Think Not Thinking - Fukan Zazengi (Part 7)

Think Not Thinking - Fukan Zazengi (Part 7) - Kanshin Allison Tait - Suggested Donation $5

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Good morning everyone. Welcome to Seattle Soto's End. Can everyone hear me okay? Great. I'm uh competing a little bit with the fan, which keeps blowing my okesa off my shoulder. My okesa's a little bit small, so that's most of the problem. I got it wet and it shrank. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. So welcome to Seattle Soto Zen. I uh it's such a sunny, beautiful sunny day. I was not expecting to have a full Zendo. So uh welcome everyone. And uh we just finished our the annual Samush Island Sashine with uh our Darmer brothers and sisters of Red Cedar Zen community. Uh I had been meaning to go, but at the last minute I got a tummy ache, so I ended up staying home. Uh but uh from the people who went, I heard it was an incredible session. It's a really one of the most beautiful places I've been to, and uh very uh with the you know the most beautiful people. So it's worth doing if you considered it this year um but couldn't get make it work, then maybe uh try again next year.

unknown 1:37

Or in the fall.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Or in the fall, right? Yes. We are co-producing this awesome sheet of it's here um in November. In November, we are having you have another chance to go there. Uh the weather will be different, but also wonderful. It'll be a beautiful place with beautiful people. Uh yeah, so please join us in November. And uh it's Father's Day, so I know there are a lot of very wonderful, dedicated fathers in the Sangha. And uh I'm I'm really glad that uh you are being honored and acknowledged today. Thank you so much to all the amazing dads in our community. You know, uh uh IQ, Crazy Cloud, uh, a famous Japanese and monk, poet, and rascal. Um he had uh uh uh Daikensho, a great uh experience, uh a great understanding experience in Zazen. And uh when he he he wrote about it, this wonderful insight that came to him and through his years of dedicated practice, this is what he said. Ten dumb years I wanted things to be different. Furious, proud, I still feel it. One summer midnight in my little boat on Lake Biwa, hearing the harsh caw of the crow, Father, when I was a boy you left us. Now I forgive you. You know, even those of us who who are or were blessed with loving, generous, and kind fathers, we still have a lot of work to do to forgive our fathers. Just for being human, even when everybody is trying their sincere best. Our fathers hurt us in so many ways. And uh many of us, like IQ, are not blessed to have fathers who are so loving, generous, and kind. So maybe if we're in that uh situation, we we don't forgive our fathers until we're enlightened. Like IQ. I just uh I'm always so touched by that poem that this great opening of the way for IQ. He understood it as finally I forgive my father. Ten dumb years I wanted things to be different. Furious, proud, I still feel it. One summer midnight in my little boat on Lake Biwa, I heard the crow give a harsh ca. Father, when I was a boy you left us. Now I forgive you. So before we took uh we went to Sexhin, uh, we had a guest speaker, Echo Jeff Kelly, give a wonderful Dharma talk. And before that, uh we were discussing the Fukanza Zengi, which is in your champ book, page 20, I think, around there. It is uh our founder in Japan. You heard in the uh when Alexander was doing the after-service dedication, our founder in Japan, great teacher Ehei Dogen. So Fukin Zazengi is Ehe Dogen's uh Zazan instructions, his meditation manual. And so uh the week before Echo Jeff gave his Dharma talk, we talked about the uh section on proper uh Zazan posture. I got so excited describing Zazen posture that I went over time and was scolded very harshly for it, deservedly so. Um you know, newcomers to this practice are often very surprised by how much emphasis is put on bodily posture in in Zen training and especially in Zazen instruction. In uh writings like Dogen's Fuke Zazengi, that uh Zazen is really a practice that's uh at least as much of our uh to do with our bodies as our minds. Uh body and mind study the way. So I ended right before the phrase, I think it's either at the top of the second page or at the very bottom of the first page. Your eyes should always remain open, and you should breathe gently through your nose. So breathing is also very important uh in Zazen. Posture and breathing. And uh a few things to say about breathing. First is uh we breathe from uh in in Japan in Japanese they say hara, in Chinese they say denchen, your um your belly, from your belly instead of up in your chest. Which, you know, if you try it now, when you breathe in, if you're can breathe in in such a way that your belly expands more than your chest does. If it feels really unnatural, uh you should know that that is how we breathe in our sleep. So if it's hard to do consciously, uh you can trust that your body knows how. And this is again um kind of allowing our body and mind to study the way together in this moment. For me, uh that is a very