Well, it's very nice to see all of you this morning. What I would like to talk about is in Buddhism, we use words like mindfulness, concentration, awareness, attention, samadhi. All these words point toward unity. They seem to be concerned with unifying. mindfulness is present in every moment of our attention, and we make a great fuss about being mindful in all of our activity, and about being concentrated.

[01:22]

We should be really concentrated on our not dreaming about something, but really paying attention. And samadhi is a word that sometimes seems mysterious, but you can say that samadhi means attention or concentration without self-centeredness. Simply speaking, concentration on each moment's activity without selfishness or self-centeredness, or where the imbalance of ego is not present.

[02:28]

Ego, we talk about ego as a thing, but ego is not really a thing. It's simply an imbalance or a kind of separation from absolute reality. is balanced, complete oneness with things, where the imbalance of ego is not present. So, in a way, in a sense, it means to be connected with our true self. Master Rinzai used to say, there's a true person of no rank who is continually coming and going out of this lump of red flesh.

[03:44]

This true person of no rank, who is this true person? In each one of us, is continually coming and going out of this lump of red flesh. So maybe you could say this lump or this true person of no rank has no special characteristics, no name. yet it expresses itself as myself and it expresses yourself as yourself, continuously. So in meditation, in zazen, we eliminate all the hindrances

[04:55]

to allowing this true person of no rank to come forth. This true person is always there but often covered over by name and form. had four, named four categories of practice. And these four categories are concerned with circumstances and the person. So a person is always meeting circumstances.

[06:01]

This is what our life is about. I am involved. So the first category that he talks about is when the person is taken away or hidden. and just the circumstances are present. When I was driving to Gringotts this morning I was listening to KPFA and Glenn Gould was playing Bach and you could tell that there was no Glenn Gould, there was just Bach. This is the person is hidden, and the circumstances are revealed.

[07:05]

Just circumstances, just the work is there. So this is easy to see in an artist. An artist will be completely consumed within the work, and this is a kind of samadhi, a kind of concentration in which there's no separation between the person and the activity. But the person is kind of more or less gone and subsumed into the work. For a Zen student, this is what our daily activity is supposed to be. When we work in the garden, there's just working in the garden. When we wash dishes, there's just dishwashing. When we drive the car, there's just attention to driving.

[08:16]

And all the circumstances on the road are this driving. When we have to take care of difficult situations, there's just the situation. A good Zen student, a well-trained Zen student is always ready to do something, because a well-trained Zen student doesn't have anything personal to do. There's no personal drive, no personal goal, but just taking care of the circumstances at hand when they arise is the work of the Zen student, to just be ready to do whatever arises at the moment, and then when nothing is

[09:19]

sometimes described as a cat waiting for a mouse. When the cat is waiting for the mouse, he just sits there at the hole, concentrated, calm, at ease, but when the mouse pokes his head out, That may be a little dramatic, but a Zen student should be just ready for any circumstance and just drop the personal aspect and just do the thing. So this is one side, right?

[10:27]

This is one aspect of practice. according to Mr. Rinzai, Master Rinzai. The other, second category of practice is circumstances are dropped. Everything is left behind, and you enter the zendo and sit zazen, and there's only the person. The only thing to be concerned with is the person. sitting up straight, concentrating on body-mind, and letting go of the world, and giving ourself the freedom to let this person of no rank freely come and go.

[11:32]

to let go of all concerns. And in this practice of letting go of all concerns, you don't feel hungry, you don't get cold, you don't feel too hot, you don't crave anything, you just feel okay. And even though various difficulties arise, because wherever you are difficulties will arise, and in Zazen there's always a problem, as you know, pain in your legs, the thoughts in your mind, the various you just let them come and go.

[12:40]

There's no involvement or entanglement with these circumstances. So this is the opportunity to just let go of everything. So this aspect is just the opposite. Circumstances are dropped. and just the person is present. Just being present, totally. This is a samadhi of non-conditioned activity. And the first category is the samadhi of total activity. circumstances. Then in zazen there's a, you know, zazen is a kind of singular activity.

