I want to speak today about the transformative aspects of zazen, this practice of sitting meditation we've just been doing. And partly I want to follow up on the talk Douglas gave a couple of Monday evenings ago about practicing with anger and talk about, more generally, about the what we call the three poisons of Buddhism, greed, hate, and delusion, and practicing with them kind of an overview. This practice of Zazen we do in the tradition, Soto Zen tradition we're in, founded by Dogen in Japan in the 13th century, and then the branch we're affiliated with of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in the San Francisco Zen Center. We talk a lot sometimes about non-gaining attitude.

[01:04]

to just sit, not trying to get anything from our sitting, just offering our sitting to Buddha, just sitting for the benefit of all beings, just to see what is this body-mind on our Kushner chair this morning without some idea of getting something from it. Our usual way of being in the world is to try and get stuff from what we do to manipulate the world to get something or to get rid of something we don't want. And this is other than that. So we talk about not trying to sit with some particular goal or some limited goal. that we're not sitting just for ourselves alone, we sit together to benefit all beings. And we, through this practice, see the deep, start to see, glimpse the deep interconnectedness of all being and how we are connected and not separated, really, from everything else.

[02:17]

So we get a taste of that in the sitting. We start to sense and even trust this underlying Buddha nature. But practically speaking, we all as human beings also have this long karmic patterns of and habits of what are called the three poisons, greed, hate and delusion. So to say that we don't to talk about non-gaining attitude and not trying to get something particular from a sitting doesn't mean that the sitting is meaningless or purposeless. And in fact, it is transformative, personally as well as collectively. And we start to see that, actually. So how does that work? What is that about? Dogen talks about

[03:18]

Studying the way is studying the self. Studying the self is actually forgetting the self. But studying the self is our main practice. So in this sitting, in our zazen, even in long periods of zazen, a few of us, some of us practiced for, sat for three days last weekend. What's difficult is not getting your legs into some funny position or dealing with some pain in your knees or your shoulders or your back or whatever. That can be challenging to face that discomfort. But what's really difficult and what's really transformative is to be present with this self, to study this self, to and to study the self yogically. This is a yogic practice. This is a practice of body and mind, to see what this body and mind is, to be willing to be present and upright and face what is happening on our cushion.

[04:28]

So, again, I want to kind of give an overview of how this is transformative. not according to some idea we might have of getting enlightenment or something like that, but in terms of actually being willing to face the realities of our own particular patterns of greed and anger and confusion. Through that, so this goes back to very early Buddhist practice, the early Theravada Buddhist practice to the Abhidharma teaching, which is sometimes described as a kind of Buddhist psychology, maybe it is that, but it's more like, again, yogically, not analyzing, or analyzing based on what we actually experience when we're willing to sit upright and be present.

[05:30]

So the purpose of the sitting is to relieve suffering, to help everyone, to help ourselves and everyone else to enter into the path towards awakening. Awakening is not some thing to get in the future. Awakening is this ongoing process that we're involved with. And part of what we need to awaken to is our own patterns of greed, anger, and confusion. And in these early Buddhist teachings, they talk about how to transform these. And there's one way of talking about this, that all of us are, some people specialize in one or the other of these three. Some people are greed types, some people are anger types, some people are confusion types. Of course, we all have some of all three. But how does this transform? So, it may be useful to study this, these early Buddhist

[06:35]

teachings of mind and transformation. Again, this to me is part of what goes on when we do this practice of just sitting and studying the self. But I want to look a little bit at each of these three, again just as a kind of overview, and see what is involved and what is And each of these has transformed or transformative qualities. Each of these has a positive. So these are negative, we could say negative emotions, negative patterns, but each of them can transform in a very positive way. So since Douglas spoke about anger, I'll start with that. So the precept about this in our Bodhisattva precepts, our precepts for awakening beings that some of us take formally and that we all benefit from as we sit is that a disciple of Buddha does not harbor ill will. Some early translations talk about not getting angry.

[07:38]

That's not possible, actually, for human beings. We do feel aversion or negative responses. We do feel desire or positive responses. Or sometimes we feel neutral. So the point of our practice is not to harbor ill will, not to make a harbor of it, not to, when anger arises, how do we practice with it so that we don't turn it into ill will, resentment or hatred. This applies obviously personally but also applies in terms of how societies function and how we can make big problems in the world with this. And also it applies to this body-mind on your cushion or chair. So how do we avoid turning our upset or anger for our frustration into resentment and ill-will?

