Good morning. Good morning. We have a nice, cozy, intimate group today. So, it's a good day to talk more about what I've been talking about, Zazen mind and its transformative function. Most of you were here yesterday when I talked about it in the seminar. I wanted to talk about it in a different way today. But again, I'll start with this awareness. So particularly in Sashin, particularly sitting all day or when we can for three days or more, we can settle into this quality of presence, this quality of a deeper level of awareness than just the syntactical, discursive, discriminating, calibrating mind.

[01:17]

Again, not that there's anything wrong with that, we all need that, but just sitting uprightly, feeling our breathing, hearing the sound of the air conditioning, feeling the sensation of our butts on the cushion and our shoulders and mudra and knees and so forth. We can return to this deeper awareness, which I was calling yesterday Zazen Mind. It can be called Big Mind or, anyway, related to Buddha nature. But it's also just the mind that we once had before we were caught up in language as infants just aware of the world all around us without the discriminations.

[02:23]

Now we can let go of trying to grab on and hold on to our language mind. and feel the language of smell and physicality, touch and hearing and the shapes and colors on the wall or the floor in front of us. It's not exactly the same as infant's mind. We do have a self, we are informed by many things that our language and culture has taught us. So we don't get rid of that. Still, there's this deeper awareness. And as Dogen says in the Self-Fulfilling Samadhi that I was speaking about a little bit yesterday, this awareness

[03:33]

when one displays this buddha mudra this uh... posture and awareness of buddha with one's whole body and mind sitting upright in the samadhi even for a short time everything in the whole phenomenal world becomes buddha mudra and space itself throughout the universe completely awakens so this awareness that we can't exactly name or figure out or contain with our human perceptions and intellectual and spiritual faculties, still is connected to something that has to do with the fabric of reality itself. Very deep. And we can't get a hold of it or find words to encompass it, but yet we have some, when we're sitting, have some relationship with it. we can almost sense that.

[04:42]

And the practice of zazen mind is letting go. Letting go of holding on to whatever way we want to try, our grasping mind tries to hold on to things. So sitting for a day, it's a wonderful opportunity to experience this, to explore this, to study this, to feel this, letting go. And sometimes there are dramatic experiences of letting go. This happens. But I think what is more reliable is this period after period, day after day, ongoing practice of just showing up just being present on our cushions experiencing the subtlety of letting go and again the whole world appears in the next moment including our conditioning and our habits and our little furry animal selves of

[05:59]

trying to get more of this, or escape from that, or, you know, this is deep in our tissues, this is how we are as animals. And yet, we can connect to this, we can partake of, we can express in some way, in our Buddha Mudra, in body and mind, with our posture, with our openness, open-heartedness and open-mindedness, we can also express an inhale and an exhale, this awareness which is itself transformative. So this transformative function that I've been trying to talk about, it's not that if we sit It's not, so I say awareness is transformative. It's not that through zazen, eventually there will be some transformation. That's our acquisitive kind of way of thinking about this. And it's kind of natural given how we've been conditioned by family dynamics and language and culture and so forth that we think, okay, if I do zazen mine, then later there'll be this transformative thing that happens.

[07:19]

but actually the transformative function is happening in each moment of awareness. And also, Casimir asked about this yesterday, how does this develop? What happens over time? Well, there is a kind of craft to letting go. There is a practice of letting go of opening up to this deeper kind of awareness and so it unfolds through our practice and through our experience. But sometimes it just opens up dramatically. I mean, we can't, this is not, doesn't function, this transformative function doesn't function according to some program or idea about awareness or transformative function. And also it's in each breath, in each moment, in this awareness right now. So, you know, I wonder what the point of talking about this during Sashin is.

[08:27]

I want to kind of encourage you just to keep coming back to just being present. Feeling your posture, feeling, hearing your breathing. smelling the thoughts as the train of thought, or the stream of thought, drifts by. Settling, settling, settling into this experience of openness. So in a way, to talk about transformative function is a little bit too much. The transformative function is right in the awareness. If I talk about this, you may have some ideas of this in your zazen, and the transformative function is already there before you hear me talk about it.

[09:29]

Awareness works, it does the Buddha work. And again, it's not just awareness in the sense of thinking about things, it's awareness in our openness to hearing, in our openness to seeing, the wall in front of you, whether it's white plaster or red brick, or a curtain in front of a window, and you can imagine a world outside the window. But anyway, as you're sitting, just, what is this? So, one thing that, so what's required for this awareness is, first of all, just to show up, to be present, but then to continue to show up and be present with each inhale, with each exhale, to pay attention. And it's not that there's some particular kind of attention that has to be, you know, like military, like, attention!

