Zazen is Not Meditation - Sensei Tom Dharma-Joy Reichert - 6/14/26

"Here there is aim, but no target. So we just sit in the midst of this contradiction."

 In this Dharma talk, delivered during our Sunday program, Sensei Dharma-Joy illuminates the agenda-less goal of zazen practice. Whether we are counting the breaths, doing shikantaza, or working with koans, he says, our task is not to contemplate, solve a problem, or meditate on any thing because this enacts a separation. “We’re just letting go. And in letting go, we can just be completely present, and that’s what we call being free. To really reconnect with our natural original freedom.”

Sensei Dharma-Joy invokes the words of Dogen Zenji, Keizan Zenji, Kodo Sawaki Roshi, and Reverend Issho Fujita. All of them, in different ways, emphasized how zazen requires dropping our "gaining mind" and stepping out of the day-to-day business of being human.

Case 17 of the Blue Cliff Record koan collection is also brought to bear on the topic.

Music for this episode by Leopold Genzan Hackman.

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by Descript and only partially reviewed. It may contain errors. When in doubt, please refer to the recording.

Sensei Dharma-Joy Reichert

So in my last talk in May, I ended it with a [00:01:00] reference to the great and esteemed Zen text, the Zen Page a Day calendar, which had the great teaching, "You yourself must make the effort. Buddhas only point the way." So today I want to talk about that effort part.

And this talk, the title of it I'll just say, as I promised then, so I have to follow through. The talk is titled Zazen Is Not the Same as Meditation.

The origins of this talk are that it's all Myoki's fault, as we all know it usually is. Myoki recently moved her desk in the office upstairs in the sangha house. Oh, tell them. [00:02:00] Now you have to get through two locked doors to get to her.

The only person who's further away from the door is Jotai, who sits with the computers in Iceland. But in any event, so Myoki moved her desk, and in the great Zen Center tradition, I noticed, behind her new desk, there was just this pile of paper, 'cause there's piles of paper everywhere. And on the top of it, there was a piece of paper that said, "Zazen is not the same as meditation."

And I thought, "Wow, how great is that?" And then I said, "Oh, I have to give a talk about that." So here we are. Because my teacher, Egyoku, who is going to be showing up here on Tuesday, she used to say the same thing and for the same reason. So when I found that paper, which I snatched, I found there was a whole pile of them. At some point, they must have been connected to either a talk or something.

So the paper was the condensed version of a talk given by Reverend Issho Fujita. And I'm gonna talk today about a number of these different Zen teachers, but in particular, I'm gonna talk about a few people in his lineage. So Reverend Fujita is a really interesting guy.

He's come and given a talk here. Perhaps it was on that particular topic. But he is the grandson in the Dharma of Uchiyama Roshi, who many of you know. And Uchiyama Roshi, who wrote Opening the Hand of Thought, who himself was the Dharma successor of Kodo [00:04:00] Sawaki Roshi. And so I'm gonna talk mostly about some teachings that each of those three gave over the course of the last hundred years or so.

All three of them are unquestionably known for their propagation of the practice of zazen, and zazen as the core and heart of our practice. And this is, of course, very strongly connected to our tradition. So obviously, and I'll talk about this a little bit more, when Dogen Zenji, who was the founder of our school in Japan, ordained in Kyoto, he eventually went off and studied in China.

And he came back from China in, I believe, the year 1226, 1227-ish. Don't hold me to it. [00:05:00] And the first thing he wrote when he got back, and what we believe is... What's... It's believed to be the very first writing that he ever wrote, is this thing called the Fukanzazengi. And Fukanzazengi basically translates to the universal recommendation for the practice of zazen.

And at the time that he came back from China, he brought this zazen practice with him, and he really distinguished it from everything else that was going on in Japan at the time. His understanding of what zazen is became the core of the Soto practice. And then, as you may know, a few generations down, Dogen Zenji is considered kind of the father of the Soto school, and then four generations on, Keizan Zenji is considered the mother of the Soto school.

And Keizan [00:06:00] Zenji wrote a tract that's called the Zazen Yojinki. And Zazen Yojinki means points to watch out for in the practice of zazen. And in a way, people here are not that familiar with the Zazen Yojinki. Everyone knows the Fukanzazengi, or quite a few people do.

