How To Sit

Sitting all the way down

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Good morning. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Those of you who just came up today who were who are visiting and uh appreciate your getting involved with things when you are here too. And uh for those who are here of course all week for the for the session. And um course it can feel like with session finished or this morning, but that's feels like perhaps the end of session, but then we have a whole program going on with Mozarzen. I know for like the years that I've been here, often those like two periods after service on a Sunday after a week long, I'd just be like, oof, you know, just kind of grinding it out. If it's it would often feel that way, you just start like feeling like you're on the you kind of fin you're approaching the finish line and you you just need your foil blanket, and you're you know, you you just want to get done, but of course, you know, the transitions are important, and knowing that uh although session ends schedule-wise, there is no uh there is no existent kind of um break or separation where it was session and now now that it's not. Yeah, uh session. Um we had on uh perhaps it's on the website, is it still there to unify the mind as a translation?

SPEAKER_01 1:46

There's some pages where it's still.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Yeah, somebody helpfully corrected us with a closer translation. Do you remember what it was? Gathering? I think it's to gather, yeah, gathering, gathering the mind. So in in Sashin, there's certainly that air of uh that practice of of concentration. Or we can see that we have methods to help cultivate concentration. You know, the schedule is certainly that helps to cultivate concentration. The mind is not dispersed in a lot of different new activities, but rather it's it's pretty much the same activity uh over and over again, and that in itself is naturally concentrating. You know, the the relevance of whether we call it Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday starts to fall off. It's just especially in the middle of session, you know, it's it's um it just you know it can cause it causes suffering to think about what day of a week it is, but to just be directly involved in in whatever it is that we're doing. So there's a certain concentration there, and then there's also just a concentration from uh sitting still and quietly in one place. So we have these hours of Zazen, that is also a concentration, and maybe we'll even add in some concentration beyond that. So you know we might be following the breath or counting the breath or working on Koan. So all of these uh in an effort to um help encourage or allow the conditions of realization to become apparent. So creation of a of a container, and that is more of a refraining from doing things that obscures that always enduring basis. So we're not trying to create something new in Session, but rather letting everything that is extraneous dissolve. So that which is always here, that which we are becomes so uh apparent that you can't miss it, and that is the making real then. So concentration helps to turn our head back to our place, our only place of being, this present awareness. You know, in the scheme of the Zen Ox herding pictures, it's like a series of ten pictures. If you're not familiar, I'd encourage you to have a look at that. It's a curious thing, you know. We have all of the wonderful written tradition, um, and it's it's it's an interesting thing to see the way represented in pictures, you know, to use a different medium. And often pictures can express a lot more than words, right? It's that way with um with art. And in these ten Oxhodon pictures that uh map out perhaps a typical human approach to uh to spiritual practice, it's shown in the visual metaphor of a spiritual practitioner seeking uh a water buffalo, seeking a buffalo. And the buffalo is here is the our uh true or intrinsic nature. And in the first picture, the search begins. So people are turned toward our this practice and practices like this, then there's um a search has begun. A search has begun to look. And in the first picture, looking for the ox, the um the footsteps, the prints of the ox are directly in front of the practitioner. But the way that it's drawn is the practitioner is looking over here instead, so looking toward for something else, expecting something else to come in from another way, or something that can't be seen, you know, looking over the shoulder for something. So we tend to have the way that we're, of course, conditioned and the way that we seek knowledge or try and resolve problems. We use this well-honed lens of intellectual analysis and knowledge seeking, and