Well, this being the first day of our Rahatsa Sashi, I want to talk about Zazen. And I've chosen to talk about Zazen in conjunction with the seven factors of enlightenment, or the seven factors of awakening. this very ancient method, not a method exactly, but inclusion of the various important points that all together practiced awaken us.

[01:03]

So, if we practice these various factors in our daily life and in Zazen, this is, I believe, what Dogen would appreciate as practice enlightenment. I've talked about this before, but many years ago, I talked about a whole lot of things in a kind of cyclical way, but by the time the cycle comes around again, it's as if I hadn't done it before. But maybe many of you remember. These seven factors are also called the seven limbs of enlightenment because

[02:07]

It's like a tree with seven limbs, and our body-mind is the tree, and these are the limbs. What gives the tree its fullness? So, I'll just tell you the list, and then I'll talk about each one. The first one is mindfulness. The second one is investigation. The third one is effort. The fourth one is ease. The fifth one is joy, which you'll be happy to know. The sixth is concentration. And the seventh is equanimity. And some of these fall into pairs.

[03:12]

So the first one is mindfulness. Mindfulness is also called recollection. Mindfulness means paying attention to what you're doing. And in practice it means, is this practice? How do I practice? Am I straying from practice? And if I am, what is it? And what good does it do? So this is like always coming back, always recollecting, what am I doing? But what am I doing is also a wonderful call. What am I doing?

[04:17]

Who's doing what? What is doing? So all these kinds of questions are very simple and they don't stray very far and they're very meaningful. So in Zazen, what am I doing? When we sit in our attention is carried away by dreams. And dreams, you know, are not just when we're sleeping, although often we're sleepwalking. So the recollection is, oh, my mind is awake. Let go and come back. Oh, my mind is wandering. Let go and come back. Gee, I'm really tired of my mind wandering and coming back over and over again.

[05:21]

Is this Zazen? Yes. No matter how many times you stray, you come back. Maybe someday you will not stray so much, but our human nature is to stray. So we have to make some effort to stay concentrated. There's three of those factors right there. Concentration, effort. So Mindfulness in Zazen is to continually come back to what we're doing. Continuously come back to what we're doing.

[06:26]

And since we're not reading or listening or speaking and just sitting in this position, it has to be pretty vital in order for us to actually do Zazen. So what do we do? What do we come back to in satsang? We come back to our posture and our breathing. I know that we all know this. We've known it for forever. So why do we have to talk about it? Because we always need to be reminded and be refreshed. especially when we're entering into this seven days of mindfulness. So I was thinking this morning, looking around the Zen Dome, we keep coming back to the most fundamental thing, which is posture.

[07:39]

The most fundamental thing is posture. And there are two aspects of posture. Now, not everyone can sit in the same way, you know. Some people have very good flexibility and so forth. Some don't. Some people have to sit in a chair. Some have to lie down. At the same time, each one of us has a body, and the body is present. As long as the body is present, there is some kind of posture. That is, what do we do with our body? No matter whether it's healthy or not healthy, or tired or strong, we have to do something with our body. So, we're really all in the same place. If we're physically able, we hold our posture straight.

[08:46]

Not leaning to the right or the left. Not leaning forward or backward. Making sure that our head is on top of our spine. Not leaning forward like this. Not letting our movement sag. Not letting our back sag. You know, this has to do with virya. or effort and ease. The combination of effort and ease. Effort and ease are the two factors that keep our posture comfortable. Often we feel that passive. Meditation is a kind of passive activity. Or passive non-activity. But actually, it's not zazen.

[09:52]

Zazen is making the effort. It doesn't matter what it looks like. You're making the effort. It's zazen. When we're no longer making the effort, it's something else. So sometimes people say, well, what isn't zazen? Am I doing zazen? As long as we are making the effort, it's not a... you can't judge the result. My mind is always very busy. I can't sit up straight for very long. As long as you're making the effort, it doesn't matter. You can't judge whether it's good or bad. So... Not only over and over again do we recollect our mental activity to bring it back to the posture, we make the effort to sit up straight. And so, as I say, when you sit down in this seat, give yourself Zazen instruction.

