So our speaker today is Denkei Raoul Monkayo. He began practicing in 1978 in France with Deshimara Roshi. But in that same year, he moved to Berkeley and has been practicing at the Berkeley Zen Center ever since. He received dharma transmission from Sojon Roshi in 2010. Good morning. Thank you. Good to be here. and see all my usual Dharma friends and brothers and sisters. And I think we have also a group of high school students with us this morning. Somewhere over there. Somewhere over here. So welcome to you as well. And I think at some point I'm going to sort of stop and they will in the community room, I believe, right?

[01:03]

So, I actually need a watch. There's a clock right next to you. Yeah, okay. So maybe a quarter off in 20 minutes. So, um, So my topic, the topic I want to speak today is mindfulness and mindlessness. And we've been studying, we've been doing an introduction class. I was asked to give an introduction class. We give those periodically, about once maybe every two years, something like that. We do a class of introduction to Buddhism, and then we do a class of introduction to Zen. and the different practice leaders offer the class. So this time I'm doing it. So we've been studying the Golden Age of Zen by John Wu.

[02:08]

It's a classic and it's the first book actually that Sojin Roshi gave me when I started practicing here with him. So I'm going to extract from that the topic for today. Mindfulness and Mindlessness. John Woo points out that, by the way, he was a convert to Catholicism. I think Thomas Merton wrote the introduction to his book, so it was part of the Zen Catholic dialogue. So anyway, he wants to draw a distinction between the Indian Dhyana. Dhyana was the Sanskrit term for meditation. And he wants to contrast that with Chan or Zen in China and Japan.

[03:10]

In the Pali Sutras, which are the sutras of the ancient Buddhism, better call it ancient than archaic. Sometimes the Mahayana thinks of the Hinayana as archaic, but we'll consider it as ancient. And so in the Pali Sutra, the Buddha teaches about two different types of meditation. Samadhi and insight or vipassana. And we're familiar nowadays because we have our tradition, the Zen tradition, and then we also have the vipassana tradition, sort of parallel to our tradition, in addition to the Tibetan tradition. So we can think of these different types of meditation as embodied in different schools, or as each school having these two aspects of meditation.

[04:16]

So Samadhi is the same as calmness or quiescence or serenity or tranquility And we usually define it as the one-pointedness of the mind. And that's the experience of concentration that we have in Zazen. While Vipassana means seeing things as they are. And which of course, Suzuki Roshi said Zazen was seeing things as they are. so immediately we see that we have both aspects within the same tradition but calmness balances the flurry that can come from the overdoing of insight or analysis and insight instead balances the indolence that can come from tranquilization

[05:38]

So insight gives serenity to accept things, and serenity supports the function of seeing things clearly as they are. Sometimes the aspect of bearing suffering, like Sojin says, we have to, in Sechine in particular, we have to bear the unbearable, So there's the aspect of bearing, suffering, which is kind of one of the definitions of virtue. And then there's the aspect of the cessation of suffering, or the extinction of suffering. And within, in Chinese and Japanese, and often the Rinzai lineage or school, which privileges insight.

[06:43]

It's a little different than mindfulness, but sort of related. Criticizes the Soto school for being quietistic, you know, for just sitting in silence and not working, trying to work through a koan in Zazen. We don't do that. We use the koans for teaching, and for sharpening our understanding, but we don't think about cause during Zazen. And so often people say what insight, especially the mindfulness school nowadays in the United States, sometimes criticizes Soto Zen for avoiding problems, or not dealing with your problems, and not dealing with your suffering, So, Samadhi practice is often lumped together with what John Wellwood, who is a local psychologist, he popularized a term called spiritual bypass.

[07:55]

I don't know if you've heard it. Spiritual bypass. Which means that people use it as a defense against, you know, dealing with the problems that cause anxiety, because we just want to eliminate anxiety, instead of using the anxiety to understand something about ourselves. So I say, oh, sitting is just tranquilization. You're really not dealing with your problems. Whereas inside mindfulness includes dealing with different aspects of the mind. And not just this Or is it just this? Is there any need to analyze or understand anything other than just this? So mindfulness or vipassana

[09:01]

is usually taught in terms of the four foundations of mindfulness. So there's mindfulness of breath, mindfulness of posture. That's kind of a basic aspect of our practice. We're always focusing on our breathing and posture. Where's our posture? Where's our breath? So we're mindful of the body in that way. But then there's also mindfulness of feelings. So we have to be mindful of our feelings and not just say, well, no feelings. Right? The Heart Sutra says, no feelings. So there's that co-unattention between having feelings and not having feelings. experiencing feelings and having our feelings be extinguished.

