So I think it's appropriate to remind us of our attitudes and what we should be aware of for Cixin, as well as every moment of our daily life. Same thing. Cixin is life. And our daily life is no different from Sashin. It's just that the activities are maybe not the same, but the attitudes and understanding is the same. So, nothing special and everything is special. So every once in a while, I talk about the six qualitative factors of consciousness or awareness.

[01:19]

And I think you will remember them as I go on. I'll enumerate them. It's sometimes called the six pairs of qualitative factors. They come from the Abhidhamma side of the Dharma. The Abhidhamma is like the analytical side of Buddhism. Zen is more like the synthetical side. not so given to analysis, but more to awareness of the present moment, the oneness of things. Usually, or often, the Abhidhamma is considered like Hinayana, we say Hinayana, but we have to remember that Zen is also Hinayana practice.

[02:27]

So we don't criticize Hinayana practice, we actually incorporate it. As Suzuki Roshi used to say, we have a Hinayana practice with Mahayana mind. So Hinayana means narrow. Mahayana means narrow. So the narrow and the wide support each other. We don't really reject anything in the Dharma, in Buddhist Dharma, that is meaningful. But we rarely study the analytical side, as Berkley said. But it's very important, and the more I think about it, the more interesting it becomes. So when we were studying the eight levels of consciousness, which is more of a Mahayana understanding, the eight levels of consciousness are a part of, actually the touchstone for Vasubandhu's 100 dharmas, which are analytical.

[03:51]

So anyway, that's a little background. So I'm going to enumerate what these six factors are and then talk about them. Because they are definitely present in our zazen. So the first one is called tranquility. The second is called agility. In the Korean tradition, when they sit zazen, there's a saying, to leap like a tiger while sitting. That's agility. The third one is pliancy. The fourth one is workableness. The fifth one is proficiency. And the sixth one is uprightness. So you probably already, maybe I don't even have to say anything because you already know what they are, but I will.

[05:10]

So tranquility, Suzuki Roshi would talk about it more or less as composure. Always, he was talking about composure as the basis of our practice. is also necessary, but composure, he picked up composure as the thing that he talked about mostly. So composure is tranquility. Tranquility is like water, just very still. There are two terms, tranquility and serenity. Serenity is described as like a beautiful sunset where nothing is stirring and you feel this wonderful feeling of serenity.

[06:14]

Tranquility is like watching a beautiful pond that's all the way down to the bottom. So, actually being able to see all the way down to the bottom is really important. As soon as there are waves, they obscure. So, that's why, of course, Zazen is such a wonderful activity because it stills the waves of the mind So the opposite of tranquility is anxiety, agitation, restlessness, and worry.

[07:18]

These are considered impediments, but the more we worry about them, not so easy. So deep stillness or energy with control. And so it's also called, you know, it's in its deepest sense, is the result or the activity of nirvana. So we can equate nirvana with tranquility. That's the way it manifests. It's called the cool state. Nirvana is called the cool state. Some people say you cut off everything in order to have nirvana, but nirvana is simply a cool state where whatever comes up does not disturb you.

[08:37]

So it's kind of like imperturbability. And imperturbability is samadhi. So samadhi, imperturbability, and nirvana are the same thing, sort of. So we say we should have cool head and warm feet. Cool head and warm feet. So warm feet is like balances of Coolness does not mean cold. It means the balance of warmth and cold. The balance of heat and cold. You stop the fire on your head, as Buddha said.

[09:41]

Our head is burning. Our heads are on fire, so we need to cool our heads down, but not cold them, just cool them. So the fire is controlled. So Suzuki Roshi used to talk about the little wheel on the lamp. He talked about a smoky kerosene lamp. Because we used to have these kerosene lamps at Tassajara. We do to a certain extent, but now there's electricity. But we used to have these kerosene lamps. And adjusting the lamp was always, we had to always be aware of the lamp, adjusting the lamp. Because if the flame is too high, you don't see it as it's too high, but it starts to grow, and pretty soon it flames out. and the chimney gets all black, and you have to wash it out.

[10:47]

So how to control the light? The little doohickey that controls the wick. You lower it and raise it just enough so you get just the right amount of light without flaming out. That's Nirvana. Not too much of this and not too much of that. The perfect balance. So that tranquility. It's a steady, steady light. It doesn't flicker. It doesn't waver. As a matter of fact, wavering is with the waves, you know.

