Today I want to talk about something that's very relevant for Sashin, as well as our daily life. In Abhidhamma, the subject is called, I've talked about this before, by the way, you may remember, the six qualitative factors of mind. and also called the six pairs, which makes 12. And I'll tell you what those are. The six qualitative factors are present in every wholesome state of mind. So you get some picture of what is a wholesome state of mind by studying the six factors.

[01:15]

The first one is tranquility. The second one is agility. The third one is pliancy. The fourth one is workableness. The fifth one is called proficiency. And the sixth one is uprightness. And these six factors have their complement. They complement each other. So tranquility is complemented by agility and so forth. So I'll explain this as we go along. These are very important to understand because these six qualitative factors are like the temper of our mind. I say our mind, but our mind includes our body. What the mind does affects the body.

[02:19]

So if we have a stiff mind, we're likely to have a stiff body. If we have a loose mind, we're likely to have a loose body, and so forth. So when I say qualitative factors of mind, it's also factors of body-mind. And these six factors apply to our zazen. And I think that we should not forget them. And these are factors that we work with in zazen. If you want to know what to do in zazen, this is what you do. This is what you think about. Zazen is not cement bag activity. It's not sow bug activity.

[03:28]

You know what sow bugs do? They curl up. It's opening. Zazen is how do you open up like a flower? This is how you do it. So the first one is tranquility. Tranquility is the access to meditation. It's the access, but it's also the temper or temperament of meditation. We have various temperaments. We have angry temperament, we have moodiness, we have tranquility. Tranquility is a kind of temperament, temper. So temper, when you want to temper something, like in metal, metal is tempered.

[04:36]

And a good sword is tempered. But the temper of the sword, you know, first they heat it, get it really hot, and they put it in cold water. And this tempers the metal. And the temperament means that the sword is very strong, but it's also very flexible. Very flexible, not brittle. So this is the characteristic of tranquility. Calm, strength, flexibility, and joy. Actually, two characteristics of tranquility are joy and energy. But the joy of tranquility is very deep joy, which is not over-exuberant, but is constant and can't be easily overturned.

[05:59]

It's not subject to conditions. It doesn't get turned around by conditions or modified by conditions. It's just constant and remains through either favorable conditions or adversity, like a very deep stream. And the energy is always present. And at the same time, it's not an overexuberant energy. It's an energy that is balanced and constant and supportive. So tranquility is like the ocean, very deep and calm. But even when there are waves on the ocean, even when the ocean is stormy,

[07:05]

In order to maintain tranquility, one goes, takes the submarine and goes way deep and it's like, Dogen says, like a fish swims lazily in the deep water. It's also like a candle. where the light, the candle is just very constant, it's not wavering. Serenity is associated with tranquility, but serenity is like the sky. It's like a beautiful sunset, a calm sunset, a calm evening. where you just feel kind of euphoric watching the sky at evening time, serene sky.

[08:11]

So serenity is more associated with mental calmness and tranquility is more associated with depth of deep settledness. So the opposite of tranquility is agitation, restlessness, anxiety, and scruples. I often thought, what is, what do you mean scruples? Scruples sounds like, you know, scrupulous, paying attention to little details. But actually, meaning of scruples, another meaning of scruples is not being able to make, not being able to move because you can't make a decision. Being stuck because of the inability to make a decision.

[09:14]

So that's the meaning of scruples here. So the second one is agility. And agility means lightness, the ability, springiness, or not held down by things. the absence of weight, the absence of restriction. So agility is not being restricted. And in zazen, this is such an important factor. We should have agile zazen. Agility gives life to tranquility.

[10:28]

Tranquility, it's easy in tranquility to sink because tranquility is like water and has depth and one can sink into tranquility and just kind of stay there. You know, Suzuki Roshi, sometimes in the early days, people used to like to sometimes sit through kin-hin. They would reach a kind of tranquil state and they want to stay there. Suzuki Roshi said, when we do kin-hin, everybody does kin-hin. When we eat, everybody eats. When we sit, everybody sits. In other words, it's easy to get stuck in tranquility, it's easy to get stuck in some euphoric state, or it's easy to get stuck in your own self-satisfaction, or attached to some special state of mind.

[11:43]

This is one of the Not everyone. It's one of the problems in meditation practices that not everyone is aware of. Because we hear so much about wonderful states of mind in meditation practices. A lot of people promote those states of mind, some special states of mind. But purpose of meditation practice is not to have some special state of mind, but to be free from everything. to be free from special states of mind, to accept anything that comes, but not to get stuck.

[12:53]

So this is one of the dangers of meditation practice, is getting stuck, thinking that because you have some wonderful euphoric state of mind that you've reached enlightenment. Tranquility is an important factor, but it's not the only factor. It's only one factor. Sometimes, you know, we say, people say, well, meditation is to get peace of mind, and peace of mind sounds like tranquility. But peace of mind is not the point of practice. Whole mind is the point of practice, not just a peace of mind.