But people don't know Zazen Yojinki. And I came across it a few years ago, and I've been just, like, totally waiting to use it as a study text. And I know that it's a little bit long. It's not something... It's hard to use in a sesshin. It's about nine pages long, single-spaced. But Maezumi Roshi, back in the day, he gave 10 talks on the Zazenkai.

And it was... And it's... Like, we don't see this anymore. It was 10 talks over 10 [00:07:00] consecutive weeks, right? So every, whatever it was, Thursday night or... Every night he just went through, and it took him 10 weeks to do it, and he just went through it, you know, in this kind of dedicated way. And so I can't do that today.

But I am gonna touch on it, and I really encourage you to look for it, or just hit me up because I have multiple translations of it. And the Zazen Yojinki is Keizan Zenji's kind of elaboration on Dogen Zenji's original kind of a statement of zazen, what zazen is and what zazen is not. And Keizan Zenji's text is quite amazing because it goes from basically the sublime to the ridiculous in terms of its level.

I'll talk about it if I get a moment. It goes out to, like, the celestial beings level and then comes in to talk about exactly, you know, where you should put your mat and that you should stay out of a drafty [00:08:00] place and that if your mind starts to wander, this is exactly what you should do.

And it's really quite amazing. And it's just fantastic. So I really encourage you. But this zazen... Fujita, Reverend Fujita, who is, as I said, Uchiyama Roshi's Dharma grandson, gave a talk and then went around and gave a series of talks around the United States on this point of zazen is not the same as meditation.

And I'm really gonna sort of upset the people who do the introductory class here today which we call the Intro to Zen Meditation. So I want to read a little bit of what Reverend Fujita says. He says, "In the West, zazen is usually translated as Zen meditation or [00:09:00] sitting meditation. However, zazen, as understood by Dogen Zenji, is something different and cannot be categorized as meditation in the sense described above," which is basically the idea that we are meditating on something.

He says it would therefore be helpful to look at some differences between zazen and meditation.

He says, basically, according to Dogen, sitting in zazen is not to have an object in mind that we are working with.

In zazen, we are taking our position in this zazen posture and then just being present. We are not engaged in [00:10:00] some sort of meditation with the mind. We are just being present with the moment. So he says, "Dogen uses various terms to describe zazen, one of which is gotsuza, which means sitting immovable like a bold mountain.

A related term of great importance is kekkafuza, full lotus position, which Dogen regards as the key to zazen. However, Dogen's understanding of kekkafuza is completely different from the yogic tradition of India, and this understanding sheds a great deal of light on how we should approach zazen.

In most meditative traditions, practitioners start a certain method of meditation, such as counting breaths, visualizing sacred images, concentrating the mind or on a certain thought or sensation after getting comfortable sitting in full lotus [00:11:00] position. In other words, it is kekkafuza plus meditation.

Kekkafuza in such usages becomes a means for optimally conditioning the body and mind for mental exercises called meditation, but it is not an objective in itself. The practice is structured dualistically, with a sitting body as a container and a meditating mind as the contents, and the emphasis is always on meditation as mental exercise.

In such a dualistic structure, the body sits while the mind does something else. For Dogen, on the other hand, the objective of zazen is just to sit in kekkafuza correctly. There is absolutely nothing to add to it. It is kekkafuza plus zero." In this understanding, zazen goes beyond mind-body dualism. Both the body and the mind are simultaneously and completely used up [00:12:00] just by the act of sitting in kekkafuza.

While most meditations tend to focus on the head, zazen focuses more on the living holistic body-mind framework, allowing the head to exist without giving it any preeminence. In the zazen posture, the head learns to find its proper place and function within a unified body-mind.

As Shigeo Michi says, "Since zazen is the posture in which a human being does nothing for the sake of a human being, the human being is freed from being a human being and becomes a Buddha." So this is where I want to talk a little bit about Uchiyama and Kodo Sawaki Roshi. So Kodo [00:13:00] Sawaki Roshi, who was often known as Homeless Kodo, he was called that because he was always traveling around Japan constantly just exhorting people to practice zazen and leading zazenkais.

Kodo Sawaki was kind of like the big evangelist in the 20th century, early 20th century, of zazen. Zazen, practiced just for the sake of zazen. And he was... He's actually marvelous. I really recommend you read some of his work. His works have slowly been translated, and he's one of these people, I talk about him all the time because he's such a character.

