So what I'd like to speak today is about how Siddhim Sasheen is how we manifest our intention to practice. And this is one of the, it's the name and the theme, the title of the Samadhi Nirmokana Sutra. which I studied this while I was on a little trip not too long ago. I studied this text by Red Anderson called Third Turning of the Wheel. It's his commentary, his lectures on the Samadhi Mokana Sutra which can be, the title can be translated into something like manifesting the intention to practice. So we're sitting here together today manifesting our intention to practice.

[01:02]

So intention, we often talk about intention, the intention to practice, but this intention is a little indefinite with respect to its meaning in words, or intention is a word with indefinite meaning. Otherwise, intention usually evokes a goal, an object, or a purpose. I remember when Benkar Roshi gave a talk at the Berkley Sense Center, must have been 1980, He was talking about Buddhism as an intentional phenomenology. So he had studied the philosophy of phenomenology. I don't know if you know that. That's a major school of Western philosophy. So he was translating that into the intention. But in phenomenology, intention is always directed towards an object or a goal, which doesn't seem to fit with

[02:16]

Now Suzuki Hiroshi defined the intention to practice with beginner's mind or without gaining idea. So it's a kind of non-thinking form of intention. It's indefinite in that sense, or unformulated. Just an intention. So we don't come to Sishing to, or we don't sit to relax, or to lower stress, or to get enlightened, or to shape our character. Although all these things are included in the practice in one form or another. But neither of them is the actual object of the intention to practice. So, uh, Revkos is the third turning of the wheel, this text, this commentary, which is a reference to the second turning of the wheel, because this is a Mahayana sutra, and the Mahayana sutras

[03:44]

and the teaching of the Madhyamika school and the Jyotvachara school that are associated with Nagarjuna and Vasubandhu which are both Indian ancestors were the main expositors that converted the sutras the teaching of the sutras into an actual teaching of an actual practice they were both scholars and monks of Buddhism. This sutra is more or less from the third century after Shakyamuni Buddha and Nagarjuna is in the first century of the common era and Vasubandhu more or less I mean all these timelines are kind of indefinite being indefinite and Vasubandhu is from the second or third century of the common era so 300 years after the Buddha these Mahayana sutras appear more or less and then 300 years after that these two great teachers turn the wheel of the Dharma which is called the second turning of the Dharma wheel

[05:14]

and the assumption is the first turning was the actual teaching of Shakyamuni which resulted in the Pali Nikaya Sutras and there's a lot of controversy whether these are actual teachings of the Buddha or not and there are various theories about that which I won't get into but it may be these are oral teachings all the teachings of the Buddha were oral teachings and which were remembered differently by different people according to their understanding. And I mean a lot of the sutras are attributed to Ananda and his prodigious memory. Buddha but there may have been other disciples who also remember different things according to their understanding and therefore they transmitted them orally and at some point they were written down and Reb represents the other branch of Suzuki Roshi's lineage and teaching if we could refer to it as a tree with different branches

[06:45]

or two, maybe main branches, Sojan and Red. And always when there are branches like this, it represents different aspects of the teaching. And Hinayana and Mahayana being different aspects of the teaching. And both the aspects are also within Mahayana and within Hinayana. So it's more of a state or an attitude or or a style of teaching. And the Yogacara, the Mahayana Yogacara school, comes out of two main sutras. This one, the Samdhinirmokana Sutra, it's hard to pronounce, and the Lakkavatara Sutra. And from the Lanka we get the teaching of the different consciousnesses. including the the alaya vishnayana consciousness and sojurnista many times about this and then from this particular sutra comes the teaching of vasubandhu of the three self-natures the imagined the other dependent and the real

[08:10]

So Rev spends a lot of time going over that. What they are and the different ways of teaching about them. And how each one is different and yet they're contained in each other. So this third turning of the wheel I think also refers to this meeting place or this interest between Buddhist Mahayana psychology and Western psychology. I think Rep has a lot of interest in Buddhist psychology because there's a lot of interest in psychology in the culture given that the last century was called by many the the era or the century of psychological man or person.