[08:46]

Well, one place to start is to see that, and perhaps this is true of all three poisons, but certainly for anger, that this is about some underlying pain. We feel anger in some ways, sometimes to cover up or sometimes as a response to a reaction from some hurt, some pain. This is, again, going back to early Buddhism, the first noble truth, it's called, is that there is dissatisfaction or pain in the world. Not even just from old age, sickness and death, but in terms of how we react to it. So how do we turn, how do we, first of all, just to see that when we feel anger that we're feeling some pain or some hurt, and then when someone

[09:50]

expresses anger, maybe even directs it to you, to see that underneath that there's some hurt, there's some pain. How do we respond to that? How do we hear that? So in terms of, again, and I'm just kind of giving an overview of these three today, and I hope we'll have some time for discussion, Anger particularly, there's a lot of energy. When we feel mistreated or hurt or in pain, we can feel this energy of anger and we can get self-righteous about it and so forth, but it's tremendously energetic. So the practice, again, studying the self, just being present and willing to face what's going on in our body and mind, is to witness that, to see that, to see that there's this energy and to see that underneath it there's some hurt, some sadness, some pain that allows us to bring forth our own anger.

[11:05]

And then, again, the guideline of the precept is, well, how do we not turn that into a harbor of ill will? How do we not turn that into hatred? Again, this applies individually, it applies in terms of our interactions, and it applies in our world, in our society. So I think the first thing is just to see it, just to witness it, to not rush to transform it. How this transformation happens is through our awareness So one of my slogans is that awareness is transformative. This is basic Buddhist teaching, that we, as we're sitting here in zazen, being present and upright, facing the wall, facing ourselves, seeing what's happening, enjoying our inhale and exhale, and thoughts and feelings arise and we let them go.

[12:07]

and then more of them come up and you may hear sounds and so forth. Being present in here, how do we see this self? How do we become intimate and friendly with the person on your cushion or chair right now? This is our practice. So when I say that there are transformed qualities of this, this is not about trying to arrange or manipulate some transformation. Dogen says that studying the self is forgetting the self. This happens not according to our ideas of how we should do this or what we should get in the future or some delusion of enlightenment, but by actually awareness itself. Just to pay attention.

[13:09]

So in our style of Zen practice, we don't go around hitting people with sticks to wake you up or anything like that. Sometimes during longer sittings, I'll go around and make postural suggestions. It's not even a correction. It's just like, oh, notice this about your posture. But as we're sitting, being present, studying the self, something happens, and we can start to see what's going on. And it shifts, and so what can happen with anger, if we're willing to pay attention to it, to see the pain underneath it, to own our own anger, is that this transforms in particular ways. So each of these three can transform in particular ways. Using that energy of anger, first we this can transform into seeing clearly. How do we see the situation that allows us to feel anger?

[14:16]

How do we look at it and look at it in its complexity, including our own part of it and including, you know, if there's some situation of harm in the world that we want to respond to, how do we see it clearly? That's the first step. And anger does have that potential, that energy of anger. And then the second part is a kind of commitment, resolve. You can decide, oh, I want to respond to this situation somehow. I want to pay attention, first of all, just to pay attention to it. And then see, oh, what can we, what can be done to change or help the situation of suffering going on, the pain underneath it. And then the third part is then actually responding, and that's very subtle. Our tendency from anger is to react, to lash out, to speak in angry ways.

[15:27]

There are all kinds of ways. We each have our own ways of doing that. But actually, if somebody is having a hard time, how do you help them to respond in a way that's more helpful? How do you find a way to respond in a way that they might hear and that where it's possible to work together towards benefiting beings, instead of the harm that might be there? So that's just a little bit about anger. Again, I appreciated Douglas' talk a couple of Monday nights ago. There's lots to say about each of these, and I wanted to just kind of give an overview this morning. And we can talk more about them. The second poison they're called is greed. Sometimes it's talked about in terms of lust, desire, wanting.

[16:29]

So one description of greed or craving can become from early Buddhism. The term craving includes not only, or sometimes translated as thirst, includes not only desire for and attachment to sense pleasures, wealth, and power, but also desire for and attachment to ideas and ideals, views, opinions, theories, conceptions, and beliefs. we can get attached and desire our opinions or views or our beliefs. So this also becomes a source of craving, in a way, to impose our desires or viewpoints According to the Buddha's analysis, all the troubles and strife in the world, from little personal quarrels and families to great wars between nations and countries, arose out of this selfish thirst for craving.

