Full Transcript

Good morning everyone. Joel, Nancy, Bob, Julie, Tim, Bill, Susan, Tova, and Elisa. Good to be with all of you today. Today I'm going to start with the beginning of the Diamond Sutra.

Thus have I heard: once the Bhagavan was dwelling near Srivastava in the Jeta forest together with a full assembly of 1250 bhikshus and a great many fearless bodhisattvas. One day before noon, the Bhagavan put on his patched robe, picked up his bowl, and entered the capital of Srivastava for offerings. After begging for food in the city and eating his meal of rice, he returned from his daily round in the afternoon, put his robe and bowl away, washed his feet, and sat down on the appointed seat. After crossing his legs and adjusting his body, he turned his awareness to what was before him.

This practice is quite simple. Or is it? Today I want to talk about taking our seat, about establishing our pose, and what is helpful to bring to this situation when we take our seat. It is considered helpful to be at ease, to have a sense of well-being in our mental and physical aspects, to have comfort. To have this sense of well-being, it is helpful to also have thoughts of goodwill, goodwill towards others, goodwill towards ourselves. And this puts us in a good mood for our zazen.

In contrast, when we carry our old score to this seat, is that helpful? Really, it's best to feel this goodwill towards ourselves and towards others. Our meditation begins with a sense of openness, a full-bodied, peaceful poise, experiencing what is before us, just this it is. This present moment is sufficient and complete.

As soon as we think of the past, we fall into regrets and shoulds and what-ifs, and we mourn loss. When we think about the future, our desires pop up, even desires for lofty things, our enlightenment, peace in the world, resolution of conflict, or maybe less lofty things like our sleepiness or boredom or angst in this body-mind circumstance. Instead of attending to what is before us now, when we move into the past or the future, the present that is unfolding dynamism is left behind. And where do we go?

Coming back to this pose of ease and comfort and well-being, time and time again, we, each of us, learn to take care of this self. And we do this through learning from our mistakes in meditation. We're engaged in a personal training, developing our own understanding, deepening our sensitivity to what works and what doesn't. The more we do this, these understandings of what works get more refined. This refining of practice helps guide us in this experiencing, discerning being with what is wholesome and useful.

This practice of meditation is a testing as well as manifesting of our understandings. Taking best care, taking responsibility for our meditation and also for our insights that flow out of this process. Through learning, we trust ourselves. And that is a very intimate experience, this trust, this trusting of ourselves. Trusting through the many ways that work.

Sometimes we come together with others and share our experience with a teacher, with other sangha members, and share our reflections, share what we've learned. And we hear from others what their ideas are. But fundamentally, it is each of us that is the experimenter. Each time we sit down, we enter another experiment. A concentration and being experiment. One hypothesis in this experiment is to sit zazen is to be the Buddha. We test that hypothesis.

To be willing to experiment takes desire and it takes intention. A wholesome desire to sit down and practice this zazen and to see what follows. There are other wholesome desires that include non-grasping love, compassion, and empathy. There are three wholesome roots to consider: non-greed, non-hate, non-delusion that can manifest in forms of generosity and kindness, cultivating connection, pursuit of knowledge, and desire for the mastery of skill.

As we navigate the way we find out how discomfort can disappear if we attend to our posture and to our mind, our concentration becomes focused when our body is at ease, when we have goodwill towards ourselves and others, when we choose to direct our mind to wholesome states. We must persist in this effort, be willing to work through what arises, and then use the techniques that we've learned, techniques that we've discovered in our zazen to meet what arises.

This persistence requires paying attention, sometimes very careful attention. And this persistence also requires an intention to persist, a vigor and determination to continue through each moment, attuned to our breath and posture of this body-mind. And we include our hands, our eyes, ears, nose, where our tongue is, the position of our shoulders, the uprightness of our back, the feeling in our buttocks and legs. We attune with a gentle determination, and attune to the many aspects of being we become more skillful. We use our intelligence and ingenuity to discern what works and what doesn't, and how we might improve what we see going on. And in that process, we make it our own.

