Everydayness - Fukan Zazengi (Part 10) - Daiho Chris Middleman

Everydayness - Fukan Zazengi (Part 10) - Daiho Chris Middleman - 07/12/26 - Suggested Donation $5 - Drawing on Dogen’s Fukanzazengi, this talk explores Zen practice as something ordinary, wholehearted, and available to everyone. It reflects on honest effort, the temptation to make spiritual practice seem special or otherworldly, and the freedom of fully inhabiting our everyday lives just as they are.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Good morning. Thank you for coming. Lots of new faces. Hope I don't disappoint. Um, and hello to everyone out in the zoom realm, as they say up at Mountain Rain. My head's a little cut off.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

How's that?

SPEAKER_00 0:26

So, in the event we haven't met, I'm Daiho or Chris. And I guess I'm what you'd call a senior practitioner at Seattle Citizen. As odd as that sounds to me, I would say I feel more sophomoric. Thank you, Kanchan, for offering me a chance at the high seat. So, for the last several weeks, been taking our time with an essay by our school's founder. Speaking, of course, about Dogen Zenji, your favorite 13th-century Zen master and mine, whose teachings inform how we in Soto Zen go about practicing the Dharma. This essay, one of many he authored, is called Fukhanza Zengi, which translates to the Universal Recommendation of Zazan. In other words, it's Dogen's how to sit. But I wonder if it's more accurate to say, please just sit. Last week, we heard Kanshan remark on Dogen's cautioning us against some mistakes in practice. First, he says we shouldn't take intellectual analysis as the path. And then he makes the disclaimer against the belief that any supernatural talents have a place in what we do. In this week's passage, Dogan underlines that his idea of practice is down to earth and inherently approachable. He meant the universal in his title. So we continue at the bottom of the second page of Fukan Zazengi in your chant books.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

We have the page one.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

This being the case, intelligence or lack of it does not matter. Between the dull and the sharp-witted, there's no distinction. If you concentrate your efforts single-mindedly, that in itself is negotiating the way. Practice realization is naturally undefiled. Going forward in practice is a matter of everydayness. So, in the interest of making sure that we're all on the same page, just want to highlight that practice realization is hyphenated. In Dogen's view, we don't practice to attain enlightenment. We're enlightened, so we practice. Doing it is doing it. Please just sit. With this being a shorter paragraph of the piece, I hope you'll indulge my adding a second translation. Thus, do not be concerned with who is wise and who is foolish. Do not discriminate the sharp from the dull. To practice wholeheartedly is the true endeavor of the way. Practice realization is not defiled, not special. It is a matter for every day. Personally, I feel very gratified with moments like these when reading Dogen, where the mists thick with ancient literary references or stupefying paradoxes dissipate, and we receive the gift of plain spoken encouragement. Case in point here with his underlining that this approach we're taking to life doesn't favor brains or being a simpleton for that matter. What it does require is honest effort. Maybe you've heard of the six paramedas. Maybe not. It's okay. Got a lot of lists. And we just found out that book learning doesn't mean the sharedness on the path. Six paramitas. The parameditas are six qualities a bodhisattva has perfected. Each can be regarded as different virtues to be cultivated in practice. One of these is virya, or enthusiasm.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

You might say honest effort.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

I think for a time I had the idea if I kept on top of my zazan and was enthusiastic about it, then an intangible change would take place, loving kindness welling up in me and flowing outward as a natural consequence. I think this still rings true, but it's only a fraction of practice. When I fall off the wagon of equanimity, or am a few words or actions deep into an inappropriate or unskillful response, the time spent on the cushion has acquainted me with spaciousness. Where there's plenty of room to recognize that I can stop and reverse course.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

To remind myself that there are beings to benefit. This is what takes the effort, I think. Applying what you know when you know, you know better. And understand this is not failure of practice, this is practice. But but Dogen also says via cause that practice realization isn't anything special.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

