So we're in the middle of the spring practice period. Most everybody here knows about practice period. Those of you who are new, we do this six weeks out of the year in the spring. And it's an intensification of our group practice. And we have a head student. This year is Andrea Thatch. And generally we have a theme that Sojin sets down at the beginning. This year the theme is Divine Light. And as well as this theme which Sojin teaches in his class once a week during this period, the head student also has a koan that they work on that Sojin gives them. Each year it's a little different. And this year the koan is Ordinary Mind is the Way. And this is Andrea's koan that she's chewing on.

[01:02]

And we'll be discussing as we go further. So we have these two, well actually there is a koan that goes with the theme of light. And both these koans, Ordinary Mind is the Way and this koan by Young Men, are fairly, very short and fairly accessible, at least conceptually, to the good ones to work with. And I think there's value in just keep relating back to these two cases, these two koans, these two situations that are brought up for us to reflect on. How much we understand it or don't understand it isn't so much the point, I mean it's the point, but in terms of practice period, it's just like keep reflecting on these themes and see where it leads you. Wherever you are in terms of your understanding, just see where it leads you.

[02:05]

So I'll just briefly restate, you've heard these many times, most of you, but I'll say them again. Young Men's koan is, he's giving a talk in his endo, he asks his monks, everybody has their own light, if you try to see it, everything is darkness. What is everybody's light? And the monks are all silent, nobody wants to answer. So he answers for them, he says, the halls and the gate, let's just say the halls and the gate, or the kitchen pantry and the main gate. What is everybody's light? The kitchen pantry and the main gate. He could have said anything, he could have said, the zendo altar in the garage, or he could have said the hot water heater closet,

[03:09]

the hot water heater closet and the altar. The point is that he was making, at least conceptually making, is that light is everywhere, and there's no place, that's why he says if you try to see it, you don't see it, because you're it. So the light that he's talking about is everywhere. And we are that light. This is easy to put into words, at least kind of superficially, but to experience this and to experience what he's talking about is another matter. So this is an invitation to us to investigate what this means. And Dogen said something like,

[04:11]

un-men didn't want to explain it to the monks, a light explains itself, so I don't want to try to explain it either. If this light were just some kind of energy field, some kind of electromagnetic phenomena, that we couldn't happen to see with our eyes, if that's all it was, if this was just like a kind of a scientific phenomena, a kind of an infrared phenomenon, experience that we just didn't happen to be able to see visually, if that's what it was about, then why would we be so interested in studying it? Why would all teachers throughout, I would imagine probably all religions,

[05:11]

but particularly within Buddhism, teacher after teacher, brings this same kind of experience up, and not just Buddhism, Hinduism as well. So spiritual teachers have this recognition of this, what they call light, that's more than just a scientific phenomena, and what does that mean? In our spirit, what is light? So this koan, for me, when we talk about light, there's a very light feeling, kind of a radiant feeling to it. When we talk about koans, I like to get the feeling of the koan, just the sensual feeling of the koan. I don't recommend it as a practice, it just happens to be what I like to do. I can't help but do it. Talking about young men's light is a feeling of light.

[06:12]

It's a light feeling, kind of buoyant, mysterious, but mysterious in a bright way, not mysterious in a dark way. So Andrea's koan, or the koan that Andrea has to work with, is ordinary mind is the way, and that's for her to talk about, but I will intrude. I'll just tell you the koan, because this is what we're reflecting on during the practice period. This koan is that the teacher is Nansen, and the student is Joshu, two of the great teachers of Zen. And Joshu is only about 20 years old or so during this case. He lives to be 120, actually, but in this case he's just a young man. And he asks Nansen, what is the way? And Nansen says, ordinary mind is the way.

[07:17]

And then Joshu says, well, should I try to get at it, to understand it? And Nansen says, if you try to approach it, it goes away from you. And then, well, that's a dilemma. Joshu says, well, if that's the case, how will I ever know what you're talking about? And Nansen says, when you really experience it, you'll find that it's as vast as space. How can you talk about it in terms of good and bad or right and wrong? And then Joshu has this great realization experience as a result of that. But then the commentary after that says, even though Joshu has this great experience, he still needs another 30 years to digest it. Or to integrate it.