Meditation may also be considered as bathing. We clean ourselves. We clean ourselves by paying close attention. We clean our breath that may be noisy and irregular to being full and gentle. That's when we pay attention. We develop skill in breathing and the intricacies of breathing. The slow breath or fast breath, the loud and soft, the partial and full, and where our breath brings attention to different parts of our body and our heart. And noticing these places in our body that our breath brings our attention to.

Immersed in the present, this breath, this sound of breath, this experiencing moment after moment with our wholehearted effort, delving into the tiny aspects of our being and into the vastness of what is around us to the ends of our universe. And we see the links of one system, two systems, countless systems interacting dynamically in this nonstop flow.

Hearing the sound of the bell here in our zendo here at Jikoji. In the summertime, we have the doors open so we can hear the birds easily and even the cars and motorcycles driving by. We can hear the rustling of the leaves and with the striking of the bell, the merging of the different sounds comes to our ears. The sounds of the bell. What is the meaning of the bell? The sounds of the birds. What are they saying? The sounds of the vehicles expressing the dynamism of their existence. And hearing these sounds intermingle, bouncing off the windows and walls, maybe even bouncing off the inside of our head. These sounds intermingle, these systems of sounds intermingle continuously. The sound of wind through rustling leaves, each leaf making a sound. Countless leaves intermingling sounds in every direction.

And so it is with sight. We see the reflected light of the sun or transform sunlight from electricity received through these lenses and deposited on the backside of our eyes. We each get this, the shining images, and yet the light is mingling with other light. With the sounds and sights and tastes all intermingling, what a complex and dynamic soup we live in. A soup that we taste with our receptors, our instrumentation of these sense organs and sense consciousnesses moment after moment.

So where do we go while in this soup? Can we maintain our concentration? Concentration is called samadhi, maybe even rapture. Can we maintain this for long? For a minute? For two minutes? When we get distracted by a thought, where do we go? Concentration. What is it? Because it is what it is. And it is, our attention has been brought to it. So calling something a distraction is a judgment.

Can you hear me now? It's better, yes. Thank you. Okay, here we go. All right, can you hear me now? It's really good. Yes, thank you. Okay.

Well, I went around to see if people were on the internet, and they were getting their coffee, they were making some sourdough toast with fresh jam, all these wonderful things. So, it wasn't others using the internet, it might be the wind. So, you can hear me now. It looks like we got a connection momentarily. So, I'll keep going.

When we hold a thought of "this body is a rock," let's say. How long can you hold that thought before it transforms into something else like reflecting on how this body is a rock, and we're meditating on the rockness of this body, or discerning the different qualities or lack of qualities that make this a rock or not a rock? Summarizing and expanding and connecting and even questioning and doubting shows up in an instant.

So, we observe our mind, we attend to our mind. We create a generous space when we sit, we're kind to ourselves and to others and to the world. We attend to this body, heart and mind. And we watch the experiment, the experiencing unfold and we take care and notice what works and hone our being with repeated experimenting, bringing our intellect and ingenuity to find our way, each of us. And repeated doings, we develop skill and a sense of ease and familiarity and a deep trust in ourselves.

In closing, I want to just read a brief passage from "Each Moment is the Universe" by Katagiri Roshi. He says, "We are already enlightened beings who are embraced by Buddha's wisdom. Because nothing exists outside the ocean of Buddha's world. So, all we have to do is deal with life in terms of this wisdom. But we don't want to do it. We always do the opposite. We always see ourselves in terms of our own viewpoint. No matter how long Buddhas and ancestors try to tell us that we are Buddha, we don't feel intimate with Buddha. So, let's stop the habit of seeing life just in terms of human perception. Let's see human activity in terms of this Buddha's wisdom. Intimacy is not something to discuss. Intimacy is activity itself. This is not philosophy. It is something you have to do."

So, thank you. Thank you. And I look forward to hearing what you might have heard or thought. Thank you, Kaisa. I'm going to stop the recording and then open up to anybody who would like to ask questions.