This morning during service we chanted the questions of the Shalimata. Is that right? The Shalimati, the Bodhisattva Shalimati, which is chapter 5 of the Nirmacana Sutra. Samdhimacana Sutra is a Mahayana scripture, scripture of the great vehicle. And it is the most important text, perhaps, for the founders of the Yogacara school, Asanga. And one of the English translations of the sutra is titled, Buddhist Yoga. I think that title was to sell books, but also because the biggest chapter in the sutra, in the scripture, is the chapter which in Chinese says, Yoga Practices.

[01:13]

And the translation says it calls it the chapter of the questions of Maitreya. The bodhisattva asked questions in the eighth chapter is Maitreya Bodhisattva. And so the chapter is about Buddhist yoga, Mahayana Buddhist yoga, yoga for bodhisattvas. And it is presented basically as a meditation practice, a yoga meditation practice. a yogic meditation practice, which is all centered as having two basic dimensions. One dimension is the dimension called, in Sanskrit, shamatha, and the other is vipassana. Shamatha is often translated as tranquility or serenity.

[02:22]

or calm, or calm abiding. Spipassana is often translated as insight or higher vision. Literally, it's higher vision. So these are presented as two dimensions, and then they're also presented as being practiced simultaneously. Simultaneously we have a situation where there is a, well, where there is wisdom. And in the text it says, if a bodhisattva is practicing vipassana, practicing insight, but has not yet attained it, is that the practice of vipassana? And the scripture says, no. It is intensified effort. concordant with vipassana, but is not actually vipassana.

[03:35]

In other words, in this scripture, it's saying that if you do insight techniques and meditations, but you have not yet realized tranquility, it's not actually what's meant in this scripture as insight meditations. But it is an intensified effort that's concordant with, or you might say, promotes the development of insight. Insight in this text is done actually in a state of concentration, in a state, the actual insight is done in a state of tranquility. We can train and prepare for insight work By studying the scripture, learning about the teachings, learning how the teachings are applied to experience, and we can do this study without having attained Samatha.

[04:38]

And Samatha means, again, of tranquility, but it means not just being calm, but it also means being buoyant, and bright, and flexible, So it's an awake calm. It's like maybe a calm that a very great musician has right in the middle of a great performance. Or perhaps at the beginning. At the beginning they might be a little bit nervous. Maybe they warm up beforehand, and they're already calm, but they're ready to dive into performing the music. And maybe the first stroke of the bow across the cello has this calmness, awakeness, flexibility.

[05:45]

So you can imagine somebody like a very great cellist or pianist, their hands are not stiff. Their hands might be stiff sometimes, but that's not shamatha. I heard about this, actually a cellist, what was the cellist? His name was Pablo Casals. And I heard about him when he was about 90. I think he lived to be 90. And someone was spending time with him and observed him soon after he arose from bed when he was 90. And he would shuffle across the floor like elderly people do. I think piano. And he would play, I think, every morning Bach's well-tempered Clavier. on the piano.

[06:52]

And when he first started playing, his fingers would be stiff. The master's fingers would be stiff. But as he played, they would loosen up. And by the end of the performance, which is also a warm-up exercise for him, his hands would be like, I don't know what, electric muscular butter. And it would be very flowing. And then he would get up from the piano and dance across the floor. No more shuffle. His whole body would wake up from the concentration practice. And it's where he had the awakeness, relaxation, buoyancy, and concentration. This is a Shama. Generally speaking, the classical Zen teachings do not say much.

[08:01]

You don't hear the words shamatha and vipassana, or even in Chinese Zen texts. Seldom do you hear it, but I made some effort myself how the Chinese Zen masters actually were teaching Samatha Vipassana, but just didn't say so. I think partly because they wanted to present the Buddhist meditation practices in a way that Chinese people didn't get frightened by Indian terminology. That's part of the reason. Maybe they also wanted to be more innovative in the way they presented the teaching and make it actually not just more easy, more accessible, but also make it, I don't know, just more alive for their culture.

[09:07]

So you don't hear the terms, but I'd like to point to, in a sense, how this is presented as a way of encouraging the practice today. Today means like in contemporary American society, but also on Saturday, November 20 at Green Gulch. Samatha itself is a wonderful state of being, as you may be able to sense from what I said about it, but Samatha by itself is not sufficient for... is not wisdom in itself sufficient to realize liberation from ignorance and suffering. We need also vipassana, but we do need Samatha.

[10:09]

We still need it. the Mahayana scripture. Well, actually, I'll just go back to Shakyamuni Buddha. Shakyamuni Buddha taught mindfulness of body, the foundation of mindfulness of the body. The foundations of mindfulness, there's four of them. One of them is of the body. The other is of the then of mind states, and then of aspects of teachings about phenomena, mindfulness of dharma. Under mindfulness of body, there's mindfulness of posture and mindfulness of breathing. These practices are often said to be wisdom practices.

[11:14]

And I agree with that, but I also think view the foundation of mindfulness, especially the foundation part of the mindfulness, as simultaneously developing tranquility. Some people say that the foundations of mindfulness are Vipassana practices. And some people say that when they're first established, they are concentration practices, and then as you go deeper, they turn into insight practices. When the yogi is breathing, the yogi is aware of the breathing.

[12:21]

In practicing the foundation of mindfulness of breath, when breathing, the yogi is aware of the breathing. And it says, either barely aware or aware just enough to be aware. And also the yogi is aware of the posture in the same way. I suppose to you that it looks like to many people that Samatha practice is to focus on something. But I think that actually It's not to focus on something, but it's to pay attention to something in such a way that there's no discursive thought at the moment of cognition.

