought to check this out. Something that I consider mysterious. So he's saying, it's never apart from one, right where one is. One's enlightened nature is never separate from who you are or where you are. Then he says, and yet, If there is the slightest discrepancy, the way is as distant as heaven from earth. If the least like or dislike arises, one's mind is lost in confusion.

[10:18]

So it's not that like or dislike won't arise. But if you get caught by that like or dislike, then you are confused in the sense that if I like this, if I like, let's say, if I like this period of Zazen, You know, oh, it feels so blissful and relaxing. Or if I dislike it, it's like this hurts. When is the bell going to ring? Then I'm certainly in either case, whether I'm clinging on to it or I'm pushing it away, then I'm separate from this enlightened nature.

[11:24]

separate from a sense that everything I need is right in this moment, whether it's pleasant or unpleasant. And so we sit. He says, Suppose one gains pride of understanding and inflates one's own enlightenment. In other words, you have a really good period of Zazen and you think, wow, I get it. If you think you get it, you're still just making an initial says you're making the initial partial excursions. about the frontiers, about the frontiers of awakening, the frontiers of your true humanity, but you're still somewhat deficient in the vital way of total emancipation.

[12:36]

So this is a very high bar that he's setting right from the start. It says, need I mention the Buddha who was possessed of inborn knowledge? the influence of his six years of upright sitting is noticeable still. So in other words, even though the Buddha was born with some sense or saw in himself that his nature was the nature of enlightenment, he still had to sit. He had to let it cook. That's what we're doing. We're letting this cook in ourselves. You know, for some of us, you know, it comes to a boil really quickly. And some of us, I can speak for myself, it's really long and slow. It's like a slow cooker that's put on very low, like 150 degrees.

[13:40]

And it just takes a long time to get cooked. Or we talk of Bodhidharma over near Afsaneh, to your right. That's Bodhidharma, who is the Indian teacher who brought Zen meditation, brought our meditation practice from India to China. Bodhidharma's transmission of the mind seal, the fame of his nine years of wall sitting is celebrated to this day. So the story is that he sat facing a wall for nine years after he came to China. Since this was the case with the saints of old, how can we today dispense with negotiation of the way? So in other words, he's saying,

[14:42]

Because they practiced like this, we should recognize that we're not different from them and we have to practice. So this, even though we're enlightened, we practice to bring this forth. And we also practice to help everybody else. So then he gets to his instruction. You should therefore cease from practice that's based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following after speech. So a lot of us do this. That's how a lot of us come to this. You know, we we read a book. And we see something In that book, we see something that we want, that we recognize, it resonates with something in ourselves, or we see something that just makes a lot of sense, and we think, oh, that's it.

[15:59]

But this practice is not about words and ideas. It's actually about something you have to do with your body. So he says, you should cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate yourself. So this backward step, we're stepping, we come in here, even though it's true that you can practice Zazen everywhere or anywhere, It's helpful to us to come to a place that's quiet and safe and peaceful. So we take that step back from the world just by coming in the door here, knowing very well we're going to go back out there and that's okay.

[17:08]

But we need some place to safely contemplate ourselves, to turn that light inward. And once we come in this room, then we sit, we face the wall and we turn that light inward on ourselves. Even though we may not be doing an analytical practice, we are noticing everything that arises within ourself. and neither pushing it away nor embracing it. So learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate yourself. Body and mind of themselves will drop away and your original face will be manifest. If you want to attain suchness, in other words, if you want to attain awakening, you should practice suchness without delay.

[18:11]

So we just take up this position of Buddha mudra and entrust that, that's the expression of what Dogen called practice realization. So it's, we, our practice is the expression of our awakened nature. So then he goes into a somewhat detailed physical instruction, much like what I gave you earlier. And he gets to the, this is a famous passage, he gets to, once you've adjusted your body and set it up and aligned it,

[19:14]

He says, and you settle into a steady, not moving sitting position, even though there's minor adjustments that you're constantly doing as you sit, minor physical adjustments, you're not moving. It's a stable position. Sitting, if you can sit cross-legged, you're creating a, triangle, the three-point base, your two knees and your seat, which is a stable geometric form. So he says, settle into a steady sitting position. And then he says, think not thinking. How do you think not thinking? Non-thinking.

[20:16]

This is the essential art of Zazen. So this is a famous passage. It's Dogen quoting an older Tang dynasty Zen master Yaoshan. Think not thinking. How do you think not thinking? non-thinking. So what does that mean? To me, what non-thinking means is not directing your mind. So thinking that he's speaking of, I kind of discursive activity of the mind. In a sense, thinking is.