[10:32]

It's not that. For some of you, maybe that's helpful to, you know, try and salute the Buddha nature now and then in your zazen. But it's, you know, what I think works is this kind of steady, gentle, persistent, generous attention to just what's going on, what's happening. In yet another period of zazen, sitting upright on your cushion or chair, with eyes and ears, nose, tongue, body and mind open, And how this transformative function works over time, but also in each breath, is that there is a kind of opening of capacity or tolerance, both in body and mind. Sitting throughout the day, sitting for several days, sitting, you know, coming back and sitting for a day again and again, sitting for a period on Monday night or now Thursday night,

[11:47]

at home in between. There's this increased tolerance for the manifestation of your body, this body, on your Krishna chair, and for the discomforts and sometimes little aches and sometimes even pain. So don't try and sit through some excruciating pain. That's not necessary and it's not helpful. but it is necessary to go beyond your idea of your comfort zone to be willing to feel a little discomfort in your knee or in your quadriceps or in your shoulder or in your lower back or in your shoulders from holding up your mudra or wherever in this body to feel tired and want to lower your head, or kind of sag in your lower back.

[12:54]

When you're paying attention and bringing awareness to your body, so awareness is not just a mental thing, awareness happens in your body as well as your mind. When you're bringing awareness to the details of your posture, there is this opening, there is this capacity. There is letting go of trying to hold on to some idea of how your body should be and there's actually being willing to tolerate some further level of discomfort. This is exactly the transformative function in your body. So this practice is a yogic practice and we learn, we become more flexible physically as well as mentally. and of course in your mind too thoughts come and go the brain continues to secrete thoughts but as we settle and breathe and bring awareness to our thoughts which is different than thinking about your thoughts and we're just aware that oh yes this thought stream is flowing by without trying to do anything about it without trying to dam it up and stop it or crush it from

[14:13]

coming up, but without needing to jump in and float downstream, or when we do that, just noticing and saying, oh, okay, and coming back and sitting by the side of the stream and paying attention. So this awareness, when applied to the mind, when applied to the thought stream, when applied to thoughts and feelings as they came up, also develops a kind of capacity for tolerance. We are able to tolerate a greater level of confusion as the tapes are running and it's okay. We have a wider capacity to be present in this background awareness, this underlying deeper awareness with various kinds of thoughts, and we might have thoughts that we don't like, or we might notice our patterns of thinking that we aren't comfortable with, or that we feel ashamed of, or berate, or blame ourselves for, but with this awareness and its transformative function, we can just be present and accept, oh, this is part of being human, this is part of how it is to be

[15:40]

Eric or Scott or Steve or whoever we are. So we develop a steadiness. We have a greater capacity, a greater tolerance. We're more open to a wider range of how it is to be this body, how it is to be this mind. Of course, they're not separate, but we can talk about them as if they are, which is the sort of strange thing, but anyway. we think of things separately. So the way in which awareness is transformative is in our openness, willingness, readiness to be present and show up in this physical sensation, in this mental sensation, with this feeling or thought, to just be with it.

[16:45]

To just sit with it, to not try and push it around, to not try and get rid of it or grab hold of it, to not try and manipulate or arrange it or make it a little better this way or whatever those kinds of thoughts might be. Just notice those as other kinds of thoughts. So, in each moment, in each breath, there's this openness and capacity and tolerance. And then as we, you know, keep coming back for more one-day sittings or, you know, period after period, as we continue to develop the craft of showing up and being present and paying attention to our life, we start to have, I was talking yesterday about faith, or trust or confidence, we start to have a steadiness and a confidence in the practice itself, that the Buddhas and ancestors are supporting us, that the grasses and trees and tiles and walls are supporting us, and vice versa, that we are connected to each other, sitting together for a day, and to many things in the world, to all beings,

[18:02]

to all the people who have sat with us in this room who don't happen to be here today and yet somehow their presence is part of the presence here today, and to all the people we may have sat with in other contexts who are also here, and to all the people who in various ways allow and supported us to show up and be present today, people in our lives. So, I almost don't want to say anymore, but I will, because there was a question yesterday about, well, is this, this Zazen mind, Zazen is just sitting meditation, what about, you know, outside of the formal sitting, shouldn't we call it Zen mind, but this Zazen is not limited to sitting. part of how that works in our formal sitting and when we get up from our formal sitting but you might notice it today actually in your practice of formal zazen sitting on your cushions and not just sitting on your cushion but when you get up and do walking meditation as we're sitting downstairs silently eating for lunch as we're

[19:35]

bowing or chanting during service. Part of what happens when this capacity and tolerance opens is that we connect with some deeper resource. So in some sense this is just a way of talking about the grasses and trees and tiles and pebbles and of course all the Buddhas and ancestors. but also it's not outside of this room and it's not, you know, back in China or India or Japan or somewhere else. It's in each moment there is this, what I can call, creative energy, this life energy, this life force, this dynamic possibility that is part of our awareness when we pay attention. And it is part, and we start in this capacity and tolerance in that capacity and tolerance we are able to connect with or notice or get inklings of this deeper vital creative energy.