So when I was given the opportunity to give one of these Fukanza Zengi talks, this paragraph immediately stood out for me, particularly the term everydayness. Maybe you've seen the word everyday before in our milieu. Everyday Zen was the title of a book by the late teacher Joko Beck. Norman Fisher's Sangha and its wider organization, with which SSE is affiliated. It's called Everyday Zen. Seems like our ancestors, distant and near, find that this everydayness bears emphasis. It's our style of meditation that is just sitting. But looking at you all, I can already see that your body is sitting. Maybe in Seiza, maybe Burmese, maybe in a chair. It's probably achy. So is mine. Can also tell that you're kindly offering me your attention. This would be hard to do if you were consciously breathing each breath you take. Your body can manage breathing on its own. Two-thirds of the way in zazen, it seems like it's pretty commonplace stuff. Similarly, your mind produces all kinds of perceptions, identifications, memories, judgments, admonishments, all involuntarily. When these come up in our Zaazen, we can receive these with warmth. We do not have to go forward biting into them and ruminating. And if we do, we can come back to our upright posture or our gentle breathing.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Honest effort. Nothing superhuman. Recently I was reading another all-time Dogen classic called Genja Koan.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Actualizing the fundamental point. That's how that translates. So Fu Khan Zazengi is, please sit. Genja Koan maybe is let me tell you why. Dogen of Dogen, the teacher Dairyu Michael Wenger wrote, quote, his rhetorical writing style is a unique one. He'll state something and then either partially or totally contradict it with his next assertion. It's the trajectory of the statements, not any one statement alone that expresses his understanding. End quote. A lot of the time I feel like I read a fascicle and I've got a finite window of time where I feel like I understand where he's coming from. Then my sense of it is clouded with the myriad things of the world intervening, which is basically Zazen practice, isn't it? Genji Koan is particularly generous with arresting images to help point us toward our own understanding of what it means to practice this practice. In one passage, Dogen writes, quote, When a fish swims, no matter how far it swims, it doesn't reach the end of the water. When a bird flies, no matter how high it flies, it cannot reach the end of the sky. When the bird's need or the fish's need is great, the range is large. When the need is small, the range is small. In this way, each fish and each bird uses the whole of space and vigorously acts in every place. However, if a bird departs from the sky or a fish leaves the water, it immediately dies. We should know that for a fish, water is life. For a bird, sky is life. A bird is life. A fish is life. Life is a bird, life is a fish. And we should go beyond this. This is there is practice enlightenment. This is the way of living beings. A fish lives its life completely and totally when it swims, just as a bird is the total picture of what a bird is as it flies through the air. Neither question the sizes of ocean or sky, nor second guess their paths or movement. Big movements use big spaces, and small movements use exactly how little they need. The water and air are the elements for the fish and birds just as we are inseparable from our environment. At a certain point, there may not even be fish, water, bird, or sky. There's only swimming and flying. Or sitting. Dogen sees Zazen as an opportunity where with upright posture and gentle breath, we can relax our habitual intellectual tension, settle into ourselves living now, and observe our mind machinations for what they are, not posing threat or thrill, wholehearted and at ease right where we are. In another fascicle, Bendoa, Dogen writes, When one displays the Buddha mudra with one's whole body and mind, sitting upright in the samadhi, even for a short time, everything in the entire Dharma world becomes Buddha mudra, and all space in the universe completely becomes enlightenment. Even if only one person sits for a short time, because this zazen is one with all existence and completely permeates all time, it performs everlasting Buddha guidance within the inexhaustible Dharma world in the past, present, and future. So what I also love from Dugan is when his writing becomes ecstatic like this. Almost psychedelic. But about what though? Sitting quietly, breathing, being present, nothing superhuman, nothing otherworldly. We would probably do well to resist any urge to make it seem precious. Koto Sawaki Roshi once wrote, The immense, transparent sky isn't the same thing as a bonsai tree or little statues for your altar. It's infinitely vast. Nonetheless, people prefer trimming around on their bonsai trees or tending to their little statues. Years ago, I came home from one of our weekly SSZ gatherings, and I ran into my landlord who was in town, down from BC with her husband, busy with some maintenance around the building. I do not have any