[09:17]

And we have a very deep teaching, psychological teaching in Buddhism. But specifically, Yogacara means the practice of yoga. So even though we think of it as a kind of heady intellectual Buddhist teaching, actually its essence of Yogacara is the practice of yoga, which is another way of saying Zazen practice. And yoga is also the common root of Hinduism or Buddhism, or represents the branching out of Buddhism out of Hinduism. And you see many Hindu saints also sitting and meditating in the modest lowest posture or all the understanding is different or how buddha used the lowest posture to realize something about himself or the universe is different or it's unique in some way

[10:40]

in contrast to Hinduism, so we can speak about two different things, Hinduism and Buddhism. Otherwise it would be the same thing. So, Yogacara then means the intention to sit zazen, or the intention to sit in the lotus posture, as we are doing right now, and to cultivate Samadhi, or Samdhi. So Samdhi is included in the title also, Samdhi Nirmokana Sutra. Samdhi is also Sabbath in French. So how we cultivate the Sabbath as a state, or as our original state, or the original state of the universe. the way the universe is actually existing. But we don't realize it.

[11:48]

So, Seshin and Yoga have the meaning of to unify the body and the mind, or unify the Bodhi mind. But this Bodhi mind is not a summation of the body and the mind. So it's not like the, if I can say, I'll risk it, see what happens. It's not the sort of the more new age becoming one with everything, or the joke about, you know, the hot dog, make me one with everything. or we are the one of Michael Jackson. This one is the duality of oneness. So Sojourn Roshi has given us a fine distinction between the duality of oneness and the oneness of duality.

[12:58]

When I got married in 1985, the invitation card I wrote in the invitation card I wrote something like and I got divorced 10 years later so it didn't it didn't work so one is not permanent but in the card I wrote this is the day we become one and I remember showing this to Ron I don't know if Ron remembers and he kind of broke into a smile sort of Well, that one turned out to be a duality. So sometimes we believe in one and we end up with two. But when we start out with two as our basis, then we realize that this two is really one.

[14:07]

Not two, not one. And so among other things, this is the basis of my domestic partnership with Deborah, who is my domestic partner. And so the oneness of duality rather than the duality of oneness, which was my first marriage. So the one of saasin and yoga is the oneness of duality. So we find this one in the empty nature of each thing. One thing at a time. One moment at a time. One breath at a time. Not everything all together at once. Although that's also true in a different way, but one thing at a time.

[15:12]

Keep it simple in the midst of the complexity. So the body is in the mudra. So the entire body and the entire universe is just in the hand. The whole body is just in this hand or in this finger, as Gute says. So, we don't need all the fingers. I mean, we do. We do, but we can relate to the body through each thing. Each part of the body is the body in itself. So we breathe, the bodies and the breath. So when we're breathing, that's the entire body.

[16:16]

And the entire body, writ large, not just my body. This body, yes, my body, this body, but this body includes the big body. but I relate to your body and I relate to the entire body through this body and I relate to this body in this breath and the same is true of the mind so where's the mind? the mind is in this awareness the mind is in the five skandhas And in Zazen, we work with the body in order to work with the mind.

[17:18]

So there's a particular gate, in that sense, yoga, yogic gate, that we work with the body in order to work with the mind. And this is included in the famous koan between Matsu and Hyakujo. or Baso and Pai-Chan. The Chinese name is Matsu and Hyaku-Jo. No. Yes. And the Chinese name is Baso and Pai-Chan. They're Japanese names. And so in that koan, Matsu asks Hyaku-Jo, what do you hit in order to get the horse to move? or you hit the cart? And the answer is that you work with the cart and the wheels in order to get the horse to move.

[18:26]

So we don't say you hit the cart, we work with. That's more of our sensitivity nowadays. We work with the cart and the wheels in order to get the horse to move, because the horse can't move. if there's a problem with the cart or with the wheels. I mean, the horse may say, hey, you know, of course I want to move. Don't think that I'm resisting or anything, you know, but you've got to help me out over here. So that's like the body and the mind. So we work with the body in order to work with the horse's mind. And so this working with the cart and the wheels is the equivalent of adjusting our posture in Zazen. And even though each period of Zazen is a period of time in numbers and in letters.