[11:49]

Too many waves is wavering, going back and forth. So you'd find the perfect balance. And when we sit, tazen, we say, be perfectly still. It's not like be perfectly still in order to torture yourself. The mind is not wavered by what is too painful or what is too pleasant, or what just seems disturbing. So this is composure, perfect composure. That's what our effort is, is to have perfect composure. As soon as you start fidgeting around or trying to escape, you create a big problem.

[13:06]

It's like a young colt. I remember, I used to turn on the TV, and there was this guy who was talking about the Bible all the time. But while he was talking, there were these wonderful scenes of horses and corrals. This was a couple of years ago. Was that the guy who had like four pair of glasses? Four what? He had like several pair of glasses on at once. Something like that, yeah. Anyway, then he had this picture, this movie of a young colt, and the colt barely touched the ground. It was marvelous to watch. Bouncing, bouncing, and you couldn't quite tell if he touched the ground. to be able to not get stuck in your own ideas, or your own preferences, or your own habits.

[14:53]

It's basically non-attachment. The ability to turn quickly to a wholesome object, when you're confronted with an unwholesome object. So it's buoyancy of mind. And buoyancy of mind leads to buoyancy of a body, actually, because the body follows the mind. Sometimes the mind follows the body, but mostly the body follows the mind. So it's also presence of mind. Agility is presence of mind. It's working with gravity in a way that is a balance between energy and gravity. Gravity is pulling everything down and energy is pulling everything up, pulling you up. So to release your energy so that you're up instead of being pulled down.

[16:03]

and to find that perfect balance. Because when we go up, we also have to go down. As we get older, it's harder to get up. And it's easier to stay down. So we have to make some effort to release the energy so that we have some buoyancy. So it's lightness. Lightness. So, you know, each one of these factors balances the other. And each factor balances all the other factors. So you can compare each and any of these two factors, and you can find that there's a balance between them, which is what makes everything work. So the third one is called pliancy, or flexibility, softness.

[17:11]

Suzuki Roshi used to talk about soft mind. Soft mind, not mushy mind, but flexible, flexible mind. It's not stuck in some place with rigidity. It's the opposite of rigidity. You know, when we sit dazen, We have to have flexible mind. But we often fall into rigidity. Stubbornness, basically. Stubbornness has two sides. One, I mean, it's got a wholesome side and an unwholesome side. The unwholesome side is sticking to your own opinions or sticking to your fears, sticking to your fears or your resistances. The good side is that stubbornness helps you to be consistent and to go forward when there's adversity or whatever.

[18:25]

So those are the two sides. So it's not actually determined to be one side or the other. But it's pliancy, flexibility, softness, soft mind, and open-mindedness. So you're willing to let stuff in and not just blocking. So the opposite is dogmatism, conceit, inflexibility. and hopeless obstruction. So resiliency, adaptability, like grass, you know, grass in the wind, grass bends over, and then when the wind is over, it comes back up.

[19:27]

So that's the basic example. will eventually crumble. Frank Lloyd Wright, you know, back in the early 20th century, there was a huge earthquake in Japan at the top of the Imperial Hotel. So Frank Lloyd Wright designed the new Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, and he built it in a way that it would move rather than be rigid. So the hotel is still standing as far as I know. And I don't know whether it's on, it's on some kind of moving base. I don't know whether it's wheels or what, rollers, something, some kind of roller. So yeah, he built it so it would move rather than just stand there and fall down.

[20:29]

Because the most immovable I figured that out. It's a koan. What happens when an indestructible force meets an immovable object? That's the koan of science. So we let things come and let things go without holding on to them. The fourth one So it's like a, well, it's like the soil. When you want to plant some vegetables or flowers, you have to make the soil workable.

[21:32]

So it has to be not compacted. So workableness is not too wet, not too dry. No grasping, no aversion. It's good form at the same time with ease. It's balance. It's the tempered state, it's like hot or too liquid, you can't work with it. And if it's too hard and too cold, you can't work with it. So it has to be exactly the right temper, temperature, temperament. You know, when you make a sword, you have to put it in the, you have to make it really hot

[22:42]

So, the tempered state of mind, actually, neither too firm nor too hard. I mean, neither too firm nor too soft. and to have the correct proportions for full functioning. So if you're making bread or cake, you have to have just the right consistency. When you have the right consistency, it turns out very well. Too much water, too much flour, or whatever. So it's all about balancing these factors.