[20:52]

So I've talked before about there's a classic poem by a great Chinese Tang Dynasty Zen poet, Wang Wei. In my middle years, I've grown fond of the way. I head out from my hut in the South Mountains and look for sights that only I can see. I follow the stream back to the source and sit and wait for the time when clouds arise. Perhaps I meet a person of the woods, we talk and laugh and I forget to go home. So this is a poem about this process that I'm talking about today. Settling, opening, developing our tolerance for other mental and physical possibilities than what we think we are.

[22:10]

And this, and when we get back to the source, which we can find actually at any point along the stream, but there's a practice of following the stream back to the source, sitting, being present, paying attention, noticing when a thought bubble, a thought cloud arises, noticing when a feeling cloud arises. noticing when some physical sensation or some sound arises, hanging out right at that creative, energetic mind source. And how this works in our practice life, particularly for us as lay practitioners out in the world, is that we resident this this creative energy which is available to us as we open up our willingness to be present to pay attention as we're sitting up right it resonates of course with grasses and trees and tiles and pebbles and buddhas and ancestors but also with our life activity so to me zazen is about finding our

[23:33]

creative energy. And then what we do in the world, how we unfold this creative energy in the activities of our world resonates with our Zazen. So our Zazen supports our creative activities. And those creative activities support our Zazen opening and letting go. So this transformative function, that is aware, well, awareness is transformative. The transformative function also supports our awareness. And I would encourage you to appreciate during, you know, your walking around, busy or not so busy, whatever, lives in the world, those creative activities.

[24:40]

And I don't mean necessarily something dramatic. Some of you are musicians or psychologists or do creative things in various ways, gardening or parenting, but all kinds of activities. Notice what it is that you like and are interested in. Notice your life interests. Whatever it is. You might, I don't know, like reading mystery stories, or going for walks, or all kinds of things. Or you might like something that's obviously creative, where there's some product like some music or a picture or a poem or whatever, but notice what you are interested in, notice what you like to do, and feel how that resonates with your zazen.

[25:45]

So I'm not encouraging you to necessarily, in the middle of your zazen today, think about those things. But they may just naturally appear anyway, as part of the thought stream that's going on in your mind as you're sitting, and that's okay. It's more than okay. It's part of this connecting to this deeper creative energy. So Zazen is about... Zazen is a kind of creative expression. How we conduct ourselves in the meditation hall is our way of expressing Buddha mudra, of enacting Buddha on your cushion or chair. But it's a kind of creative energy that's about finding the creative energy in your whole life. So in each breath, in each inhale, in each exhale, there is available a kind of rawness, freshness, a tenderness.

[26:59]

Each breath is new. Each breath depends on every other breath you've ever had. And each inhale and exhale you take is absolutely necessary to every other inhale and exhale you will ever take. Our life is alive right now. It's very easy to ignore this fact. A lot of our culture is about encouraging us to run away from the reality of the aliveness of our life. But in each the rawness and openness and freshness and uniqueness of each breath is also there in particularly in that which you pay attention to and like in your daily activities. So we all have activities that we you know, think we have to do that are chores.

[28:07]

But, you know, it's possible to enjoy washing the dishes or taking out the garbage. At any rate, pay attention to that enjoyment and that freshness in your creative activities in the world. Again, they can be very little things. They can, you know, there's a... to see to see what, you know, again, I think looking at what you're interested in, particularly, what it is that you like to do. It might be, you know, even watching television. Can you bring the rawness of your experience to, and pay attention to how it is for this body and mind watching some, you know, cop show on television, if you do that. Whatever it is you're doing, can you feel this creative energy? whatever it is that you enjoy doing, can you feel this creative energy? It may be that as this transformative function opens up and your capacity and tolerance for transformative function opens up, that some activities you might let go.