as we're reminded over and over again, that doesn't work. But the traces of the footprints are always right in front of the nose. Master Dogen is going to bring up a few words from him, a couple of generations further down from Master Dogen. Master Kazan was giving instruction for Zazen, our sit in practice meditation, and he says something along the lines of arrange the body in this certain way that we do, then look down the length of your nose and study self-nature. And that's it, that's all the instruction. Very, very simple, direct. If you wish to realize to study self, then put oneself in the position of unavoidably studying self. And not the self which is uh just examining whatever the our condition patterns are playing between the ears. That's the the critical difference. Uh just bringing up some words from uh Zazangi, which is a this is a shorter version of Fukan Zazengi, uh, a writing of Master Dogan's. Um Ted refers to this one sometimes, bringing up Fukan Zazengi. This is Zar Zengi, just rules for Zarzan. So far. Practice of meditation. Rules for Zarzen. Practicing Zen is Zarzen. So that's first. The rules for Zarzen, practicing Zen is Zarzen in this context. Now, this could have been called rules for growing apples, you know, and then the first line would say practicing zen is growing apples. So whatever the activity is, that's zen. That's the practice. Here he's talking about Zha Zen. So practicing Zen is Zha Zen. Zha, a character, means to sit. And then this trickier term to translate, Zen. Which was Chan in China or Jana in India. Meditation. Practicing Zen is Zha Zen. For Zha Zen, a quiet place is suitable. You know, and that that's that's quite obvious. Not that you could say practice in Zen is sitting on the side verge of the 10th freeway in Los Angeles. That would certainly be Zen. But it would be difficult to practice there, particularly if you're a beginner, an approaching, you know, also probably dangerous. Actually, definitely dangerous, right? So, and and noisy and all kinds of things going on which demand attention, and attention is corresponding to. So deliberately we set up, as it was eight, nine hundred years ago, say a similar condition, a place of quiet, you know, a place of warmth and um conditions arrange such that you don't have to respond to conditions. So just a quiet place is suitable. He says, uh, lay out a thick mat. Which you know, I which I appreciate, doesn't say lay out the thinnest mat you can, and then put some pins under it, you know, and this is a very uncompromising and strict teacher, but still it's like no, get a fic mat. You're gonna be there a while. So have a fic mat. Don't let in draughts, smoke, rain, or dew, which is also helpful, practical advice. And I'm sure in 13th century Japan you have to pay very strict attention to not letting in the conditions that could bring on a chill, or you know, because it wasn't the days where you could just go down to the urgent care and get some amoxicillin. You have to be careful, you have to don't let the chill in, don't let damp in. Protect and maintain the place where you settle your body. There's a few more practical instructions, and then he says, set aside all involvements and let the myriad things rest. So, like direct instructions that we that we deal with in Sesshin, in our daily life, set in the time for Zazen, set aside all involvements and let the myriad things rest. A real crux, the crux approach. You know, no matter how tempting when sitting, we have so we have our involvements, and we're always involved in something. And it can be compelling to continue to churn the involvements when sitting. But Master Dogan encourages here set aside all involvements and let the myriad things or allow the myriad things to rest. So not an act of creating something, but rather allowing creation to come forward, not constructing something. In another writing, he says Zarzen is unconstructedness in stillness, not creating something, not aggregating this narrower sense of me and mine. Letting that go for a period of time. Taking the refuge of Zarzen. Sitting is is that it is uh a refuge for this period of time. There's nothing to do. Really have it be that, nothing to do. That is Svaha or Whoopi, nothing to do in a life of endless doing, really having some time where there's nothing to do. Let the myriad things rest. And set aside all involvement. Zazen is not thinking of good, not thinking of bad. So not weighing things, not judging things, not scheming. It is not conscious endeavor. It is not trying to do something. Another potential snare for Zen practitioners are uh Zazen practitioners. Often we bring an attitude or an energy of trying to do something, but not quite knowing what that is that we're trying to do.