Chinese whatsoever. Our communication is always a little off-kilter because of this. So I came home in my sumue, ran into her, and taking a look at me, she said, You just come from work? You look like Hitman. You work for Mafia? I parried her, frankly, weird observations, and got the gloating, aware that I was in the presence of someone more culturally proximal to the Dharma than I am. No, Annie, I'm a Zen Buddhist. What? She answered. Pulled out my rock sue and showed her the calligraphy on the back. It's Chinese on there, she said. Soon her husband was passing by in the parking lot. She interrupted whatever insight I had to offer about Sino-Japanese to turn to him with a thumb pointed in my direction, filling him in on this guy in number 203, and what I assume was Mandarin. His response was something like. Saved it for you guys. Before we parted ways, she apologized for any noise her grandson made in their adjacent unit while they visited. You know what with my trying to meditate all the time. No idea whether she was messing with me or not, but she was teaching. More people are probably familiar with Doctor Strange now after the Marvel movies. The Sorcerer Supreme. Doctor Strange was always getting called upon to stop some cosmic evil threatening Earth. Very frequently this meant he was astrally projecting into these psychedelically rendered landscapes, while Stephen Strange's physical form sat in quiet meditation in his great village pad, filled with bizarre artifacts, mystical texts, burning incense. So hip, totally superhuman, totally otherworldly. Also the rare superhero from Philly, by the way. So if I'm being honest, at least on some level, the image of strange surrounded by Orientalist curios probably helped grease the skids toward my eventual fate sitting here in the seat. I wonder whether Zen would have attracted me if it were American in origin. Does the strikingly different cultural package in which Zen came to us make for a different experience than that of practitioners who've had Buddhism be part of their social fabric for much longer than 60 years? In the West, are we particularly tempted to indulge in the superficial otherworldliness of this endeavor? To subtly regard ourselves as superhuman? The nicest, most conscientious, and most mentally imperturbable at the workplace? I'm reminded of Kansin a few months back sharing a Leonard Cohen poem where he wrote of his Rinzai practice I joined a tiny band of steel-jawed zealots who considered themselves the marines of the spiritual world. If you weren't around for my practice period last year, we studied Lojang, which are 59 Tibetan Buddhist practice slogans that encourage a bodhisattva mind. Always abide by three principles is one of these. Another list. One of these principles is don't be outrageous. Of this, Tibetan Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace wrote, quote, Imagine your practice is going well. You feel that you're rising above the vicitudes of life and are filled with loving kindness, wisdom, and courage. The urge may arise to test out the strength of your spiritual fortitude by finding some thugs in a dark alley and overwhelming them with loving kindness. The advice here is don't. Adverse situations will find you in their own time. In Norman Fisher's Training in Compassion, which we studied in our class, he writes, quote, possibly up to now, we have been tempted a time or two to be a bit precious or over earnest about our spiritual endeavors. We may have felt a bit holier than thou more than once. This is no good in any case, or but perhaps not so bad in the privacy of your own mind. But now that we're about to embark on the practice of interacting with others, it becomes really bad to come off as though we were holy and spiritual. As if somehow because of the virtue of our commitments and spiritual efforts, we're conducting ourselves differently from the general run of humanity. Clearly, this would be a huge problem for our relationships. Nothing makes people feel criticized and even a little hostile, like someone else's pretentious efforts to be good. Once found myself in a leadership meeting on Zoom wasn't exactly full of good news for that particular organization. There's a lot of work to do, not much time to do it. We were volunteers spending an evening making hard decisions about budgeting and personnel. Amidst the often drastic proposals that were quickly brainstormed, one member halted the discussion, insisting we take a step back from the conversation. They took this opportunity to lead an ad hoc guided meditation for this secular, very secular organization. I sat there totally irritated. We would now have less time to work on what needed doing. One by one, people began cutting their cameras on the call. Seemed to have the effect of working against the connection we had just moments before. Feeling we've been given exclusive license to do so by our practice. Then there's what I did. Roll my eyes.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Disenage. Luxuriate in my superior understanding. Feian Wen Yi was a 10th century Zen ancestor in China.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