[13:54]

It's the same for everybody and there's So every time you sit zazen, it's the same. You sit zazen for 20 years, it's the same as when you sat the first time, as far as change goes, or progress. So there isn't progress in a as far as style goes, but there is progress as far as depth goes. So when each time we sit zazen, over a long period of time, zazen becomes deeper and deeper. But the activity, the process doesn't change.

[15:01]

It's the same sitting over and over and over, but each time it's different. And in very deep zazen, we completely let go of everything. And there's a stage where we say the mind is like the sky or like a sheet of white paper. In other words, there's nothing on it. It's as vast and wide as the sky, and there's nothing on it. It is pure consciousness, a state of pure consciousness where the mind is not reflecting on itself. has various stages.

[16:14]

There's the stage of just pure awareness where mind does not reflect on itself. And then there is the stage after pure awareness where the mind starts to name things. Consciousness becomes aware of naming and categorizing and discriminating between things. But in pure awareness, this discrimination is not there. And then, taking a step back, consciousness starts discussing what it's discriminating. And all of these stages of consciousness are important, otherwise we wouldn't be able to figure things out, or recognize things, or categorize. But the problem that we have is that we don't pay attention to the first stage of awareness, of bare awareness, and we jump into naming and categorizing, and we live in a removed stage of consciousness most of the time, without actually being upfront with the reality of bare attention.

[17:43]

to our consciousness. So when we sit zazen and just let go of our conditioning, then we see reality for the first time after a long period of time, since maybe we were a baby or a kid. because our minds are taken over by our conditioning. So this third category of Rinzai is called, sometimes it's called, the great death. It's like letting go of all conditioning, all states of mind, all categories, distinctions, and just letting the mind be, not blank, blank is not a good word, but bare, like the sky.

[18:57]

When a bird flies across the sky, you see this bird, and the bird stands out as something. When the bird flies across the sky, then But if you're just looking at the sky without the bird, you really don't see anything. But the bird makes the sky, and the sky brings awareness of the bird. And then consciousness starts to work and say, oh, there's a bird. That's the sky. But before that happens, there's just bare awareness. And this is kind of mind cleansing. Then when we re-enter the world, everything is fresh and new, and we see it again for the first time in its true sense.

[20:04]

So this category, this stage is very important, to be able to let go of everything. let go of all conditioning, let go of thinking mind and categorizing and discriminating, and just let things be what they are. Then we spring back to life again and enter the world in the fourth stage, which is Both circumstances and the person are vividly present in dynamic activity. But our activity is based on clear mind. Once we've experienced this clear mind, our activity is not the same.

[21:20]

This is the activity of a mature student where there's no discrimination between either side. There's no discrimination between zazen and daily life. It's all the same. within our daily life, within our activity. Within each activity, there's perfect stillness and perfect clarity. And we don't get caught by things. This is called being in the world without being attached to the world. so that all of our activity is non-selfish activity. So how do we maintain this kind of mind?

[22:31]

This is the difficult part. Zen student will sit Zazen and feel quite clear. go into activity and get all muddied up. How do you stay clear within activity? That's the point. So one has to have a practice of going back and forth. You get up in the morning, and you practice zazen. And then you go into your daily life. back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until it becomes one activity. All of our activity is based on emptiness rather than self-centeredness. We all want this kind, each one of us wants this kind of freedom, but we don't know what it is that we want.

[24:01]

And it's hard for us to see it. The longer I practice, the more I appreciate the ancient ancestors who worked so hard to clarify this reality for us and leave us this kind of practice. Because on our own, we won't get there. Very difficult to get there. Sometimes people wonder why we dress up in robes and chant the names of the old Zen masters, it's strictly appreciation. When you discover your true self, then you have this great appreciation for all these people that came before, who worked so hard to bring us this truth.