[08:19]

And a similarity between both of these cases is that with the light case, if you try to see it, you won't see it. And with ordinary mind, if you try to pursue it, you'll go right past it. Because it's us, it's not out there. If it's out there, okay, but it's also here, too. There's not a separation. Ordinary mind case has a feeling of, in contrast to the light case, of being like ground. Like just ordinary. Nothing special. And light has kind of a feeling of being special, even though I think people that experience it don't necessarily think it's special. Or who recognize it don't necessarily think it's special. But in terms of these case feelings, one is more base, one is more trouble. So, you know, when we talk about Kahn's,

[09:33]

we're in the wisdom realm. You know, there's the three aspects, some of the three aspects of practice are wisdom, compassion, and practice. So the Kahn's are the wisdom side of things. And for several weeks now in the practice period, we've been discussing the wisdom side. And on the altar we have, the wisdom side is Manjushri, and he sits on a lion. And the practice side is Samantabhadra, who sits on an elephant. So we've been on the lion side for the last few weeks, and now I'd like to kind of shift over just the counter of that on the elephant side this morning. And so that's the Samantabhadra practice side of what we do.

[10:33]

So the teachers that discuss light, or ordinary mind, or have this great wisdom that they are sharing with us, or helping us to see, also very much understand the practice side. And I'm just separating them for purposes of discussion. So I would like to read just three very short excerpts from these teachers, from two teachers. One is Hung Jer, who lived in the 1100s. There's this kind of sequence of Hung Jer, he eventually wound up teaching on Mount Tien Tong, excuse my pronunciation. And then after him, eventually another generation later was Ru Jing, who was Dogen's teacher, and then Dogen came to visit Ru Jing. So if you imagine this temple on this mountain with Hung Jer, and then Ru Jing, Dogen's teacher,

[11:45]

and then Dogen. These three Soto wonderful people all in the same place within a hundred years of each other. So Hung Jer really likes to talk about light. And his writing is so almost ethereal, but it's so grounded that you can't really say it's ethereal. Or I wouldn't say it's ethereal. And kind of this refined, so exquisitely refined way of writing that he has. So this is from practice instruction, which we actually looked at briefly on Thursday night during Sojin's class. The Bright Boundless Field. The field of boundless emptiness is what exists from the very beginning.

[12:45]

You must purify, cure, grind down, or brush away all the tendencies you have fabricated into apparent habits. Then you can reside in the clear circle of brightness. Utter emptiness has no image. Upright independence does not rely on anything. Just expand and illuminate the original truth unconcerned by external conditions. So you must purify, cure, grind down, or brush away all the tendencies you have fabricated into apparent habits. So then he'll go on for pages talking about, more or less, talking about light. But this goes with looking into our habit nature and our condition nature, and really coming to terms with how much we

[13:51]

tend to be stuck in our patterns. And this little excerpt is called, Drop Off Your Skin, Accept Your Function. In daytime the sun, at night the moon, each in turn does not blind the other. This is how a patch-robed monk steadily practices naturally, without edges or seams. To gain such steadiness, you must completely withdraw from the invisible pounding and weaving of your ingrained ideas. If you want to be rid of this invisible turmoil, you must just sit through it, and let go of everything. So, you can come to the Zen Dojo every morning at 5.40

[14:52]

and 5.40 in the afternoon, and do this, if you are interested. And also, all the rest of the day as well. You must completely withdraw from the invisible pounding and weaving of your ingrained ideas. It's like, think about the ocean, you know, or waves coming, and you're pounding against the shore, or something like that. And then, one more excerpt is from Guishan, who was the founder of, you know, there's five houses of Zen, and we studied that. Hozan had a class a few months ago, Five Houses of Zen, and Guishan was the primary teacher of the first house of Zen. So, he says, He says, If a person is truly enlightened,

[15:54]

and has realized the fundamental, and is aware of themself in such a case, this person is actually no longer tied to the poles of cultivation and non-cultivation. But ordinarily, even though the original mind has been awakened by an intervening cause, so that the person is still, is instantaneously enlightened in their reason and spirit, yet, yet, there still remains the inertia of habit, formed since the beginning of time, which cannot be totally eliminated at a stroke. This person must be taught to cut off completely the stream of their habitual ideas and views caused by the still-operative karmas. This process of purification is cultivation. I don't say that one must follow a hard and fast special method.