[17:35]

From this point of view, all economic, political and social problems are rooted in this selfish thirst. great statesmen who try to settle international disputes and talk of war and peace, only in economic and political terms, touch the superficialities, never go deep into the real root of the problem. The Buddha said, the world lacks an anchorage and is enslaved to this thirsty craving. So, in some ways anger comes from pain. This thirst or craving comes from lack, some sense of longing or yearning or something missing. And there are various ways to work with this. Again, something to study. So in terms of the problem of lust, for example, one way that this can transform, again that has its own energy, is to devotion and greed in general can turn, whereas anger turns towards commitment and seeing clearly, greed can be transformed when we are willing to study it to devotion, to commitment.

[18:52]

That energy we have based on desire can turn towards spiritual aims, spiritual objects, we can turn our desire for sense pleasures or for material things to a desire to appreciate Buddha. So I think a lot of the, you know, and Buddha, it doesn't just mean the wooden statue on the altar there. It means this possibility of awakeness in ourselves and all beings, so we can become devoted, we can become devotees of Buddha. And I think the whole history of Buddhist art, the images of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and disciples are examples for people to see. And maybe going back to times when there was, when people couldn't read, but just they could see an image of Buddha. Look at that, look at that, this person sitting uprightly, serene, smiling, maybe a tiny bit, settled, calm.

[20:02]

So this practice we do is actually to emulate that. And we can turn our energy of desire to that, to devotion to that. This body of Buddha that, again, is not just the images we see of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, but is something we can feel when we are willing to sit upright and be present. So like anger and turning towards hatred, greed can become, desire can become a very destructive thing. When we turn desire towards craving, then we become, we can become rapacious, we can become grasping and think that we need to do whatever we can to get what we desire. It's possible to turn that energy again towards caring and devotion.

[21:09]

And in our society, as this early Buddhist teacher, well, quoting from the sutras and Dhammapada, what Polarula talks about this, the troubles and strifes in the world. And so this is a problem, you know, in our society today. In addition to the way in which there is violence and cruelty all over in our society, There's also this greed run wild in terms of how our society is organized. So this can be transformed too, but it's obviously, you know, maybe not in our lifetimes. That doesn't mean that our attention to it won't make a difference. So I want to encourage all of you, there was a wonderful teach-in that happened in the United States Senate on Friday.

[22:15]

Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent, he's neither a Democrat or a Republican, was filibustering against the current bill that would give incredible, keep incredible tax breaks for the very, very wealthy. And in our society, the very, very wealthy have acted based on this, you know, amazing greed to, so that, you know, the percentage, I forget the percentages, but what the top 1% of people in our country own 25% of the wealth, this top 1% own as much as the bottom 50%, there's this tremendous disparity in our society and it's increasing more and more. And this bill in Congress that Senator Bernie Sanders was talking about would increase that and make it worse. And when I talk about this stuff, I'm not talking about politics. I'm talking about from the point of view of basic Buddhist ethics from precepts.

[23:22]

How do we benefit all beings? How do we act to take care of beings, to recognize the suffering of the world, to try and respond? Anyway, this guy Bernie Sanders spoke for eight or nine hours nonstop on the Senate floor just standing with just water to make his point. And I call it a teach-in because you can Google it or find this speech on Huffington Post. or other places online and watch it. And you don't have to watch all eight hours, but even a little bit of it, very instructive. He was really talking about what's going on in our economy, in our society, reading letters from people in his state of Vermont and other states who are suffering badly. And I know the problems in our economy have affected people in our sangha, too, very much. How do we respond to this kind of greed?

[24:27]

that can cause so much damage in our own lives, in our own interpersonal actions, but also in our society. How do we pay attention to it? And again, I think just being aware is in itself transformative. So again, I encourage you to look for any of the, listen to any of Bernie Sanders' talk Friday. How do we turn our own sense of lack and craving? When I talk about the top 1% of the wealthy people, it's not that all of them are acting in this extremely greedy way. the systems of the banks and the weapons corporations and the oil companies and so forth seem to be causing so much damage to our whole world. And yet, of course, there are very, very wealthy people on the top, you know, whatever, one half of 1% who are doing very many good things.

[25:36]

And one clear example is Bill Gates, who has tremendous resources and is using them and really studying how to use them in trying to help people around the world and doing many wonderful philanthropic things. So even in our society, this kind of greed can be transformed. He's not the only one. There are many very wealthy people who are trying to act in a responsible way for the benefit of all beings. So it's not that everybody should have the same income or whatever. But in terms of our own sitting and our own life and our own practice, how do we see our own patterns of grasping? How do we acknowledge the pain from our own sense of lack? This can transform. So Bill Gates is expressing in other very wealthy people devotion to taking care of others, taking care of the whole planet.