unknown 14:31

Right?

SPEAKER_00 14:31

Anyone who sat seshin understands that. There's something to be done, but not sure what. It is not conscious endeavor, it is not introspection. So it's not reaching into our bundle of relationships and understandings and ideas and attainments and failures, and trying to write the ship by being our own therapist. It's not sitting in a 30-minute therapy session where we're both the therapist and the client surrendering that too, letting that be put to the side. It is not introspection. Introspection, things may arise. We may sit and in stillness, quiet, with our concerns set aside, and things may arise in the mind that may be insightful. That's fine. You have insights, but then don't make something of that. It's just an insight. That's great, I had an insight. But if we treat our insights that come forward as somehow more important than the pain in our knees, that's a mistake in Zarzen. The real shift is to have is to surrender the value system of experience. But rather to have all experience be all experience without the picking and choosing. Whether it's internal or perceived internal or external. Again, we have all kinds of we have this value system that thinking about whatever comes up in the mind, that gets top bill in. That's got the front row C. You know, often what comes up between the ears. That's important. And then the sound outside the room is of maybe less importance, unless it's the sound of an earthquake or something, and then it becomes very much more important, right? A good disruptor to thought. But this is what he's laying out here is set aside the picking and choosing of a preference system. It is not intersection. Do not desire to become a Buddha. I'm not sure if how relevant that is for people. I don't know if anyone came up here trying to be a Buddha this week. You've probably got a good chance, I think. Yeah, do not desire to become a Buddha. Let sitting or lying drop away. Be moderate in eating and drinking, in eating and drinking. Be mindful of the passing of time and engage yourself in Zazen as well as saving your head from fire. Which is quite an extreme metaphor. And then teachers, of course, like Master Dogan and many others, since and before, really stress that importance of this may be the last period of Zars, and you do. This may be the last session, this may be the last day, this may be, don't know. We live in that world of impermanence, including this very body. Being mindful of that, then also let go of the idea of more time to come. And engage in this practice of Zarzen as well, saving your head from fire. Which I think would perhaps, you know, if I look at well, I've done some Zazen like that, but not not a lot, not like that, too. If we take it as um But you can take that in a couple of ways. What is that? To sit as if saving one's head from from fire. He says, on Mount Huangmei, the fifth ancestor practiced Zha Zhen to the exclusion of all other activities. And this is a reference to the fifth ancestor of the sixth ancestor, Daikaneno's teacher. This is when they were establishing temples and monasteries in China and really coming up with a schedule and a way to practice. And there were a lot of different esoteric ways and a lot of different teachings. And the fifth answer really emphasized Zha Zhen's the most important thing, sit a lot. And that is echoed down to the present day. So he goes through a few more practical instructions but then gets to this. Some guidelines for arranging the body. But we know those already, right? Or we can find them easily. He says here, having adjusted body and mind in this manner, take a breath and exhale fully. So sitting down, breathing deeply, exhaling fully. Sit solidly in samadhi. Sit solidly in absorption, concentrated absorption. That might be a translation of the word samadhi, shabira, others. You feel that samadhi, you feel it in in session, a few days of sitting and quiet. Silence really helps, also, right? That's often what we're seeking coming into session, or we we we remember from prior sessions that samadhi, that sense of becoming very alive in the present that starts to really emerge after concentrated practice. Sit solidly in samadhi, in concentrated presence. That concentration doesn't need to be narrow and just in here in the body. Concentrated presence is also broad, where you you feel the whole room. Everybody in here, you know, that that guise of that way that we perceive other, that separation of that we have um carried forward begins to fall off. When it begins to fall off in sitting solidly in samadhi, you look out, and there may be a room of people, but everywhere you look. It's you. Everywhere you look, it's the self. You've moved away from involvement with condition, pattern, and sense of me identity, and now you realize everything is self. Everyone. There's no avoiding it. In another passage somewhere, Master Dogan says, be blocked by the way. Be blocked by you can't escape it. It's in every direction. You really you see the book stops here. The book really stops here. Sit solidly in samadhi and think not thinking. Which is a wonderful coan. Think not thinking. I remember I I can remember the first time I read this. Because