[16:57]

One need only be taught the general direction that cultivation must take. What you hear must first be accepted by your reason, and when your rational understanding is deepened and subtilized in an ineffable way, your mind will have its own spontaneity become comprehensive and bright, there is the light, comprehensive and bright, never to relapse into the state of doubt and delusion. So, this is Joshu's thirty years after he has this realization experience of nonsense, thirty more years. And thirty years is just a round number. So, I'd like to talk about maybe two aspects of mindfulness practice.

[18:05]

Really, in order to see our habit patterns, and what we cling to, in order to really see what we cling to, it's necessary to pay attention to what's happening. How else could we ever learn? How could we learn about our state of mind without paying attention to it? Interestingly, we use the word mindfulness, this process is mindfulness,

[19:08]

and Zazen is mindfulness, actually. Just sitting still, just paying attention to our posture, and if we have a method, our breath, or Shikantaza, just sitting still, and just paying attention to whatever arises. There is a translator who is interviewed in Buddha Dharma magazine, this last issue, his name is Glenn Wallace, and he teaches actually a meditation curriculum in a very small graduate school on the East Coast. And he translates Sanskrit Buddhist texts into English, particularly for Americans, I believe. And in the interview he says that his difficulty as a translator is that there are words that he would translate more literally from Sanskrit

[20:09]

that we use all the time, but that conventionally translators over the years have decided that this is the right English word to use for the Sanskrit word, and if somebody goes counter to that, he's going to look like he's eccentric, or challenging the other people, and he won't be so acceptable, his work won't be so acceptable, he'll be seen as kind of odd. And yet, I always like the more literal translation, especially Chinese, because they evoke something that's not so much our American way of thinking, but combine elements in a way that evoke something much more rich. So anyway, he says that for mindfulness, the word sati in Sanskrit is what we translate into mindfulness, he would translate it present moment awareness. Isn't that interesting? That's not because that's what he thinks mindfulness is, it's because if he actually literally looks at the word in Sanskrit,

[21:10]

based on being a scholar, he sees present moment awareness. And I think this is so good, because in a sense, mindfulness implies this, obviously, but when you use the word mindfulness, it gives you the sense of paying attention to something, mindful of something. But present moment awareness has a feeling of you're just here, right here, right now, and you're aware of this moment, so your mindfulness is of this moment, not so much, oh, I'm mindful of my body, or I'm mindful of my mental states, or I'm mindful of the dharmas, or I'm just, at this moment, aware. In part of Sojin's class,

[22:13]

Andrea gave Sojin this book called And There Was Light, called And There Was Light, and it's a French author, Jacques... How do you pronounce it? Lucerien. I can't pronounce French. Anyway, he has an amazing book, and he read it for half an hour, or 40 minutes, he just went on, but it was very interesting. And for you who weren't there, it's basically about, he's an eight-year-old boy and he goes blind, and rather than just descend into a world of darkness, what he finds after just a very short period of adjusting to it in various ways, that actually his whole world opens up, and rather than be enveloped in a world of darkness, all of his senses that he wasn't aware of and he wasn't using start to work,

[23:15]

and he has this feeling of light, even though he can't see. And he goes into exquisite detail about what that's like walking through the world with that kind of sensibility. In such a way that I, and I imagine other people, felt rather envious. He's so in touch with his surroundings, but he can't see. Anyway, so I looked it up on the internet, what happened to him after he was an eight-year-old, after he had this great experience as a kid, what happened next? Well, when the Nazis occupied France, because he was born in 1930, 1934? 1924, I'm sorry. So, when the Nazis came into France and took over, he was a teenager, or I think maybe just got out of high school, maybe in college, first year of college, and he helped to establish an underground, a resistance cell.

[24:17]

And eventually, they were informed on, and he was sent to a concentration camp, Buchenwald. He wasn't Jewish, I don't think, so he was at least allowed to live, but it was very close to not living, and extremely difficult conditions we can't even imagine. And he was near death, and he realized that the only way that he could survive was to only pay attention to this present moment. That if he dwelled on the past, reminisced about how good things used to be, or missed his mom and his dad, and thought about being warm and cozy, it would do him in. If he projected out, hoped that things were going to get better, that they would be liberated, if he started thinking like that, that he would weaken himself. He could just feel himself weakening when he went into those states of mind.

