Especially in Zen practice, which is so very form-oriented, even though, except for ceremonies, the forms are relatively simple, there's a very precise way to do things, and you can get very good at knowing all those forms, and then go away for a while and not be so involved, and then you just forget. So there's nothing... I don't know how much of an accomplishment it is to know whether you turn left or you turn right or you hold your hands up this high or this low. It's helpful and it's good to know, but it can come and go and come back again. I don't know, again, I don't know why it's relevant, but I just thought it was interesting. Bowing, those of you who have not had a chance to bow in front of this altar, when you bow, you can smell the straw on the mat.

[01:05]

It's a relatively new mat, I think, and you can still smell the straw. It's a nice smell. And also this incense bowl, between the back one is whoever was the Cheating, it's absolutely smooth. It's just like glass. It's just ash, which is absolutely smooth. It's impressive. You know, when we finished the lecture and also during the bodhisattva ceremony, There's a line that goes, Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. And some of us has said that line thousands of times. Some of us has said that line just a few times. Dharma, in this case, you know, the word Dharma, Sanskrit word that we use a lot,

[02:14]

And actually that America has picked up, you know, you see the word dharma in America a lot these days, like karma. Karma and dharma are two Buddhist words that Americans like. They sort of sound, sort of sound cool. If we just use the word the way, nobody, people could care less. But if we use the word dharma, it sounds really interesting. So, the word dharma has many meanings actually, but there's two basic meanings when we use the word dharma. The first one is the dharma is the teaching. It's the whole body of teaching, and it could be Hindu dharma, it could be Christian dharma, it doesn't have to be just a Buddha dharma, but it's the body of teachings. every body of teachings believe that their teachings are reality.

[03:19]

The Christians think that they're just teaching reality and we think that we're just teaching reality. And we all think we're right. I think we're right. But the Christians think they're right too. So, you know, a set of teachings is Dharma, the Dharma. And this is the Buddha Dharma. And then dharma also means element of reality or constituent of reality. So the different elements of reality can be called dharmas. Parts of reality, parts of phenomena are dharmas. So for instance, part of a dharma of the dharma would be, for instance, Oh, impermanence. The dharma of impermanence, that everything is changing constantly, is a dharma, part of the dharma.

[04:24]

So, we come to this phrase, dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. So it's one of those impossible sayings that kind of bend our mind. If they're boundless, what do I do? How can I enter if they're boundless and what does them mean? Does them mean all of them or does them mean a few of them? I think the point is that you can't place a limit on it. What is a gate to the Dharma? And how do we practice with a gate? And how do we use a gate?

[05:27]

And what is a gate? Actually, Dharma gates are It's a kind of a gift that we have dharma gates that we can enter. The dharma gate that we mostly enter here is zazen, just sitting. Sitting meditation is a dharma gate. In the Doga's introduction to zazen, the fukan zazengi, he says, zazen is the dharma gate of repose and bliss. If you're on the third day of a sushin, you might not agree with that.

[06:36]

But it's, This is our primary dharmagate is sitting practice. But there are other dharmagates as well. There are many dharmagates. Posture is a dharmagate. How we hold our body, awareness of our body. Breathing is a dharmagate. And, you know, in Zen practice, actually, we have, the characteristic of Zen practice, in comparison to other schools of Buddhism, is that we keep the Dharma gates very simple. We don't have myriad, we don't talk about myriad Dharma gates, because we find that our everyday life is our primary Dharma gate.

[07:50]

to find the profound meaning of what we actually are in our everyday activity is our primary Dharma gate along with sitting practice. So Zen is actually in one way very broad, it's a Mahayana teaching, but another way it's very narrow because we don't talk about many different gates of practice, we limit it to a few. And generally people who engage in Zen practice tend to be interested or feel, I think, that are attracted to a practice which is relatively simple, pared down, not elaborate. You see our ceremonies, you would think that things are pretty elaborate, but actually they're not so elaborate, pretty simple practice that we do. If you read the Buddha sutras, the short, middle, and longer length sutras, the original spoken word of Buddha we hear, there are myriad practices and it's mind boggling that

[09:29]

Buddha in a short human lifetime, Shakyamuni Buddha in a short human lifetime of 80 or some years, was able to articulate and analyze and lay out a path that was, if you really look at those sutras, very complex. in terms of all the delineations of reality, consciousness, human behavior, and so forth. And every one of those delineations or progressions or lists of qualities, lists of stages can be a Dharmagate and can be a practice. And it can drive you crazy if you thought that you needed to accumulate all these practices in order to really understand reality or really to understand ourselves.