the next line that says, How do you think not thinking? I'm like, I'm ready. What's the answer, Master Dogan? And he says, non-thinking. That's how you sit not thinking. Would you care to elaborate? No. That's it. And any further elaboration would be extra, might be wasteful. That's where it comes down to each one. It's where words stop and really like don't reach. We always want to know from the outside the smart little monkeys that we are, how do I do that and what's it going to be like? Can you break it down for me? I want to know if I want to, you know, I put my deposit down, but before I've like pay the whole thing off, what you know, what what is it really? What's it gonna be? But there's no way to further uh describe this. This reaches the point of it's not transmitted from one to one person, doesn't give it to somebody else. For each one of us, that's the that's the the work of a practice, a zarzen. Sit not thinking. You take it on on the level of okay, as we're reminded over and over again, don't sit there just thinking about crap, because that is pretty much a waste of time. You just sit there and you're just scheming about stuff. We're we're all well familiar and have been told a thousand times, think not thinking. Or does it mean, okay, am I meant to think about non not thinking as a way to sort of fool myself into not thinking? We might try that approach, not recommended, but he says non-thinking. This is the art of Zarzen. We can turn back and to earlier in the passage where it says allowing all of these involvements, these pickings and choosings, high and low opposites, all these things that he brings up, when those are all truly set aside, and we sit Zar Zen without the value system, thinking is no longer special. Thinking is no longer special. There's just thinking occurring. It's brought up this week that Tozan's no cold or no heat. Go to the place of no cold and no heat. How do I avoid thinking? Go to the place of no thinking. Go to the place of no thinking. Go to a you know, when we're truly hot, it kills you with heat, the place of no heat. Thinking is occurring. If we're in an opposition still to there being a problem with thinking, then it's not non-thinking. But if we're in a place sitting in Zarzen in Samadhi, and practice of non-thinking, whether thinking arises or occurs or not is irrelevant. Because the value system of a specialness has been surrendered, then it's no longer a matter of good Zarzen or bad Zarzen. It's not a matter of how much thinking is going on or how little or a lot of thinking is going on. Whatever the content is, the sense of judging that content has been surrendered. That way, thinking occurs and it's not a problem. The difference is it's not identified with or held up as special in the same way. We give up the fight by declaring unilateral peace. You don't wait for the other side to negotiate the truce. You don't wait for the conditions of surrender, but just rather unilaterally declare surrender, declare peace. Then there's nothing to do. You can't make a mistake. He said, This is the art of Zarzen. This is the art of Zarzen. Is not learning to do, concentration. It is the Dharma gate of great ease and joy. It is undefiled practice enlightenment. And that's how he finishes his pack uh passage, which is just really on a page and a half. The Dharma gate of great ease and joy. Somewhere else he's asked. You talk about Zarzen so relentlessly, you know, Zazen, Zarzen, Zarzen. There are many different gates to the way. Why do you always talk about Zarzen? He said, Because it's the front gate. It's the front gate. It's a front gate to realisation. It is undefiled practice realization. Nothing else is being done. There is just sitting, undefiled, just sitting. And Master Dogan says it is the Dharma gate of great ease and joy. And we may be sitting thinking, well, I'm glad he found some ease and joy in this. But where's my ease and joy? But when that's no longer a question, when that goal has been surrendered is no longer pursued, ease and joy of Zazen is invited to come through the front gate. And you see nothing to do. Ease. I don't have to carry anything. I have to wash, you know, even on a mundane level, I'm not having to do any anything at all. There's just sarzen sitting without resistance, without a need for any difference with the present expression. You know, our human faculty is such that we judge our circumstances and what's been going on, and it's always somewhat lacking. Could have been a bit better, wish it had been a bit so and so. And in the future I'd like it to be this way. But then still went on to be able to write, you know, 96 or 99 chapters of Shobenzou. You know, there's a lot to be said, a lot of different commenting on Zha Zhen in um myriad uh situations. But the basis of sitting, which he instructs us in here, very straightforward and direct. And if we can just swallow and express those fundamentals, that's already enough. That's enough. We're no longer confused about Zazen or meditation or what it is we're doing in here. I'd like to just open it up for any um any comments or anything anyone would like to share or or ask or bring up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