[13:29]

So you're actually paying attention to the breath or the posture, yes, but really you're training your attention in such a way that there's no discursive thought about the breath or about the posture. In the present moment, you're aware of your posture or your breathing. And in the awareness of the posture, there's just what's seen of the posture or what's tangibly felt of the posture. You're aware of the breathing, and you're aware of the tangibility of the breath, the sound of the breath, the sight of the breath when it's cold, the smell of the breath, the taste of the breath, the thought of the breath, and that's all.

[14:39]

Then you're aware of the breath. You're aware of the breath. You're aware of the breath. When you're aware of the breath, then you're aware of the posture. Then you're aware of the breath. Then you're aware of the room. Then you're aware of the sound. Whatever you're aware of, you're aware of it. And in the awareness of just that thing, there's no trains of thought. There's no wandering about it. You train your mind in that way. This Samadhi Nirmacana Sutra says that when someone solely cultivates vipassamata, they practice continuous attention to the uninterrupted mind. And the uninterrupted mind is the way each moment you simply are aware of whatever you're experiencing.

[16:06]

So if I am aware of one person and then another person or myself or the sound of children or the sound of my stomach, or the feeling of my breath, or the movement of a person, or the lights on the ceiling. These are different objects which I'm aware of. But in Samatha, what I'm focusing on, what I'm attending to, is the way each moment I simply know what's happening. So although it looks like the mind's moving from object to object, in fact, I'm looking at the mind in each case so that attention is not moving from object to object. I'm always looking at the mind simply knowing the object, the mind knowing the object. the mind knowing the object, [...] the mind knowing the object.

[17:17]

I'm always focusing on the mind which knows the object. So I could look at each one of your faces, one after another, and stay focused on the mind which cognizes your face. So in that sense, I'm training in shamatha. And again, shamatha is a character which you see on stop signs in China and Japan and Korea. It's a character which means stop. That's the character they use for tranquility. They don't use it for tranquility. They use it for this meditation practice. The practice is to train your mind to stop, to stop moving. When you catch a ball, at the time of catching it, there's no movement there. Every time you catch the ball, as you catch it, there's no movement.

[18:19]

If you play baseball, when you catch a hard-thrown ball or a hard-hit ball, you catch it, but then after you catch it, you often move the hand away from the catch. Once you've got it, then you move your hand away. Otherwise, it hurts a little bit. Do you know what I mean? Some of you don't, probably. But it's a little bit of a follow-through after you catch it. If you catch it and don't move at all after you catch it, it hurts a little bit more. But at the moment of catching, there's no movement, and the same with your mind. So it's training, actually, in finding the mind which just knowing and not moving with things. This is the uninterrupted mind. I don't know if the founder of the Zen school in China, our first ancestor in China, Bodhidharma, I don't know if there ever was such a person as Bodhidharma, but our school says the name all over the world, day by day, for many centuries, we venerate this

[19:39]

...legendary figure, Bodhidharma. And we have some teachings from him. And one of his basic teachings was to his disciple, outside is all involvements. And again, that sounds like what a lot of, in India, that sounds very similar to the shamatha. Shamatha is also said to be an abstractive or an abstract meditation. Abstract means you withdraw from. So abstract meditation is you look at things, but you kind of like don't get involved. And to meet things... It could be called an abstract meditation.

[20:44]

Stopping involvement, stopping movements, and abstract meditation are similar. Cease all involvement. But looking at the Chinese characters, there's other ways to interpret this expression. Number one, the outside I think I pretty much leave as outside. But the word cease, the word that's often translated as cease, also means to breathe and breathe. So another translation of this could be outside, breathe all involvements. These have the advantage of sound more stopped. The quality of not rejecting what's happening, but just like breathe through it.

[21:47]

And the word for involvements in Chinese and Japanese could also be translated as conditions, history, So it's possible to translate this as outside, in other words, everything you see and experience, including your, you know, any object of awareness, outside any object, both inside your body, inside your mind, outside, if you thought things were outside your mind. Either way, whatever you're experiencing, either breathe through or cease all stories Mysteries or conditions. And this will come to fruit as tranquility. When you're sitting in meditation,

[23:07]

of the tranquility style, if you have some stories about your meditation practice or a history of your meditation practice. Like, I've been sitting here practicing meditation at Zen Center since 1967. I have a history like that, that could come to my mind. So I'm practicing tranquility practice. In giving my history, I tell you that. But in practicing tranquility practice, I just breathe through that story. Or I've been sitting here at Green Gulch now since early this morning. I don't get involved in that history or that story. Stories may arise. I cease being involved in them. stories of our world, I cease being involved.

[24:08]

I stop the stories. I experience simpler things. And now I'm in sentry, the Buddha's teaching on this, the sutra, bodhidharma. And now I'll tell you in historical sequence, now we come to Dogen Zenji, the first ancestor in Japan. And I would say he didn't know Shama very much, but he did a little bit. And in one of his first meditation texts, he actually said, the zazen I teach is not learning meditation.

[25:12]

And that could be understood as saying, the zazen I teach is not tranquility practice. But he gave some tranquility instructions. And after he said that, he gave some tranquility instructions. I would interpret what he's saying is that, my main teaching to you is not tranquility practice. But of course you have to practice it. But I'm not going to be spending much time teaching you that. I'm going to . He says, give up all movements of the conscious mind. We chanted this scripture where the Bodhisattva is asking the Buddha, how is the Bodhisattva wise with respect to the secrets? Is it of mind, consciousness, and intellect? Was that it?