He was probably completely horrible to live with, but he makes really great copy.

But one of the things he's known for saying... Well, obviously, his most famous words are, "We can't share so much as even a single fart," [00:14:00] talking about how everyone has just their own experience of life. But this is the one that I love right now. He says, "All of Buddhism is a footnote to zazen."

He says, "Zazen is not a competitive way. It is nothing more than becoming yourself."

He says, "Do not seek after the truth. Only cease to hold opinions. Opinions are arbitrary. Zazen means to die. You cease to have opinions. You become completely zazen."

This is something, for those of us who are, have been around for a bit. "Zazen is not something you feel you've grasped. There's nothing to chase after, there's nothing to run away from, and there's nothing to fear. Even at this age, I do zazen with a beginner's mind. [00:15:00] If you become accustomed to zazen, it becomes false zazen.

Get used to it, and it isn't worth a shit. You have to do it fresh every time. That's why the most important time is when you awaken that beginner's mind. Don't ever think you have mastered zazen just because you become familiar with it. Zazen is not something a person will become better at as they get older.

While you are practicing, that is zazen, so whether your practice is going well or poorly, you must always return to practice."

So he's also... One of my favorite things he says is, "Zazen is good for nothing." Right? Zazen is good for nothing. And that goes to this point that Fujita says, which is that zazen is the practice of not being a human being. Because in the human mind, we're always [00:16:00] looking for gaining.

We're always... We sit down and we want to accomplish something. We wanna have a good sitting practice. We wanna get this. We wanna get that. We wanna become a Buddha. But in true zazen, we just sit. We give up all of our gaining mind. We let go of all of it, and just sit with no expectation of gain. The minute there's expectation of gain, it is not true zazen.

In fact, it's something that's called shuzen. Shuzen is a style, it's a sort of a sub-style of zazen, which is about gaining something. So there is a practice called shuzen, which is about developing single-pointed concentration. So in the introductory classes, we give people the practice of counting the breath.

Counting the breath is basically a way of gaining something, right? So we give them that, we give all of us, we give it as a technique to develop something, and then we let go of it. [00:17:00] We have to let go of it. Because as long as we are holding on to it, there is me, and then there is the thing. There is the counting.

There is the accomplishment. There is the 10. If I've been really good. Or there's the one. You know, when I did the introductory class, a few years ago, there was an assistant instructor. We were given the instruction of counting to 10. If your mind wanders, you just come back to one, and she said, "What comes after one?

I've never gotten there." And I thought, "Wow, this place is for me."

But I will say this about the counting and the mind. So of course, this is what we set our intention to, which is to just sit. And then, of course, this brain, which is built to think, it kind of starts thinking, [00:18:00] and so then something seductive comes along, and then we're, like, off to the races.

Which is fine. It's what's called being human. And I tell people all the time, it's not interesting to me whether you start to wander off. Of course you are. You're a human being. We're gonna wander off. What's interesting to me is the quality of the return, right? So if we wander off, and then we're like, "Ugh, I...

Five minutes, and it's 17 times I've done this. Rah." It's like, that's very interesting. But if you wander off, and you're like, "Oh, okay. One." That to me is the real measure of practice. To the extent that we can measure practice, it's not in the fact that our minds are wandering, it's the quality of our return to the one.

It's our quality of [00:19:00] return to just sitting. So in the Zendo this morning, you know, I have this talk, so I was kind of struggling with how to start it. There are a couple of koans that I was thinking of using, and eh. And so I'm kind of... And then I just, like, "Oh."

And when we're sitting like that, just sitting. So in the just sitting, we're gonna start to see the levels of what's going on in the mind. So we may begin, for example, by noticing. But noticing also has that quality of there being a me and there being a thing. So for example, you know, one practice, Joko Beck gave this practice a lot, was the practice of labeling, right?

So if your mind is really busy, counting to 10 doesn't work, da, you can just come back to labeling. So you start to label your thoughts. So you say, "Oh, [00:20:00] sound, car, bird." But even there, there's the dualism. So the question then becomes, can we get to before the labeling? Can we just rest in just sound?

So rather than hearing these voices outside and trying to sort of strain to interpret them, we can just hear the sound of the sound. We don't even have to say sound of voices. Just sit.

