This morning I want to talk about zazen as a form of creative expression. So when we sit zazen, as we just have, when we do this upright sitting, we're sitting like Buddha. We are putting our body in the form of Buddha. Whether we're sitting cross-legged or kneeling or in a chair, we're sitting upright. We're taking the posture of Buddha. Physically, with our body upright, with our hands together in a mudra, or if we put them on our knees, either way, breathing, eyes open, looking down, calmly, we are sitting,

[01:06]

emulating the body of Buddha that we have an image of in the center of the zendo. So this is a physical practice. With our posture, we are expressing Buddha, upright but relaxed. One of our, the chants that we do, the Song of the Grass Hut, says, let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. So this practice is upright sitting but relaxed. The point of this practice is to relax completely, to be calm and peaceful, like Buddha,

[02:12]

like a fully awakened one. We're expressing awakeness, awareness, attention, with our muscles, with our spine, with our breath, with our diaphragm, in our uprightness. So this has to do with physical uprightness, a kind of balance. So how do we find each of us in our own body, in our own particular body, mind, because mind, heart, is not separate from body, how do we express our inner balance, our inner uprightness, our inner dignity? So this is a creative act. As we sit for 30 or 40 minutes, as we

[03:16]

take the posture, the form, the shape of Buddha, part of Zazen, this Zazen we do from the tradition of Soto Zen, going back to Dogen, who brought this from China in the 1200s to Japan. I'm going to refer to some of his writings, but it goes back much further, of course. Part of this creative expression of Buddha is to check and creatively find, re-find, re-discover, re-explore, re-create our inner balance and our outer balance.

[04:21]

So sometimes we may realize that we're sort of slumping, so how do we gently maybe lift from our lower back, or from the top of our head, or push back with the back of our head, or tuck our chin in if our chin is lifting, or if our head is sagging, lift it. How do we find our uprightness, or if we're leaning left or right, how do we come back to center, to uprightness? So we're expressing Buddha in this body, physically, but also emotionally, with our mind and heart. So we're not creating Buddha, we're not inventing Buddha, we're expressing the Buddha that's already here. So in various places in his writings, Dogen says, have no designs on becoming a Buddha,

[05:30]

or creating a Buddha. And he's referring back to an old story, but I want to refer you, in your chant book, if you would like, you can open to page 20. One of Dogen's very first writings, Bukan Zazengi, the Universal Guidelines for, Universally Recommended Guidelines or Instructions for Zazen, in the middle of the first page, the middle paragraph ends with, have no designs on becoming a Buddha. We can't become a Buddha, Buddha is already here. So this creative expression is not about inventing Buddha, or creating Buddha, or figuring out how to become Buddha. So I'll read that paragraph, put aside the intellectual practice of investigating words and chasing

[06:33]

phrases. So this is, you know, a lot of what many of us do. We investigate words and chase phrases, we try to calculate things. He says instead, to learn to take the backwards step that turns the light and shines it inward. This is a basic instruction for Zazen. We turn our attention inward. Body and mind of themselves will drop away and your original face will manifest. This expression of Buddha is already here, this is our original face. This is about how do we creatively manifest or express this. And he says that if you want to attain suchness, practice suchness immediately, just to be this attentive, aware, immediate reality of suchness. Just practice suchness immediately. And then he gives some

[07:39]

practical instructions for practicing Zazen, a quiet room is suitable. Eat and drink moderately, put aside all involvements, suspend all affairs. That doesn't mean that we never go back to our involvements and affairs, but for Zazen, we put that aside. And then he says, do not think good or bad, do not judge true or false. This is not where we find Buddha. This is not how we express Buddha. This is not, Buddha is not a matter of good or bad or true or false. Give up the operations of mind, intellect, consciousness, stop measuring with thoughts, ideas and views, have no designs on becoming a Buddha. So, Buddha is not something we can figure out or create or design.

[08:40]

And I think many people hearing about Buddha or hearing about enlightenment, you know, might have that idea that, oh, what is that? We have to figure that out. I have to, or we might think that our Zazen, our meditation practice is about figuring out or through, you know, many hours of meditation, creating some new thing called Buddha. Buddha is already here. Buddha is already right under your seat right now. Buddha is all around you. Buddha is within you. Buddha is what brought you here in the first place. Buddha is that impulse that led you to care about the quality of this body-mind.