[26:15]

Mind, consciousness, and thought? How is the Bodhisattva wise with respect to the secrets of mind, consciousness, and thought? This is a Vipassana question. This is a wisdom question. Because it says, how is the Bodhisattva wise with respect to mind, consciousness, and thought? Right? How is the Bodhisattva wise? How does the Bodhisattva have to be passionate about these mental phenomena? And then the Buddha explains, tells you about it. But in practicing tranquility, we're not developing wisdom. We're setting a stage for wisdom by developing tranquility. But it's not actually So in doing tranquility work, you cease the movements or you give up the operation of mind, consciousness, and intellect. Mind, consciousness, and intellect are moving around, are operating, but you cease them.

[27:19]

you realize a stopped condition in the midst of mind, consciousness, and intellect. That's the tranquility training. That's not tranquility itself. That's the type of mental attention which comes to fruit as tranquility. So Dogen, I would say, tranquility or shamatha, when he says, give up, the movements of the conscious mind give up the operations of mind, thought, and intellect. Once you give them up and you enter into tranquility, you hear the teaching about how bodhisattvas are wise with respect to mind, consciousness, and intellect, or thought. If you're in a state of tranquility and you read that scripture, it goes in very deeply. and you're very buoyant and flexible to ask questions about it. You are so buoyant and flexible and calm and joyful that you don't mind that you don't understand.

[28:26]

You're just happy to be a student of this Dharma which you've just heard, and you have many questions, and if you get answers that you don't understand, you just ask more questions because you're such a buoyant, energetic Dharma student. because you're enjoying shamatha, which you've attained by giving up the workings of the things that you're now studying with the teachers. Dogon also says, stop the measurements or gauging of thoughts, ideas, and views. Cast aside all involvements. Cast aside all stories. Cast aside your history. We should sometimes study the news and study the New York Times and study whatever. We should study the world. But for that study to be fruitful in terms of insight, we need tranquility.

[29:36]

And in tranquility, we stop studying in this paper and stop listening to getting involved. Give up involvements. before Dogen, just before Dogen gives his essential wisdom teaching in the Pukan Zazengi, where he says, think of not thinking. How do you think of not thinking? Non-thinking. This is the essential art of the sitting meditation of the Buddhas. But before that, he says, settle into a steady, unmistakable posture. settling into a steady, unmoving sitting posture, is Shama's training. He says, if you keep wandering around in your mind, you may miss the body leaping.

[30:40]

Leaping where? The body which is leaping into the realm of wisdom. a body which is ready to learn the Dharma, this body which wants to learn the Dharma, and not to learn the Dharma to get anything, but learn the Dharma for the sake of learning Dharma. That body you might miss if you're wandering around. It's right here, but unless we stop, we might miss it. We might catch it, but you're running around, you might run into it, Dogen's disciple, Eijo, says, trust everything to breathing in and breathing out. And when I thought of that just now, I thought,

[31:50]

The word trust, the Chinese word for trust, or one of the main words that they use for trust in Chinese, is a character which has the radical for a person next to the radical for a word. So it looks like a person standing next to a word, or a person attending or paying attention to a word, like a teaching. So trusting, you can almost say trusting the word breathing. Stand by the word breathing in and breathing out. Breathing in, breathing out. Breathing out, breathing in, breathing out. Trust everything to breathing in, breathing out. Breathing in, breathing out. Trust everything to that.

[32:52]

Put the person with that process. Trust everything to breathing in and breathing out. And then leap into the womb of light and don't look back. Trust everything and breathing out. And then throw yourself into the womb of light and don't look back. Tranquility practice and then wisdom practice. Putting it negatively, If you keep wandering around your breath, and again, wandering, if you keep wandering around in your mind, if you keep discoursing around in your mind, if you keep being involved in discursive thought during this day, you might miss the chance to leap into the womb of light.

[34:14]

giving up wandering, thoughts, thoughts. Trust everything to being with what's happening. Just be with what's happening. That's training your attention on the mind which is uninterrupted. The mind which is uninterrupted, the mind that's always with what's happening. There is a mind. There is a mind. There is a mind. In every moment there is a mind. In every moment there is a mind that is with what's happening. Train your attention to that mind which is always with what's happening in each moment. So, for example, train your attention always with the breath when you're breathing. Train your attention to the uninterrupted mind. Give up wandering around the room, the world. Be here.

[35:17]

now. This is the same as breathing through all your stories, breathing through the wandering. Don't get caught by anything. This is tranquility practice. In a recent publication called Introduction to Zazen, on this. I heard the author, I think the editor of this is Shohako Okamura. He said, I heard an American Soto Zen teacher say, when I first read this, I thought,

[36:19]

Shohako Okamura was saying this, but he said, I heard an American Zen teacher say, some American he heard say this. So this is, if I say this to you, you may go away from this sitting and say, here, remember the statement, as though it were actually so. I'm telling you that he heard somebody say this, and this person who said this I just thought they heard it. I actually heard something like this myself, but I wouldn't say what this person said. This person said that Suzuki Roshi, the founder of the San Francisco Zen Center, taught counting. He did. But if you just say that, you may think that that's all he taught. He didn't just teach breath counting, but he did teach breath counting. He did, in a sense, that he did say to the students at one point, let's all count our breath.