important uh step in sitting Zazen and preparing for Zazen is to uh consciously allow my breath to settle down and and from my belly, so that uh, you know, sort of to balance myself out a bit. So much of my time I'm you know up here in my head and just allowing my uh awareness to settle down to my belly to uh kind of be a being with a body uh instead of you know a concept with ideas, uh is you know it's it's sort of returning home in a way. And there are a few ways to practice with breathing. Um a lot of uh teachers teach uh to count the breath. Um Suzuki Roshi, for a very long time, he said we should all just count the breath together. And uh typically inhale through your nose and count one, exhale through your nose, count two, inhale, count. Sorry, inhale through your nose, count one, exhale, count one. I already messed it up. Inhale, count two, exhale, count two. Uh if you want a little bit more of a challenge, you can try counting only on the exhale. And then uh you count from one to ten, reach ten, start again at one. Or if you want even more of a challenge, count from one to ten and then count back down to zero. And uh if I notice my mind has wandered off and I've forgotten what number I was supposed to be on, I inhale, exhale, start again at one. If I realize I've counted up to twenty-seven, twenty-eight, then I start again at one. And uh the other uh common method is just following the breath, just being aware of the breath and the body. And uh children in her book uh How to Meditate, although she's not a Zen teacher, she she gives uh some wonderful advice on the practice of following the breath. She says, breath practice trains us in letting go, it brings gentleness to our practice, and through the breath, we are able to relax and unwind. Focus on your breathing just for a few moments and see if that helps you to soften. Just allow yourself to feel the sensation of the breath coming in and the breath going out. In meditation, I teach students to begin with the breath as the object to come back to. The breath is used as a basic object of meditation for many reasons. But one excellent reason is because it's impermanent. It's always changing, always flowing. It is not a stable thing. By focusing on the breath, you're feeling something rather than concentrating on something. And you're also developing your mind, training your mind to be able to stay present to the impermanence of things. Impermanence of thoughts, impermanence of emotions, impermanence of sights and sounds, all the things that don't stay stable. So when you sit, place your attention on your breath. Whenever your attention wanders, bring it back to the breath. With as much precision and clarity as possible, come back to its flow in and out. This is not watching the breath like a hawk watches for prey. This is not concentrating on the breath. This is feeling the breath, or any word that you can use to describe being one with the breath. Let yourself be breathed in and breathed out. As you work with the breath as your object of meditation, you will begin to feel your body and mind becoming synchronized. You are no longer divided. You can call meditation practice the practice of open awareness or the practice of natural wakefulness. As your practice grows, you can lighten your attention on the breath, allowing yourself to calmly abide in the open space of the present moment. What does it mean to sit and be present? It means to be like space itself, allowing everything that arises, breath, thoughts, emotions, sensations, everything. Or as uh Okamura Roshi says, in my tradition, we don't count or watch the breath, we just breathe naturally, deeply, and quietly. So the next line in Fukun Zazengi, 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. And the next line, which has caused no end of consternation and confusion. Think of not thinking. Think of not thinking. How do you think of not thinking? Non-thinking. This in itself is the essential art of Zazen. This instruction pissed me off so much for the longest time. He goes on and on and on about your posture and how you cross your legs and everything. And then his only instruction for working with the mind is think of not thinking. And then natural follow-up question: how do you think of not thinking? Oh, is non-thinking. Oh, well, thank you very much, Mr. Dogan, sir. So Dogen Zenji here is referencing uh a teaching story, a Koan, uh, about uh our ancestor Yakusan Egan, who was uh a Dharma heir of Sekito Kisen, old Stonehead, who was credited with writing the harmony of difference and equality and the song of the grassroof hermitage. So this teaching story goes. A student asked Yakusan Egan, What are you thinking in the still-still state? The still-still state is of course the Zaz and Pashtur, the steady, immovable sitting position. So a student came to Yakusan Igan and said, What are you thinking in the still still state? And Yaku San Igan responded, I think not thinking. Student asked, How is it possible to think of not thinking? And Yakusan Igan replied, non-thinking. So I bet that added context really cleared things up for everyone. So some teachers and translators, including