So we talk about Zen, of course, you know, if you've been around for five minutes, you start to see the subtle... Every word has, like, seventeen meanings. And so there's a lot of subtlety to what we do. And so, there's a subtlety to this so-called zazen [00:21:00] posture. So Uchiyama Roshi says, "Some people believe that all activities that use the same posture as zazen are alike, but there are many different kinds of sitting practices.

The posture may be the same, but the spirit and purpose are different. Even while we are in the zazen position, if we continue our thoughts, we are thinking and no longer doing zazen. Zazen is not thinking, nor is it sleeping. Doing zazen is to be full of the life aiming at holding a correct zazen posture."

Maezumi Roshi, who is the founder of this place, the first abbot here, comments on this. Maezumi Roshi says, 'Just sitting on the cushion, letting your mind wander around is not zazen.' It's not about the position. He also says, 'Zazen is not just idle sitting. If you say [00:22:00] that is your practice, you slander the great vehicle.'

So Uchiyama Roshi again, he says, "When we actually do zazen, we should be neither sleeping nor caught up in our own thoughts. We should be wide awake, aiming at the correct posture with our flesh and bones. Can we ever attain this? Is there such a thing as succeeding or hitting the mark? Here is where zazen becomes unfathomable.

In zazen, we have to vividly aim at holding the correct posture, yet there is no mark to hit. If the person doing zazen thinks her zazen is really getting good or that she has hit the mark, she is merely thinking her zazen is good, while actually she has become separated from the reality of her zazen."

He goes on, "When we do zazen, we have to let go of our [00:23:00] self-centeredness and our dealing in relation to others. Zazen is just whole self doing itself by itself. Zazen does zazen. Zazen is the act of throwing away the calculating way of thinking that supposes that as long as there is an aim, there must be a target.

Here, there is aim, but no target. So we just sit in the midst of this contradiction that is absolutely ridiculous when we think about it with our small mind." So in this practice of zazen, as they say, we are not sleepy. We're not gonna be thinking. We're not gonna be daydreaming.

We're not gonna be sleepy. So it's just, as they say, just sitting. Who knew that just could be so hard? Maezumi Roshi says, [00:24:00] "Please sit strongly, but without any tension. By being tense, you can strain yourself to the point of exhaustion. To sit strongly requires that your body be free of tension. When you really sit strongly, it's almost as though you are generating electricity.

If anybody were to accidentally touch you, sparks would leap out."

And he says, "When you do shikantaza, sit as if your very life depended on it, as if you were in a duel to the death. What kind of intense concentration would you have? You would need to be physically relaxed, and yet in a state of greatly heightened alertness. When we sit, two major types of hindrances may occur: a scattered, busy mind," I've heard that, "or a dull, drowsy mind.

And the way to eliminate both these hindrances while we sit is to concentrate in zazen as though engaged in a fight [00:25:00] for our very lives." So I can't, I didn't track it down. There's a, there's a quote somewhere from one of Maezumi Roshi's teachers, Yasutani Roshi, where he said, talking about shikantaza, he says, "I think I've sat true shikantaza for five minutes in my life."

Right? I was talking with Kijun about this, this week. He had trained at Great Vow, our sister temple up in Oregon Monastery. And I was saying, "When you're sitting in zazen in this way, you should feel like you're sitting in the middle of an open field in the middle of the night with no idea what's out there."

And he said, "Hogen has said the same thing." It was really quite amazing. He said Hogen, Roshi Hogen, one of the co-abbots there, really has this feeling like when you're sitting in zazen, you should have this alertness, [00:26:00] and it's very hard to maintain. So we wander off, and then we come back, and we want...

And this is what we call being human. But remember that when we are sitting in zazen, no human activity occurs. We get to set it aside.

Fujita quotes Uchiyama as saying, "We might accurately say that entering zazen is going out of the business of being a human being, or that in zazen, no human being business gets done."

So when Dogen Zenji came back from China to propagate the practice of zazen in Japan, where people were [00:27:00] unfamiliar with it, in his Fukanzazengi, he says, 'Cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate yourself.

Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will be manifest. If you want to attain suchness, you should practice suchness without delay."