[37:22]

As a matter of fact, I remember, you know, in 1970, in the beginning of 1970, there was a little bit of a controversy going on in Zen Center about, you know, various types of practices. Some people were counting their breath. Some people were following their breath. Some people had an advanced practice called Shikantaza. and some other people might have been doing some other things, and they were kind of arguing with each other about who was more advanced, and who was doing more of the true practice of Soto Zen. So just to sort of unify the Sangha, he said, this basic practice of counting the breath, let's all count the breath, I'll do it too. So, I don't know, I guess probably all of us started just counting our breath. But there were various interpretations of how long we should continue that. Like some people may do it one hour or one minute.

[38:23]

And in July of that year, when I was at Tassajara, one of the Tassajara residents said to me, Roshi didn't tell us to stop doing that practice. He told us last January. He didn't tell us to stop doing that practice. But I think we should stop now. So I'm going to stop. And I never did remember him saying that you can stop practicing following your breath. I don't remember him saying that. But he forgot a lot of stuff. Did I tell you to do that? He probably would have laughed at that point. But anyway, this Japanese Soto Zen monk heard an American Soto Zen teacher say, Suzuki Roshi taught honking the breath. And then the same person says, Danyin Katagiri Roshi, the founder of the Minnesota Zen Center, taught watching the breath.

[39:32]

And then the teacher, Shohako Komura, Uchiyama Roshi, taught doing nothing but breathing naturally as we forget breathing. And then he says, how could one choose among those approaches? Like myself, I would say they're all fine. Counting the breath, following the breath, forgetting the breath. As the Kurukshetra says in Zen Mind, Beginning Mind, If you follow your breath, you'll forget all about yourself. If you follow your breath in such a way that you forget about yourself. And I don't know if he said this, but I think he almost did. If you forget about yourself, you'll follow your breath. It's because we have self-involvement that we don't have time to notice things like breathing, which is actually going on.

[40:38]

And we do notice it. We do notice it, but we don't notice it because we're busy doing other things. There, I just inhaled and I noticed it. I wasn't trying, but I just happened to notice it. Great bodhisattvas might, for the sake of entertainment, sometimes get involved in what's going on and get hysterical and stuff, just to demonstrate what it's like to be agitated and uptight. But a more basic practice is

[41:45]

to give up wandering about where you are. And after you really give up wandering about the way you are, you calm down. And after you calm down, then you can, in your calm state, you can start discoursing again and wandering again. except that now your wandering is a state of calm, and now your wandering can be used over to the teaching and bring the teaching over to what's happening. This kind of wandering, then, is the wandering of wisdom. It's not wandering away. It's just coordinating the infinite dimensions of consciousness in a way as to eliminate the nature of the universe and all life. But, first of all, Why not trust everything to inhaling and exhaling?

[42:52]

Train the mind to continuous attention to the uninterrupted mind. knowing, [...] knowing. Each person I look at is a different story. Each person I look at is a different story. Instantly, like that. Just a flash, and you've got a different story for each face you see. I have such an amazing mind. Boom. Story, story, story. Story, story, story. Less than a second, I can have a story about each face I see. You can too, probably, right? focusing on that simple knowing, knowing, knowing, and understanding that you're looking at that mind.

[44:19]

If you just attend to that, train yourself to attend to that, this will come to fruition as a tranquil, bright, buoyant, flexible body and mind, mind and body. of a bodhisattva. A bodhisattva needs to take care of her body and mind in this way in order to be wise and in order to fully benefit beings. This is part of our work. So today is a day we can be devoted to tranquility if you wish. Now, if you're already tranquil, congratulations, and you can work on wisdom. If you're already tranquil, you can meditate on mind, consciousness, and intellect, and how there's two types of apprehension, the apprehension of the body and the apprehension of the disposition toward the information. You can watch the eye arise and the eye objects and the eye consciousness, and you can see all that stuff.

[45:26]

You can work on that. But you won't be very good at it if you're not already really calm and flexible. So even if you are already calm, you can still deepen it. So today's a good day to do it because for the rest of the day there's not going to be much talk. So you can really have a great time just practicing tranquility for the rest of the day. And if you devote yourself to practicing tranquility and a story arises in your mind, give it up. If the story arises in your mind is that you're doing really well at practicing tranquility, breathe through it.

[46:26]

If the story arises in your mind that you're not doing very well at practicing tranquility, breathe through it. And if you breathe through both of those types of stories, you will realize tranquility. But if you get caught in self-practicing tranquility, that will get you excited and somewhat disturbed and uptight, because then you'll be afraid to lose your tranquility, which you think you have. I've heard this story, I've heard renditions of this story that I'm about to tell you many times. Here's the story. The story is a person is kind of upset and they're doing some work

[47:35]

sitting in a meditation hall or working in a factory, and they just decide to take refuge in just doing what they're doing. Now, the kitchen's going to work, you know, in the kitchen, I suppose. Some people are going to work in the kitchen. And when they're working in the kitchen, they can take refuge in just doing the kitchen work for the sake of kitchen work. take refuge in just doing the kitchen work with no wandering thoughts around their kitchen work. So this person told me that she was just working in a factory and just took refuge in just working in the factory. And then one day walking out of the factory she realized she saw the earth come alive all around her. And of course, she wanted to see the creation of the earth all around her.

[48:45]

It was very encouraging. But then she tried to get back later that encouragement of seeing the creation of the earth around her So that's just one little danger you have to watch out. If you're ever able to realize some tranquility, then when you walk in the world in tranquility, you find that it's rather encouraging the way you see tranquility. So then you might try to get back that tranquility or that encouragement. But we don't get the tranquility by trying to get the tranquility. We don't get this encouragement by trying to get encouragement. We got the encouragement by trying not to get encouragement, but just to do the things. And then when we finally were able to do the things, just to do the things, we got the encouragement.

