Taitaku Josho Patricia Phelan moved to North Carolina in 1991 to lead the Chapel Hill Zen Group, where she leads practice and teaches.

She practiced at the San Francisco Zen Center from 1971-1991, with three of those years at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. Josho was ordained in 1977 by the former Abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, Zentatsu Richard Baker. She has also studied with two of Suzuki Rōshi's other disciples, Sojun Mel Weitsman and Tenshin Reb Anderson.

In the Fall of 1995, she returned to Tassajara and completed her training by receiving Dharma Transmission from Abbot Sojun Weitsman. In October, 2000, Josho Sensei was officially installed as Abbess of the Chapel Hill Zen Center. In December, 2008, Josho Sensei traveled to Japan to participate in Zuise ceremonies at Eihei-ji and Soji-ji temples. She is married and has a daughter.

Full Transcript

So the story goes, three days into the program, a woman interrupted Katagiri Roshi while he was talking. "Roshi!" Katagiri Roshi stopped and she continued, "Roshi, I'm troubled by something. I've sat here for three days. I have a small mountain of notes. I'm waking up in the middle of the night wondering what this guy Dogen looked like. My kitchen at home will never be the same." So perhaps Katagiri Roshi was talking about Dogen's instructions to the head of kitchen practice about extending the mind of zazen into everyday activity.

And this woman went on, "I'm wondering, however, did Dogen ever appreciate a pretty girl? Did he ever get pie-eyed on sake? Did he ever laugh?" And according to the story, Katagiri, with the beautiful fluid motion so characteristic of him, placed his papers on the floor, lifted his glasses and shifted the frames out to the tip of his nose. And he gazed at the woman and raising his right hand, extended his forefinger towards the roof and moved it back and forth. And said, "Dogen gives you no candy."

And I think we all want candy when we begin practicing zazen. Candy is a kind of enticement that functions like dangling a carrot in front of a donkey to get it to move. Candy is something that we think we want, that we think we don't already have. We may feel an emptiness in the world around us and are looking for some meaning or insight or enlightenment. Maybe some assurance that everything really is okay. Or we may want to develop peace of mind, a stronger sense of concentration or focus, or even lower our blood pressure. And I think almost all of us come to meditation practice expecting to get something out of it.

And this desire to improve ourselves or the desire to develop spiritually was referred to in spiritual materialism by the Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Trungpa Rinpoche. And I think that we come to practice out of a desire for something because we're human. It's our conditioning to do things for a reason. But over time, as our practice matures, we give up even our reason for practicing. As long as we depend on a reason, we'll be grasping for a result. And our practice will remain bound by cause and effect in the realm of duality.

Okumura Roshi, the teacher at the Bloomington Zen Center, said, "Because of our desire to attain something like enlightenment or liberation, we practice. Without such a desire, it's very difficult for us to find the motivation to practice. After many years of diligent practice, we face this problem. Our motivation for practice is itself the obstacle for practice." So this hasn't been easy for me to understand. But remember that he begins with "after many years of diligent practice." And I think the direction he might be going is that our motivation or intention and our practice need to become so fully integrated that there's no longer any separation between them. Our intention selflessly becomes our practice.

And he continued and said something that I think is even more provocative. He said we need to fight against our own way-seeking mind and become free from it. Then after getting tired of fighting against ourselves, the only thing we can do is really just sit. And this refers to what was for Dogen a kind of pure practice, simply practicing for the sake of practice and not for anything else.

And then Okumura Roshi went on to talk about shikantaza, which is a kind of subset of zazen. So he said after getting tired of fighting against ourselves, the only thing we can do is really just sit. And he continued. "This is what shikantaza or just sitting means. At this time, the subject of this sitting is not me anymore. We just let go of all thoughts, even the desire for enlightenment. We come to the place where we can't do anything other than really just sit. As Dogen Zenji said, with no intention even to become a Buddha."

And Okumura continued, "Letting go of all thoughts, including the desire for enlightenment. At that time, within that sitting, all dharmas carry out practice through our body and mind." He said, "This is not my personal attempt to get something. But as Dogen said, sitting is Buddha's practice." And I think of this as me stepping aside so that all dharmas can practice through this body and mind. This way, my practice is just practice. And it's no longer something developed through my efforts and with my limitations. This body and mind become a vehicle for the universe to practice through.