[19:38]

We have a schedule. time, number, and we put a name next to it. Zazen, Qinian. But in those letters and those names, what is it? What's in the letter and the name? So it's each moment of Zazen. Something marked and there's something unmarked there. And so we're always adjusting that our posture each moment at a time and we do that over a long period of time because you know lasts for however long it lasts 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. case today through QT and work period and so on so our body and our mind is always thus this

[20:38]

So the posture, adjusting our posture in Zazen, you know, but we're always slumping, so always adjusting the back and sitting upright. And I remember, you know, when I was growing up, my mother always said, you know, adjust, she was always adjusting my posture. I was slumping Sit up, sit up. I get so annoyed because I didn't value that. I mean, my back is flexible, I can slump over, it doesn't matter. But with age, then I started to have some back problems. And the only way to deal with the back pain is to keep my back really, to sit up. So when the back starts hurting a little bit, then I'm reminded how my body's telling me sit upright.

[21:58]

And that's what we're doing in zazen, right? Just moment to moment. And adjusting our mudra also. How are the fingers? Are we holding it tight like this? Sometimes too tight up here? sometimes slumped over, sometimes the fingers are more tense, right, the fingers are up like this, and we're thinking about some stressful thought, it's probably the finger gonna be like this. Or when we're falling asleep, then the fingers go down. So that we adjust between being too tight or too, sleepy. So we balance our state of mind simply by balancing the mudra. It's a wonderful practice. So when we do that, we adjust the posture, or we hold the posture,

[23:12]

We don't uncross our legs, although if you have to, just uncross them. So this is, you know, don't move unless you have to move. And if you have to move, then just move and don't look back. Oh, why did I move? I shouldn't have moved. you know, somebody else, or those people don't seem to be moving, I'm moving, you know, all that is the thoughts that come up in comparison, so we don't do that. So if you have to move, just move, and don't look back. But otherwise, we don't move. Not moving means not uncrossing our legs. Or if you're sitting in a chair, keeping your legs stable.

[24:16]

And then your mind is cleared. So, the yogic posture has that power to clear our mind. Or to lighten up our thoughts. because it doesn't mean that we have to keep our mind blank, but our thoughts may be enlightened thoughts, or at least lighter thoughts, that we keep ourselves, we go lightly, as was being said yesterday. We don't take our thoughts too seriously. Even if it's a wonderful thought, the next breath, we go back to our breathing. So, ultimately, we are what Dogen called, or we should say, Dogen's translator called.

[25:29]

You never know whether it's Dogen's translator or it's Dogen speaking. You know, the Italians have this expression, traduttore e traidore. The translator is a traitor. because you think it's Dogon, but it's actually the translator, so might as well call it Dogon's translator. It's a combination of Dogon and the translation. But what's called the enactment Buddha. He says, if we don't practice like this, sitting in the yogic posture, which is the Yogacara teaching, like exactly like Buddha did, Shakyamuni Buddha did. Though he says we cannot be liberated from the Buddha bonds or the Dharma bonds. We get caught in the word or the world called Buddhism.

[26:32]

So the Buddhist teaching already has the antidote to get bogged down with Buddhism. So it's a wonderful religion in that sense. It has an antidote to the disease produced by the religion itself, even though it's supposed to be a solution for suffering. Sometimes the solution, the medicine, can be worse than the disease. So then you have to have an antidote for the illness in the medicine. and that's the teaching of non-duality, that's Abdomen's teaching. And this, I'm going to read you a passage from this, just to get a little taste of the sutra. It says, Subhisuddhamati, Subhisuddhamati,

[27:44]

It is not the case that seers of truth are free from the signs of the compounded. They are simply free. Moreover, seers of truth are not liberated from the bondage of signs, but they are liberated. Seers of truth are not liberated from the bondage of errant tendencies, but they are liberated. I'll read it one more time. Subhisuddhamati. It is not the case that seers of truth are free from the signs of the compounded. They're simply free. You know, the signs of the compounded, the interesting thing is that what it means here is not just words being signs. The forms of practice are also signs of the compounded. So, these are what Dogen calls the Buddha bonds or the Dharma bonds.