[23:51]

So proficiency is the fifth one. Fitness and competence. It's the opposite of lack of competence. It's moral and mental health. Faith and competence through constant practice. So proficiency comes through constancy, basically. Constant practice and devotion to proficiency doesn't mean necessarily to do everything perfectly. We get hung up on perfection. It means to have faith and be proficient enough through constant practice to have faith in what you're doing. and to have confidence. You only have confidence when you have consistent practice over a long period of time.

[24:56]

So confidence is doing good or selfless actions. And it also opens the door for spontaneity. allows us to act. You know, when we have that kind of confidence, we can act spontaneously. Someone asks this question and we know what to say. Our intuition is open. The sixth one is uprightness. Sincerity, balance, posture. The posture of our mind and the posture of our body are the same thing. So posture is the example of practice.

[26:00]

If we put our effort into having good posture, The problem with uprightness, its opposite is insincerity and hypocrisy and pride. I'm good since then, you know. That kind of pride is the opposite. It's the near enemy, sort of, of uprightness. So, self-importance. But tranquility and uprightness together is a winning combination. But basically uprightness is important. Not leaning to the right, not leaning to the left.

[27:03]

to do. Not only that, it gives you a foundation for your practice. So the posture is the foundation of practice. It comes before breathing or anything else. You will breathe, don't worry. We just let breath happen. But we have to make an effort to sit upright. And the more you sit upright, and the more you allow yourself to do that, and keep coming back to it, the more comfortable We may think, well, it's more comfortable to sit with my back arched because it doesn't take so much effort. But actually, it does. It takes a lot more effort. When you practice sitting upright all the time, it becomes easy. It's the easy way. At first, it's harder because we're not used to that posture. Our postures are so conditioned. that to sit up straight seems unusual and awkward and unnatural.

[28:23]

I've had people tell me that sitting up straight feels unnatural. Of course, because the posture has been conditioned by adversity to lean into the wind, so to speak. So, Zazen is to resume our natural posture before conditioning, just like a baby. Baby's stomach goes like this. The baby doesn't breathe up here. Kid doesn't breathe up here. They breathe down here. You watch the tummies go like this. Same with animals. Animals don't breathe up here. They breathe down here. So our animal should be breathing here. And when we sit up straight, it's much easier for the breast to go down and for the body You feel comfortable and you say, gee, that's real tranquil.

[29:26]

It must be nirvana. But nirvana is illusive. That was fun. So I just want to say something about how these work together, these factors work together. So interrelation between the six pairs and how they apply to meditation and your daily life. So the following examples may suffice to illustrate the six pairs' mutual relations. Tranquility and agility balance each other.

[30:32]

Tranquility has a moderating influence on agility, in other words, It tempers agility so that agility doesn't just kind of jump all over the place. Agility has, because like the little horse, has to be trained, right? So the agility of our mind has to be trained, otherwise we're jumping all over the place and we're mouthing everything. and blabbing away. And we have to be trained to calm it down. And tranquility is a calming factor for agility. And tranquility has a moderate, an agility, a stimulating influence on tranquility. So, yes, if tranquility is left to itself, it becomes, it can become lethargic.

[31:34]

So we have to have some stimulating activity. That's why sitting up straight, paying attention to posture, gives tranquility some quickness. As we have seen, pliancy is a fundamental condition requirements of workableness set a limit to the degree of pliancy or softness desirable. So it allows workableness to be consistent. Pliancy is a fundamental condition of workableness. So workableness has to have pliancy. Well, the requirements of pliancy set a limit to the degree... the requirements of workableness set a limit to the degree of pliancy or softness desirable.

[32:42]

And uprightness prevents agility and pliancy of mind from falling into insincerity or playfulness. Well, agility and pliancy take care that uprightness does not grow unimaginative. So that's interesting. Unimaginative. We can become so rigid that we block our imagination. So imagination is really important. And imagination is important for intuition. Imagination opens up the door to intuition. So sometimes people say, well, Buddhism, you don't talk much about imagination. Two things that we don't talk about in Buddhism, one is love and the other is imagination.