[49:48]

And that's to just watch out for that. Thank you for the encouragement. That's it. Now I'll go back to just walk. for the sake of walking through the world, not to get another encouraging moment. One of the reasons why it's good to have a community and have a teacher, in the early part of this century, middle of this century, a number of people I actually knew who started to practice meditation and had these encouraging moments, but they had no community to tell them that they shouldn't try to get those encouraging moments back. They were having these experiences in an isolated way, so they spent many years after that trying to get back their insights. And they didn't have a community to say, oh yeah, we all tried to do that, that's a big mistake.

[50:53]

now we have a community so we can tell each other yes will do sometimes practice correctly and as a result get a big encouragement but then they try to get it again and that's not correct practice but when you're not very encouraged it's not so hard to try to get back another moment of encouragement It's very difficult to resist trying to get back a big encouragement. But the big encouragements never really come because you're trying... Well, some big encouragements do come when you're trying to get a big encouragement. But the biggest encouragements don't come when you're trying to get a big encouragement. So, like, what is it, Lance Armstrong, you might say, well, he got a big encouragement when he won the Tour de France, and he was really trying to get that encouragement. But you know, most of the time I don't think he was trying to get the encouragement.

[51:59]

Most of the time he was just saying, I love to face this pain. It's so painful and I love facing it. And then at the end he got a big encouragement, but I think there's a big encouragement in the middle of the pain. I think the real liberation comes in the middle of the pain, not afterwards when you're the big hero, although that's a big encouragement. That encouragement is not as big as the encouragement that you get from just simply facing the pain. And when that encouragement comes, the really big one, get it back. So just a little, I think you already know about this, but just to say it again, Don't cry over spilled milk. Don't cry over spilled milk.

[52:59]

The milk of encouragement. Don't cry over it. It's gone. If you ever had any milk, okay, fine, it's gone. That milk's gone. Now let's go back and face the present. This life. And if we can face it with no gaining idea, wondering about, more milk will come when it's time. And that milk will go too. And more will come, and that will go. There's a constant supply of milk, but it's impermanent. Let it go so we can get the next delivery. And if we're just present with no gaining idea, we will be able to see the delivery. If we're wandering about, we might miss the delivery. So we have to train ourselves to be present, to receive the nourishment of the moment, to experience the nourishment of the moment.

[54:09]

that kind of presence of putting aside all involvements other than receiving the nourishment of the moment, quality training. And if you do it continuously, you will become, you will enter the state. Hey, is it exactly 11 or is it 11.08? What time is anybody up at the time? It's 11.08. It has to be 11 exactly. But I'll adjust. I'll give up that story. Any questions about this?

[55:19]

Looks like you understand what I was talking about. Even that question, you look like you understand, too. You have a question, anyway? Is there a difference, or what is the difference between the fundamental practices He says, you know, Dogen says, at noon service we'll chant this little, it's part of the bendowa, which is a section called the self-fulfilling samadhi section. The true path of enlightenment is to sit upright in the midst of self-fulfilling samadhi. I think sit upright is short for settle into a steady immobile sitting position. Sitting upright is short for not leaning forward into the future, not leaning backwards into the past, give up history, give up projects, not leaning to the right or to the left, no preferences, give up all evaluations of this would be nice or that would be... I think sit upright is short for tranquility.

[56:44]

So you're in tranquility and then you have this awareness And that awareness is vipassana, the awareness of how you are born, coming, of all things, how you are receiving your life. That's the, you know, you're sitting in that awareness. So that's a vipassana, awareness, and you're sitting calmly in the middle of that. Or another way to put it is, the path of enlightenment is to be calm and present with a certain kind of wisdom. And what kind of wisdom? We call that wisdom self-fulfilling awareness. Yes? Is the path of enlightenment following the breath? I think that in a sense, Shikan is, in one sense, just the way you are, actually, when you're sitting.

[58:06]

When you're sitting, of course, you're just sitting, right? And if you were just sitting, in fact, when you're sitting, you're just sitting, and you were following your breathing, in fact, you would just be sitting following your breathing, in fact. So just sitting is what means what you're actually doing, or rather how you actually are in the world. So in one sense, it's the way you really are. But in another sense, just sitting means that you're sitting and you realize the way you really are. So just sitting could be both the way you are plus the understanding and the actualization of the way you are. So just sitting could mean, again, the actuality of the way you are, the reality of the way you are.

[59:09]

It's a practice which is a practice of the reality of the way you are, which also could mean that you understand the actuality and reality of the way you are. Okay? That's Shikantaza, or just sitting. Now, a person could be sitting following their breath and have, in fact, the reality of the way they are is, of course, always there, every moment. But some people are following their breath, but they do not understand the reality of the way they are. They are just sitting, but they don't understand that. Many people, of course, sit and follow their breathing, but they do not understand what's going on. For example, they think that the sitting they're doing is the sitting they think they're doing. But that's not understanding the sitting they're doing. The sitting we're doing is not the sitting we think we're doing. So you could be sitting there thinking, I think I'm doing Shikantaza,

[60:12]

I think I'm not doing Shikantaza. I think I'm doing good Zazen, bad Zazen. I think I'm distracted. I think I'm not distracted. I think I'm not a Buddha. You could be sitting there and you could believe and understand that what you think you're thinking is what's going on, but it's not. Shikantaza is to understand that what you are is not just what you think you are. What you are is what you actually are, which includes what you think you are, but what you think you are is the totality of what you are. And to understand that is Shikantaza. And you could be following your breath or twiddling your thumbs or chewing gum and understand the reality of what you are. That would be Shikantaza if you were sitting. Now, if you were standing or just standing, and if you were walking, it would be just walking. If you were chewing gum, it would be just chewing gum. So you can be doing anything and be practicing Shikantaza or just sitting.