And in Jerry Xishin's Wick's commentary on the Book of Serenity, we hear about some teachings of Feian's. A monk once asked Feian, What is the particular thing an advanced student should attend to? Feian said, if the student has anything that is particular, he can't be called advanced. And above his door he wrote the word mind. Above his window he wrote the word mind. On his wall, he wrote the word mind. Feyen commented on this, saying, Above his door he should have written door. Above his window, he should have written window. On his wall, he should have written

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Nothing otherworldly. Fish swim. Birds fly. When we sit, we simply sit completely. Doors need not be anything other than doors.

SPEAKER_00 22:22

A door is a wonderful thing. Keep noise out, or as or may keep it in as the case may be. Keeps pests away from where we wouldn't want them. Gives us privacy, safety from those who might want to harm us. A way to get out, a way to get in. Something to slam if that's all we have at our disposal at the moment. A door fully functioning in itself as a door is a real gift. Similarly, this practice asks us to be nothing other than ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

What a relief. Completely ourselves, though.

SPEAKER_00 23:08

The idea is completely inhabiting your position wholeheartedly, not half-assed. It means showing up to our own lives rather than simply haunting them. It means accepting our loftiest aspirations and our worst habits. Our kindness to strangers and quickness to anger. Our generosity and resentment. That the highs and the lows are all part of all of us. Are part of all of it. Dogan suggests that Zazen is where you can get a taste of this sense of total inclusion. In Zazen, we make an honest effort to take a backward step and allow for the inclusion of everything in our lives. A respite from our habitual internal cleaving, biting, pushing, and judging. On just this day and every day. Stogan says, when you sit for even a short time, the entire world is your zazan, and the universe completely becomes enlightenment.

SPEAKER_01 24:19

This with just some honest effort, nothing superhuman. And you know what else? You got help. You don't have to do it alone. You couldn't if you tried.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Okamorioshi wrote, quote, Each of us is connected to all past, present, and future beings in the entire universe. This is not a mysterious truth that can only be attained through some special spiritual intuition, trance, or other extraordinary mental condition. This is a very simple, plain reality we can understand rationally, yet we lose sight of it because we cling to words and concepts separating ourselves from reality with discriminating thoughts. It takes place at our ritualistic breakfasts and lunches. At a certain point, once we've set out our utensils and our bowls have been filled with often simple foods that become life-changing after a couple hours spent staring at a wall, we make sure to call everyone else to the table. First we chant, we reflect on the effort that brought us this food and consider how it comes to us. Which is probably my favorite line in Zen liturgy. Someone had to grow it, pick it, pack it, ship it, stack it, sell it, buy it, bring it, cook it, serve it, receive it, and eat it. And then wash the pots and pans to make it happen again in a few hours. What seems like a very long time ago, my wife Ash and I flew down to Sacramento to see my folks. Then we got in a rental to make our way down to Joshua Tree, where we'd spend a few nights. We took 101 along the coast because I wanted to stop in Carmel to make a pilgrimage, the home of a writer that I really liked. Afterward, that put us southeast through the Salinas Valley. The salad bowl of the world. A sprawl of farmland on either side of the freeway. Ash, a native Californian, told me all about the repurposed school buses I was passing on the road. Painted a pale, weird green, often towing porta potties. Migrant workers would show up early at some central location to get picked up by these, she explained, and would be driven out to some farm to harvest who knows what for who knows how long that day. It's right there. Sometime after that, I was reading a sort of studs turkle style collection of interviews with migrant workers called Chasing the Harvest. One interviewee rejected the idea that anyone should feel sorry for him as a migrant worker. Instead, he demanded respect.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

He's hands feed the world, he said.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

So up next in our Oreoki service, we dedicate the meal to the three treasures, acknowledging Buddha, the teachings, and our fellow practitioners. Then we honor the four benefactors, parents, elders, sovereigns of the land, and all sentient beings. With so many particular conditions, it takes everyone to pull off a sashin, even cops and landlords.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

How about you? How did it come to pass that there's a person on your cushion or chair? This person in particular.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

There were parents, caregivers, teachers, doctors, friends, enemies, kind strangers, unkind strangers, clergy, politicians, soldiers, institutions, governments, entire cultures, innumerable hands shaped this day and every day before it. And will shape every day to come. Not always in ways we like. All the same, here we are receiving it, holding it, caring for it as best we can, passing it on.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Tomorrow's Monday.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

In a few moments we'll chant the Bodhisattva vows, the fourth of which is Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. Your practice in any virtue that comes with it is not about transcendence. Zazen won't mark you as extraordinary, but taking your place wholeheartedly inside this becoming, this continual unfolding every day, that's special.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Thank you all very much for your kind attention.