[28:54]

The entanglement caused by the teaching itself. And how to be free within those bonds that bond us to each other and to the teaching. You know, people get into all kinds of stuff in communities. and the relationships and the officers and the rules and the forms and so on and so forth. We've all witnessed that. Some people get really turned off by it and turn away from the practice. But that's something that's always been wonderful about Sojourner Roshi that demeanor that the sutra is telling us about. So we practice the forms and at the same time we are free within the forms. We practice this very strict posture

[30:02]

So, Rev says that the ultimate is the final object or the objective. the objective object of the path, on the path. What is the object of the path? It's the ultimate, right? And then after this object, there's no more objects, and all the objects cease to be. So this is talking about this object and the object. But the final object is really to realize that a thing is not an object at all. So even though we live in a world of objects, there are no objects. So the bell, even though it looks like an object, is not an object. What is it? It's a thing.

[31:23]

Or another thing, but it's not an object. The voice with which we chant also is not an object. And the same is true of our minds and our bodies. They're not objects. And we're not objects to each other. Although sometimes it looks like we get into each other's way or have reactions to one another. Likes and dislikes. Approval, disapprovals. We want to get somewhere and somebody's standing in our way as an obstruction. But yet, there are no obstructions. We are our worst obstruction. I am my worst obstruction. But there is no obstruction. It's just imagined.

[32:27]

Or sometimes we feel that our teacher is our obstruction. Or our teacher is giving us a hard time. If he just were different, then I would be okay. But actually, you know, he's just fine. And I'm the problem. But ultimately, there's no obstruction. So, don't turn yourself into an object. And don't turn each other into objects. For our desires. So we have all these desires and expectations of each other and that's how we turn people into objects. And even, you know, another part of this third turning of the wheel is, and I'm not going to say too much about it, but it's the interface between Buddhism and science.

[33:46]

But even objective scientific laws may not represent the way things are, but simply the way they appear to our understanding. In nature, the universe condescends to our understanding. Compassionately condescends to our understanding. So then we think, ah, we've discovered the way the universe is. That's just the interaction of the universe with the way we see things or the way we understand things. But that may not be the way things are. Because there is no inherent way that things are. That's the teaching of emptiness. And yet it interacts. That's the real. It interacts with the other dependent nature.

[34:53]

Subject and object. But it's not defined. So even the laws of motion could change. And in fact, in this sutra, in the Samadhi Sutra, there's a story of Angulimala. Angulimala was a disciple of the Buddha who was really ticked off by the Buddha's teaching of non-violence. So he decided he was going to kill the Buddha to prove him wrong about the teaching of non-violence. So he started going towards the Buddha, and the Buddha turned around and started walking in the opposite direction. And Angulimala then started running faster and faster to try to catch the Buddha, but

[36:03]

The Buddha wasn't hurrying up, was just simply walking away, and no matter how fast Angulimala would run, he couldn't catch up with the Buddha. So he finally yells and says, well stop! Why can I catch you if I'm running so fast and you're simply walking? Talking about the loss of motion. And the Buddha said, because I have stopped. He's moving, but he's saying he stopped. It's a wonderful teaching, at least for me. I don't know what you think. It's the same with, we find the same meaning in Zenos.

[37:11]

Zenos was a pre-Socratic paradox. Achilles was a really fast runner and so Zeno constructed this paradox where no matter how fast Achilles would run, he couldn't catch up with the turtle. The turtle was walking really slow. And so Sojin and I were talking very shortly, don't talk much, but he was saying, well, you're bowing too fast. He's trying to catch up with me, but actually I need to catch up with him. So that's like trying to catch up with the turtle. It's moving really slow. And you can't catch up with the turtle by moving fast.

[38:19]

So we have to slow down. And Angulimala had to slow down. So the Buddha has stopped, but he's moving, or he's walking on the path. So, stopping and no stopping. He stopped, but he's not stopping, he's moving. Although he's moving, he stopped. So, the Heart Sutra says, no stopping. Remember that part of the Heart Sutra, where it says, no stopping. Even though he said he'd stop, he didn't stop. So now we're traveling in Buddha's path, so to speak. We're walking the path. We're sitting still. We're walking Buddha's path. We're journeying, yet our journey consists of sitting still.

[39:25]

And so the Heart Sutra also says no path. to a path of no path. So we're traveling on Buddha's path and yet we're sitting still without moving. So during this trip that I took not too long ago, as I mentioned earlier, I was thinking about the the relationship between coming to Sishin and getting on an airplane. So, usually when I begin preparations to go on a travel, I try to travel lightly and... How are we doing with time? It's just 11 o'clock now. So we're supposed to stop now? The schedule says that. Okay, the schedule says that.