[10:39]

Or you could be the kind of person that just loves complexity and then it wouldn't drive you crazy, you just thrive on it. So I think, you know, we have a very simple practice and we keep our dharmagates limited, but we really put ourselves 100% into those practices. We try. I think in the Genjo Koan, Dogen says, to to penetrate one practice is to attain one practice to... Then he has a second line, but I can't remember what it is. Do you remember what it is, Alan? I think it's something like, to penetrate one practice is also to penetrate all practices.

[11:45]

Something like that. The point is that you just, and he was, in this particular line apparently he's talking about meditation or zazen. Just to truly penetrate zazen is what we need to do. So I've been talking about practices, but also there are, you know, what you might call attitudes or recognition of what reality is. And lots of, you know, because we can't keep talking about practice in terms of

[12:47]

formal practice over and over again. We talk more about reality, and Sogen certainly talks about the nature of reality, primarily non-duality, the going together of duality and non-duality as being the fundamental point, and the letting go of self-centeredness, and just generally letting go. And because, you know, Zen, I'd say the primary, in terms of, what do you call it, in terms of dharma gates, and also in terms of recognition of how the world works, the oneness of all things and the side-by-sideness of the oneness of things and the differentiation of things is what we're constantly being aware of and discussing with each other.

[13:54]

you can discuss non-duality, but it's, as soon as you start discussing it, you're in a dualistic realm, but that's the best we can do when we're with each other and we're discussing. So one, because our practices are very simple, the formal practice is very simple, although the attitudinal practice is vast, in noticing in my own practice and attitude, I can become a little lazy or a little complacent in a subtle way, in a subtle way of saying that because everything is one and because we know that, because another value of Zen practice is no gaining idea.

[15:01]

So we know that, well, it's not, that gaining idea isn't so good and that everything is one. You can become kind of lazy and say, well, everything is, everything is reality. Reality is, enlightenment is everywhere. There's no place it does not reach. Everything is, I'm okay, you're okay, you know, whatever. Everything is just fine, right? And there's a kind of a, I mean, if you really, really understand that, that's wonderful. But if we're just kind of taking the easy way out of just, well, let's just not hassle with these problems, you know, let's just sort of enjoy things. It's a little bit too easy. It's a little lazy. It's not the, there's something missing in terms of really seeing what's in front of us, really seeing what's in front of us.

[16:03]

Speaking for myself. So, you know, when we're in the Zen Do, it's very concentrated, and just the format of the Zen Do and the fact that we're all sharing a practice together creates a kind of a concentration and kind of intensity that is very valuable, and I think we all feel. So, it's not, you know, it's a little, you don't feel so lazy maybe when you're in the zendo. Maybe if you're, more difficult if you're a resident. If you're coming every day and you've been here for years, you can become complacent, you become kind of lazy, you're very comfortable, you know the routine. But generally, I think people tend to exert themselves. when we're here. And you feel some, if you do some sitting and you come to some sushis, you start to feel some concentration, some sort of more clarity, or maybe not.

[17:15]

But the problem that everybody expresses is, okay, I feel in the zendo, I feel, you know, I have some feeling of feeling strong or more centered. But when I'm out and I leave the zendo and I go out into my life and I deal with work and society, a society which is increasingly aggressive and sort of out of control, self-centered, materialistic. As I was driving to work this morning, a woman drove, down the street in front of me, she was smoking a cigarette and talking on the cell phone and driving at the same time. So if you think about that, it's just like. That's our society is going in that direction. And. So the kind of concentration and simplicity that we might feel and clarity we can feel in the Zen Do, when we get out, starts to evaporate.

[18:27]

And since we only spend maybe at most a couple of hours a day sitting, or a few hours if we're lucky, actually sitting, the rest of the time we're active. How do we wake up the rest of the time? What's a Dharma gate that could help us to wake up the rest of the time? In here, we have this Dharma gate of listening to the Dharma, and we have a Dharma gate of sitting, which is very important, and posture, being aware of our mental activity, breath. So what do we do when we're not here and we can't take this formal position? To stay awake. You know, I have a friend who's a TM practitioner, and we get together occasionally and we have these sort of strange arguments.