[10:10]

So, pain and no pain. Is there pain or is there no pain? That's one of the koans of Sachine. What is this pain? How do we get through the pain? Then there's mindfulness of mental states or mental formations. That seems to emphasize having some kind of awareness of the different dimensions of consciousness or the different levels of consciousness. And this is where we get the teaching, the Mahayana teaching of Yogacara or Vasubandhu. Sojin often spoke to us about the eight or nine levels of consciousness. And that can get a little heady or heavy.

[11:24]

So that's why that needs to be balanced with samadhi practice or one-pointed concentration or just this, but it's also important to be aware of our consciousness and the different ways that we perceive or we don't perceive or the ways that we see or don't see or where we have to see and where it's better not to see. And then there is the, so that's the third foundation of mindfulness. And the fourth one is mindfulness of mental objects. So I thought that in Zen we don't have mental objects. We don't objectify, do we? Don't treat things as objects. And yet we do.

[12:28]

And those are the hindrances. So mindfulness of mental objects means being mindful of our hindrances. Mindful of our hindrances and our fantasies about others and reality. That's the imagined nature. That's what Vasubandhu called the imaginary or the imagined nature, which is one of the three dimensions of reality. So mindfulness of what is actually there in the body or in the mind complements the practice of letting go and mindlessness or dropping body and mind. So being aware of body and mind and dropping body and mind. Those are the two meditations of the Buddha. Samadhi and Vipassana. So mindfulness is applied to the body, and being mindful of our bodies and our posture and our breath, and being mindful of our hindrances, our objects of mind.

[13:52]

And mindlessness is applied to wholesome virtue and wholesome states of mind. and the virtue of our sitting practice. So we're not mindful of the virtue of our sitting practice or of our wisdom. We are mindless of our virtues, our sitting practice, and our knowledge. So we see our mistakes, but we don't see our virtues. and we do not see or speak about the mistakes of others but rather we see their virtues. Winang, Winang was the sixth ancestor

[14:59]

and who is often considered to be the figure responsible for widely disseminating Chan in China. He emphasized mindlessness rather than mindfulness. So he speaks a lot about mindlessness more than mindfulness. So this is in school or gate of mindlessness. And the point that he was making was that if we are mindful of positive states of mind and virtues, then this dissipates virtue and leads to cleverness and to abiding in virtue. So he emphasized, this is the teaching of non-duality, emphasizing non-abiding in anything, including virtue and enlightenment.

[16:07]

So with a goal of mindfulness of virtue, or self-conscious virtue, or of wisdom, or of Zazen, even when we're practicing Zazen, we're letting go of the virtue of practicing Zazen. Because if we don't, then it becomes a hindrance. And then that way we're settled in emptiness. And emptiness means readiness to respond to all situations or circumstances. So in Zen we know through unknowing or non-knowing. And this non-knowing is not not-knowing or ignorance. That's another confusion. We often confuse, in Zen, we confuse non-knowing with ignorance or not-knowing. So in the Soto school, emptiness means readiness to respond to the world and to all situations, and not being attached to the void.

[17:17]

So emptiness is attached to the void. And so, quote, we name now what he says. And he says, learn it, friends. He was the illiterate teacher. Learn it, friends. When you hear me speaking of the void, please do not cling to the word void. If you sit in meditation with a vacant mind, you will fall into a spiritless apathy, depression. Sometimes you will get depressed, you know, it's as if... Part of it is because letting go involves having to grieve. So there is a grief, a deep grief, that leads to clarity and peace. And that's a necessary grief, we can't avoid that. We have to go through that.

[18:19]

That's part of the teaching of no-self. So we grieve the loss of our imaginary ego that we cherish and we spent so many years sharing, cherishing so keenly. We have to let go of that and there's some grief that goes along with that. But then there's also a depression which is different than grief and sometimes people get depressed. So this is kind of the clinging to the void leads to this kind of depressive apathy. Then he says, those who cling to the void vilify the scriptures by saying they have no use for words and letters. Those who cling to the void vilify the scriptures by saying they have no use for words and letters. But anyone who says that he has no use for words and letters contradicts himself by his very speech.