[26:41]

And we can do this in our own way, too. So again, this is the transformed quality of greed. The third one is delusion or confusion. Sometimes this is talked about in terms of laziness. We can feel, so in our sitting, we sometimes feel kind of foggy, you know. This happens. This is, you know, we may feel sleepy. So, you know, we can feel these qualities in our sitting. We can feel our own pain and kind of reactive, you know, anger against. We can feel our own desires, and desires are natural. We all have things we appreciate and want, How do we not act in a greedy, grasping way based on them? And then with the third poison, delusion or confusion, it usually feels like sluggishness, laziness.

[27:50]

We're just in a fog and we don't know what to do and we can, one possible reaction to the suffering in our own life or in the lives around us or in our society is just a kind of retreat into that kind of fog, to feel overwhelmed, to feel like there's nothing I can do, to feel like I don't want to look at that. And of course we all do need to take rests and breaks and nurture So that's another part of Zazen, is how do we support that which is constructive and positive? And how do we nurture our own energy to continue to sustain paying attention? So for those of you who are just sitting for the first time here this morning, I do encourage you to do this regularly, several times a week, even just 15, 20 minutes, or even 10 minutes, to stop and sit.

[28:52]

face the wall, face yourself, be upright. And what is it like? Feel how you feel. Be present with this body and mind. It's okay, actually, the underlying connectedness or Buddha nature or non-separation that we start to glimpse is about how there is a wholeness to our individual lives and our lives together, and even to our world. And then these three poisons are that which obstruct that, which get in the way. So the third one, this confusion or delusion, this kind of sluggishness or torpor, this feeling of, oh, I don't want to, whatever, I don't want, I'm going to stay, I'm going to just check out. Again, this doesn't mean don't take breaks and don't do things that you enjoy. Quite the contrary. This confusion can actually transform to kind of clear analysis, to actually paying attention to the aspects of what's going on, to really thinking about them in details, to listing positive and negative aspects.

[30:12]

There are various ways that you can actually work with this. to actually pay attention in a detailed way to what's going on. This is the kind of antidote and the transform quality of this third poison, so-called, of confusion or delusion. So, again, our basic practice is just to sit, just to be present, just to be, to commune with this underlying non-separation, this underlying connectedness in Buddha nature to see how we're connected with everything in the world and to see how we're connected with each other. But practically speaking, as human beings, we all have these qualities, these negative qualities. Maybe it's too much even, maybe it's extreme to call them negative qualities. They're just part of who we are and how we are as human beings. How do we pay attention to them? Not trying so you know, by mentioning these transformed qualities, I'm not saying you should go try and fix them and change them, you know, because your efforts to do that could be more just manipulation or desire.

[31:25]

Yeah, I want to get rid of my desire. Yeah, I want to get rid of my anger. That's not it exactly. How do we study the Self, as Douglas says? Settle into being present and upright and be willing to look at the pain that allows us to hold on to anger and turn it into hatred or resentment or ill will? How do we just sit and look at our desires and then see how we can turn them into craving and grasping and act in a negative way from that? How do we look at our own confusion and be willing to look at it and say, oh yeah, what is What's going on here? What is underlying this? How can I find the energy to actually pay attention to my life? So these are not like instructions that you need to remember or do.

[32:28]

These are the aspects of our underlying wholeness that naturally can express themselves in our ongoing, sustained sitting and Of course, obviously we're talking about Zazen itself, but also how that awareness then expresses in our everyday activity, in our interactions, in our responses to the world and so forth. So maybe that's enough for me to say to kind of give a kind of opening to this material. And again, thank you, Douglas, for inspiring this by talking about one of the poisons. Does anyone have any questions, responses, comments? Please feel free. Yes, Alex.

[33:30]

The idea that you presented about Bernie Sanders' take on greed, and the idea of right knowing being if you are raised within the system, you also have the ability to see, you know, despite being raised within the system, seeing what, you know, negative qualities the system might have and you have a certain responsibility to Yeah, so the response to confusion is to actually study what's going on, to pay attention in a kind of detailed, meticulous way. So this applies to, you know, in the case of Bernie Sanders talking about the greed that's corrupted our society, but it applies to ourselves and to interpersonal things when we're when we see that we're caught in some greed or craving, to look at that and to study it, to look at it carefully, to kind of look at the different pieces of it, to kind of analyze it, take it apart.

[34:53]

So this is a positive use of discriminating consciousness. So I often talk about how true Buddha awareness is deeper than our discriminating consciousness, but actually in the context of this third poison, to look closely and carefully at the details of how we're caught in, why we're not willing to look at some aspect of our life, or why we kind of fog up when we think about some situation in our life. So yeah, this is a place for looking at the details. Yes, Lauren? So I think it's really helpful to ask yourself the question, am I greed, anger, or delusion? And so when I was asked that question, I instantly knew I was greed.