the Venerable Kaz Tanahashi, uh say beyond thinking instead of non-thinking. Uh I'm certainly not qualified to judge their uh the accuracy of their translation. Um, but personally I'd I don't like to say beyond thinking because uh for me it feels too much like uh describing Zazen as some sort of transcendent state, like astral projection, you know, beyond thinking. You know, after I kept everyone here over time talking about correct bodily posture, to say that it's beyond thinking, as if we enter some special state of you know uh pure reason or something. Uh I don't like it. In uh one of Dogin Zenji's essays, the The Power to Know Others' Minds. Uh, he talks about this uh uh Indian monk who was uh renowned to have the power to know other the minds of others, and uh the national teacher, sort of the abbot of abbots in China, tested him, and he said, Okay, tell me where is my mind now? And this Indian monk said, Oh, you are the abbot of all abbots for the great nation of China. What are you doing in the bleachers at a mariner's game? And the national teacher said, Okay. Second go. Tell me, where is my mind now? And this Indian mystic said, You're the national teacher! The abbot of all abbots! What are you doing playing pickleball at Green Lake? And the abbot said, Okay, for third time, tell me, where is the mind of this old monk? And the mystic thought about it and his face got all scrunched up, and he held his breath, and his face went bright red. And he finally had to admit that he didn't know. And the national teacher smacked him on the ear and said, You scoundrel, get out of here. So the conventional understanding of this story is that uh this mystic couldn't read the national teacher's mind in the third case, because in that case, his mind was in the still, still state of Zazan, resting nowhere and everywhere. Uh, one commentator said the mystic couldn't find the national teacher because the national teacher was sitting at the tip of his nose. Very hard to focus on something if it's at the tip of your own nose. But Zoganzenji disagreed quite strongly with the conventional understanding of this story. He said, I don't think the mystic knew where the national teacher's mind was any of those three times. National teacher never said, you're right. So it's not about the special state of mind in Zazen. It's that nobody has the power to know another person's mind. And isn't that good news? I found uh a wonderful uh and concise definition by Shohako Okamura of Senshin Zen Community in Minnesota on uh think not thinking. What is not thinking, non-thinking. This in itself is the essential art of Zazen. The Reverend Okamura says, when we are sitting, we do not follow our thoughts, nor do we stop them. We just let them come and go freely. We cannot call it thinking because the thoughts are not grasped. If we simply peruse our thoughts, it's just thinking, it's not zazen. We cannot call zazan not thinking either, because thoughts are coming in and going like clouds floating in the sky. When we are sitting, our brain does not stop functioning, just as our stomach is always digesting. Sometimes our minds are busy, sometimes our minds are calm. Just sitting without being concerned with the conditions of our mind is the most important point in Zazen. When we sit in this way, we are one with reality which is beyond thinking. To say it in another way, reality manifests itself through our body and mind. There's uh a teacher who I don't know, I'm not sure if anyone even knows who it was who said uh our minds secrete thoughts like our pancreas secretes insulin, right? And in uh his continued commentary on the meaning of think not thinking, Shookamura uh quotes this wonderful book by Koshochiyama Roshi called Opening the Hand of Thought. So now I also will quote it. When we sit zazen, everything is straight. Trunk, back, neck, and head. Because our abdomen rests comfortably on our solidly folded legs, blood circulates freely toward the abdomen, and breath moves easily towards the dentin. Congestion is alleviated, excitability is lessened, and we no longer need to chase after fantasies and delusions. It is easy to tell you to aim at the correct posture and leave everything up to that, but it is not so simple to do. 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 life, aiming at holding a correct zazen posture. If we become sleepy while doing zazen, our energy becomes dissipated and our body becomes limp. If we pursue our thoughts, our posture will become stiff. Zazen is neither being limp and lifeness nor being stiff. Our posture must be full of life and energy. This applies to any kind of activity. If you get sleepy while driving or working, your life force becomes dull. If you worry, you get tense and rigid. Both are dangerous. This is equally true for everyone, whether one is a statesman, a ditch digger, or a zen priest. Our life force should be neither stagnant nor stiff. The most essential thing is that our life force live to its fullest potential. It is the practice that directly and purely manifests that life. So although it is easy to explain, actually practicing this is the most crucial thing in our life and at the same time a tremendous task. 