[21:18]

And I don't I just want to be clear that I have not. I don't think well. What he's calling thinking we might call story making. something comes up, there's some sound from on the street, and we hear it, and our creative mind makes up a story about what it is that we're hearing. Or there's some sensation in our body, we create a story about that. My feeling is that that is also, you just have to understand, that is also your awakened mind. It's not something to get rid of.

[22:20]

In fact, that story making capacity is something that really distinguishes us as humans, I believe. I love stories. But there's, if we sit zazen for an hour a day, there's 23 hours to make up stories. And it's a challenge to control our mind in such a way that we are setting aside that story making and just having a stream of perception that flows. And that is what he's calling. So he's calling thinking is basically connecting the dots.

[23:23]

And non-thinking is letting each dot be a dot. And there's this thought and there's this thought and there's this thought. And one of the efforts of meditation is to allow that. And I know that you are already experiencing today. It's like you're sitting there and something comes up and you make a story up about it and you follow it. Everybody's been doing that, right? at least some of the time. That's fine. When you notice yourself doing it, let that go and return to just the immediate perception or the immediate sensation. So this is a way of developing

[24:30]

kind of it's interesting a kind of controlling non-control of your mind that we're doing our ordinary pattern is to connect the dots and if we can intervene with ourselves if we can train ourselves to allow each dot to arise and fall away, that's an unusual and free activity of the mind. And that's what he's encouraging us to do. So think not thinking. How do you think not thinking? Non-thinking. This in itself is the essential art of zaza. Now, here's the next sentence is really interesting. He says, next couple sentences. The Zazen I speak of is not learning meditation.

[25:38]

So it's not just a technique. Then he says, it is simply the Dharma gate of repose and bliss. That particular sentence had me stumped for quite a long time. The Dharmagate of Repose and Bliss. And I would say it took me about 10 years sitting, thinking, okay, when do I, when do I walk into this park of repose and bliss? Because actually this is hard. My legs hurt. I'm bored, you know, or I'm tired or this or that, this or that complaint. And I feel I'm grateful because there's something in my nature that that also you could call it faith.

[26:49]

I had a kind of trust in this process. And also looking around me in the Berkeley Zen community and other places that I've been, I saw people who appeared to me to be fairly settled. comfortable with themselves, comfortable with their environment, not devoid of problems. And I sort of trusted that process. And it wasn't, there was no moment when I thought, ah, here's the ripples and bliss. But gradually, I noticed that sitting down and just stopping and pausing was incredibly restful.

[28:08]

Restful from the otherwise ceaseless evaluative aspect of my mind. And gradually, also, I find I can do that most places. You know, I can do it in an airport. I can do it waiting in a doctor's office. I can just drop into that a place of openness and have just watching the activity of my mind without trying to direct it. And I believe that's what he's speaking of, the the Dharma gate of repose and bliss. Once its heart is grasped, you are like the dragon when he gains the water, like the tiger when she enters the mountain.

[29:16]

What that means is you're home. Wherever you are, you have your home because you have your breath and your body and your practice to return to. For you must know that just there in Zazen, the right Dharma is manifesting itself. So right there, the right dharma means, again, you're taking the Buddha's position. And that from the first, dullness and distraction are struck aside. That's been very interesting to me, having spent decades having to endure and combat boredom You know, you have the experience sometimes of wanting to jump out of your skin.

[30:24]

And I will say I'm never bored. And I'm not saying that to boast, I'm just saying I'm actually saying it with great surprise. And I can't tell you how that happened. But I am incredibly, if there's something that I'm grateful for, that's the thing that I'm grateful for every day. It's not that everything is wonderful. But I'm never boredom. I'm never just sitting there waiting for something to happen. Because we learn to recognize that something is happening all the time, and we have the capacity to pay attention to it. So at the end, the last two paragraphs, he says, you have gained the pivotal opportunity of human form.

[31:42]

Do not use your time in vain. You are maintaining the essential working of the Buddha way. In other words, we are responsible for it. It's been passed on to us where as we're sitting, we are maintaining the reality of the Buddha's understanding in the world. Who would take wasteful delight in the spark from the Flintstone? In other words, you have the spark, you should use it. Start a fire. Please honored followers of Zen, long accustomed to groping for the elephant, do not be suspicious of the true dragon. So there's two stories there. You know the story of the elephant, the blind man and the elephant.

[32:45]

People know that story. A bunch of blind men, this is a fable, they encountered an elephant and each of them with their hands was feeling the elephant. One of them felt the elephant's side and said, oh, this is like a wall. And the others, another one felt the elephant's leg and said, oh, this is like a pillar or a column. And another one found the trunk and said, this is like a huge snake. So each of them, according to their partial understanding, had a perception of what the elephant was. And the Suspicious of the True Dragon is another great Zen story.