[29:19]

You might not be so interested in some things as you used to be. That's okay. You're alive. You're allowed to change. Pretty much have to. But appreciate and pay attention to that which interests you, that which you can give your attention to. That's the place to keep turning this awareness and this transformative function. So we all have different things that we find interesting, that we enjoy doing. See how those are related to your zazen, both when you're doing them and Also how maybe they help feed your zazen while you're sitting. Again, I'm not saying you should think about them. But your practice of listening to music or making music or your practice of going for walks or your practice of some athletic activity or your practice of cooking or gardening or

[30:27]

whatever it is that you enjoy, that you get into, that your attention is engaged in when you do it, that's something to do with this awareness of zazen mind, of big mind. And it has something to do with this transformative function that's right in the middle of awareness. So notice this in yourself. Pay attention to the person sitting on your cushion or chair. You don't need to run away from that person. Attention must be paid. Enjoy showing up in the activities of your life. Enjoy seeing how they are unfolding and deepening and opening, or how they can be, of this awareness that's not caught by some particular description.

[31:39]

So one of the crafts of practice is just to remind yourself of this mind during the course of the day, during the course of your life, in the middle of a period of zazen. What is it that can bring you back to, oh yeah, here I am? One very helpful trick has to do with inhaling and exhaling. just to really develop a relationship in your body to breathing and enjoying and appreciating your breathing. This is something that we slow down enough for in zazen, sitting all day, such that, you know, sometime Wednesday or Thursday in the middle of the week, in the middle of your work, in the middle of some activity, in the middle of some challenging or frustrating activity, you might remember to breathe.

[33:11]

Oh yeah, I want to pay attention. Okay. This is part of how this transformative function works too. There are many other ways. Somebody asked me yesterday how I did it, and I realized afterwards I didn't mention mantra, which for me is one of the, is very helpful. I've said that it's okay in zazen for you to just silently say to yourself, over and over, something like, gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhisvaha. When we chant the Heart Sutra, there's an instruction at the end of the Heart Sutra in how to practice with us. And you can use that during the week, or some other phrase from the teaching. So in the Dogen's writing about Arousing the Vow that we'll chant at noon service today, you could take a phrase from that.

[34:17]

What in past lives was not yet complete now must be complete. Or any other phrase that appeals to you. This is the one color of true practice, of the true mind of faith, of the true body of faith. you might just say to yourself in the middle of Zazen or in the middle of your life, riding on the L or driving on Lake Shore Drive, true practice, true mind of faith, true body of faith. You might repeat that to yourself and remember, oh yeah, I'm alive. Transformative function, Zazen, oh yeah, yeah. Anyway, there are many ways, tricks in the libraries of Buddhist meditation technology to help you remind yourself to just show up and be present and pay attention. So we talked yesterday also about the side of karmic entanglements.

[35:26]

and that's part of what we have to face too we do have habit patterns and addictions and patterns of grasping and patterns of feeling what frustrated or fearful or lonely or confused you know this is part of what it is to be human and then our reactions to those sometimes can causes problems and prevent us from settling more deeply into this source of creative energy. So part of our practice is also facing that stuff too. You don't have to turn away from that. It's okay to be who you are. Please be kind to yourself. We learn compassion for the world by first, well, not just first, as we work to be helpful in the world, that also helps us to be helpful to ourselves. But to be willing to breathe into those places too.

[36:30]

To not just appreciate the force, but be willing to look at the dark side. And apply this awareness and transformative function there too. And it's not that we can suddenly let go of some addiction or change some habit pattern. As Bob Dylan says, here I sit so patiently waiting to find out what price I have to pay to get out of going through all these things twice. And I'd say to Bob, only twice? He's pretty lucky. Well, he's a genius, but anyway. For most of us, it's, you know, again and again and again and again. But as we pay attention to these all the things we have to go through, as we sit and settle and develop our capacity, we can learn to be with those things we go through in our thought dreams, in our habit patterns.

[37:51]

Let go of our hold, or let go of their hold on us. And it's not that we can fix them or change them. Some of them are going to be there in subtler and subtler ways for your whole life, or for lifetimes to come, even. But still, we don't have to be caught by them. We don't have to react to them. But, of course, we do react to them, and so how do we then forgive ourselves and just bring awareness, just show up and be present? Not have to run away from those things. We don't have to run away. Breathe into them and enjoy your breathing. Enjoy your life. Enjoy whatever it is that you find engaging, interesting, enlivening. See the awareness and transformative function in all of those activities. And then Zazen will be with you.

[38:53]

Always. So please enjoy your sitting today. Enjoy your breathing. Enjoy your walking meditation. Enjoy lunch. Enjoy chanting. Show up. Be present. Pay attention. Don't stop breathing, please. Thank you all very much.

[39:20]

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