[09:42]

So our practice is, how do we express that? How do we through the course of our whatever, 40 minutes of sitting in the meditation hall or when you go home and sit at home, as I hope you will, several times a week or every day, even 15, 20 minutes, just to have some regular time of expressing Buddha, not to figure anything out, not to create something new, but just to enjoy the creative activity of Buddha, expressing Buddha in your body-mind, as your body-mind, with your body-mind. How do you express Buddha, whatever that is?

[10:48]

So that's one of the questions. Well, what is Buddha? And nobody can tell you how to be Buddha, how to express Buddha. Each of you creates Buddha in your body-mind, in your situation, for you. It's already there, but it's this creative activity, this creative expression, that unfolds and develops and grows in your practice, in your sustained practice. So somehow I'm reminded of a story that I've actually written, I guess I haven't told in a while, but some of you have heard me tell it. It's a story about the sixth ancestor, Hui Neng, in some ways the founder of Soto Zen. And one of his two main students, Nan Yue, when he first showed up at Hui Neng's,

[12:01]

Hui Neng asked him this strange question. He said, what is this that thus comes? He didn't say, who are you? He said, what is this that thus comes? And Nan Yue was speechless. He didn't know what to say. So he went back to the meditation hall, and the story tells us that he sat with this question for eight years. So in these old Zen stories, sometimes it looks like they're, the teacher and the student are going back and forth, you know, and like they answer very quickly. But sometimes there's, you know, we don't know, it doesn't necessarily always say. There may be, you know, a while before the student comes back and responds, or a while before the teacher asks a follow-up question. Sometimes it says, oh, the next day, the teacher said such and such, or the student said such and such. In this case, eight years later,

[13:04]

Nan Yue came back and said, oh, now I can tell you, I can respond to that question you asked me when I first showed up. He said, what is this that thus comes? And now I can say that anything I say would miss the mark. Took him eight years to get to that. Anything I say would miss the mark. What is this that thus comes? And Hui Neng said, oh, well then, is there practice realization or not? And Nan Yue approved, he hadn't wasted those eight years. He said, it's not that there's no practice realization, it's just that it cannot be defiled. And the sixth ancestor said, ah, this is exactly what all the Buddhas and ancestors take care of.

[14:12]

So, in your process of creatively expressing Buddha in your zazen and your everyday life, you should know that you can't defile practice and realization. You cannot defile Buddha. You can't wreck it. You can't, you know, there's nothing, however bad you think you are, there's nothing you can do to mess up Buddha. Buddha is here. Buddha, the awakened one, the awakenedness of reality is here. It's up to you to express it. It's up to you to create it. But you may think, you know, sometimes people practice for a while and they go away and, you know, wander off and think they're doing bad things. Then they come back to practice. But you can't mess up practice and realization. So, how do you find your way to express

[15:28]

suchness right now? This zazen is kind of, if I call it an art form, that sounds too highfalutin. It's just you creatively expressing Buddha here now. What is it? So, I like the mantra of my favorite dharma poet, the recent Nobel laureate, Bob Dylan, says, how does it feel? So, you can use that in your zazen. Just ask, as you're sitting, how does it feel? What comes up? How are you expressing Buddha in your zazen right now? Feel how it feels. What is it? And it's not that there's some right answer. Just how is it? How does it feel? So, you don't, so creatively expressing Buddha,

[16:34]

again, it's not about making some design on becoming Buddha. It's not that you have to find some right special condition. I talked about finding balance, but it's not some perfect balance. Suzuki Roshi, my teacher's teacher, said, we're always losing our balance against the background of perfect balance. So, it's okay to lose your balance. It's, in fact, unavoidable. It's not about being perfect. My favorite American yogi says, if the world were perfect, it wouldn't be. So, it's not about finding some perfect situation. People think they have to find, you know, that they can't really be Buddha, or they can't even sit zazen unless they find some perfect situation. Some, you know, the best zendo, or the best zen teacher,

[17:39]

or the most beautiful mountaintop. Well, you can creatively express Buddha in your body-mind, even in a storefront temple on a busy street in Chicago. So, even when, maybe even especially when your situation, the situation of your body-mind feels uh really imbalanced, or out of whack, or you know, when some of us sometimes sit all day, we have monthly half-day or all-day sittings. There's a half-day sitting coming up next month that you some of you might want to try if you haven't.