[33:46]

There was a Chinese story that there was an old man, an artist who loved dragons. And his house was full of paintings and drawings of dragons and carvings of dragons. Uh, you know, there were dragons everywhere. And one day this dragon said, you know, this guy really likes us. He really likes dragons. And I think, I bet he would really appreciate a visit from a true dragon. So I think I'm going to go and visit him. And, uh, He goes up to this guy's house and he knocks on the door and the artist, the old man, opens the door and sees this dragon and runs screaming out the back door.

[34:59]

He liked the idea of dragons. not the reality he wasn't ready for. So don't be suspicious, don't be afraid of the true dragon, because actually you are the true dragon. That dragon is in you. Devote your energies to a way that directly indicates what is true. Gain accord with the enlightenment of the Buddhas. Constantly perform in such a manner and you are assured of being a person such as they. Your treasure store will open and you will use it at will. This is one of the things that Dogen said over and over again, that the Buddhas of the past are not different than us. that we have their same capacities and abilities.

[36:03]

We think that they knew something that we did or they lived in some way that that we don't. But the the message over and over again from Dogen and others is like. You have what you need. To be a Buddha. And that's what that's the practice that we're that we're learning. Not with the goal. So much of being a Buddha, but just allowing with a sense of faith, allowing what is within us to just. Emerge and bear fruit. So I'm going to stop there and. Leave time for. some time for questions, and it can be about what I've been discussing or anything else about Zazen practice. We have a bit of time to talk.

[37:05]

So does anyone have any? Gary. I'm not sure I ever heard that. No. Do you know where that comes from? Oh, that could be, but yeah. Um, all I would say is who's measuring, you know, uh, one age Buddha,

[38:12]

is all that's necessary. And if you start quantifying how much you sit or how much you practice and thinking that that is commensurate with the size of Buddha you are, I think that's a big problem. So, Yeah. Well, there's something else that Sojin has always said that I really appreciate and agree with. People ask him, what is true practice?

[39:16]

Because we're always encouraged to have a true, authentic practice. And what I've heard him say numerous times is something to the effect like, If you decide you're going to practice Tuesday, February 11th for 20 minutes and you actually get to Tuesday, February 11th and practice for 20 minutes, that's authentic practice. It's setting an intention and following it. And it's not It's not quantifiable. I'm saying intention and effort need to be aligned.

[40:20]

But you know, when people start practicing here, often what I'll say is, see if you can come one day a week. Not like, oh, you should like be coming six days a week and really, really doing hard practice because actually for most of us, what we're trying to do is create a sense of practice of our whole lives as practice. And our lives are hard. And our lives, we have other responsibilities, responsibilities to family, responsibilities to work, to society, and those also should be our intentions. But if we clarify, if we work to clarify our intention in a place like this, then we gradually begin to learn

[41:32]

that everything, we can set intentions for how we're going to live. And that's a life of practice. Other questions? Yeah, Brian. Why does it seem such a struggle? Sometimes it's easy. Sometimes it isn't. I think, I don't know why it's such a struggle, but I suspect it's because we have bodies and we're getting older and we're less flexible and also we feel other things pulling at us and that's the nature of our lives. So it's not so much that Zazen is struggle, everything, once we start looking at it, that aspect pervades so much of what we do and what we think.

[42:45]

It's really important to, and this is something we can do in Zazen, is begin to be aware of what isn't a struggle. You know, that's the thing that the painful parts sort of arise to our awareness and the relaxing parts or the unpainful parts just kind of drift by. So it's important to recognize there's a lot of Zazen practice that that may be easy. And the other thing that one thing that you see particularly, well, it's probably true all the time, but for me it was more true some years ago than it is now.

[43:48]

Uh, every period of Zazen, You know, it would begin with some kind of, well, there could be some ease in the beginning or in, you know, say 20 minutes in, and you get to like 30 minutes or 35 minutes, and then it gets hard, you know, and it might get painful. And that pain is also part of our lives, enduring it, not moving, facing it. But it's not always there. So I don't know, I don't have an answer of why it's hard except for the fact that I honor the reality that our lives are also hard and that they're not always hard. Someone else? Yes, Sarah. Well, I wouldn't say anything about general practice.

[45:17]

It's interesting. I went to a Vietnamese Buddhist retreat yesterday in Santa Cruz, and all the meditations were guided. And I will say that for me, drove me crazy because I like the silence. But that is not an evaluative standard for me. I mean, some people really respond to various kinds of guided meditations. It takes you on a journey, which can take you away from your mundane thinking and lead you towards something that's more wholesome, some ways that you can discover things about yourself.

[46:20]

I think that's really valuable. We don't do a lot of guided meditation here, wouldn't you say? Yeah, almost very, very rarely. And sometimes when I'm, even when I'm teaching in another setting, often what I'll do is I'll give some guidance at the beginning. But I just, I appreciate the silence. I trust it. But sometimes people need other, they need other, uh, direction and that's fine. And that certainly is a guided meditation is a, you know, it's a time tested and respected, uh, modality of meditation.

