Well, we're getting close to our spring practice period, which begins week after next, I think, on the 10th. So I want to talk about mindful practice. People say, how come you never talk about mindfulness? Which is true, we don't, but we do. But we don't call it that, necessarily. But what does that mean? You turn it up a little bit. What does that mean? To illustrate, listen to the following.

[01:11]

This is case number 12 from the Mu Man Con, Master Mu Man's collection of koans. Jiu Yien is his Chinese name, his original name, but we always call him Zui Gan because we always learned our koans in Japanese. So that's the Japanese pronunciation of Jiu Yien, believe it or not. Zui Gan. That's how we know him. And you probably remember him from having heard this before, or read it, or studied it. But whether you have or not, here's the case. There's no introduction. The priest Zui Gan called Master to himself. every day, and answered himself, yes.

[02:48]

It's not a question. Then he would say, be aware, and reply, yes. Don't be deceived by others. No, no I won't. That's the case. So this is Zuigan's practice of masterful practice. So then Master Wumen who collected this koan said, Old Zuigan, buys himself and sells himself. He brings forth lots of angel faces and demon masks and plays with them.

[03:51]

Why? Look, one kind calls, one kind answers. One kind is aware, one kind will not be deceived. If you still cling to understanding, you are in trouble. If you try to imitate your discernment is altogether that of a fox. And then there is a verse which sort of sums things up, Mumon's verse. He says, students of the way do not know truth. They only know their own deluded consciousness up to now. calls it the original self. So going back to the case, the priest Julian called Master.

[04:58]

So this is an interesting term because he's talking to himself. Well, who are you? Who is the master? There are many koans that reverberate with this one. Like, who is the master? That's a very good koan. Master, meaning accomplished person, could be. Master could be your original mind. Could be Buddha nature. could be essence of mind. Master, you could say mistress, but that could be misconstrued.

[06:08]

Suzuki Roshi used to say, He used to use the term boss. He said, you should be the boss. Wherever you are, you should be the boss. Which doesn't mean to boss people around, or that you're some kind of potentate. But you are the master of yourself, whatever that means. And then Suzuki Roshi would say, when you are you completely, Zen is Zen. So maybe boss means, or master means, when you are you completely. But what does completely mean? Every word has meaning. What is the meaning of completely?

[07:16]

or totally, or wholly. So, Zui Gan, every day, said, Master. And then, he answered himself, Hai! So, however they say in Chinese, Yes! An affirmation. This is like an affirmation. Yes. OK. Often, in Zen literature, we read about the shout. The shout is an affirmation. It doesn't have to have any particular meaning other than its own expression.

[08:25]

Its expression of being present. Then he would say, be aware. Aware of what? The third ancestor, Senzan, has a saying, no need to give up everything, just simply be aware. And then he replied, yes. My comment here is, letting the goose out of the bottle. I wrote that down years ago.

[09:33]

And then I realized it means, letting the goose out of the bottle means letting the ego go somewhere else. Letting go of the ego. Let the goose out of the bottle. It's freedom, right? What binds us is our self. That's our problem. We're always blaming others for our problems. Always blaming others for something. If only things would change, I would be okay. No, that won't happen. No matter how things change, you will not be okay. But we keep trying. We keep trying really hard to change things so that we'll be okay. But that's not how it works.

[10:34]

Don't be deceived by others. So it's our own self-deception, of course. By others means ourself, really. Don't deceive yourself. But mostly we're self-deceptive because we don't know our own mind. So, don't be deceived by us. No, no, I won't. I had a nice little thing that I wrote that by affirming the self. He drops the self. Dogen says to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.

[11:39]

Forgetting the self actually is affirming the self. We say no self. Humans have no self. But if we didn't have a self, We only can say no-self because there is one. So, no matter how hard you try to get rid of your self, you can't get rid of it. You can only drop the self by affirming the self. Master, Suligan said, Master, Neti said, Yes. That's self-affirmation. It's self-affirmation by letting go of the self through self-affirmation. I remember Suzuki Roshi talking about his master.

[12:46]

His master would say, I don't have an opinion. But when I say something, I really say it like that. I totally say it. I totally affirm what is necessary to affirm. So, Ojiiryu, sorry, Zuigan, buys himself and sells himself. This is the little drama that's going on, right? So he's creating a drama. He's talking to himself. He's like the puppeteer with one puppet in one hand and one puppet in the other hand. And this puppet is saying, da-da-da, and the other puppet is saying, hi, yes, yes, OK. OK, OK, OK, OK. So he's having this little drama going on for us.