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 do 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 for us to hit. Or at any rate, the person who is doing Zazen never perceives whether she has hit the mark or not. If the person doing Zazen thinks his zazen is really getting good, or that he has hit the mark, he is merely thinking his azan is good, while actually he has become separated from the reality of his zazen. Thus, we must always aim at doing correct zazen without being conceived without being concerned with perceiving the mark as being hit. When we do zazen, we have to let go of our self-centeredness and our dealings in relation to others. When we do zazen, we have to let go of our self-centeredness and our dealings in relation to others. We just sit in the midst of this contradiction where although we aim, we can never perceive hitting the mark. We just sit in the midst of this contradiction that is absolutely ridiculous when we think about it with our small mind. When we practice this kind of zazan and just sit, how indefinite we may feel, how unsatisfied and completely lost we may feel. This problem is exactly why Zazan is so wonderful. This small, foolish self easily becomes satisfied or complacent. We need to see complacency for what it is, a continuation of the thoughts of our foolish self. However, in our Zazan, it is precisely at the point where our small, foolish self remains unsatisfied, completely bewildered that immeasurable natural life beyond the thoughts of that self take place. Life functions and the power of Buddha is actualized, precisely at the point where we become completely lost. In any event, Zazan is the best posture for truly aiming at reality as it is. Aiming at this posture of body and life as it is is also referred to as Shikantaza, just sitting. Think not thinking. A phrase uh that apparently did not originate with John Lennon. It was around long before him, but he's that life is what happens to us when we're busy making other plans, right? So Zazen is just experiencing the life that is happening to us instead of putting our attention on all the plans that we're making, we're paying attention to the life that is happening while we were distracted by making all these plans. So just allowing ourselves to exist as ourselves in this moment without seeking anything, without trying to get out of our minds and go to the Mariner's game or the pickleball court, but just resting in this openness of mind. Resting in this transient breath. As uh another phrase, uh that uh clouds can't hurt the sky. So our mind is like this infinite and the infinite blue sky. And our thoughts and the plans that we're making are just clouds moving across the sky. And again, while we're busy making plans, we can sometimes be completely unaware that the of the life that we're living while we're making these plans, the life that's happening to us while we're making these plans. If we're focused on the clouds, we can forget that the sky even exists. And you know, it's not to say that there isn't, you know, real power and beauty and terror and drama in our thoughts, right? There can be really wild storms. But, you know, it's not like um, you know, I I guess I think I thought of my mind for a long time as uh uh sort of like a piece of white paper. And everything I do or everything that happens to me is something written on that paper. And you can't you can erase it, but it'll always leave a mark, right? And so it felt like you know, this white paper was getting more and more full of marks and damage and everything else. But to think of it more as the open sky, and these thoughts and experiences and stories are clouds that move across the sky, and they can be very violent, they can be very compelling, but the sky is not never damaged by the clouds or storms that move through it. And furthermore, you know, the blue sky is always there. We can't always see it, but sometimes just remembering oh yes. I can't see the sun or the moon or the bright sky. Everything is dark and obscured by clouds, but it's all still there, it hasn't forsaken me. When the storm passes, the sky will not be damaged by it. My mind, my nature, my zazen is not damaged by any thoughts that come and go. When we are sitting, we do not follow our thoughts, nor do we stop them. We just let them come and go freely. We cannot call it thinking because the thoughts are not grasped. If we simply peruse our thoughts, it is just thinking, it is not zazen. Cannot call zazen not thinking either, because thoughts are coming and going like clouds floating in the sky. When we are sitting, our brain does not stop functioning, just as our stomach is always digesting. Sometimes our minds are busy, sometimes our minds are calm. Just sitting without being concerned with the conditions of our mind is the most important point of Zazan. When we sit in this way, we are one with reality which is beyond thinking. To say it another way, reality manifests itself through our body and mind. Thank you all very much for your kind attention. Please take special note that I did not go over time this time.