[25:24]

in this practice. When I was young, younger, I used to... I was looking for this kind of practice, but I didn't know what it was I was looking for. Exactly. And for a long, long time, I knew that I had to find something and there was something inside of me that kept directing me to something. And then when I finally found it and connected with it, I knew that this was intuitively felt, the rightness of it, but I couldn't have practiced it without the discipline of my teacher.

[26:29]

And you can never, it's almost impossible to get through, to discover by yourself, even though each one of us has to discover by ourself. It's a kind of funny thing, but we can only discover this person of no rank by ourself. but we need the help of our teachers to do it because we're not disciplined enough by ourself. It takes an enormous amount of discipline to be able to practice zazen in its true sense. And it's very difficult to do something just for its own sake, without wanting to get something.

[27:38]

See, what we want to get is not what we think we want. That's the problem. We know we want to get something, but we're always settling for something short of what we want. What I mean by that is that left to our own devices, we would think it was fine just to use zazen as a way of being healthy. Isn't that good enough? Or as a way to make ourselves strong. or as a way to get some advantage in life. This is like stopping short of the real purpose of zazen. But real purpose of zazen is to let go of everything and find ourself at the end of letting go of everything.

[28:51]

And that's very difficult. So at the same time, ego brings us to practice in order to eliminate itself. So it's a little bit scary. And so Zen students, although they offer themselves to the practice, at the same time, there's always this hesitation. Because who wants to lose their ego? We all do and we all don't. So it's a yes, yes, yes, no, no, no, yes, yes, yes, no, no, no.

[29:57]

So, at the same time that a person is willing to do something, they're also unwilling to do it. And so we always have this problem in practice with Zen students. We want to go a certain distance, but we don't necessarily want to go all the way. So, sometimes we have to drag you, push you, cajole you. whatever it takes. And sometimes people give up at the last minute. So it's not an easy thing to be a Zen student. you have to be completely committed and sincere.

[31:15]

And sometimes we feel that we are, and then we come to a place where we realize where we're not. And then we have to make a decision. So, in order to have a sincere practice, there has to be a sincere commitment. And so commitment becomes the basis of Zen practice. It really becomes the basis of Zen practice, because without commitment, we just become pulled around by our feelings of, you know, when things get difficult, We say, well, why am I doing this? That's being pushed around by your feelings. So decision or commitment is what carries us through.

[32:15]

Otherwise, the mind is always fooling itself. And we back out when things get difficult. Or we do something only when we feel good about it. So mindfulness and concentration really have a lot to do with commitment. It means to always be mindful of our original intention. Always be concentrated on our original intention. Because when we hit a difficulty, we always want to take the easy way out, instead of going through it. So when you see the Zen students sitting Cixin, you know that there are all these silent dramas going on with the students.

[33:29]

You know, why am I here? Why did I say I wanted to do this? This is crazy. So the only thing that pulls them through this is their commitment. And then when they reach the end, they say, I'm really glad I did that. It's like climbing a mountain, which is very difficult. and you want to turn back many times, but you continue. And then at the end, you say, I'm really glad I did that. So through this kind of consistency or constancy of our original commitment,

[34:35]

we begin to really see who we are, and we begin to see how we fool ourself, and we begin to see how we dilute ourself, and we begin to see how we can straighten ourself out. And in the end, we experience pure existence. And practice that in the world. Giving up our small self and dedicating ourselves to the welfare of all beings, because all beings are my true self.

[35:41]

People sometimes say, when you're bowing, what is it that you're bowing to? And you can say, I'm bowing to myself. People say, well, isn't that a little egotistical? But that's not the self that we mean. Anyway. For a Zen student, we shouldn't get stuck in any particular mode of practice. Practicing Zazen, washing dishes, protesting nuclear proliferation, working at your job, being a mother, taking the flak from your children.

[36:59]

whatever it is, we do it with the same mind, consistently with the same mind of practice. So I encourage everyone to practice zazen and study the way with us. Thank you very much. Amen.

[37:34]

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