[13:55]

So one kind calls, one kind answers. He brings forth lots of angel faces and demon masks and plays with them. So that's his little game. One calls, the other answers. One kind is aware, one kind will not be deceived by others. If you still cling to understanding, you're in trouble. Our true nature is beyond our understanding. We can be it, but we can't see it, so to speak. If you peek, then you can't. It's gone. No peeking. It's simply total presence.

[15:01]

is total presence. During our practice period, we will have the shuso, the head monk, the head practitioner, who shares the seat with the other. And at the end, as you all know who have done this before, we have the shuso ceremony, where everyone asks the question about dharma. And the shuso has to say something. The shuso, we would hope, responds with total presence. That's the shuso's task, is to respond to questions with total presence. It's not a matter of right or wrong, or good or bad. It's a matter of total presence, exercising total presence.

[16:19]

It's hard to be totally present, moment to moment. It's very hard to be totally present, moment to moment. Why? Because we're always dreaming. So, when Zuligan talks to himself, be present, no dreaming. But we love to dream. That's our unique, or we think it is. We don't know if ants dream or not. We think they don't. Dogs dream. What is our understanding? I don't know. The basis of understanding is not knowing. No knowing.

[17:27]

No knowing is complete knowing in its true sense. But we discriminate. And in our discriminating, which we need to do, we take that which is complete and break it down into little pieces. And then we get attached to the little pieces. The little pieces are like, what am I doing today? And we sink in discriminating ways. Discrimination means to break down into pieces. Take one thing and break it down into pieces. So we forget the one thing because we get lost in the pieces. So we can't see the forest for the trees, so to speak. We get caught by knowing. And we break one thing down into many pieces in order to know, which is important and necessary.

[18:33]

Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to live our lives. but we forget that it's all one piece. So if you still cling to understanding, you're in trouble. You can't be free because we're stuck in the pieces. If you try to imitate Zuigan, your discernment is altogether that of a fox. You can't imitate him and you can't But imitating him, you know, is not original. Where is your original response? To be inspired by his spirit, but not to be imitating his acts. That's how we appreciate someone like Zuigan. So we all have to find our own manner of expression, which is true expression. So, Bhuvan's verse, he says, students of the way do not know the truth.

[19:37]

They only know their deluded consciousness up to now. Deluded consciousness means consciousness is discriminating. When consciousness is turned, then it becomes wisdom. When we talk about the mind, mind is just a word. for consciousness. Various levels of consciousness are what constitute something called mind. So we use mind as a kind of cover for the various levels of consciousness. But it's important to understand the various levels of consciousness which constitute what we call mind, so that we don't get fooled by consciousness. Consciousness is necessary, but it also is the basis of self. And what suffers and what goes through birth and death repeatedly is consciousness, or self-consciousness, or self-centeredness, or ego.

[20:51]

That which is born and dies is self-centeredness. What we usually call ego. I don't know if I like that word, but that's what we have. Manas. The pretender. That which thinks of itself as ourself. So he says, students of the way do not know the truth. They only know their consciousness up to now. This is the source of endless birth and death. The fool calls it the original self. So what we call our self is our thinking mind, our feelings, thoughts, feelings, our form, the five skandhas.

[21:56]

Think of the five skandhas as our God is our true self. That's what it's saying. But it's not. So, the source of birth and death, you know, life is birth and death are a continuous continuum. Within birth there is death, within death there is birth. And it just rolls along. But there's no person or self that's involved. And our suffering comes from this unfortunate delusion. That's Buddhism. So, where does that leave us? This is a kind of mindfulness.

[23:01]

practice that Zungan has, a mindfulness practice that is based on reality, to always be awake, to wake up to reality. And we're always dreaming. So Zazen, you know, is Purpose of exhaustion is moment by moment to wake up from the dream. We sit down and we hold our back straight. I hope we do. And we sit up and put ourselves in a position and breathe and let go. And then we start dreaming. And then we, oh, That was an interesting dream.

[24:03]

But I have to get back to work, to what I was doing before. And then we have another dream. Oh, excuse me, I have to get back. Then we have another dream. say, I'm going to sit down and have some nice dreams now, but maybe in the back of my mind we still have to have them. But the problem is we think. My mind is just thinking all the time, you know, I'm never citiesizing because my mind is just going all the time, dreaming, dreaming. So the problem is not the dream, because the nature of the mind is to dream. Dream is not bad. The nature of human beings is to dream.