[10:59]

How would you do Zazen instruction to somebody? If you can't give Zazen instruction to yourself, you can't give it to somebody else. So you should give Zazen instruction to yourself. Continuously. For seven days, all you're doing is giving yourself Zazen instruction. How do you do that? Sit up. Push your lower back forward. Raise your... ...abdomen. Keep your head on top of your spine. Don't lean forward or backward. Don't lean from side to side. And yet, the posture ten minutes later, oh yeah, it's all different. So, part of recollection, mindfulness, bring it back. So people say, well you're not supposed to move in zazen. Well, you do move in zazen. Micromanage. People don't like this word micromanage. The boss makes me micromanage.

[12:04]

You micromanage your Zazen. It's not like you make your Zazen perfect, because you can't. As soon as you make it perfect, it changes. So it's always changing. Zazen posture is always changing. So it's not like sitting like a stone, even though you sit like a rock. Sitting like a rock does not mean that Nothing changes. Rocks are also changing. So we're always micromanaging. Then we go to work, pick it up, start to fall asleep, open your eyes. So making, continuously making the effort to set up strength. And when we do that, this effort And there's also ease. Ease means that is the so-called passive side, effort is the active side.

[13:14]

So Zazen is both active and passive at the same time. So our effort should be to sit up straight and let go. Sitting up straight and letting go at the same time. So that there's no stiffness or tenseness. Tense. There's a difference between tenseness and tension. Tension is the effort that's needed to keep the form correct. Everything exists in tension. In one kind or another. Tenseness is what's not necessary. tenseness is holding on to yourself so when we get when we don't know what to do we hold on to ourselves and that's we get very tense it doesn't help so over and over we keep letting go of the tenseness and retain the tension

[14:18]

Retaining the tension by keeping a proper posture and at the same time letting go of the tenseness in your upper back. You can feel, oh my back is sore or something. Let all the tenseness drain out of your body. You can drain out through your arms or just let it get big. Instead of, tenseness makes us small. Letting go makes us big. So there's no limit. So if we sit up straight, lifting up your sternum doesn't mean it's right on your chest. It simply means it helps your back, your lower back to help you sit up straight. And if you can concentrate on just that effort the whole period, the period will go by very quickly. And you have good energy.

[15:23]

Because when you open yourself like that, you induce energy. When you're closed down, you don't induce energy. You block energy. So we want to induce energy by just totally opening up. Totally without fear. Defenseless. So we sit with our face to the wall and our backs. to this space, defenseless. And then you just open yourself completely. This is what we should be thinking of in mindfulness, as mindfulness. Not straying from this. If we stray, we come back. And not blaming ourselves for straying. You shouldn't feel so good by yourself. You're not making any effort.

[16:25]

But if you're making effort, there's no way to judge whether it's good or bad. So the investigation generally means, you know, this is like Samatha Vipassana. Vipassana means investigation. Samatha is like Samadhi, stopping. And Vipassana is deeply looking. So in this case of Zazen, what we're investigating is not trying to investigate good or bad or various levels of concentration, simply going over our posture all the time. How is my back?

[17:31]

How is my mudra? When you're concentrating on the mudra, the mudra is in the foreground and the rest is in the background. But it's all there. So sometimes We're just going from one point to another of our posture, examining our posture, investigating our posture, the points of posture. It's very much in connection with concentration. Concentration and investigation. going over all the points of our posture from time to time and making sure that everything is in place. So, effort and ease, I've talked about that, but this is our effort.

[18:58]

Without this effort, there's no tanzen. I also wanted to say, if you're sitting in a chair, there are various ways to do that. If your back is in good shape, don't lean against the back of the chair when you're sitting tanzen. If your back gets tired, you can lean against the back of the chair. But if your back is in good condition, if it's possible, put your feet flat on the floor and sit down without leaning on the back of the chair. But you have to judge what your capability is. Whatever it is, it's your body. And you have to find the way, best way to do that. So there's no judgment. Just simply find the way that works for you.