[18:40]

In the course of sitting for more than a period, you know, it's very common, you know, some periods you might feel great. You might feel, oh yeah, now I'm expressing Buddha. Or in some periods, though, you might feel some pain in your knee, or your back, or your shoulders, or you might feel some emotional disturbance, or you might feel some problem, the problem of the difficulty in your life this week, or this month, or this lifetime. Some emotional disturbance. Or you might feel very sleepy. You know, that happens too. It's not about some perfect situation. Just expressing Buddha right now. Practicing suchness immediately, wherever you are.

[19:45]

This is what we learn by doing this practice of sitting. It's not about finding the perfect situation, and then you'll be Buddha. It's wherever you are. So another one of Dogen's writings is called Expressing the Dream Within a Dream. And he talks about all Buddhas expressing, express the dream within a dream, even if you're feeling dreamy, even if your mind is wandering. This happens sometimes, you know, feels like your mind is involved in daydreams, even then. So just to read a little bit from this essay, Expressing the Dream Within a Dream. He says, every dewdrop manifested in every realm is a dream. This dream is the glowing clarity of

[20:48]

the hundred grass tips of all phenomena. What requires questioning is this very point. What is confusing is this very point. At this time, there are dream grasses, grasses within expressive grasses, and so on. When we study this, then roots, stems, branches, and leaves, flowers, and fruits, as well as radiance and color, are all the great dream. Do not mistake them as merely dreamy. Within the, when you say within confusion is just confusion, still you should follow the path in the vast sky known as delusion throughout delusion. The expression of the dream within a dream is all Buddhas. To express with the dream within a dream is the ancient Buddhas. So it's not that, it's not that Buddhas never dream. In fact, you know, right now,

[21:56]

there's a dream going on that some of us are having that we're sitting together at Ancient Dragon's End Gate, listening to a dream about creatively expressing Buddha as Zazen, or Zazen as a form of creative expression. And Dogen says elsewhere that it's not that Buddhas sit up in the front talking about Buddha, it's that Buddhas sit and listen to talk about Buddhas. So we're all doing this together in this dream. So in this essay, Dogen also says, without being within a dream, there is no expression of dreams. Without expressing dreams, there is no being within a dream. Without expressing dreams,

[22:58]

there are no Buddhas. Without being within a dream, Buddhas do not emerge and turn the wondrous Dharma Wheel. This Dharma Wheel is no other than a Buddha together with a Buddha and a dream expressed within a dream. Simply expressing the dream within a dream is itself the Buddhas and ancestors, the assembly of unsurpassable enlightenment. Furthermore, going beyond the dream body is itself expressing the dream within a dream. So aside from that kind of dreamy talk, here we are practicing sitting upright, expressing Buddha in this body-mind-heart, awakening this reality. So we can also see Zazen as performing Buddha. We sit down, we have these

[24:00]

little forms, we bow to our seat, we turn, we bow to the space of the meditation hall, we take our seat, we sit facing the wall, facing the floor, upright, breathing, and we perform Buddha. So we could say that Zazen is a form of creative expression or maybe we could say it's a performance art. Some of us were studying one of Dogen's predecessors, Hongzhe, this spring in the practice period, and he says to romp and play in samadhi. So this, you know, when you walk into the meditation hall, it looks like we're sitting very austerely and seriously sitting upright facing the wall. But in the middle of this upright sitting, sitting silently, sitting still, how do we find our inner play? How do we find

[25:08]

this way of performance and expression of Buddha? This is a creative act. Each of you can find your way of creating that for yourself. And in the middle of that, you know, insights arise. So your mind is working. It's not about getting rid of thoughts or getting rid of desires or being good. Those are traditional traps of practice to think that you can design Buddha or create Buddha or express Buddha through getting rid of all thoughts. So, of course, as you sit, thoughts arise, desires and emotions arise. Don't try and get rid of those. Don't think that it has to do with being good or bad. Of course, you know, we try, our precepts are about being helpful rather than harmful. But how do we find