[19:20]

Because this too is a form of words and letters. No setting up of words and letters belongs to words and letters. By no setting up of words and letters is meant merely that there should be no attachment to the letter. So we use letters and concepts, we don't get attached to letters and concepts. So Bodhidharma who brought Zen from India said that in Zazen we're in communion with pure reason and at the same time emancipated from discrimination. So again it's the same teaching. We use words and concepts but we're not used by words and concepts. Mindfulness and mindlessness.

[20:27]

So, we are mindless or forgetful or asleep. Mindless, sometimes you can think mindless, is not being mindful. Not paying attention. But that's the mindlessness of Zen. That we're mindless, forgetful, or asleep with respect to our knowledge and virtue. No self-consciousness. As if these beings were nothing to speak of. You know, we sit all this Sazen, we sit all these Sashims, and you know, we go out in the world and practice, take the lamp with us, and practice outside in the world, and we're not talking about how many hours of Zazen we've done, or what time we got up in the morning, or how we're practicing compassion, or what we've been studying, or this or this or that.

[21:45]

None of that. It's just the situation, responding to the situation. So that's being forgetful, or asleep with respect to our knowledge and virtue. being in deep sleep you're not aware of your deep sleep, you're just sleeping not self-consciously asleep, just completely asleep and rested and now we know that mindfulness and mindlessness being awake and being asleep are both equally important the body and the brain needs sleep in order to be healthy. We still get up at 4.30 or some awful time like that. But mindfulness, but we also sleep.

[22:52]

So how do we do that? How do you do that? Well, that's often people say, well, how do you do that? Where do you find the time to do that? Where do you find the time? Where do you find time? Where is time? By the unknowns. What is it? There's no time and no space. Where do you find time and space where there's no time and no space? And at the same time we practice forbearance and patience. Forbearance and patience and mindfulness of bitter and painful states of mind of ourselves, our own bitter and painful states of mind and of others.

[23:57]

We have to endure and be patient with the painful and bitterness of others towards us so have great patience and just remember just when we're receiving it right means we've also been given it but we tend to be aware when we're receiving it rather than when we're giving it And so, you know, we get upset in practice and we have all these complaints, you know, about, you know, our brothers and sisters or our teachers or, you know, the schedule or, you know, whatever it may be. And the teacher has to put up with all the complaints. Year after year, all these people, you know, and half the time it's complaining. Right?

[25:01]

Because we often think that our suffering is caused by others. That's common ignorance. And people say, well yeah, a lot of people, you know, are victims of what other people have done to them. And that's the way we complain, right? So-and-so did this to me. My parents did this to me. That's a favorite. I hate my parents. or I hate my mother, I hate my father, and so on and so forth. But that's only half the story. The mistake is to think that's the full story. That's only half the story. The other half is our hate. And our complaints. And we've given that to people, right? And people have to put up with that. And so that's part of being a Zen teacher, is putting up with people's complaints, and with the bitterness of that.

[26:12]

One minute, or is it time to go? Okay, well thank you so much for those of you who came today and have to leave, and you are now excused. The other people are not excused. The other people are not excused. The door will be locked. No escape. So, this practice of mindlessness is part of going, practicing beyond merit and no merit.

[27:20]

Right? So, Bodhidharma said, no merit to Emperor Wu, you know, I've supported all these monks, I've translated all these scriptures, I've built all these temples for Buddhism, is there any merit in that? No merit. It's the same thing. Well, I've been practicing, you know, for all these years, and Is there any merit in that? You know, blood, sweat and tears. Like when you're cooking in the kitchen. And it's non-stop work. You have to be paying attention to several things at the same time. You have to be working with people. You're anxious about, you know, whether something's going to come out right or not, whether it's going to be on time or not, and so on and so forth. Blood, sweat and tears. And then you go to the teacher and he criticizes you. That's no merit. That's bitter, you know, and you get really pissed off.

[28:23]

But that's sort of part of the teaching. That's the equivalent of 30 blows if you're right, 30 blows if you're wrong. Either way, whether you're right or wrong, you get 30 blows. That's not very kind practice, is it? We don't like that. That's part of the old world, traditional world, right? They used to do that in those days, the Middle Ages. But the logic behind that is that, is how do we get beyond merit? Because we just, our natural proclivity, that's the way we socialize. Good boy, bad boy. Good dog, bad dog, right? good boy bad boy so that's the way we're socialized and that's the way we build our ego our social ego so then we expect well if I'm a good boy then I expect something back right?