[20:02]

But if you can sit without leaning, that's very good. If you're lying down, lying down. You go to sleep when you're lying down. That's one reason why we sit up. So we don't go to sleep. If I were to lie down, it's awesome. I don't go to sleep like that. I remember Charlotte's over in there. That's really weird. Yeah. Everybody's lying down. But you have to find I don't know how to stay awake if I'm lying down. So I congratulate anybody who can do it. But if you can do that, that's fine.

[21:07]

So we find a way. But the effort has to be there. And also the letting go, the ease. So too much effort leads to strain and tiredness. And too little effort leads to sloth and tiredness. So how do you find that balance? It takes effort to sit up, but what we're looking for is not strain, but simply balance. You don't lean to the left, you don't lean to the right, you don't lean forward, you don't lean back. You find a balance, moment by moment, moment by moment. So actually we're living moment by moment.

[22:11]

in Zazen. One moment, one moment. And each one of those moments is a total moment of awakening. So Zazen is straying and awakening, sleeping and awakening, dreaming and awakening. So continuously waking up, moment by moment. And each moment is a moment of awakeness. This is what Dogen says, Zazen and enlightenment Are the same thing? Yes. You said he's awesome. But you may say, I don't feel like him. I don't feel like him. It's because he has an idea. So, when we can sit in that way, then we feel the joy of satsang.

[23:21]

You know, joy, we talk about jumping for joy. Jumping while sitting. True joy is not something that comes and goes. It's like a deep river that's in natural buoyancy. And when we set up the conditions, that joy arises. When the conditions are there, joy arises. We're setting up the conditions for joy and enlightenment. But the joy has to be experienced through all the difficulties.

[24:23]

You know, we do have difficulties when we sit. Our legs are in pain, sometimes our back, sometimes this and that. And since we sit through with those difficulties, we can only do it by letting go. So, when we actually sit in this way, we have Samadhi. concentration. Concentrating on what? We have flat concentration, one-pointed concentration when we're investigating parts of our posture. And then we have wide concentration when we're not concentrated on anything in particular.

[25:33]

So there's one pointed concentration and wide concentration. Wide concentration is when there's no particular point of concentration, but everything is present within your concentrated state. So if I just leave eyes open, without looking at something in particular, even though something is there, then the vision goes very wide. So this wide vision is one important aspect of concentration. And since there's no particular object everything is equal. When we pick out one point, then that one point is in contrast to some other point.

[26:45]

But when we don't have any particular point of concentration other than our body-mind and our surroundings, then There's no discrimination. This is a concentration of equality. Everything here is totally equal, even though it's all different. So this is an important aspect of letting go. to be able to simply sit without thinking about something outside of what we're doing and cease the thought of something that's our only thought and open our eyes and everything's there but there's nothing in particular that stands out

[27:53]

Then the seventh factor is equanimity. Equanimity means all things are equal. When we keep our eyes open and with a wide concentration we have equanimity. Nothing is any more important than anything else. If you have pain it's no more important than if you don't have pain. We give it special importance. As long as we don't give it special importance we can be quite comfortable. But we tend to attach. Attach to pain. not opposites.

[29:09]

Pain is just pain. And non-pain is the opposite. Pleasure is not necessarily the opposite of pain. Pleasure is the opposite of displeasure. So we become displeased because we have pain. And this is a discriminating mind. So equanimity is absence of the discriminating mind. You see, everything is equal. Pleasure, displeasure, pain, absence of pain. Pain is simply a sensation. And if we don't like it, it doesn't turn into suffering. We experience it as suffering. Something doesn't turn into something else.

[30:12]

We simply experience things as we meet them. So to be able to be open, equanimity actually is the four foundations of mindfulness. Actually, the four Brahma-viharas. Loving-kindness. Sympathetic joy. Karuna. Compassion. And the fourth one is equanimity. Four aspects of love. In Buddhism, equanimity is... means impartiality. It's really... So the seven factors of enlightenment, along with the four Pranabiharas, is love.

[31:25]

The old story goes that in Zen you guys never talk about love. And I say, we don't ever talk about anything else. So equanimity means impartiality, which is the highest kind of love because it has nothing to do with like or dislike or how you want things to be. So equanimity is actually at the basis. And each one of these aspects contain all the others. So when one is present, the others are also present. And so to me, if we keep these factors in mind, we can decide that

[32:37]

They help us and point out the points as I've been actually. Does anybody have a question? Yes. About a wide concentration or kind of looks like a couple of things. When we have thoughts arising, it seems like there's a, for me, there's a first line or there's a, where's the line between being present and being caught up into the past and the future? So how's the time of the wide consciousness?