[25:20]

And that the only way that he could be strong was to just stay exactly in the present moment, no matter what happened, good or bad. So he gave an example, if it were warm and sunny, because they were cold a lot, if it just happened that the sun came out and they were warm, rather than hope that it would continue, he wouldn't hope that it would continue. He would just enjoy it for what it was, and then take the next moment for whatever came along. And that's how he survived. And he not only survived, but he actually developed a very kind of cheerful spirit. And the other inmates elected him to be like the person who communicates between the different cell blocks, and brings news, and is like a communicator. Because he was always cheerful, and he would always come up to each cell block with a smile on his face, and it was genuine. And that was his way, actually, of helping. He was being Avalokiteshvara,

[26:22]

in that sense that he was helping people who were suffering by having his own good spirit. But it wasn't concocted, it was true. But he had to stay in the moment in order to be able to do that. And, you know, when we're... I have not been in a life and death situation, but I would imagine that people who are in life and death situations become much more present right at the moment. And you wonder, why can't we do that? You know why? Because we have this natural... I don't know if it's right to say natural, but maybe natural kind of complacency, where if we're not pressed, if we're not under great pressure, we tend to sort of gravitate

[27:23]

towards what's the most comfortable, what's the most enjoyable, mainly what's the most comfortable. That's just a tendency. I see it in myself. So being willing to live each moment means that being comfortable is secondary, actually. Because if this moment is uncomfortable, then I can escape it by various mental or physical means, not really escape it, but sort of escape it. Escape it in a way that's not so painful, not so evidently painful. Everybody in this room has some version of this, and they're all different. They're all a little bit different. We're all snowflakes. We all have these different ways of avoiding pain. So it seems like to really be able to live

[28:23]

moment by moment, mindfully, is to be willing to undergo that pain, particularly psychological pain, of feeling insecure, or whenever lonely, or awkward, or whatever qualities that we don't particularly like. And in order to understand our habit patterns, in order to... I have to say be free, but whenever I say be free, or somebody talks about liberation, I want to kind of back off, as though being free or being liberated was... some kind of... some objective state that you could look at. So maybe just use the word poetically,

[29:28]

it's more safer. But if we want to be free, from a poetic point of view, that we have to understand how our minds work, or to not understand conceptually or analytically, but experience, be willing to experience, and trust that our experience teaches us something, if we're willing to experience that. The problem is that... when we're... the really deep-set habit patterns are so deep that we can't even see them, because we are them. And I think what happens in a robust practice, or just a process of aging and maturing, is that we begin to see what we didn't see before, what we've been stuck with all of our life. And it's amazing

[30:30]

how we might have some inclination of it, but don't really get it, and then at some point start to really get it. Oh yeah, this is how I've been stuck, this is how I've been hiding, this is how I've been protecting myself from being uncomfortable, or from pain that I can't stand. Okay. So just for... there's also a fun part of this. This is also fun. You know, when I gave a little talk at a small Vipassana group in Venetia, the Vipassana group is really about mindfulness as the main subject, really. Much more so than Zen practice, in terms of discussion. So we're talking about mindfulness, and I said, you know, when there's these discussions about mindfulness, and particularly as a kind of technique

[31:31]

or the dynamics of mindfulness practice, what always seems to be missing to me is some mention of the passion that's involved in order that would make one care to be mindful, that would care to open themselves up to put that effort into being mindful. There's some generating energy there. It doesn't just happen automatically because of our various tendencies to avoid it. And then, of course, they said, passion? What do you mean, passion? And they were right. Because passion is just a loaded word in English. It's a bad word to use. So I don't know what the right word to use is. But there's some engagement, maybe. There's some... I would even say enthusiasm. There's some enthusiasm, but maybe quiet enthusiasm.

[32:32]

It doesn't need to be bombastic enthusiasm. Some quiet enthusiasm which makes us care enough to do this, to want to be mindful. Now, also there are times when we do our homework. Every day, every moment at work. Relationship, relationship. Plenty of mindfulness in relationship. But sometimes somebody at the right time and place can help us. A teacher can help us, or a friend can help us. So there are... There's a few examples that I have that are just actually kind of fun examples of how a person's mind can change. How we can be seeing something in one way and then with the right combination of conditions can see it in a different way, quickly.