And Okumura Roshi's teacher, Uchiyama Roshi, often used the image of opening the hand of thought as a metaphor for letting go of thoughts, for letting go of our mental conceptualized world. And Okumura said, "When we sit and open our hand of thought, in a sense, we negate everything from our karmic consciousness, even the aspiration to be enlightened. And we just sit."

And in the book, "Opening the Hand of Thought," Uchiyama Roshi compared a person sitting zazen to a rock. And he said that no matter how long the rock sits, no thoughts will ever arise. By contrast, a person, even when sitting zazen, is alive, a condition that naturally includes thought. And he said, "The truth of life never means to become lifeless like a rock. For that reason, thought ceasing to occur is not the ideal state of one sitting zazen."

So, does this make sense? Or does it contradict what you thought was supposed to happen in zazen? And if it sounds contradictory or doesn't quite click, try using it as a koan. Investigating what does he mean by "thoughts ceasing to occur is not the ideal state of one sitting zazen." And one thing he does not mean is to sit and think. But he also doesn't mean to block out thoughts in order to create a blank mind. So, is there a difference between letting go of thoughts over and over as they arise and having no thoughts arise? Can we be free of thought and still have thoughts? And understanding what he means can only come through our own zazen practice. You know, we have to know it directly.

And Suzuki Roshi taught his American students to count their breath in zazen. But sometimes I wonder if he taught his Japanese students this. And he also taught things like when thoughts come up, you don't need to fight them, just let them go. Or when thoughts come up, let them continue on their way without inviting them in for tea. And in "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind," he said the way to control your mind is to give it a big punch. And he talked about letting go of distraction and returning to the breath.

And many of us practice breath awareness in zazen as our primary focus. But although the breath may be the primary focus, it doesn't need to be an exclusive focus. So when your attention wanders and when you realize it, what I do is try to let go of the thought with my exhalation. And then when I inhale, I try to refocus my attention on my body, including the breath, but also on the position of my back, whether I'm lengthening and extending my spine or kind of slumped, but coming back to my body. And for me, this happens over and over throughout a period of zazen.

But I've also read instructions for zazen that say to stop your thinking or cut off your thoughts. But Suzuki Roshi didn't teach this. And for me, letting go of thoughts is a lot different from cutting off thoughts, which seems like a kind of mind control that uses discriminating consciousness to control consciousness.

The 18th century zazen teacher, Menzan, wrote, "If you think you have to cut off a delusory mind, instead of simply clarifying how a delusory mind melts, a delusory mind will come up again, as though you had cut the stem of a blade of grass and left the root alive." Our practice is to clarify, to penetrate how a delusory mind arises and melts, or hopefully melts away, because cutting off thoughts doesn't go deep enough to reach their source. And both thinking and stopping thought are bound to the realm of duality. They're like two sides of a coin.

And Dogen taught a third option of non-thinking, which is outside the framework of either thinking or stopping thought. And the state of non-thinking is beyond our usual thinking, as well as beyond blankness. So we aren't caught up in either of these states. But of course the question is, how do we do non-thinking? And for me, non-thinking is much like shikantaza. It's engaging with the fullness of being as it arises moment by moment, and which exists before thoughts arise. And in non-thinking, the focus is wide, open, and still, with no particular object singled out that excludes other objects.

And during daily zazen, when we're sitting maybe just once a day and leading a busy life, for me it's pretty hard to settle into such a wide field of awareness, without getting lost in thought, since our everyday mind tends to be so saturated with mental activity. And so much of the time when we sit, the momentum of our thinking continues, so that when we stop thinking, we zone out or fall asleep due to the lack of content. But non-thinking is neither thinking nor stopping thought, but being awake to and engaged with our full presence.

And sometimes the distinction is made between having a thought and thinking. And thinking, as you probably know pretty well, is when we actively engage and participate in a thought or train of thoughts. And then having a thought arise, simply a thought with space before, and then letting the thought go on its way without sticking.

And Okumura Roshi also talks about the practice of shikantaza, as accepting everything that springs up from our consciousness. And we said we neither negate nor affirm anything. We really do nothing. We don't control our mind. We just keep upright sitting, breathing naturally, deeply, and quietly from our abdomen, and keep waking up and letting go of thought. And he says, accept everything that springs up from consciousness. Again, you know, it has the meaning of not sticking to what arises. It just arises. And without trying to fight it or make it stop or go away, and without engaging it. We just let it do its own thing.

