Kaizan Doug Jacobson — Going to Ground: Samatha
Kaizan Doug Jacobson began practicing Zen in Minneapolis in 1974 with Dainin Katagiri Roshi, and had Jukai in 1977. A householder, father, contractor, and civil engineer, Doug received priest ordination in 2010, and transmission in 2015, from Shoho Michael Newhall at Jikoji Zen Center. He currently serves Jikoji as one of its Guiding Teachers, and also assists prisoners with Buddhist practice. Doug also helps maintain and develop infrastructure at Jikoji, where he enjoys getting his hands dirty as a mode of Zen practice.
Full Transcript
Well, good morning. Santa Barbara Sangha and Nationwide Sangha on the East Coast with Yoji and Kinko and Bill and Yo-Sui and Joel, Pamela, Elisa, Tova, Susan, everyone. Tim in the Midwest.
This morning, I want to speak on the fundamental of Soto Zen practice, Samatha, as well as on grounding. And start with a gem from a gemstone from the record of Tungshan from Bill Powell. This is number 61. After Chin Shan had been doing sitting meditation together with Yen Tao and Xu Feng, the master brought them tea. However, Chin Shan had closed his eyes. The master asked, "Where did you go?" Chin Shan replied, "I entered Samadhi." "Samadhi has no entrance. Where did you enter from?" asked the master.
We think these things are so far away, or we enter or get them, achieve them, including Anuttara Samyaksambodhi, the great perfect enlightenment. We seek enlightenment, and it is realized in the calm of the mind of complete relationship with all things and times. It is ever present yet elusive. We contain all elements for our enlightenment, just as getting moisture to our lips is when our lips are dry, we can bring moisture to our lips. When we are calm, we can realize our enlightenment. It is that close. And yet, as soon as our preferences and predilections and resistances arise, mountains and rivers, Mercedes separate us from this direct experience.
I know a couple young musicians who took a trip recently to the southwest and visited a Navajo reservation and shared some music and played some of their music for youngsters who are suicidal. And there's just prolific difficulties with alcohol and meth, and a complete loss of connection with their creator, with the creator and the Mother Earth. And one of these musicians was in a park, praying on the ground. And a young boy came up and asked one of these other musicians, you know, what's this guy doing? And he said, well, he's praying. And he said, well, can I do that? He said, well, yeah. So he went down on the ground and a couple other young men came up and wondered, what are you guys doing here? Oh, we're praying. And they joined in. And yet they expressed this great distance between where they're at and where they would like to be because of this whole. And yet in touching the ground, they made connection again with their creator.
And I wonder in our taking the bows we take to the ground that perhaps that's a way of grounding us in this whole mix that we are totally immersed in. Very intimately yet impersonally. And as soon as it becomes personal, it becomes desirous and preferential.
So how do we get grounded? And I thought about, you know, electrical systems. Electrical systems have a ground. They're grounded to a copper rod driven eight to ten feet into the ground. It's secured so that erratic current has a place to go to the ground. Disastrous current has a place to go to the ground. And I wonder if the electricity of our activated mind. Really, that's what our practice is about is finding the calm, finding the ground that will de-energize this that's in our mind.
We bow to take refuge in Buddha nature. What is that? We take refuge in the Dharma. Where's the limits of that? We take refuge in Sangha. And what is that? You know, each time I bow, it's like, what is this that I, this being, gets to mix with?
There are basically considered two paths to enlightenment through Samatha and Vipassana. And the Soto Zen uses Samatha or calming tranquility as our basis. And it takes time for the mind to settle down. And it doesn't settle down when you try to force it to settle down. It settles down when you provide a place and space for it to wind down. And it takes time. But at some point in this practice of letting the mind settle down, we actually taste the calm. We're with the calm. We experience the calm. It's not attained. It is experienced and it is realized in that it's always available. It's just mountains and rivers and Mercedes and Perrier separates sometimes.
We welcome our thoughts. We learn to welcome what comes up in our day with curiosity. And it's once we then begin to analyze what's coming up that we begin to fall into our desires and vacillations. So our resistance and preferences of our underlying biases are the asavas or the mental effluents. These underlying biases are the karmic blockages that prevent us from merging with this calm. And so it's important to, I guess part of this process of meeting our mind is actually being able to see our preferences, see our predilections, see our desires and be able to, with our mind, decide what we're going to do with it.
One of the relationships we speak of frequently in Zen is guest and host. And sometimes we're the host, sometimes we're the guest. Being a good host means being aware of the needs of a guest. Being a good guest means being aware of the needs, conditions of the host. And fundamentally, where are we in this mix? Are we guest? Are we host? And perhaps we are just a guest. Fundamentally, we are just a guest. And yet as guest, we host the host. And as we embark on what's next, if we cling to being the host, we actually become blind to what the needs present really are.
So I want to bring forth another pearl from the record of Tungshan, and it's number 62. The master went up to the Dharma hall and said, "Cut down the host, but don't fall into secondary views." And monk Tung emerged from the assembly and said, "You should know that there is one man unaccompanied by a companion." And the master said, "There is nothing more, that is nothing more than a secondary view." And then Tung, the monk, flipped over his zafu.
So I wonder if Tungshan's saying here, he says, cut down the host. That fundamentally, we are a guest in this existence. And a guest imbued with many, imbibed or beholden of so many different things. The clothes we wear, the classes we have, the skin we get, the air we get to breathe. We're a guest in this mix. And perhaps when we bow down and connect to the ground and feel the ground, what it feels, that we actually converge and quiet this maelstrom of views that we carry so often.
To enter Samadhi, something that is already present, is a mistaken view. Maybe all views are mistaken. Fundamentally, we just come back to this practice to sit and to eventually find the mind calmed down to a place where we are immersed in the calm that is ever present and available to each being.
So I'm going to stop here. I would like to have some discussion about grounding, about the calm that you can experience to help elucidate what this intimate experience of our existence is about. So thank you.