[33:35]

But we're ready for that. So the first one is when Dogen went to visit, go to China to try to find his true teacher. He was in his early 20s. And he just got there and the boat was docked. The ship was docked in the harbor. They hadn't gone on land yet. And the cook from the Chinese monastery came out, rowed out to the boat to get mushrooms to use for the monastery, maybe several miles away. And he was an older fellow. Actually, in those days, he was just in his 60s probably, but that was really old. And he met Dogen and they had a great conversation. They really clicked with each other. And it was getting kind of dark and the cook said, well, I have to go back now. And Dogen said, why do you have to go back? Why don't you stay the night and go back in the morning? We can talk some more. And the cook said, no, I'm responsible for cooking the meal tomorrow morning or tonight. I have to get back.

[34:37]

And Dogen said, well, why are you so involved in cooking? Why is it such a big deal? At your age, you should be studying the sutras and doing meditation. And the cook said something like, but you don't understand. And he said a little bit more. But basically he said, you just don't understand. Come and visit me sometime and I'll explain it to you. And then he left. And Dogen reflected on that and said, oh, I get it. It's that taking responsibility for what you do and actually what you do, whether you're cooking or you're reading sutras, whatever you do is it. It's not that meditation and sutra study is really holy and cooking is kind of like, well, this is practical. That it's all holy or none of it's holy, but it's not one. It's not this is exalted. This is not exalted. So brilliant as he was because he was a genius,

[35:41]

brilliant practitioner, even in his early 20s, his mind turned at that point. And then modern times, Master Shen Yen, a Chinese teacher, just died in February at the age of 79. He actually taught here and gave a talk. And I went and visited him several times in New York, maybe 15 to 20 years ago. First machines. And he tells a story. He's a wonderful teacher, really. Complete grounded kind of teacher. He was as a younger man in Taiwan. He was sitting up at night with his friend, friend monk, and he started complaining about how poorly the monastery was run. But, you know, so much. And doesn't he doesn't understand this. And he doesn't understand that. The practice committee. They were thinking about the board. Why?

[36:41]

What are they thinking? And on and on and on. And then his friends just listen. Listen very patiently. Yeah, I understand. Yeah, I know how you feel. Yeah. Yeah. And then when she is finished, his friend just says, put it down. And he did. He just he realized that he was just he was creating this big drama was unnecessary. The drama might have been true drama. I mean, they may have been doing everything wrong in the monastery. But his response was his own drama. And he just at that moment was able to just drop it. And he said the rest of the evening, he just had this wonderful. He actually used the word light, this wonderful light experience of just almost like floating, just feeling so a way to be lifted up in the shoulders, his mind in turn. And then finally, locally.

[37:45]

Where is Bob? Bob here, Bob. Oh, yeah. Bob told the story where he was in couples therapy with his then wife, his ex wife. And he in those days, not like now. In those days, he would get very angry. He would get some anger, really intense. And so he was going through one of those situations when they were in therapy. And the therapist and he had finished. And the therapist, I think, said to his ex wife, well, Bob's just having a tiff. And so and then that did something to Bob's brain. According to what he said. And ever after that, it was hard for him to really take his anger too seriously because he thought it was just a tiff. I was angry about not being able to take it seriously.

[38:48]

So, yeah. So he still might be angry, but to take it seriously and really be angry, hard to do. So, just to end. So we have light and ordinary mind is the way. And this wisdom, wisdom practice of trying to understand what they're talking about. Experience what they're talking about. And then we also have our just nitty gritty, just paying attention practice as well. Do you have anything you'd like to say? Thank you very much. OK. And in particular for the item about the meaning of mindfulness, present moment awareness.

[40:02]

Yeah, really. P.M.A. P.M.A. Good question. That's really helpful I think. And I don't know if other people would disagree but we, as you were discussing that, I realized that when I think of mindfulness, it is. I'm sure that's not what's intended when people talk about mindfulness, But I do sort of observe my mind, you know, I make a distinction, or I try to. And when we talk about observing our patterns, there's judgment implied there. Whether we say, you know, we say there shouldn't be. There is. It's like we observe our bad patterns, and we try not to have them, etc. And we know what that does. So this, and if you can just observe them, that is to say, just take note or just, there they are.