[25:07]

But we said we're going to Zazen. So that's intention. So Surya Gandhi is saying, my intention is to be present. This is my practice. My intention is to be present. But even though my intention is to be present, I still dream. What am I going to do about that? Well, let the mind dream. That's what it wants to do. What's wrong with that? Well, it's just that we're not awake. We're dreaming. What's so good about being awake? Well, that's a good question. A lot of us think that it isn't. But, if we want to base our activity in reality, then we have to be awake.

[26:14]

Because being awake is another important aspect of being one. Because being awake means being whole. This is what we mean by being awake. Wholeness. Being awake can include dreaming. But dreaming will not include being awake. So being awake includes dreaming. Being in a big mind includes everything. You see the clouds, and the clouds are passing by, but the clouds are always changing, and they're interesting. And there's the elephant. Oh, now it's turning into a giraffe, and, you know, kind of interesting.

[27:16]

But we don't stay there all day. We just let them pass, because we know these are just clouds. But our dreams become vital to us. making judgments, and liking and disliking, and so forth. Just let things be. And wake up. Moment by moment, waking up. That's what Zui Gan's practice is. Moment by moment, waking up. So, how do we do that all day long? What do we wake up to when we wake up?

[28:20]

So, we come back to wholeness. When we wake up, we come back to wholeness. So, when we pay attention to of Zazen, I'm using Zazen as an example, then we come back to wholeness, because there's nothing, we're not discriminating. Discrimination is necessary, but it's also a problem. we come back to wholeness. Because discriminating is what divides.

[29:25]

So, during our daily life it's the same, because the moment we open our eyes we start discriminating. We get out of bed, we do all this stuff, we brush our teeth, we go to the bathroom, we go to the toilet, or we take a shower, or we have to get some place, and so the mind starts working all together. you know, discriminating. So, Ekin Roshi has written some ways of mindful, a kind of outline of mindfulness for the day. And this is the way he puts it. He said, getting out of bed, these are the things that we don't usually Think about these discriminations about getting out of bed, using the toilet, washing my hands, stepping into the shower, stepping out of the shower, drying my body, brushing my teeth, brushing my hair, getting ready to dress, opening the door, and it gets all the way down to going through all of the activities up to getting ready to leave the house.

[31:13]

But in each one of these activities, this is like living our life. You know, Suzuki Roshi used to say, our practice is living our life one moment at a time, little by little, little by little, one moment at a time. So what does one moment at a time mean? It means every moment is its own time. Every moment is its own moment of birth, its own moment of birth and death. A complete moment of one lifetime on each moment. One complete lifetime on each moment. Do we experience that one complete lifetime on each moment? That's called practice. It's experiencing that one lifetime of birth and death completely on each moment. If you say now, when you say now, it's gone. No, no, [...] no.

[32:17]

Birth, death, birth, death, birth, death, birth, death. It's happening at the same time. We're leaving behind and renewing. Leaving behind and renewing. Leaving behind and moment by moment by moment. So this is getting down to momentousness. The one moment is totally momentous. Momentous means, you know, great. So it is. Each moment is Great. This is all the time we've wasted not being present. So we could start any time. There are some Gatas. I don't know if some of the older students remember the Gata period. In Soto Zen, Dogen has Gatas. A Gata is a little saying you do before you go to the bathroom, before you wash your where you do various things in the monastery to give your Zui Gans a wickedness.

[33:21]

So we had those, but nobody practiced them. And then Thich Nhat Hanh came out with gathas back in the 80s, I think it was. And that was a kind of renewal of the gatha. And then Ekam Roshi came out with gathas. And we practiced writing them down. But we don't do that. But it's great practice to keep us focused on wholeness and how to stay centered. Here are some of those. Actually, I think this is pretty much the Soto Zen one. Taking my toothbrush in hand, I vow with all beings fully to realize the subtle dharma and at once attain purity. We think of purity as cleaning.

[34:27]

Purity in Zen means non-duality, essence and function. teeth the eye teeth to conquer demons Preparing to enter the shower, I vow with all beings to cleanse this body of Buddha and go naked into the world."

[35:32]

That's a good one too. So, you have to let go of Buddha as well. So, we can see that Ross is the beater there. Actually, this is She printed a book called The Dragon Who Never Sleeps, and it's all about us. I just grabbed it this morning. I said, seriously? Read that book. I'll just read a few. When I entered the Zen Dojo and bowed, I bowed with all beings. with my friends once again. When I bow to the four before Buddha, I vow with all beings to release my needless fixations and die to myself at last.

[36:37]

And when I bow to my sisters and brothers, I vow with all beings to freshen our intimate kinship and enliven the practice we share. Very nice.

[36:52]

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