Once you have adjusted your posture, take a deep breath, inhale and exhale, rock your body right and left, and settle into a steady, immovable sitting position. Think of not thinking. How do you think of not thinking? Non-thinking. This in itself is the essential art of [00:28:00] zazen.

Maezumi Roshi's comment on this passage from the Fukanzazengi, he says, "Please understand that this is not denying the functioning of our mind when we say think not thinking. Consciousness is vividly functioning, all alive with ideas or thoughts, but that functioning is conditioned, and if we don't let go of the conditioned functioning of consciousness, the thoughts and ideas that arise, then we falsely find ourselves in those thoughts and ideas, and to the extent we do that, we restrict ourselves."

So when Dogen Zenji says, "Think not thinking. How do you think not thinking? Non-thinking," he's quoting from one of our earliest Chinese ancestors. And this [00:29:00] line shows up in pretty much... It shows up over and over and over again. It's the core of Dogen Zenji's teaching. "Think not thinking. How do you think not thinking?

Non-thinking."

It's originally from an exchange with Yaoshan Weiyan. For those of you who are here and chant during our services in the morning when we chant our temple lineage, Yaoshan Weiyan is the ninth Chinese ancestor, the ninth ancestor in China. In Japanese, his name is Yakusan Igen.

Well, he's quite a character in himself, but this line became hugely influential for Dogen Zenji. And so as I said, he quotes it, and it becomes, as one scholar says, basically it's the heart of [00:30:00] Dogen Zenji's teaching. And to really kind of start to understand what is this not thinking, I'll tell you another little exchange between Yaoshan and his teacher. One day, as Yaoshan was sitting, Shitou asked him, 'What are you doing?'

Yaoshan said, "I'm not doing a thing." Shitou said, "Then you are just sitting leisurely." Yaoshan said, "If I were sitting leisurely, I'd be doing something."

And I didn't write it down, but there's two more lines to that exchange where his teacher says, "Well, if you're not... Then if you're not doing anything, what are you not doing?" And Yaoshan says, "Even the Buddhas and sages don't know." [00:31:00]

So this gives us a little bit of the flavor of what this practice is, right? And okay, here's the really good marketing part. It's incredibly boring.

Right? We are just gonna sit here. We're not gonna take up all of the wonderful, seductive thoughts that we can. We're not gonna go somewhere. We're gonna just basically just sit here in this alive awakeness, without any expectation of gaining something from it, without any expectation of accomplishment, without any idea that this makes me become a Buddha.

You are already a Buddha. Dogen Zenji refers to this as practice realization. He calls zazen practice-realization. And the point [00:32:00] of why he does this is to emphasize that practice and realization are not separate, and that there is nothing to gain, that the realization is in the practice itself. Dogen Zenji has this line, it's Shusho ichinyo, which means practice and enlightenment are one. Maezumi Roshi says about this, he says, "Doing zazen in order to create a certain effect or to give rise to certain conditions is the wrong way to do zazen.

When we say that practice and enlightenment are one, we mean that practice is not a means through which we attain something. Rather, practice itself is a fulfillment of the originally enlightened life. What you are expecting or striving to attain is already here. From the very beginning, the way is perfectly manifesting [00:33:00] right here, always here as your life.

Realization or attaining enlightenment is nothing but becoming aware of this fact." When you practice, keep in mind that practice and realization are one. Don't make them separate. Allow your zazen to be the manifestation of that fact and just sit. It's okay if thoughts arise. Just let them go. Try it. When you practice in this way, then sitting, standing, walking, lying down all together become zazen.

Then a very new version of life will open up for you. Please do not chase after something else, but appreciate this very life, all the activities of life, as the manifestation of realization. [00:34:00]

Now I'll get to my koan.

In the Blue Cliff Record, which is a collection of old cases, case 17, this is a translation. This is a modern translation by a practitioner, a teacher in the Korean tradition. His name is Matthew Sullivan. I highly recommend it. Some of his comments are quite wonderful. But this one is the only one that made me laugh out loud.

Okay, here's the case. A monk asked Xianglin, "Why did the patriarch come from the West?" Xianglin said, "Sitting for a long time becomes tiresome."

Here's Matthew Sullivan's commentary. In the 17th case, Xianglin Chengyuan [00:35:00] gives away one of the deep secrets of Buddhism. It's a family secret, and like all family secrets, it is shameful and hidden in plain sight. Of all the ancient teachers, only Xianglin has the courage to call out its name. Xianglin says that meditation is tiresome, but what he really means is that it's dead boring.