[47:22]

So, uh, that's, that's where I go with that. But to the extent that works, you're great. It's good. And I totally trust Norman for sure. Yes. What have I? Yeah, actually, I mean, I can think of one particular instance. One of my teachers is a Rinzai Japanese teacher, Shoto Harada, and I I've been close to him for 20 years or so. Somebody recommended that I might sit with him, another Zen teacher friend.

[48:27]

And I went to session with him on Whidbey Island. And he has very strong energy. And so every day you have dokasan, you have a private interview with teachers. In the Rinzai tradition, it's generally brief, and sometimes it's a couple times a day. And the first time I went into dokasan with him, he's sitting there and it's like, boom! somebody described sitting in front of Hirata Roshi as like, it can be like sitting in front of an open nuclear reactor. Really strong energy. And he said, show me your breasts. And I couldn't.

[49:32]

I couldn't, I, sitting down I had I was thrown off by his energy and he, uh, I admitted that I said, I can't right now. Can you help me? And so he invited me to breathe with him and I did. And ever since, that was really my first encounter with him. Ever since, it's just been great joy in that meeting. So you can make friends with the dragon and you can find the dragon in yourself.

[50:37]

What's your name again? Daniel. Yeah. Yeah. What I find about Sashin, the word means something like touch the mind. And while This practice that we do, the practice we got from Suzuki Roshi was really daily practice. And part of it was integrating that within your everyday life and showing up, showing up. You're encouraged to come to the Zendo. And that's what his students did. And that's what we're encouraged to do that without necessarily the obligation to do that here, particularly if you're living somewhere else in town and you have other responsibilities.

[51:49]

So we just practice and we make that practice, the daily practice, part of the rhythm of our daily life. it really helps to have periods of intensification. There's something that I think you will touch today from sitting multiple periods of zazen, from keeping the silence that allows you to touch yourself in a deeper place. And that's what I find valuable. I know that sitting Sashin, I could say it in another way. When I sit Sashin, it feels like I'm at least temporarily rewiring my brain and that

[52:56]

you know, after a day of Sashin and particularly after multiple days of Sashin, things look different and feel different. Now, some of that change is enduring and some of that change ebbs away back to so-called normality after some days. But I trust the process that the intensity of that kind of practice is a way that's reworking things in a healthy fashion in my mind. Does that make sense? Maybe one more, then we'll... Yeah. Yeah, I've heard that, right.

[54:01]

Oh, yeah, that's a really good question. Don't let your legs wither away. I don't know anybody here at Berkeley Zen Center who has actually injured themselves from sitting. I know people have, they come in with various kinds of injuries, but I don't think we sit in a way, and we're not, there are places where they really, they'll yell at you if you move. We don't do that. If you feel that you need to move quietly and gently move.

[55:07]

But I will say from extensive personal experience sitting cross legged that, you know, sit. And if I move my leg, then the relief will be temporary and pretty soon I'll have to move it again. So what we try to encourage people to do is see if you can find a posture that you can keep for a whole period of Zazen. And I think in my earlier years, I used to, I would vary that. Sometimes I would sit in quarter lotus. Sometimes I would sit in that Burmese posture, one leg in front of another. Sometimes I would sit on a bench. Sometimes I'd sit on a chair. And I would just try to keep that posture for the period.

[56:15]

And I would vary them. And I tried different things until my legs kind of changed and I was able to sit this way. And I also recognize that there will come a time when I will not be able to sit this way and that's OK. But I think. I would say when the pain gets really intense. you can think about moving. And if you have real concerns, if you have any concerns that you're injuring or harming yourself, please move. Don't be Bodhidharma in that respect, okay? All right. What? Yes, yes, it's a story that... Right, right. It's also said that

[57:16]

Right, and he also, it was also said he tore off his eyelids and threw them on the ground and that's the origin of tea. So, you know. Right, well there's truth in, you know, there's some essential truth in myths and stories. Right, right, yeah, yeah. Good, well, one thing I was going to say that we're not getting to do in this day of Sashin is the piece that we've left out is Oryoki meals. And if you think, I would say, you know, not being afraid of the true dragon, I would suggest don't be afraid of Oryoki. And Sue is the Oryoki teacher, right? And she's very kind. And actually, orioki is a really wonderful.

[58:20]

Pretty logical way to to eat, and the best thing to do is come on a Saturday, come on a Saturday early and during the. Second period of Zazen. There's orioke instruction so you get a basic instruction and then you eat a meal and the food is really good here. Well, I've gone a little over, so let's do just five minutes of indoor kin-hin, OK?

[59:23]

All right.

[59:24]

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