[35:55]

It's like, instantly. And it helped me think about just the way I am. So things that I do that are harmless, that are in that category, keep a list of all the birds I've ever seen in my whole life. It's kind of great, right? It's, it's acquisitive, but it's fine. It's not a bad thing. It's just a thing about myself. And so, uh, I could probably name many things like that that are okay. It's like getting to know how you work, and it helps you work with the parts that you do want to transform. I do think Zazen is transformative in a non-conscious way, but we also work on ourselves in a conscious way, so bringing this stuff to consciousness helps me. Like I would say, 80% greed, 15% anger, and 5% confusion. So things, a kind of greed that would be

[36:56]

I mean, even the first kind of Zen that I practiced had that sort of looking for tensho, looking for awakening, that sort of plugging into that part of me. Soto is much less in that direction. Anyway, I think it's helpful. It's like, I don't know, like those personality test or something, just helps you think about yourself. So thank you. You're welcome, yeah. I mean, there are various Buddhist typologies. Some people are into astrology or enneagrams or whatever, but we can look at greed, anger, and delusion types. We can look at the, my Bodhisattva book was partly to look at aspects of spirituality and are you a Jizo type or a Manjushri type or whatever? We could do it, we could look that way. But yeah, we all have, again, some of all three,

[38:12]

But you also, and mentioning the kind of aspect, the schools of Zen that are what Trump called spiritual materialists and trying to get something, to get some satori experience, and that's gotta be the point. And maybe for people who are real greed types, that helps to think of something you're gonna get. I want to encourage you even in our, you all, even in our, approach to Zen practice that there is some transformative positive quality that happens, but it doesn't happen based on our trying to grasp it and pushing ourselves to do it. But, Laurel, excuse me for saying so, but in terms of your talking about being a greed type, I talked about the transformed quality of that as devotion. In terms of your commitment and devotion to practice and to our Sangha, which has been very helpful, you're demonstrating how that has transformed in your life and how practice has affected you, so thank you very much for that.

[39:22]

But I wish there were a positive word for greed, that you could do it in a positive way. I was sitting here struggling for what is that positive word for that impulse that doesn't have to be negative. I mean, is it something like striving? Well, I would say devotion. Maybe there's other words for devotion, too, but that's the positive side of that. Yes, Kathy? Can I just suggest a word for that is fundraising? So for those of you who don't know, Laurel is the head of our fundraising for our Sangha and has shifted her desire towards trying to support our Sangha and been very skillful at that. So thank you, Laurel. But, you know, so Donna giving generosity is another way of talking about the transformed quality of desire.

[40:29]

Our practice of dharma is about giving and receiving. So, as making dharma available, we are giving the dharma and then we are also happy to receive support in other ways. So, through people's efforts and work or through donations. But giving, generosity, giving and receiving is a kind of, maybe that's another transformed quality of desire, to give back. Their comments, responses, questions, please feel free. Yes, Roy? Your description of delusion or confusion was, as speaking of torpor or that aspect of it, was new to me and it made me wonder if That would also encompass kind of the way we can sleepwalk through life in some sort of zombie-like state where there isn't any freshness, but rather it's just muddling through.

[41:39]

Very much so. Yeah, so people so-called in the world, this isn't just our society, this goes back to the Buddha, worldlings it's sometimes translated as, who are caught in trying to acquire or get rid of or caught in greed, hate and delusion. Don't pay attention to this. our Buddhist practice, the beginning of Buddhism, is to actually look at this and to bring our lives alive. So to awareness, to pay attention, even though I encourage gentle zazen, to not push to get something out of it, to change your leg position during the middle of a zazen period if you need to, to sustain a kind of gentle awareness, there is attention and awareness that's required. So when we start in the process, there's a process, there's a living process, a path of paying attention to our life.

[42:51]

And this actually brings our life to life. So the sluggishness of people walking through their lives, just doing what what's still inside doing what they do just to be nothing more than something they invest in, to not really enjoy your breathing, to not really enjoy your friends and family and loved ones, to not really enjoy the work you do and the parts of it that are enjoyable, to not enjoy the beautiful snow falling outside in Chicago today, even though it may be inconvenient to travel through it. How do we pay attention to our lives? So yeah, the non-attention is kind of confusion, delusion, torpor, sluggishness. And we are all susceptible to that. We all have some part of that. And our practice and our zazen is about starting to look at that to pay attention. Thank you.

[43:47]

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