[33:40]

Being open, so when we have thoughts and How do we process them? How do we process them? Yeah, well, you know, the thinking mind, the thinking mind's task is to produce thoughts. So, thoughts are continually bubbling up as bubbles. I can think, you know, dream bubbles. Thoughts are like thought bubbles and dream bubbles. If you look at an aquarium, you see all these bubbles coming up out of a little tube for oxygen. So it's kind of like that. It's kind of like these thoughts. And if there's no subject or object for them, they just invent something. So we're continually inventing something. When you sit Sazen, you say, I bow to Sazen.

[34:45]

You don't bow to something else. You're doing Sazen. So what's all this about? What's that about? That's not what you're doing. You're doing Sazen. So, but they do it anyway. You know? So, the baboon, [...] baboon. And then we take it seriously. oh my god that thought you know that's a great one oh that's an awful one it's just thought bubbles but we take them very seriously so if we promise ourselves we're going to do something that's what we do but we don't chase the thoughts away we're not mean we're not restricted the thoughts can be there if they want Okay, you're there. That's all. Excuse me, I have to come back to Zazen.

[35:54]

So maybe if you don't attach those bubbles, they can, using the aquarium metaphor, the thoughts can be like oxygen and just let it go through. It's a process like that rather than trying to keep it in the water, remember? It's part of the process. Yeah, you don't try to shut it off. Don't put your finger over it. That's unhealthy. And even if we try to shut off the thoughts, just a little bit more thoughts, you can't control it. It's bigger than you. You can do it. It is possible. But it's not a practice because We're not trying to cut off something. In your daily life, you're not going to cut off your thoughts. You have plenty of them, but then you select the ones that... it's really the same thing. But then, in our daily life, we have this activity, a different kind of activity.

[37:00]

At the beginning of your talk you said it's our nature to have our mind wander. And in the meal chant we say the natural order of mind to be free from greed, hate and delusion. So it seems like there's a tension between those two aspects of our mind. That we have this natural order of mind which is free of these three ovals, and then there's this nature which kind of gravitates toward that. So, Buddha nature and human nature. Right? Buddha nature and human nature. So, because we're practicing, we're illuminating Buddha nature, and Buddha nature is illuminating human nature. Human nature is illuminating Buddha nature. And it's really not two different natures.

[38:05]

It's just two sides of one nature. So we don't try to eliminate human nature. We simply allow Buddha nature to lead so that human nature is in sync with Buddha nature. But sometimes we're human nature's leading and Buddha nature's way back here. And then once, sometimes we go, I wish I'd been there. Oh, Buddha nature. And then you're like this. And then Buddha nature, oh, OK, I'll let Buddha nature lead. And then we get greedy and angry and deluded and say, no, I'll lead. And then we say, oh, it's easy. I can let Buddha nature lead. OK. So we have this tension all the time between our ego, which is human nature, and non-ego, which is Buddha nature, basically.

[39:11]

So, you know, and that's our human nature, is both. And we have this struggle. That's what we're struggling with all the time. If we simply throw ourselves into the house of Buddha, as Dogen says, and his fancicle on birth and death. Just throw yourself into the house of Buddha and let Buddha take care of everything. No problem. But that's hard to do. It's hard to do. Because our human nature is so... our habit energy is so strong. Do you think it might be better to say either ego nature or habit nature instead of human nature? Yeah. You're contrasting? Well, yeah. I got a little, you know, using those terms synonymously. But yes, ego or nature, human nature is both Buddha nature and ego nature.

[40:17]

Abhasya? Just please stay engaged with the or Brahma Viharas are? Yes. Could you just say what Karuna is? Loving kindness is the first one. And sympathetic joy means your enjoyment when you see someone practicing Dharma and being successful. And then the third one is karuna, which is compassion. So being sympathetic to suffering. Because passion means suffering. Compassion means suffer with.

[41:13]

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