[14:02]

Well, peace of mind is just a peace of mind. It's just the part that you like. The part that I like is the peace. But it's not just peace. It's sometimes warfare. Sometimes excruciating pain. So I have to be very careful. It's so easy to get lost. But tranquility is like settledness and settledness is really important because settledness balances all of the agitation and difficulty. It's true. We do want that peace of mind. but without being attached to peacefulness.

[15:17]

So agility is lightness, buoyancy. It's like presence of mind. It's like It's stimulating, you know, and it's the opposite of heaviness. So dullness, apathy, sloth, rigidity and heaviness are its opposites. And rigidity especially, you know, It takes a while for us to let go of our rigidity in zazen. And that's the thing that I think a good many people need to really work hard with, is how do I find lightness and let go of rigidity?

[16:25]

When you sit zazen, we should make an effort to find out where we're tight, where we're rigid. Zazen is not a rigid practice. Zazen is a practice of flexibility and lightness and agility and letting go you know, bit by bit, letting go of rigidity. Even though it looks like, we look like statues, it's not the practice of statues. It's finding total freedom within this posture.

[17:28]

We really hang on to things. You should question yourself, what am I clinging to? What am I holding on to? And just go through your body and find out where the places are that there's clinging and rigidity. So, the third one is pliancy. Pliancy means softness. So, Sukiro, she used to talk about soft mind, meaning mind that is not stuck somewhere. It's not dogmatic. It's not opinionated. It's not self-protective. but is flexible and goes with things, goes with what's happening.

[18:50]

So it's like elasticity or resilience, adaptability, the ability to keep the mind open and learn something. That's something in. It's said that pliancy helps intuition because it's open-mindedness. and tolerance and understanding. So its opposite is rigidity, stiffness, brittleness, obstruction, dogmatism, opinionatedness, conceit and inflexibility. Do you recognize any of those? Agility is that sprightliness, and pliancy is the softness, the flexibility.

[20:04]

If you're sitting, when you take your position, you should be able to bend all over anyway. It's not this. That's not zazen. Looks like zazen, but it's not zazen. If someone comes and adjusts your posture, there should be no resistance. If there's resistance, you should say to yourself, what's this resistance? Why am I resistant? Why am I not complying? Why don't I trust my teacher? What am I holding on to? This happens all the time if I adjust people's posture. I know what I'm doing. But you don't. You know what you're doing, but it's not Zazen.

[21:04]

Resistance is not Zazen. You should be totally open to whatever... whoever is digesting your posture. You should just let them do that. You shouldn't be like a rag doll or a puppet. You know? To keep all of the joints loose is the secret. The lower arm is connected to the upper arm through a joint. The fingers have joints. Everything has joints. And it's all pieces held together by joints. And these joints have to be able to move. And if you lock them, you suffer. So to be flexible and no matter how long you're sitting in zazen, that flexibility should always be there.

[22:18]

So when you feel difficulty or problems in zazen, you should look at whether or not you're locked or unlocked. Chazen is not to lock yourself. That's why we have to keep going over our posture over and over again, because posture is always changing. It's not the same one minute to the next. And you have to keep adjusting, subtly adjusting. And the only way you keep subtly adjusting is to keep yourself unlocked and loose, flexible. So flexibility is really the key. But this works in everything we do. It works in the kitchen. It works when we're serving. It works when we're interacting. It works in the world.

[23:20]

So these qualities are not just in Zazen. These are the qualities that we have to practice. all the time. It's not just for some special occasion. All the time. I just can't emphasize this too much. When you are sounding the bell, and you're the Doan sounding the bell, it's all looseness. All these qualitative factors are there in that one act. If there's rigidity, you hear it in the bell. When there's looseness, you hear that in the bell. So, what we're expressing are these qualities. And when these qualities are well expressed, then we all feel uplifted.

[24:29]

When they're not there, we feel kind of heavy. So, you know, we have to be careful how we approach these things. Nevertheless, there are times when, like right now, or today, I have a sort of bad lower back. And when I sit, if I were to not be fairly rigid there, it would be worse because it would sort of push it into an even a painful state. So that's not rigidity. That's strength. You have to put strength in your posture. Rigidity is not the same as strength.

[25:34]

Rigidity, you know, to hold yourself upright is strength, it's not rigidity. There has to be some flexibility within your effort. So, you know, I have my back, my lower back gets painful too, but when I sit in Zazen, although I need to put the energy into sitting up straight, I also let go of, continuously let go of what's not necessary. So there's always the balance. Striking the balance is what it's all about. If you don't have the balance, then you have rigidity. When you have the balance, you have tempered strength. I'm coming to all that. That's a really good question, you know, very good question, because that's the crux of the matter, is how do you balance?

[26:50]

You know, how do you keep everything, all these qualities balanced so that you can actually do something? If you have too much emphasis one way or too much emphasis the other way, then things become unbalanced. So we're always looking for that balance. moment by moment, what is the balance? And it's shifting, always shifting. So it's not like you take a position, as Zazen stated, we say, take your position, don't move. Doesn't mean don't move. You can't help moving. There's no such thing as not moving. But it means you stay in your position and then you work through the position, you subtly keep working to maintain the position. And the way to maintain it is through balance. And it's like doing the most work with the least amount of effort. So you keep refining and refining your effort.