[29:31]

but in Zen nothing nothing coming back you know? just the hands are empty And so that feels like a bummer. That's really a bummer. Zen doesn't feel a bummer. But we have to get beyond merit and no merit. And that's part of the traditional teaching. So we have to understand that. That's the understanding of non-duality. It's not just the old school you know, the heavy-handed, you know, abusive teaching. It can be that, right? Because if a teacher's hitting you, even when you're being good, right, they used to hit you, we don't hit anymore. So 30 blows, so that 30 blows if you're wrong, 30 blows if you're right. So Rinzai told the student, he said, well go back, and when he gives you, when he gives you 30 blows for being wrong,

[30:37]

When he gives you 30 blows for being right, then grab the stick and push it towards him. That's what he said to do. So the monk did that and grabbed the stick, but he got what's going to get hit for being right. He pushed towards the teacher. And the teacher put the stick down, got up and left. That's classical Zen. So, what does that mean? So that's the unconditioned. Meaning, not so clear. Or it's meaningless. Just coming back to one's nature. That's teacher gets up, goes back to his room. just coming back to our nature which is that's the place he's trying to help the student to get to beyond merit and no merit and Suzuki Roshi gave a similar story and he said on one occasion he opened he was

[32:06]

He opened a sliding door in a heiji. Following the rule, there was a rule, right hand, right side, door. And it's Fusuma Shoji. It was a rule how you open a sliding door. So he was being a good boy, doing it the way he's supposed to. And then he was scolded for opening that side. And then the next morning he opened the other side and was also scolded. He was scolded either way. what side he opened. So that's like 30 blows if you're wrong, 30 blows if you're right. He was completely bewildered and didn't know what to do. He was trying to do something good while being reprimanded for doing something good. So this is what he calls being reprimanded with a double-edged sword or words that cut both ways.

[33:10]

So we're always looking for approval and disapproval, right? We want approval and we fear disapproval. So the teacher sometimes gives us approval and sometimes gives us disapproval. And that's to dislodge us from this attachment to approval or disapproval. Sometimes the teacher smiles. Oh, he smiled at me. He must like And I'm... no smile, serious. That's like day and night. So, how is the no smile a smile? Or how is the smile not a smile? So we have to get beyond that duality in our relationships. Then he also said, we should understand our everyday activity in two ways and be able to respond either way without a problem.

[34:16]

One way is to understand our life dualistically, good or bad, right or wrong, and we should try to understand things in these terms. Also, we should be able to ignore this dualistic understanding and understand things non-dualistically. So that's first, you should be able to understand or accept things in two ways. But this is not enough. Dualistic and non-dualistic, mindfulness or mindlessness, samadhi or vipassana, is still dualistic. Without being attached to one of the two understandings, you should have the freedom to move from one to the other. So even though there are two understandings, we're not attached to these two understandings. And not being attached to these two understandings then allows us to go from one to the other at different times.

[35:18]

Then you will not be caught by your particular understanding. You won't be caught by mindlessness. You won't be caught by mindfulness. You won't be caught by Rinzai. You won't be caught by Soto. You won't be caught by Buddhism. That's the mind that doesn't abide anywhere. And yet, it is everywhere. And he finishes that saying, whatever you do will be the great activity of practice. So, this is how we practice inside the gate and outside the gate, without creating a duality in the swinging door between inside the gate or outside the gate. Sometimes people say, well, you really should practice hard, you know.

[36:23]

Really, sometimes people come in and they have this really gung-ho attitude about practice, which is really good, because it really establishes the practice. And then they go around criticizing everybody. Oh, you didn't show up for Zazen this morning. Or what happened to this? Or how many? Or who's counting? How much are you doing in the practice? And often, those very few turn out to, they do that for five years, and then after that, they're gone. You never see them again. So it's still caught in this duality of inside the gate and outside the gate. So, We have to be able to move back and forth between these two understandings of practice inside the gate and practice outside the gate. Mindful of our hindrances, mindless of our virtues. I'm going to end with giving a little personal story.