And Katagiri Roshi used this metaphor of the ocean with waves, you know, many waves breaking on top of the surface of the ocean splashing the rain as a metaphor for our usual mind and thinking. But he said, keep one foot on the bottom of the ocean, where it's very deep and the water is still. So when our mind is active, sometimes it gets very active. And I think it's better just to let it be active. But it's almost like we withdraw the oxygen from it. And let the mind do its thing, but we choose a deeper part, you know, of our body and mind to rest in.

I think of this practice as allowing consciousness, in a sense, to be however it arises, without interfering, it's a little bit like walking on a tightrope, where we're allowing consciousness to function and thoughts to arise. But at the same time we try not to fall over into thinking, or fall asleep from lack of content.

And Okumura said that zazen is non-doing. We do nothing. He said, "Sitting is not my action anymore. All dharmas are using my body and mind. That's all." And another Japanese priest, Issho Fujita, who lived in Massachusetts for several years, maybe 10 or more, said, "The Buddha way is the faith that zazen posture is Buddha." And when the word Buddha is used like this, often it includes the meaning of realization. And I think the statement, the Buddha way is the faith that zazen posture is zazen, or realization, would be a pretty radical idea for other Buddhist traditions.

And Fujita discussed two Japanese terms, hishiryo, which means beyond thinking, or non-thinking, and munen musou, which means no thought, no image. And he said, "When we refer to the qualities of beyond thinking, and no thought, no image, we mean that sitting posture itself is beyond thinking, and has no thought, no image. Not that we ourselves are." And he said, "We will never be beyond thinking, nor have no thought, no image, as long as we live. What we can do is sit with the faith that zazen posture itself is Buddha. That zazen posture itself is beyond thinking."

And he said, "Shikantaza is only concerned with zazen posture. We tend to think that we are sitting zazen. But he said, this is not the case. The entire universe is sitting zazen. Zazen is just to sit. If we sit, that's all there is." When I first read this, it was such a relief that simply taking this posture, trusting this body and mind is enough. It gets me off the hook. So practice becomes entrusting practice to zazen itself.

And in another talk, Fujita Sensei wrote that zazen is a different practice from other types of Buddhist meditation. And he differentiated the practice of zazen from meditation by describing three elements that he considers to apply to meditation in contrast to zazen. And these are seeing one's present condition as not preferable. Imagining a possible future that would be preferable. And the third is using meditation as a means for moving oneself from the present to the preferable future. So these are characteristics of what he considers to be usual meditation, not zazen.

The first element is seeing one's present condition, which we evaluate as not preferable. For example, right now, would you like things to be any different from the way they are? Would you like to change the way your knees or back feels? Are you bored? Would you like to lean back against the wall and rest? Is there anything else that you'd rather be doing? Or can you imagine this moment being any better than it is right now? So these questions might be asked during zazen. And if the answer to any of them is yes, that's evaluating. You know, using comparative thinking to fantasize about how your present condition is not preferable, which of course is all related, rooted, excuse me, in duality.

And Fujita's second element of imagining a possible future that would be better than the present is a continuation of the first. Now the third element of meditation practice used as a means or a vehicle for moving oneself from the un-preferable condition to the preferable condition is how we use meditation as a method for moving from an undesirable state to what we imagine will be a better experience.

And when we practice zazen as a technique to change our present experience, our practice becomes a strategy. And no matter how wholesome the goal, this endeavor uses spiritual practice as a means to an end by rejecting the present for something more desirable. It sets up a duality between the actual now and our conceptualized then. And we still have the problem of the self that we're trying to transport to the more desirable place.

In Dogen's way of practice, using meditation as a method for accomplishing a goal is considered stained in the sense of it being colored by dualistic separation between the means and the end. Dogen wrote in his text, "Only a Buddha and a Buddha": "To be unstained or in a non-dual state does not mean that you try forcefully to exclude intention or discrimination, or that you establish a state of non-intention. Being unstained cannot be intended or discriminated at all." He said being unstained is like meeting a person and not considering what he looks like. Also, it's like not wishing for more color or brightness when viewing flowers or the moon.

And again, as long as we practice zazen as a technique to achieve a particular outcome, we reject our present body and mind, our present life. And this is denying the emptiness or the wholeness of everything, just as it is. This is why acceptance is such a big part of our practice. To reject our experience of anything is to reject Buddha. And when we no longer use zazen as a kind of candy to bring ourselves to a more desirable state, zazen becomes the activity of non-doing. Where we offer this body and mind for the universe to practice through.

Thank you.