[19:43]

And it's based on effort, the concept of effort. And I say, you know, it's really necessary to make an effort to be mindful in our daily life, to really notice what's going on. Because of myself, I notice a constant stream of anxiety, jealousy, you know, you just name it. I can see this coming up in myself and I feel like I need to be aware of this, because I'm aware that a good deal of my mental activity is what I consider to be relatively unwholesome, and I would like to wholesome-fy it. I would like to, not necessarily change it, but I would like to find out why so much of my mental activity feels unwholesome or painful. And she says, well, in TM, if you just

[20:49]

do the practice, which is a mantra-based practice, and if you just really do that diligently day after day, you don't need to make an effort in the rest of your life. It's just taken care of. It just happens to you. You've actually set some force in motion, and we're all evolving constantly, so don't worry about it. So we have this little argument. And actually, you know, if you read accounts of people who other people think are enlightened, they say something like that, that what she's saying, they say, you do not need to make effort. But of course, those very people made decades and decades of effort before they said that. So if you care to make an effort, I would like to suggest that you consider breathing, this Dharmagata breathing.

[21:59]

And if you read Sojin's talk in the last newsletter, he talked about the Sutra on the Mindfulness of Breathing, the Anapanasati Sutra. And you might want to take a look at the sutra sometime. You know, in some way, I'd like to give a two-part talk, one to set up the sutra and then the second part to talk about the sutra. But the sutra is a little bit too elaborate, although it's a very simple sutra, to talk about now. So I just tease, just do a tease. I do not want to go into the whole sutra because it's a whole other, in a sense, it's a whole other subject. and it would be a good lecture topic, as long as it's not too academic. But the Anapanasati Sutra, the Anapanasati Sutra,

[23:08]

has a first section where there's like 16 different practices that you can do as you're practicing meditation. Sitting meditation, ways to guide your consciousness. And it's not like zazen. You're actually meditating on either the length of your breath or the nature of your consciousness, the nature of your thinking mind, the nature of your happiness or your unhappiness. So there's actually topics, but each topic is experienced through breathing, through being aware of your breathing in relationship to what's going on in your mind. or what's going on in your sense of well-being or not well-being. So breathing becomes the anchor. And you could spend lifetimes, many lifetimes with these 16 aspects. And the second part of the sutra, the first part, Buddha says, you go out and sit underneath a tree in the forest and practice this.

[24:20]

The second part, he says, you can practice this anywhere. And the second part is to practice mindfulness through breathing anywhere. And then this brings in the whole mindfulness sutra, which is What's the name of the mindfulness sutra? The Satipatthana Sutra. He brings in the whole Satipatthana Sutra, which is a whole other relatively short sutra, which has four parts to it. And so in the sutra on breathing, you go through the mindfulness sutra, but using breath as your anchor. So, you know, using breathing as a Dharma gate in our life of activity is actually well accepted by Therapeutic America as stress reduction.

[25:39]

To just, you know, tune into your breathing is a very good stress reduction technique, and especially in the Bay Area. I don't think people would be too surprised if you described this practice to them. But this is more than a stress reduction technique. What do you think? And now I'm getting lazy. You tell me, what do you think would make it more than a stress reduction technique? You might like the stress.

[26:58]

You wouldn't want to get rid of it. So you don't have a preset idea that stress is bad. Yeah, that's good. That's true. It's true. The problem with stress reduction is you've already made up your mind that stress is bad. So you already have an agenda. And in Zen practice, there's not, there's an agenda to, the agenda is just to be what we actually are, but that's the agenda. Anything else? If I increase your stress, it might get you in touch with things that you experience as stressful. Fear or So it'd be a stress increase technique. It'd be a stress increase technique. Yeah. All right.

[28:00]

Well, um, I want more than stress reduction. I want to enter the Dharma gate of replacement bliss. Yeah. So I think that's a good answer. We all would like to express our life in the best way that we're able to. I think that's true. And that's deeper than not having stress, or that's deeper than just being comfortable. But there's some feeling to express our life in our deepest way. Courtney?

[29:04]

end in itself. It's just you can clear things up so that you can allow things to, you can see things as they are. So, you know, that would be, to me, a good place to be is to see things as they are. And sometimes if you get under stress or tangled up, then you're unable to see things as they are because you've got things. So breathing, so that's simply But then you have to be willing to look at whatever arises. Yeah. Which could be stressful. And then you breathe again. Yeah. What he was saying was, each moment is nirvana.

[30:36]

And that did not mean each moment, you know, aside from the ones that you feel stressed out. where you would have to be open to that moment. And this is a problem with what happens in the Zen Do, we slow down, relatively slow down, and and as gradually can be more open to each moment.