[41:10]

Then you don't reify them. Then you don't give them, you know, big, important meaning. You can't have them just be a wish, or whatever, because you're not observing them. So obviously, in hanging on to them, or trying to see every detail of them and all that, you just can't. And then you just put it all down. You can't, a little bit, at least, just let go of it. You don't have to account for it. You don't have to analyze it and all that. You just note it, and it's not important. You know, try to, in fact, just be in the next moment. Then, again, you know, it's not like, oh, OK. But very helpful. And so thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah, it's a real that's a whole nother talk is about the judgmental, the judgmental possibilities of awareness. You know, when we start to see what our habits really are and dwelling in that judgmental side of it. And my experience to myself is that it's it's really always a mixture.

[42:15]

There's judgment and then recognition that that's not so. You know, should I be judging? You know, there's it's a mixture and there's a tendency to judge. But then also a tendency to see that that judging is very limited. It's kind of it's a real mix. I realize in listening to you that I don't know if this is true in other languages, but in English, light means the opposite of dark, but also the opposite of heavy. And so if that awareness in the moment illuminates something for us, we don't add a lot of judgment or analysis to it. It remains like light, which doesn't win. Yeah, that's true. Light is light. There's probably some word origin reason why they're the same. We're talking about that French gentleman who was in the concentration camp.

[43:25]

I was sort of as impactful as impact is that she feels kind of intensity. So I guess I'm equating with the concentration. So you're plugging the. Yeah, I agree. I said I'm aware of this. For. And I wonder why we talk about this. It only seems to be that. Yeah. Well, because we are.

[44:32]

Well, for one thing is I think you you can get something out of just talking about it, but it's very limited unless you actually practice practice what's being talked about. But assuming that you're practicing what's being talked about and then think, well, still, why is what's the point of all the talk? I think the point is, is that because so much of our activity involves communication and words to avoid that or to disregard, that is not to use a whole portion of our consciousness, which is used in so many other kinds of ways. So why not? Why not use that in this way as well? And I think the art of it is to get underneath the words so that the words. It's like actually, in a way, I'm thinking like if you use the word mindfulness over and over again after a while,

[45:44]

you know, you kind of don't really feel it. So those words, if you're not really asking yourself, what do these words mean to me? Then they don't really they don't really take on a live quality. And particularly with the colons, if you know, because the cars are difficult, they're not so obvious, not obvious at all in our usual way of thinking. And it's a little intimate. It's intimidating. So I think people are afraid to, at least publicly, to kind of be wrong about it, but to actually trust yourself to get something out of a column, even if it's so-called wrong. As long as you don't take yourself too seriously. In other words, you can use words as long as there's some creative openness. There has to be openness to the words. If there's not that openness, then you're just sort of like being herded mindlessly.

[46:50]

Go ahead. I just thought of a weather vane, you know, and the wind blows it at a point in the right direction. Yeah. You think the words do that? I like the wind, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good way. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that moment of being willing to be present with the pain, you know, we can easily understand that we don't want that or what goes against that. And it is pretty strange to change your lifelong habits so that you'd be actually willing to be present with that pain instead of avoiding it. I can remember all the way back in childhood how I very deliberately avoided things that I found painful.

[47:56]

How do you inspire that to happen? That's a good question. Did you hear what she said? You know, if you've been unwilling to face painful situations in yourself your whole life, what is it that would change that would make you more willing to deal with that pain now than you weren't before? What is it that changes? You could answer too, Laurie. Well, you somehow feel safer. I mean, you're afraid of the pain, it seems to me. Maybe that's just me. You don't want to face it because it's frightening or something. And somehow, in a new situation, there's a sense that you might create a zone of safety where you could feel it.

[49:05]

I also think the avoidance of pain causes the pain. So I think that's the experience. And one more, Tamar? Well, I think sooner or later you won't have a choice. State, state, state. To say a little more. Maybe someone else would like to. Sooner or later, you have to face it. You know, you can avoid it at some point, but sooner or later you have to face it. So you can choose if you want that to be now or you can wait and see and let it choose you. But sooner or later, there's no choice. That's the noble truth of life. I know, I know. But we're right at the right time.

[50:08]

It isn't a quarter after? No. That's what it says on the schedule. I don't want to schedule. I'm sorry. OK.

[50:25]

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