[37:27]

Hopefully it will be relevant to what I'm talking about. But during the break, I went one week to Argentina, to Buenos Aires, and to go help my mother. I brought my mother back to the States. She's 84, and she's lived in Latin America for 50 plus years. She's originally from New York. She married a Chilean man, my dad, and moved to Latin America and never came back. So I went to get her and help her, you know, pack everything and clean up the place. And so we're going through lots of documents, right? Because they kept, my stepfather's dead already, but they both kept everything, you know, like all records of all documents and everything. And my mother had all the letters

[38:30]

to read things that I read, that I had written when I was a little kid. But in going through some documents, my stepfather, you know, was really an anti... he didn't like Peron, you know, Peron was, you know, Elita Peron, and he was a general, and consider him a tyrant. So basically what he did was, I mean, he created a middle class by taking the money from the wealthy and distributing it to the poor. And that's how he created a middle class. So that's a good thing to say about Perón. But a lot of the people himself and others, they really had an aspiration to be like the wealthy.

[39:40]

So they spent a lot of money on giving themselves all the luxuries possible, and at the same time they gave a lot to the poor. So it's the corruption part that he didn't like. So I always thought, you know, he was never a Peronist or something like that. So that's one understanding. Then I find these documents, these letters, where he was offered the position, bipedon, of Attorney General. So, what? And I said, oh, there must be a letter after this one rejecting it. There must be a letter of him saying, you know, sorry, but I can't do it or whatever, right? So then the next letter says, he accepts. And then the third one says, welcome to the Peronist Party. So he had been a member of the Peronist Party understandings and then the other thing is that they kept everything but then he had four children from a first marriage and they're all lawyers and my mother was in so much pain because they didn't want anything.

[41:13]

They wanted to burn everything. They didn't want any of the pictures of their great-grandparents and their grandparents and all these documents going back from, I don't know how many, I think to the 1800s. And they want photos, nothing. They just said, if you give them to me, I'll burn them. So all these books and stuff like that. So again, this kind of duality of the two of them wanting to hold on to everything, and the next generation is like having no interest in tradition, and just wanting to burn the whole thing. So to me that was kind of these two understandings. Mindfulness of tradition, of kind of what is, completely gone.

[42:16]

So I could appreciate both sides. But my mother was really upset about them not having any appreciation for what my stepfather had preserved and kept for them. And then after I came back from Buenos Aires, the next day I got on another and went to New York because my older son Gabriel is living there now. He has a job. He was working in San Francisco and he was transferred to New York City. So he's living in New York City. So I took my younger son and went to spend a week with him because he had a week off from work. And so just to be with him my mother's originally from New York City, from Long Island, and I took him to see my uncle, my mother's brother.

[43:19]

But the point I wanted to bring up, the situation that I wanted to bring up, I went to my partner, Deborah, is also from Long Island, New York City, and she had one of her closest friends from childhood died of pancreatic cancer. So she wanted me to meet up with her husband and one of their sons and introduce Gabriel to his son. Maybe they were kind of the same age and maybe similar interests and so they would meet each other. So we met at a restaurant and So it was really crowded. New York City is like really crowded. I mean, like masses of people down the street. I mean, this was Christmas time too. So the place, the restroom was completely packed.

[44:25]

So, so I'm not, so I had a little discomfort, you know, with being crowded in, not having space. You know, it's like I want my space. and there you have no space and they were my son and this other family they were fine with that and I wasn't I was hindered and upset with not having my personal space and so I started complaining to the Hostess. Hostess, yeah. When is our table going to be ready? We've been already waiting here, you know. And so I lost my cool. And my son reprimanded me.

[45:30]

He said, Don't make me babysit you. Don't you know what patience is? Don't you know we're all standing here patiently waiting? Just wait for your turn. What do you think? You want some special treatment or something? And when he said that, I felt this great sense of liberation. It's like there's no anger. He just called it right on the spot. And he gave me this great teaching. And this sense of entitlement. Like, what? You're going to make me wait here, standing? So, that was, you know, just that situation with him, particularly he's been very, when he was an adult, he was very rebellious.

[46:46]

And so, probably this had something to do with why he was rebelling from me. It's like my piece is rebellion. And then after that, he was also able to listen to me. I was pliable, just because he's my son doesn't mean he can't teach me something. And he also brought me back to Zazen. I really felt like, oh, now okay. Beginner's mind. being hindered by the situation and the crowd and this moment, you know. And so that was a wonderful moment outside the gate. I think it's time to stop. No questions? No time for questions now? No. Well, thank you very much. Sorry that we don't have time for questions.

[47:52]

It's at one, but I have to. Thank you very much.

[48:06]

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