[31:40]

In other words, if we don't have to have an agenda, we're not so much trying to accomplish something, we're not concerned with where we have to be at two o'clock and then be at three o'clock and then return the phone call. So you all know this, but it's still worth saying that to be open, And what Alan is saying is to be open to each moment. We get carried away over and over again. And our drama takes over. The drama shuts out the openness. It's not all or nothing. You can be, it's not just, oh now I'm in drama and now I'm in openness. It's all intermingled. But returning to breathing allows us to let go, at least just from, just shortly.

[32:41]

And then maybe longer if we're, strong at it, to let go of that drama that we constantly surround ourselves with and that we love. We don't really love, but we're hooked into our incessant dramas. And we love the stimulation of our dramas. So what I'm suggesting is that, if you're interested in trying it, that to... return to your breathing during your life, during your active life, I find it's a very difficult practice, very hard to sustain, particularly during work time when there's a lot of demand and pressure, and is impossible sometimes. I won't say impossible, but very, very difficult.

[33:43]

At certain times when you're under a lot of pressure, you really have to just use all you've got just to deal with the demands on you at that time. But there's so many times during the day where we can be aware of our breathing as a kind of letting go process, but also it requires a kind of effort and desire to be, to return to our depth. And so this is a kind of a, you know, it's not exactly a, I don't know if you'd say it's a Zen practice, but it's a Dharmagate and it's very consistent with Zen practice because we do this when we're sitting.

[34:46]

Why not do it when we're active? I suppose a problem could be that we could, I don't even know if it'd be that much of a problem, actually. If we started, it's hard to imagine, but if you just got obsessed with your breath and you went around all day just focusing on your breathing and it'd kind of be spaced out and disconnected, I suppose that's possible. It's unlikely. I don't think most people would fall into that. So I think we have some sense of responsibility and engagement with people and what we're engaged in in our life. We feel some responsibility and connection and we have to take care of things. So breathing isn't like a shutting that out.

[35:50]

It's really participating. And again, you know, there's nothing, to make breathing very romantic or very holy is also to miss the point. Breathing is just breathing. And you could focus on, what's so wonderful about breathing is it just happens. We don't have to create it. And you could focus on your little finger. You know, if you could press your little finger, you could press your two fingers together at key times during the day, and it might be beneficial. So it's not that breathing is particularly holy or religious or some profound thing in itself. Breathing is just breathing. So do you have any comments? What does I vow to enter them mean?

[36:58]

It means I vow to practice them. It means I vow to do it. That's all we can do. It's just to do. What do you think? Is it that easy? Well, I just was wondering if enter them... I didn't know, I mean, I was just curious if... I mean, if there was something more than that or if it was... if enter them meant something like penetrate or become one with or... but practice... practice it is good. Well, I think that's what in the Genjo Koan, that's what he's saying is to Well, you're right. Actually, he's saying more than that. He's saying to, Dogen is saying, to penetrate one practices, to penetrate one dharma is to attain one dharma.

[38:14]

So yeah, I think that it's not just a matter of, it depends how you're using the word practice. If it's a wholehearted practice, there is penetration. If it's not wholehearted, maybe not. Kind of lazy like resident practice. What? What? Like lazy resident practice. Yeah, like lazy resident practice. Karen? Well, I've always had a particular fondness for that line, Dharma gates are boundless. where we're encountering all sorts of things. So I haven't thought of it so much in terms of specific Buddhist practices, but more in terms of everything we experience and encounter in our life. The San Francisco library system. Yes, to be precise, yes. So can you comment on that?

[39:19]

Do you agree? Yeah, that's right, that's the other side. I like, you know, I like the pristineness of the Buddhist practices. I think they're really inspiring. But what Karen is saying is what is said in the Genjokan is that the Dharmagate, that your child is a Dharmagate and your good friend or your good enemy is a Dharmagate. whatever's difficult is a good Dharmagate. And that's true. But what I'm talking about is focusing on a particular, narrowing the focus down a little bit, and really getting into a particular Dharmagate, because there's no end to them. You'll never be at a loss for Dharmagates, but to focus on

[40:20]

one or two is not a bad idea. Stan? It's not so much. that swirls around them.

[41:45]

It's sort of like... Yeah. Struggle. That's a whole other topic. It's very interesting and a good topic. Next time.

[42:48]

Thank you. We should stop this time.

[42:51]

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