[26:15]

this creative energy? So as we express, find our own creative expression. It's different for each one of us. Each one of us has our own context, our own situation with which to creatively express Buddha, or awareness, or attention, or kindness. We could get rid of the word Buddha. Just how do we creatively express kindness to ourselves and the world and to our problems, to the difficulties that we each have in our life? So as we're sitting upright, feeling how we feel, looking at what's going on, paying attention, even to our dreaminess,

[27:22]

this allows us to be more flexible, unadaptable, and maybe new ways of seeing the situations of our life can arise. Maybe we can clarify our intention, or maybe, you know, we can allow accidents, we can allow mistakes, we can allow ourselves to think in new ways that are not how we think we should. So this is not about controlling our awareness and controlling our body. You know, we sit still and upright, try and find balance, but how do we allow new possibilities? So part of this is that each of us, in our life, when we get up from sasen, when we go out into our lives in the world, each of us has other creative

[28:30]

expression, forms of creative expression. Sasen is one form of creative expression. In some ways, it's the most fundamental form of creative expression. Just sit upright, be present, pay attention, feel. How does it feel? Enjoy being present. Allow yourself to feel what you feel. But each of us has other activities that we do. They may be formal, creative activities, making art or appreciating art, making music or listening to music, gardening or cooking or interacting in relationships or parenting or going for walks or whatever. All of those other creative activities are food for the creative expression of sasen and vice versa.

[29:31]

Part of this fundamental form of creative expression called sasen is that it also connects us when we are willing to sustain our sasen practice and do it regularly with a fundamental underlying creative energy that is connected to all those other creative activities. So, enjoy that. Enjoy creatively expressing Buddha in, or whatever you want to call it, in whatever ways you do in your life, through studies, through walking, through bicycling, through various physical activities, through emotional activities, through various

[30:36]

formal or informal creative activities. All of these connect through sasen. And sasen is the most fundamental because it doesn't depend on anything else. It's just sasen. But it connects with everything else. And as we do this regularly, we deepen our capacity to create awareness, to appreciate awareness and attention, even in the middle of dreaminess, even in the middle of some frustration or impatience or difficulty in our life. When we're having a hard time with a family member or a coworker or whomever, we can be a little more patient and we can maybe sometimes find some skillful,

[31:42]

creative way of responding that might be helpful. So, this is just a little bit about how sasen is a form of creative expression. I'm interested in hearing any of you and how sasen is a creative expression for you, because it's different for each of us. We each have our own particular context and situation. So, I'll stop for now. Comments, reflections, questions, please feel free. I can tolerate who to be and who to not. Even though I don't know what it means.

[33:00]

But the dream within the dream really gets me because I don't know what kind of dream he's talking about. What's he talking about? What kind of dream? Do you ever dream when you're asleep? Yes. I didn't know that's what he was talking about. Well, it could be that. Or do you ever have daydreams? When I was a kid, I had daydreams all the time. I would be bored in class and school and I would look out the window and have daydreams. And I kind of think that helped me to be able to sit sasen. Did daydreams help? Sometimes, I think so. So, sometimes when we're sitting, you know, sometimes we're very, there's a part of sasen that's about being very focused, you know, counting breaths, just paying attention to each breath, just really focusing and settling and calming.

[34:02]

But there's a part of sasen that is allowing, as Zuki Roshi says, allowing the cow a wide pasture, allowing the mind to wander. And that allows a kind of sense of spaciousness. And that's also part of the creative expression, part of the creative expression of focus and part of it is openness. And so the dream within a dream is that to express the dream, to express whatever is going on, to be there with it, to pay attention right in the middle. So there are practices. We don't talk about them so much in American Zen, but in Japanese Zen and in Tibetan Buddhism, they talk about dream practice. There are practices of actually conscious dreaming or paying attention, trying to pay attention in the middle of sleeping dreams. So in monasteries in Japan and elsewhere, there's a form of sleeping. They sleep in the,

[35:10]

monks sleep in the meditation hall and they sleep on their right side like the Buddha when he passed away. And anyway, there are, I don't know if any of you have ever done this, but to actually, there are practices of like trying to see your hand in the middle of a dream. Or have any of you ever had flying dreams where you're flying? Eishin has. I have occasionally, very rarely. My wife has them more often. But to be aware of what's going on in the dream. So from some point of view, consciousness is a continuum from the awareness that you have in a dream, like in sleep. And the dreams in sleep are often really strange. There's strange connections and they're not like the usual way we think. There's different sequences,