[40:29]

Okay, so let me just... tell you about this little story and then I'll stop. So I try to leave the house and go to the airport with plenty of time so that the whole thing doesn't turn out to be a real stressful event. So there's no rush and there's time for things to go wrong because invariably something is going to go wrong. I did the same thing today with printing my notes here because all these things went wrong with the printer. Ross's printer wasn't working and then went to Alan's house and then their toner was out. But it sort of went out as I'm printing my notes. It wasn't out before. Maybe it was going to be out, but right at that moment. And Ross still doesn't know why it didn't print.

[41:32]

So there's always something. So we have to be prepared for that eventuality. So I stopped early so I would have enough time to do that. So that's being a little methodical there. but so that you can pace yourself and pace your life as it goes, so you can live in the moment, as opposed to being in a frantic, being a nervous wreck and being frantic about needing to get from point A to point B. But because it does evoke some anxiety for me, Just like giving talks can evoke some anxiety. And I just want to get to the airplane, and then I relax when I'm on the airplane. Well, Debra, and also my son Gabriel is like that, and they were both born on the same day, not the same year.

[42:36]

Anyway, they like to make it to the airport at the last minute. And once she insisted on going for a sauna when it was time to be going to the airport. And so it's like my anxiety is more kind of obsessive and I want to kind of get everything on the schedule. And if the schedule is not working, then I start getting anxious. Hers is, forget the schedule, she always has something, she comes up with something else to do, you know, when what needs to be done is to get ready to go to the airport. So this one time was a sauna, and I said, you know what, relax Raul, don't be so uptight, just go to the sauna, okay, whatever. Because, you know, you can't always prevail and people have different tendencies.

[43:45]

You know, and I've been accused of being rigid, so, you know, and there is some, I mean, I think the rigidity is sort of my way of working with some feelings. So, we went to the sauna and then, of course, we went to the wrong terminal in the airport, so we missed the plane. So we have a track record with that, but that's not enough to convince her that my way works better. Even that's not enough. So it's always a koan. And my son, he just likes to, he knows that they say two hours before, you have to go through security and all that. he has it down to the minute, just when the gate is closing, that's when he's sliding in. And so far, it's worked for him, so it reinforces it.

[44:50]

But then it's a problem for me, because if I have to give him rides to the airport or something, then I'm a nervous wreck, saying, where is he? We're going to be late. He's going to miss his plane, and so on and so forth. So I've always also learned, you know what? And my other son told me, just just relax because it's his problem. If he misses the plane, he misses the plane. But then don't get me involved in whatever collateral damage there is afterwards with whatever he needs to do afterwards if he misses his plane. So this kind of question is a test to the practice of calm mind but also compassion and maintaining a flexibility And in this trip, I realized that what makes me so upset is that, you know, growing up in childhood, I used to, I always going to the airport and airplanes were bad news because I was traveling between Chile and Argentina.

[45:59]

My parents split up and my father was in Chile and my mother and my stepfather were in Argentina. my mother decided to move without telling my dad. And then my father came over pretending it was a visit and then kidnapped us and then brought us back to Chile. And so we didn't see my mom for two years. I was five years old. So I think I have all this association with separations and all of that. But then when I'm in the airplane, It's different. That's like Zazen for me, the actual flight and the experience of the roaring of the motor of the plane. It's like a roaring stream. Have you ever sat Zazen next to a roaring stream? You can hear the roaring stream.

[47:01]

That's the same experience I have in the airplane. So even though it's moving, it's not moving. So that's the same thing. I have to work with this idea we have. We have to get there in a certain time and all that for it to work. And if it works, fine. And if it doesn't, it doesn't. so we have to have an intention to go move in a certain direction but then we're always being interrupted if we don't have distractions other people may distract us and then part of the practice of compassion is to be prepared for the distractions so that's how we maintain a kind of pliable

[48:06]

mind as opposed to a rigid mind. And the same thing with Sachine, you know, we're doing this and we have this discipline and we have all these periods and all that, but things are constantly happening, there are all these distractions, and things are happening in people's lives, and the Sachine director has to deal with this all the time. So this is how we practice with our own mind, it's how we practice with each other. So with that, we will stop.

[48:42]

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