[33:50]

That's not so. It's all about love. And imagination is a very important part. It's just that imagination needs control, more control so that it doesn't just kind of wander off in states of vanity. So, uprightness. prevents agility and pliancy of mind from falling into insincerity, while agility and pliancy take care that uprightness does not grow unimaginative, because agility and pliancy kind of stimulate imagination and impair the adaptability of wholesome consciousness to actuality.

[34:53]

So uprightness can lead to arrogance and righteousness. So these agility and pliancy are like the gestures in the court. They keep everything from getting too serious. Proficiency gives agility that sureness and smoothness of movement. implying the capacity to admit of modifications and changes, open to them, prevents proficiency from becoming an over-specialized and inflexible habit. You just become too good, too proficient, and then you lose your flexibility and your openness. and so limiting the adaptability as well as the potentialities of the mind.

[35:57]

So, I don't know if you remember any of that. If we keep this in mind during Zazen, it can extend into our daily life. We say that we don't practice Zazen for any special reason, which is true. We don't practice to gain anything, which is true. But this is not gaining something. that lead to freedom.

[37:04]

Balance is the most important thing. Balance and flexibility. Balance, uprightness, flexibility. Uprightness and flexibility are at the two ends. And to always keep them in balance. Uprightness and flexibility. Uprightness is this effort that you exert. And flexibility is the openness. And it keeps uprightness from being rigid. So when we sit Zazen, no rigidity at all. This is what we should be thinking about all the time that we're sitting Zazen. is how to not be rigid in this posture. How to be totally loose and flexible in this posture.

[38:09]

And the more upright we are, the more flexible and loose we can be. Because you're perfectly balanced. So you're seeking perfect balance. balancing all the parts of the body in a harmonious wholeness. And there's no tenseness at all. It's a perfect balance. That makes it easy. Because when you're not balanced, that makes it hard. When you're not balanced, then you have to compensate for the offness. And when you compensate for the offness, you create a tension. So, if I correct posture, I put one finger at the small of your back, and one finger on your chin, and go like this, and everything falls into balance.

[39:16]

It's not a difficult thing. It's not like, well, let's see this part, and I'll balance this part. No, it's all one piece. You pull one corner of the handkerchief, and the whole thing comes up, right? It all falls into place. As a matter of fact, this is what we do in our Oryoke. The way we handle the Oryoke cloths, the wiping cloths, and of course all the other corners, is with two fingers. Two fingers and a thumb. So we have the bowl, and we're going to wipe the bowl. So we pick up the wiping cloth with two fingers and a thumb, and the whole thing falls into place. It's perfectly natural, hanging. the weight of the glass, and the size of the glass, and all falls into place. And then you lay it over the bowl, and you put your thumb inside the bowl, and then you move the bowl. and in this wonderful concentrated activity.

[40:30]

So, people often think that Zazen is simply letting go, which is great, it is letting go. But in order to let go, you have to have something to catch, whatever it is that you let go. So you catch the emptiness in your posture. Posture is everything. sitting upright, even though you can't do that. If you can't do that, you do what you can do. Whatever, whichever posture you're able to do, you work on balancing the factors within that situation. If I have to sit in a chair and I balance all the factors that are different than sitting on the cushion and so that I can find the balance between all those factors in that situation.

[41:35]

If you have to lie down, then you find what are the factors in that situation and you balance those. So you're always looking for the balance and the harmony, the balance and harmony. So there's no posture that's wrong posture. And you can apply the balance of the factors and the effort in any posture. It just so happens that the sitting posture, which has a nice triangle, is the most stable. When you serve food on the floor to students, we should get down on two knees or one knee, okay? Either two knees or one knee.

[42:37]

If you're squatting, you can be pushed over. Sometimes when I see somebody squatting, I want to push them over. you're watching. So we're always looking for the stable position. Walking, standing, sitting zazen, working in the kitchen, whatever you're doing, you're always looking for the stable position. If you're not doing that, you're unaware. So awareness is always finding the stable position. every moment's activity. That's what distinguishes you from someone who's not aware. That's Zen practice, basically.

[43:39]

two hands on the cup because then the cup, you and the cup become one. This is like I'm holding a cup, but this is the cup and myself are one. I'm totally holding the cup. And the cup is holding me. The cup is holding me. The cup is telling me what to do. Just like with Oreoke, ordinary, so-called ordinary cereal tastes different. The oatmeal just has a different flavor. Not that it's different, it's just that we experience it, and it's more fully.

[45:01]

So anyway, time.

[45:04]

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