What comes up for me is that all the things to not do or to not think or to think about not thinking, you know, all those all those things, it it almost seems like when I sit, it's like a process. It's like I'm almost having, or at least so far, as a novice. I'm I'm I'm going through all those steps sometimes for an hour before all of a sudden I feel different, and then as soon as I know, oh, what just happened, I'm thinking again. And it it's it's almost like I can't will myself to do all those things. I just have to keep tr trying and keep at it and just allow it to happen. I I don't know if that makes sense, but that's kind of what I go through when I sit. I don't know if that's common or it's like I can I can't just do all the things that I I know are defined and not do the thing, the like thinking and all that. It's almost like I just have to go with what happens for as long as it happens, and and and then the feeling changes. It's nothing in my head, it's more like in my body. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 33:48

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:51

And it disappears like that.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

And he says in this in this passage, when he refers to the fifth ancestor, he said he um he practices our zen to the exclusion of all other activities. So he you know, when he refers back to that, that's where it's really emphasizing the um practicing over and over or sitting over and over. Usually, you know, we um we need to put some hours in. But it's a curious and ironic thing where we put all of these hours and years in to finally realize that none of it was even temporarily necessary.

SPEAKER_01 34:39

But in a way, for me it's still is.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

Yeah, well that's but just you know, I I would say just watch out for don't put your you don't have to put yourself in the place of being a novice. You know, just watch out for how you identify or categorize yourself in the practice, you know. I'm a beginner or kind of leaning into being an intermediate, therefore I I should be about this far along, but not expected to be this far along. You know, just watch out for that, you you can throw that out. Thank you. I'll use in the vehicle of Zen. Um when I when I finished Cohan's study, and um I had a choice there whether to work on on something else. You remember Tension Roshi saying, Do you want to work on anything else? I said no, no, no, no, I'm gonna I won't look at anything else right now, at least for a period of time, but then just um practice just sitting and do she can tata, you know. And after doing can study for so long, and I I thought that would kind of be like a vacation-like then experience in a sense, you know, I can just do just just sitting now, but then um what I discovered in making uh that shift is suddenly sitting uh was far the periods were just far longer. Like an like it's like when I was working on cons for a long time, it's just like you know, you'd have someone to have you put your mental teeth into, you know, you'd have someone to work on, and there's a sense of accomplishment or going towards a finish line, there's a sense of progress, you know, and then in Latin, when you when that when that's gone and you just have sitting, you really and you just sit, often, you know, the periods of sitting are like they're timeless. It's like an age. It's an age. And always being uh a student or a beginner in that, though, you know. I'm reminded of attention Roshi bring up my Zumi Roshi saying, after being very accomplished and 40 years of practice or something, he said, I'm starting to understand a little bit about Shikantaza. And then ten years later, I'm starting to understand a little bit about Shikantaza, and then just before he died, the same thing. Was he messing with us? Starting to understand a little about Shikantaza. Anything else before we finish? We have a little time, but we can also spend that time drinking coffee or something. If there's nothing else, we'll finish. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:42

Those coins are going on my side. Uh-huh. The the language, I I also don't understand poems. I'm not into poems. And and the language is so convoluted. It's I can't make heads or tails or sense, it's word salad. And then I get terribly frustrated and run away from it. And I don't know how to break that aversion to coins. To open myself up to it. I it's like I have a mental block against word salads.

SPEAKER_00 39:29

Or maybe do crosswords instead.

SPEAKER_01 39:33

I don't do those either. I do Sudoko.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

So okay, we'll do that. You know, don't if something if you if you don't feel an affinity with something or it, you know, it's uh then don't do it. You know, Buddhism is a vehicle of um reducing suffering.

SPEAKER_01 39:53

So if something is causing suffering, I feel like there's something deficient about because I don't understand poems either. I mean modern poems, not old Chinese poems. And it again, anytime when I confront just a bunch of, I understand all the words but not in the way that they're put together. And I'm a pretty intelligent person, so I don't think that's part of that, but it I I don't know, do I just really just write it off and say that's not for me?

SPEAKER_00 40:29

Well, that's it's up to you. You know, if it's important for you to uh if it bothers you enough to resolve that, then um you'll find a way to resolve it. And otherwise, let it go. You know, it's staying on the fence about it, which is painful. But you know, sometimes people will criticize cons because I'm not saying this is you, but I I hear a criticism where it's you know, things it's set up, it's it's like they're just trying to mess with us, you know. But that's not so. It's not written in a deliberately abstract way just in order to make it difficult for people, but it's rather an expression from within the principle, and the principle that's being expressed is not um adherent to dualistic understanding. That's why it's non-intellectual, it's not a matter of subject-object, it's an expression from within the principal within the principle. That's why it appears in language as a koan, because you just had to break it down into something dualistic. Yeah, so that's that's just the way that it looks, but it's not it's not like a plot to uh make it deliberately difficult. Yeah, but if you if you don't have a particular affinity with it, you don't have to pursue it. There's enough koan in your everyday life, you know, you can't avoid koan all day, every day, anyway. You don't have to just you know dig it up out of a book from a hundred years ago.

unknown 42:32

All right.

SPEAKER_00 42:37

Well, a thousand thanks again for uh supporting the session. The I spoke with the other the roche was leading the other group, and you know, it's they had a they had a lovely time. They're like all the really excited, you know, and then I spoke with a coordinator just trying to get that kind of well, what are a few things logistically it didn't work? What could you know looking for those kind of um improvements or whatever, and he couldn't think of any. So that's you know, a nice job done with that, and I hope that everybody can uh get a catch up on some rest and enjoy some uh lighter schedule over the next next couple of days. Thank you.