[61:15]

And you could also be doing it and not understand it. In some sense, the key difference is that people generally have a tendency to think that what they think is going on is what's going on, which is not true. And not otherwise. Yes. A friend of mine said a couple days ago that she thought that then students had a problem with thinking and that we might try to cut it off or diminish it too quickly. But it has a value. And I was just thinking, You were just talking about breathing or just walking.

[62:31]

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Knowing that just sitting and thinking could be . Right. Right. Shikantaza is not just tranquility practice. Shikantaza is also insight practice. So I said before, Dogen says, settle into a steady immobile sitting position. That's shorthand for Then he says, think. He says, think of not thinking. How do you think of not thinking? Non-thinking. That's the essential art of zazen. The essential art of zazen, actually, he's saying, is thinking.

[63:34]

So he's recommending doing thinking as the essential art of zazen. So the actual... wisdom part of Zen is a thinking practice. It's a way of thinking. Bodhisattvas, in their wisdom dimension, are using their thinking very thoroughly. We think about thinking, we think about non-thinking, and we think about not thinking. Think of all these multidimensional types of thinking. So definitely thinking is part of our wisdom practice. And in order to understand shikantaza, or just sitting, you have to think. You have to hear teachings about... You have to hear teachings that tell you that the thinking, the zazen you're doing is not what you think it is. You have to hear those teachings and think about those teachings until you understand that the sitting you're doing is not your thoughts about the sitting.

[64:38]

But you have to think about that. We have to think. about a teaching which we heard and thought about in order to understand that what's going on is not our thinking. So we have to train our thinking in order to become free of our thinking. But not necessarily before, but at some point along the way, we also have to in order to have tranquility because in order to have the deepest realization of thinking, we have to be very calm. So the calming practice, in the calming practice, we actually give up the thinking. We let go of it for a while and train our interrupted mind. In insight work, we pick up the thinking again and we use it. And we use thinking to study thinking. Like this morning, we used our thinking to study a chapter about thinking. And we will be able to use our thinking, how thinking works,

[65:41]

and how mind works and how feeling works and how emotion works, we'll be able to think about that stuff best when we're calm. We can be somewhat successful thinking about the thought process and the feeling process and the emotional process. We can be somewhat successful when we're calm. But of course some people are so upset that they can make almost no progress in understanding themselves. They're just besides themselves, as we say. And they're sort of not even in the neighborhood. So they can't really study their experience. So we have to kind of like invite them back home for a little while. Come on, come back. It's okay to be in your body. It's not that terrible. And then when they get there, we can help them calm down more. And when they're finally in their body and calm with it, by giving up their horrible past and all that stuff, then we can start, now we can start thinking again.

[66:49]

So Zen, I think Zen, I don't know, I think it has more reputation for giving up thinking than it does for using thinking. Students think, but they're not supposed to think. But it's just during part of Buddhist meditation or Zen meditation, we give up thinking. And then when we're calm, when you're calm, then you can think without getting upset. You can think skillfully and buoyantly and flexibly. So we definitely use thinking in Zen, but we also recommend giving it up. So both. And some Zen students actually They attain calm. Well, actually, most students, when they get calm, they're willing to start thinking again. They're not so afraid of thinking. Because with the resource of tranquility and flexibility, we're not so afraid to think.

[67:57]

We're not so afraid of our stories. We're not so afraid of getting involved. Because it's dangerous to get involved in our stories. We know, to some extent. But when you're calm, you feel like, I think now I can get back involved in my thinking without blowing it. without getting super involved like I used to be. And then sometimes you get back involved and you find out, no, I'm still going to go back. So it's kind of like now we have this recovery stuff, right, 12-step and all that. Some people never can go, some alcoholics can never go near a bar again. But some can after finishing their recovery and becoming enlightened. But maybe they shouldn't go in bars anyway. I don't know. Anyway, I'm just saying that when you become calm and enlightened, you can go back into thinking. Or even just calm, you can go back into thinking. And we should go back into the realm of thinking.

[68:59]

And then my next spontaneous thought could be Dharma. Well, it definitely not only could be, but every thought is Well, there's a dharma of every thought. It's not so much that thoughts are dharma, but every thought penetrated by the dharma. And the thought doesn't reach the dharma, but the dharma reaches the thought. So when our eyes open, we see the dharma in everything. Yes, Paul? Do you need to be thinking when you're chanting? Do you need to be thinking when you're chanting? Yes. Did you need to be thinking? No, you didn't have to be. No. You can be practicing tranquility meditation while you are chanting, while you are chanting.

[70:05]

In other words, you can be going, you can let go. You can be chanting that and just giving up all stories. Like, you can be chanting, why am I chanting in Japanese? What am I going to get out of chanting this? When's this going to be over? You know? You can be thinking those while you're chanting this. Khan. What's Khan? Who cares? These people are weird. I'm great. I'm a Zen student. You can be thinking that stuff while you're, you know, oh, what does this mean? You know? I wonder what does this really mean? You can be doing that. Or you can just be, Khan. And watch that mind which knows kan, ji, kan, ji, zai, bo, zai.