[27:53]

Refining and refining over and over again. Refining your effort moment by moment. And then you're able to sit. You're able to... And then you feel the joy of practice through that refinement. So the fourth one is called workableness. So workableness is like not too soft and not too hard. How do you work something? And the example is like you have gold. If gold is too soft, you can't really shape it. If it's too hard, it won't hold its shape. If it's too hard, you can't do anything with it. So when your posture is too rigid, you can't shape it.

[28:56]

When it's too soft, it won't take a shape. So how do you find the balance between just enough hardness and just enough softness and keeping those two factors balanced. And you're always looking for that balance. That's called workableness. You're always, you know, subtle wiggling. Yes, I did. I don't feel like I understand the distinction between pliancy and workableness. There is a distinction. Pliancy is softness in the sense of being able to move easily, not being restricted in movement, whereas workableness is the balance between hard and soft. between firmness, and hard is not the right word, firmness, and softness, and tempered state of mind, and the right consistency of things.

[30:14]

So the opposite is excessive rigidity and one-sidedness, It's either this or it's that. One-sidedness means it's too hard or too soft or too flexible or too inflexible, but it's like finding the mean all the time. And Suzuki Roshi, as I said many times, says everything is constantly falling out of balance and finding its balance, moment by moment. everything is falling out of balance and landing on his feet, like a cat. So we have to, we can't count on, you know, what we did last moment. We can't rely on that.

[31:18]

The last moment sets up this moment, but this moment is independent. So when we set our posture, it doesn't mean that that's set because it's going to change. The next moment it's changed. So we have to find our balance even though it's subtle. We have to find that on each moment. And we have to keep going over all the points of our posture and asserting our effort and letting go of tenseness. Tension is necessary for everything. Nothing exists without tension. But tenseness is what's extra. Don't be tense, but find the tension. Attention. So it means come to the right tension. Come to the right present moment.

[32:25]

Find yourself in the present moment and adjust to it. Then the next one is proficiency. And proficiency is like fitness or competence or inner certainty or assurance, which comes through long practice. Proficiency is that kind of confidence that you have through many years of practice. And it gives you faith and spontaneity and assurance. And uprightness is the sixth one, which is sincerity, doing something for the right reasons, But it's also like posture, right?

[33:32]

Uprightness is not leaning to one side or another. It's like confidence and going straight and sitting. It's finding that center point, finding the balance all the time, balancing all the six factors. So tranquility and agility balance each other. Tranquility moderates agility and energizes and stimulates tranquility. Whereas workableness sets limits to pliancy. Pliancy is very soft, but workableness keeps it from just flowing all over the place.

[34:41]

It sets a limit to pliancy. And then uprightness prevents agility and pliancy from falling into insincerity. Because agility and pliancy are kind of like, can easily become the jesters. You know, they can take, they can easily become silly. Pliancy can, ha ha ha, you know, because it's so loose. The jester is very loose. And so is pliancy. So uprightness keeps them in check. And agility and pliancy take care that uprightness doesn't get rigid and unimaginative. You know, like... the good person, the upright Zen master, you know, who never smiles.

[35:54]

So you need to have some pliancy and agility to keep that from your uprightness getting rigid and conceded. And then proficiency gives sureness and smoothness to agility. So agility has some it fulfills itself through proficiency. And agility prevents proficiency from becoming over-specialized and habitually inflexible, limiting potentiality. So, there's a lot to think about. But these are very important factors and they just totally run through zazen.

[37:03]

Do you have a question? mind the vertebrae just exactly right. Don't sit upright. You don't need muscles. That really helped my Sazen a lot. The question, the first teacher I studied with, Joshu Sasaki Roshi, was more of the mmm. And when he gave the Sazen instruction, he told us to flare our nostrils. You will never become enlightened if you do not flare your nostrils. So for several years I tried flaring my nostrils without much success.

[38:19]

My question is, it seems like there's some place for that still. Flaring your nostrils? Yeah, and I can't... Flaring your nostrils doesn't mean to flare your nostrils, it means put in all of your effort. It's a kind of metaphor for exerting your total effort, which is true. In Zazen, total effort and softness. Effort includes softness. Effort includes flexibility. Effort includes workability. That's what effort is. It's not just flaring your nostrils. Flaring your nostrils has its place. Flaring your nostrils includes all those factors. Otherwise, You can't really practice Azan well, or live your life well.

[39:34]

Dragons, you know, throw their nostrils, they have fire coming out. But if you want to be a dragon, Dragons, you know, dragons live in the water. Dragons live in the deep water of tranquility. And they also breathe fire, you know. And then they have the whole range in between, both fire and water. And they're very earthy. And in order to have fire, you have to have air. And they fly. I admire Sasaki Roshi a lot. He says you have to flare your nostrils.

[40:39]

Suki Roshi said you should have strength here. So this is Soto Zen, you should have strength here. Renzai Zen is you should flare your nostrils. He's our God.

[41:12]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