Boring for newcomers, boring for masters, boring for Buddhas. Sitting, retreats, monastery life, and chanting are all boring. Dharma talks are usually boring, too. Wait, what? I didn't... Perhaps the most boring sermon I ever heard was given by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. I slept so soundly that I awoke only when the congregation started to bow.

His Holiness had left. I went and brushed my teeth. [00:36:00]

So what's the matter with that? Yeah.

He says, "Zen, more than any other human art or endeavor, teaches us how beautiful and necessary boredom is. It is not a downside or a drawback. It is the central feature of our tradition."

When Xianglin says sitting for a long time becomes tiresome, he is uncovering a high and holy truth. Only boredom can set you free.

This is zazen. We're just sitting. And of course, this brain, its job is to just generate thoughts like sparks, you know? And we just let them come, and we just let them go. As one of the teachers here, Sensei Shingetsu used to say, you know, "Just let it come, [00:37:00] and let it cross the stage, and let it go."

She says, "Just don't ask it in for a cup of tea," you know? And that's the practice. And our challenge is to resist the temptation for entertainment. So when we sit, if we have a Zazenkai, as we will in a few weeks, it's a lot of sitting. Sesshin means to settle the mind.

When we have a sesshin, we just sit. Just sit to allow this boredom, to allow the mind to settle. Uchiyama Roshi, who I mentioned before, Uchiyama Roshi, who was the abbot at a temple, a very famous temple in Japan, he had this thing that he called, sesshin without toys. And so for his sesshin, there would be no samu, there would be no services, there would be [00:38:00] no face-to-face.

And if you looked at the schedule, it started at about 4:00 AM in the morning, and it went to about 9:00 PM at night, and it was zazen period, walking, zazen period, walking, zazen period, breakfast, zazen period, walking, zazen period, lunch. And it just went on like that for the entire day, to avoid giving us these opportunities to sort of let the, you know, busy mind take over. So this is the practice.

This is the core practice of our school. And it can be... It's not for the TikTok world. A million views.

But that's how it is.

Uchiyama [00:39:00] Roshi, when he was retiring as the Abbot of Antai-ji, gave a talk titled Seven Points of Practice. And the second of these seven points, I've read some of them before. One of them is about the sangha supporting each other in practice.

But the second one is, "Zazen is our truest and most venerable teacher." He says, "The enshrined Buddha statue on an altar is referred to as the honzon, but the word really means what is most revered. What is of highest value and most worthy of veneration is zazen." He said, "Once a visitor to Antai-ji wanted to pay reverence to the Buddha statue in the zendo.

When I opened the door, he was surprised to see an electric fan [00:40:00] above the altar and exclaimed that it was irreverent to put a fan above the Buddha." He says, "People in Kyoto think that the Buddha statue is the most venerable thing in a temple, but in Antai-ji, the honzon is on the other side of the hall in the activity of zazen."

The Buddha statue is just an embodiment of zazen as the most venerable thing. Opening the Hand of Thought for oneself should have ultimate value. He then warns us, "If we're not careful, we're apt to grant ultimate value to something we've just made up in our heads."

He then says, "Zazen is the only true teacher. This is an important point. I've never said to my disciples that I am a true teacher. From the beginning, I have said that zazen, that the zazen each of us practices is the only [00:41:00] true teacher." And we know this is true. We should understand that this practice is where, as we know, this practice is body practice, right?

That's what we... This is what Dogen Zenji teaches us, that we sit in this zazen posture, and we just see what comes up. When the Buddha was dying, he said, "What I've taught for the last forty years is what I found to be true, but you have to verify it for yourself. If it works for you, great. If it doesn't work for you, find something that does."

So in Sanskrit, this is called ehipassiko. Investigate for yourself. Verify for yourself. And this was one of my teacher, Egyoku's, favorite phrases. [00:42:00] Whatever I say is secondary. Whatever anyone says is secondary to our own experience. Zazen is the only true and authentic teacher, because it's in zazen that we are present with ourself. No one can tell you, this goes back to Sawaki Roshi's point.