[71:13]

You can just be watching. You can be practicing tranquility, in other words, giving up all involvements while you're going kan, ji. or while you're not chanting, and listening to somebody else go, kan, ji, zai. Or watching somebody's lips go, kan, ji, zai. Or feeling your armpit vibrate with kan, ji, zai. You can be just with that, and then you're training in tranquility. You're giving up thinking. Training is tranquility. But you can also be listening, kan. You know? Ji, zai. And you can understand, oh, that's saying contemplation of the way things are. And you can be looking at, how are things? How are things? How are things? You can be thinking about doing insight work while you're chanting, too. Or you can even say, now, what is that citrus? No. Say no. How are Bodhisattvas wise?

[72:13]

And that's more the insight than thinking. What did the Buddha say about being wise? Did he say, what does it mean to have two-fold apprehension? Is that the way my mind is? That's more the insight work. So if you're doing insight work, then at the first part of insight work, you are doing thinking. At the final part of insight work, you're not doing thinking. But in the initial part of insight work, you are thinking about the teaching. You're hearing it and thinking about it and asking questions. So during some phases of the practice we're giving up thinking. Other phases of the practice we're applying the thinking to the teaching to check to see if we understand it. And then we use the thinking to analyze and apply it to various circumstances until we understand it. When we understand it, we give up thinking again and enter into the deepest level of wisdom. So there's an alternation between giving up thinking, using thinking, giving up thinking, using thinking. Most people are using their thinking

[73:16]

almost all the time. So because there's not much giving up thinking, there's not much tranquility, and because there's not much tranquility, their thinking is not functioning very well. Most people's thinking, as far as I can tell, is really afflicted and disturbed, disturbed and disturbing to them and others. There's too much holding on to and grasping and manipulating and not enough giving up and surrendering in the midst of the process. So there's not much buoyancy, flexibility, joy, alertness, and composure in the thinking process. So in order to bring all these wonderful mental qualities into the midst of our thinking, we need to give up thinking. So, yes, you do not need to be thinking when you're chanting. You can just go, kan, ji, zai, bo, zatsu, gyo, jin. It's totally... Without thinking, oh, I'm a Zen student.

[74:18]

And then, of course, you'll be happy. You'll be happy if you chant that way. And then when you're happy, then you can say, I wonder what this is about. I wonder what this... It's in Japanese. How am I going to ever find out?" And you might say it to somebody and say, we can talk about it. And the first word, khan, is the word that they use. The first word of the Heart Sutra is the word khan. It means vipassana. The first part of Avalokiteshvara's name is translated into Chinese, the first character contemplate it. It's the word they used for wisdom or vipassana. But you can practice shamatha, stopping, on the word for insight. You can listen to the word insight or khan and practice tranquility with the word. And then when you achieve tranquility, meditating on the word for wisdom, then you can say, I wonder what the word wisdom means.

[75:29]

And you can ask someone and they can tell you. So we have quite a bit of information on that in this tradition. And then you get thinking about it, but you're calm now. And now it's what wisdom is, rather than like, oh, God, I don't understand anything. I'm a bad student. Does that make sense? So at noon service, you're going to get quite a mouthful. The spectacular... Buddha's wisdom is going to be open to you, you know, about what it's like in the awareness of a Buddha. It's going to get a peek in there at noon service. But you can just like, just say, now all ancestors and all Buddhas, you know, you can just stay with each syllable and not think about it at all and practice. It's fine. By the end of the chant, you may be ready to wonder what you just read. and we can give you a copy to take home with you.

[76:32]

But you have to be calm before you can read it. When we talk about stopping thinking, I usually think of not clinging to thinking. Yeah. Thoughts. Well, sometimes it's possible almost like stop, but it's initially more like letting it go or not getting involved in it. And then you kind of realize that movement is an illusion. If thinking of moving, you can't stop it. But if it's already not moving, you can realize that it's stopped. Movement is really an illusion. But it's a good illusion.

[77:36]

And to understand that it's an illusion, you really enjoy the movement. Impermanence, in a sense, is also an illusion. But understanding it is freedom. So basically the train, when the character for stop means also rest or... Hmm, Sarah? Pardon? Correct. That's why I said shamatha is calm, but not all states of calm are shamatha. I think a lot of people are fairly calm during dreamless sleep. How about you?

[78:42]

A lot of people are in sleepless dreams and are not very calm. They're in a sleepless dream and they're very hysterical and upset. But most people, when they're in dreamless sleep, are pretty calm. but they're not necessarily flexible and buoyant and ready to study. You know, surfs up, hey! So, shamatha is like calm and ready to leap off the diving board and do a triple, half-triple So Samatha is being flexible and calm. Some people are calm and they say, leave me alone. I'm calm. Don't ask me to get off my seat. I finally got calm. Leave me alone. This is not really Samatha yet. Samatha is like, calm, and I'm ready to, and I'm out, and I'm ready to give it up.

[79:46]

Like Susie Grower, she said, sometimes when I'm sitting, I feel like I could sit here forever. And so I know some other people that they're sitting, when's the period going to be over? Ever heard about people like that? Oh, these periods are so long. This day is so long. When am I going to get a break? And then the same person suddenly, oh my God, I don't care if this period ends. Wow. If they don't ring that bell, I don't mind. I'm actually willing to stay here forever. I've met more than one person that had that experience. Strong experience when you have had the other experience. This is new. This is wonderful.