[36:20]

but it's some kind of awareness. And then there's awareness. Well, there's different kinds of awareness. There's awareness when you're walking down the street, there's awareness when you're focusing on some task that you really need to be very careful about. There's awareness when you knock over a bell and you have to pick it up. There's all kinds of, there's a range of awarenesses that you can think some are more aware than others. But actually, what he's talking about is just to be present in all of that. And it doesn't mean that you have to be, you know, have to figure it out. It's just, well, what's it like to be, to express that awareness whenever it's, wherever it's happening. So Ishan, when you say you have flying dreams, what's that like? What's it like? For me, it's kind of like flying. I'm like, okay, that's a little weird.

[37:33]

That's not usually what happens. Maybe I'm dreaming. And I don't really know how to say that. Okay. So I don't, usually I don't remember my dreams. Occasionally I do. Do any, are any of you, you know, do any of you remember your dreams sometimes, somewhat regularly? Yeah. Occasionally, not often. What's it like? Usually what I do is when I usually wake up either during the dream or very shortly after. Right. And the most notable thing, I think, is that it never makes much sense. Good. Yes, yes. In reality, in my waking world, it doesn't seem to make perfect sense at the time. So that's it. Yeah. How do you be there in the way that it doesn't make sense in usual terms? So our usual way of making sense is fine. That's how we get around. You know,

[38:35]

that's how you got here this morning. But there's other kinds of sense, obviously, that happen in dreams. And so that's like what I was saying about sitting for several periods. During a half-day sitting, the nation will be leading this month. Or other times when we sit for longer periods, there's, you know, sometimes it gets dreamy, even though you're still sitting upright and your eyes are open. And we just get in touch with other ways of being awake. And it's not about giving them grades or they're good or bad or whatever, making sense. But how does it feel? What's it like to be there in their own terms? So that's kind of what he's talking about, expressing the dream within the dream. How does it feel right there? So we don't have to figure anything out about it just to be there. Yes, Kyosha. That's all right.

[39:40]

So I write down the date. And I don't dream very often, or at least I don't wake up and dream very often. So I have a small book, and it has dreams from over five years. And I recently read the whole thing, which didn't take a very long time. And it was so interesting. And I have a question for you. So I was just thinking as we were talking, is there any value to sometimes breaking down what our mind knows during a thought? And I think the way I break down what my mind knows during a dream, because it's like, I'm going to learn some stuff about myself by reading this thing. I mean, part of it is, yeah, some of the laws of physics are suspended when we dream, you know, gravity or the gravity is different or whatever, you know, the physical stuff is very strange. But then part of it is just, oh, that was an interesting place in my own mind.

[41:22]

So I don't know, I've never heard of anybody breaking down like a journal or something. Oh, yeah, people have done that. So yeah, no, that's an interesting question. So I've done that thing about writing down dreams. I haven't in a while, but I have done it at different times in my life for a while. And I've gone back and looked at them and remembered them, and it's strange. But yeah, it's, but they actually sort of, they sort of make sense or sort of remind me of things. And often they're related to things. I mean, I can see how they're related to things in my life, even though they're not, you know, in strange ways sometimes. But, you know, one of the things that happens in Zazen, and I was sort of mentioning is that as we're sitting, everything in our life is there. So when we're expressing

[42:23]

ourselves as we sit, you know, thoughts and feelings come up. And it's not that we should try and figure something out while we're sitting. But I think sometimes, you know, we're sitting and whatever problem we have this week, or whatever situation is in our life this month or whatever, it's part of what's going on in the thoughts and feelings that are rumbling around. And sometimes, and this is also something the Sixth Ancestor talked about in the Platform Sutra, he says samadhi and prajna are one, which is a technical way of saying that when we're settled and concentrated, insights or prajna arise. So this is very much related to this expressing the dream within a dream idea of Dogen's that our settledness allows things to arise, reflections to arise, thoughts to arise. And sometimes, sometimes they're actually helpful and valuable