No one can share so much as even a single fart, right? No one can share your experience. As he elsewhere says, when I'm holding this cup, my experience of this cup is completely different from each of your own experience of this cup. Is it the same cup? So we understand that each of us has our own experience, and it's from that experience that we investigate our lives.

Okay, I've said enough. All right, so having said [00:43:00] that... Oh, let me say a little bit about Zazen Yojinki, because I'm so excited. I'm so excited about it.

Dharma-Joy: So Keizan Zenji, Keizan Zenji, I'm quite a big fan. Dogen Zenji gets all the glory, but Keizan did all the work. Keizan Zenji, the mother... Is the mother.

Yeah, that's right. It's, of course, it's the mother. Interesting, very interesting. Dogen got, Dogen Zenji got to sort of sit up in the mountains and just sort of write the Shobogenzo and just sort of, like, do all the writing that sort of set the stage. But it was others, after a big civil war, it was others that had to sort of actualize it as Soto Zen in Japan.

So in the Zazen Yojinki, he says, "Points to keep in mind when practicing zazen." [00:44:00] And he starts off as... One of the things that you'll notice with both Dogen Zenji and Keizan Zenji is that in the very first sentence, they say the most important thing. They never bury the lede. Good, they were very good newspaper people, right?

They never bury the lede. He says, "Zazen means to clarify the mind ground and dwell comfortably in your actual nature. This is called revealing yourself and manifesting the original ground."

If you wish to clarify the mind ground, you should relinquish your various types of limited knowledge and understanding. Throw away both worldly affairs and Buddha Dharma. Throw away both worldly affairs and Buddha Dharma.

An ancient master said, "When [00:45:00] delusive thoughts arise, tranquility arises. When tranquility arises, wisdom appears. When wisdom appears, reality reveals itself. If you want to eliminate delusive thoughts, you should cease to discriminate between good and evil. Give up all affairs with which you are involved.

Do not occupy your mind with any concerns or become physically engaged in any activity."

Vow to cut off all delusions and realize enlightenment. Just sit without doing anything. This is the essence of the practice of zazen. This is good. "Though you should not begrudge anyone the Dharma, do not preach it unless you are asked. Even if someone asks, keep silent three times. If the person still asks you from his or her heart, then teach him or her.

Out [00:46:00] of 10 times you may desire to speak..." Oh, sorry. "Out of 10 times you may desire to speak, remain silent for nine, as if mold were growing around your mouth. Be like a folded fan in December, or like a windbell hanging in the air, indifferent to the direction of the wind. This is how a person of the Way should be.

Do not use the Dharma to profit at the expense of others. Do not use the Way as a means to make yourself important."

Drop mind, intellect, and consciousness. Leave memory, thinking, and observing alone. Don't try to fabricate Buddha. Don't be concerned with how well or how poorly you think you are doing. Just understand that time is as precious as if you were putting out a fire on [00:47:00] your head.

I'll just end. He ends it this way: "You should just rest and cease. Be cooled past numberless years as this moment. Be cold ashes, a withered tree, an incense burner in an abandoned temple, a piece of unstained silk. This is my earnest wish."

So when we're sitting, we just sit. And for those of you who are working on koans, this is not, like you don't get a pass. I just wanted this to be clear. So when we're working with koan, it doesn't mean that we are gonna be busy in our sitting, right? That's not sitting either. That's just being busy with your koan.

Because then it relies, as I said last time, on a fundamental misunderstanding of [00:48:00] what koan is. Koan is not something to be figured out. So if we're sitting in zazen trying to figure out a koan, then we're not sitting in true zazen. As I said, koan is not an escape room that we're trying to figure out the escape from, right?

When we sit, if the koan is mu, we're just mu.

Or just dissolve into the koan.

If the koan is sitting long becomes tiresome, just tiring.

Because we're not gonna solve it.

And for most of us, we have been very successful in our lives by solving problems. And as we said earlier, zazen is the practice of giving up being a human being doing [00:49:00] human things. Zazen is the practice of being a Buddha. Buddhas are not here to solve our problems. Right? So really to have this sense of, like, it's not. We just let go.

This is the Opening the Hand of Thought that Uchiyama Roshi talks about, right? We're just letting go. And in letting go, we can just be completely present, and that's what we call being free, and that's the object of this practice. To really reconnect with our natural original freedom.