[80:48]

Wow. And then they ring the bell. And then sometimes the people say, I don't want it to end now. I finally are. So, yeah, it's like forever. It's over. Fine. Now, walking meditation. Wow. Keen heen. That's the shamatha. You're calm. You can sit here forever, but you can give it up. You can move. You're not attached to it. That's shamatha, which not all forms of calm are. And many people have a mild calm. Even when the alarm clock rings and they wake up, They still feel pretty calm sometimes. Put the alarm clock off. Maybe press the snooze thing. This is kind of calm. I feel fairly calm.

[81:50]

This is kind of nice. Warm. I even feel kind of relaxed and flexible here in bed. Flexible. Not flexible exactly to get out of bed and go out. But when you're in shamatha, if you wake up in shamatha, it's like, well, Yeah, maybe so. Let's get up. Of course, you could also be flexible and say, I'm so flexible I can stay in bed. I'm not attached to this schedule. Could happen. Yeah, flexible, buoyant, awake, you know, not attached to your calm. That's shamatha. It, that's, well that's what comes, that comes with, we're naturally that way when we don't get involved in our stories.

[82:52]

When we're not wandering around all the time, we naturally become that way. You don't have to like try to be born. In some sense, you could say, in the process of giving up your involvements, you kind of are being kind of flexible because each different involvement that you let go of, you're letting go of in a slightly different way. So by letting go, you're kind of preparing yourself for being flexible. Again, Bodhidharma says, outside, breathe through or cease all involvements in these stories and so on. And then he says, inside, there'll be no kind of coughing or choking in the mind. So when you practice, the energy flow in your mind becomes liberated, and so all your energy is flowed throws through your body and mind smoothly because you're not seeking and grasping and, you know, blocking and partitioning and segmenting and segregating and, you know, piling up.

[83:59]

You're not concerned with all that. You're letting go of all that. Suddenly things start blowing quite naturally. So everybody's basically around 98.6. Everybody's cooking away, you know. But we interject all these all these partitions into the flow, it creates turbulence and the energy is itself as fully because our mind can actually interfere with the free flowing of our energy. It seems that way. It doesn't really, but it looks like that. When you let go of those involvement in those partitions, which the good stories and the bad stories, good stories create some kind of Even a story like a story of complete freedom of energy and all that and everybody's helping me, even that's a little bit of a disturbance. The real way that everybody's helping everybody is inconceivable. So you sort of have to let go of even the stories of the real way.

[85:04]

So today at noon service, again, you're going to hear a story about the real way we're all working together in harmony and liberating each other and resonating back enlightenment between us all day long. This enlightenment is coming over to you right now and it's bouncing back. It's, you know, that's really what's going on. But that idea of it doesn't really make it. Like at the end of, then you'll chant at noon service, it says, even if all the Buddhas gathered together the power of their wisdom, they wouldn't be able to fully comprehend how this process of inspiration working for one person. You can't really comprehend it fully. You can get glimpses of it, which is great, but it's too big for anything to get a hold of. You can enter into it by giving up trying to get it. So give up grasping and seeking and you'll relax and wake up and enter.

[86:09]

But that's hard. I mean, hard means it takes a while to give up, to cease in the habit of grasping and seeking. It takes a while. Mm-hmm. between giving up discursive thinking and non-thinking? Again, giving up discursive thinking, I suggest, will come to fruit as tranquility. Non-thinking is to actually think beyond thinking. It's actually to think about the fact that what's going on is beyond our ideas of it. It is. It's a discursive thought. It's a kind of wandering discourse. It's sending your mind to the thought that the experiences you have are beyond your conceptual version of them.

[87:15]

So in some sense, it's to send your thought to the... that whatever you experience is a very, well, just a wonderfully, a marvelously interdependent event but the mind can't grasp that. So the way things fundamentally are is beyond the way our mind grasps them. So to practice non-thinking or to think of non-thinking is to think about the way everything that you're experiencing is beyond your thoughts about them. Emptiness is more like to think of not thinking. So to think of not thinking... The entry into realizing the ultimate is to think of non-thinking. In other words, to open up to the teaching that things are not our ideas of them. But we need to have ideas of them in order to have to grasp them.

[88:17]

So again, coming to sitting, you can't get into the zendo and sit without some fixed idea about what sitting is and where your seat is and where your zafu is and where your butt is. Otherwise, you can't get there to sit. But once you get there in sitting, your sitting is not your idea of your sitting. And Dogen says we have to work with both of these. We have to sit at your seat and to sit upright and have a posture and be aware of it. That's what you think it is, and you have to think something about it, otherwise you can't practice. But then you also should hear simultaneously, but the practice is not my idea, but that takes you back to the Shikantaza. And when you do both, then you realize not thinking. You realize that how you're sitting really isn't your sitting. It's beyond your sitting, and it's actually totally empty of your ideas of your sitting. This is the wisdom practice of the sitting.

[89:19]

That's the essential art of Zazen. Christine? You say last part, is it possible for activities that have intense Well, like I said, for example, music. Mozart said that music is, he didn't say mathematical, but I'll say it's a mathematical calculation without, you know, where you don't even know it anymore. When musicians are doing this, they're actually doing high-speed, very high-speed mathematical calculations as they're doing their instruments.

[90:28]

But they can do that, just that, with no gaining idea, not worrying about what people think of them or whether they're going to be able to do it or whether they're going to be able to finish the line. It's very intense thinking. So actually, we are intensely thinking all the time. And in music, we have training programs for these musicians to teach them how to do these calculations. And when they learn them, then they get further teaching about how to, like,

[90:55]

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