[43:37]

insights. Sometimes they're just, oh, okay. Now you don't have to, so please don't sit with a pad by your cushion and start making notes as you're sitting. It'll be distracting to the people around you. And, you know, a lot of it may be gibberish or not. But, you know, later on, if some, Linda Ruth, who's the central abbess of San Francisco Zen Center once said this to me and folks on many years ago, if it's something that arises in your form, I remember this, the way she said it, it was so, it was so interesting. If it's something that arises in your zazen, it's in your form, it informs you. So if there's a real insight that comes up as you're sitting naturally, as part of your creative expression, it's there, it informs you, it's in your form. And later on, you can make some notes about it. It'll be there.

[44:39]

It's not going to go away. And it may be helpful. So it's true that sometimes some helpful insight arises in zazen. It's actually, as a writer, one of my creative practices, there are times when whole paragraphs rise in the middle of zazen and later on I can write them down. So the thing about zazen being a creative activity, it does connect with our other creative expressions. And people I know who, artists sometimes have ideas about something they're working on and so forth. That happens. That's not that you should look for that or you don't need to look for that. It's just that that does happen sometimes to some people. So if you're working on something as a student or a scientist or whatever, you know, part of what is going on in your life, whatever it is, or some issue in a relationship even,

[45:40]

you know, it's there. You don't have to think about it. It's just part of what's in your body. So insights arise when you're really settled and allowing yourself to creatively express yourself and how it feels in this zazen. Yes? I guess I was thinking about what you were saying about zazen being a creative practice. Sometimes I think of creativity in a couple of ways. One is that it's a very methodical way of creating something. But there are other times where it's a different sense where you just kind of let go and feel the creative process. Right. I was wondering maybe zazen can be kind of like that.

[46:47]

Yes. Yeah, I think it's like that. And even in science, which is this, you know, systematic approach to exploring reality, many of the great scientific discoveries have happened outside of the laboratory or wherever in just some moment, in a dream even, or in some moment of just some insight arising, you know, in that kind of way. So I just mentioned about, you know, accidents and mistakes, but being open to, you know, accidental thoughts, you know, to letting go of our sense of control.

[47:49]

Of course, there are times when we need to be in control, obviously, but to letting go of that sense of our controlling our reality to being open to something different allows something else to appear. Other comments or questions? Yes, Brian. Some months ago, I listened to one of the audio files on the website, the talk you gave on a long time ago on zazen as a creative process, and it really stuck with me. And I think it, you know, you're, you're, you intuited how, how creativity and contemplation come together, because one of the names you gave me, one of the dharma names is dhokan, which means that period of contemplation or insight. And one of the ways I experienced that is that it's, it's really creative work

[48:54]

to just sit there and to learn to be upright and present for me. And one example is that for a while, it was like a feeling of contracting around thought and then expanding beyond thought, so I'd get caught up with something. And then it was sort of almost like a very slow breathing or very slow, you know, tired, tired, and that was very useful for a while in terms of learning how to be present. It was, it felt like a creative response, like, this is one way I can do this. And that sort of faded. And now it's more like, the things that are going on in my brain while I'm sitting, I sort of remember this is, this is only one aspect of reality, of suchness. And there's so much more happening. I'm not limited to, and that opens me up. And it sort of contextualizes brain activity. And that feels like a creative way of working with

[50:03]

just sitting there. And part of the reason it's creative is that it never stays the same. Yes. If you're an artist, you're never doing the same thing over and over for 20 years. Hopefully, you're having to find new ways of, new processes of working with things so that new things can emerge. And I feel like, you know, Zaza has a potential for being a lifelong discovery, creative discovery, just how to be alive. Well said. And part of the way you were describing it, I liked, it sounded almost tactile. It's because it is physical. It's, I mean, it's mental, too. It's emotional, too. But it's also, you know, you're just talking about waves going in and out. It's something that we, it's not something we figure out. It's something that is happening as a part of physical reality,

[51:09]

when we have to allow and give ourselves to that. And it happens in its own way. It's not something, you know, you may be sitting for a long time and not be aware of this process going on, but it's happening. It happens sort of alchemically or organically. And so, anyway, it's beyond our usual way of looking at the world, but it's part of this active process of Zazen.

[51:53]

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