Last time we had an evening kind of a class on a Thursday night, I think I talked about samadhi. I don't think so. You don't think so? Oh, I'm sorry. I talked about the ceremony. That's right. Time before. The time before about samadhi. Is that right? Someone said to me just recently, asked something like, does traditional Soto Zen practice or does the Soto Zen tradition include Dhyana? Dhyana. Dhyana. Adhyana is a word that means something like concentration or trance or meditative ... something like that.

[01:23]

And I said to the person, I think that traditional Soto Zen embraces all authentic practices of the Buddhadharma. But the essence of Soto Zen, the main thing of Soto Zen, is Transmission of the Buddha mind seal. That's the essential point of Soto Zen, is the Buddha mind seal. and the transmission of it, or the remembering the Buddha mind seal, the practicing the Buddha mind seal, and the transmitting.

[02:39]

Another word for the Buddha mind seal is the precious mirror samadhi. The word is the self receiving and employing samadhi. And then the person who asked me the question also said that the teacher said, emphasized that dhyana practice is essential to Buddhist practice or, you know, maybe essentials. Is that what you heard? Essential to Buddhist practice? One of the I don't know what this is. This is kind of an irony.

[03:47]

The word dhyana is a Sanskrit word. In Pali, it's dhyana. And the Sanskrit word, when it got transliterated into Chinese, they translated it as chana. Chana. And then they shortened to Chan. In Japanese it would be Zen, Zenda. And it got shortened to Zen. So the school, the Zen school, the Chan school, in China and Japan and Korea and so on, the name of the school is the Dhyana school.

[04:53]

Somehow I got that name. And the teachers of the Dhyana school, or the teachers of the Chan school, are called Chanshir in Chinese, in Japanese, Zenji. on jhana teachers. They're called jhana teachers, which means, you know, meditation teachers. So one story about why the Buddha ancestors who were practicing jhana got the name Zen school was because they practiced sitting And people thought when they were practicing sitting that they were practicing dhyana. They say maybe they were and maybe they weren't.

[06:03]

But what were they practicing? That's where there's no maybe about it. What were they practicing? They were practicing the Buddha Mind Seal. They were practicing transmission of the Buddha mind seal. They were practicing the intimate transmission of the teaching of suchness. They were sitting, practicing that teaching, intimately transmitting that teaching. And people who didn't know what they were doing thought they were practicing dhyana. And I'm not saying they weren't, and I don't know to what extent, but the main thing they were doing was practicing the Buddha mind seal.

[07:07]

The main thing they were doing was practicing these bodhisattva samadhis. Chan school, practice Chan. Samadhi, as I mentioned before, is a state of undistracted awareness. And this state of undistracted awareness could be used to practice dhyana. the Buddha practiced dhyana and the Buddha also practiced samadhi. And when you practice dhyanas by developing an undistracted state of mind, there's a technical procedure that you go through to go through various levels of dhyana.

[08:15]

For example, you're practicing an awareness, you're training the awareness to be undistracted. You're letting go of discursive thought, you're letting go of thinking. Thinking may be going on, but you're letting go of it. You're mindful of it, and you're mindful of it, and you're mindful of it. And by being mindful of it, you let it go. The more we let go of our thinking while it's going on, the more calm we become, and the more undistracted we are by the thinking. By repeatedly letting go of our thinking, of our discursive thought, we reach a state of samadhi, also called shamatha, which means calm abiding.

[09:36]

So in traditional bodhisattva practice, or I should say in early Buddhism, they taught sila, samadhi, and prajna. Ethics. concentration and wisdom. So samadhi practice, which includes shamatha practice and can be extended to develop these special states of concentration, is part of the traditional practice picture of early Buddhism. Then the bodhisattva path has giving, sila paramita, ethics, no, excuse me, giving, dana paramita, giving, dana paramita, ethical training, sila paramita, patience, kshanti paramita, diligence,

[11:15]

heroic effort, virya paramita, and concentration, dhyana paramita. And then wisdom, prajna paramita. So in the bodhisattva training, one of the trainings is dhyana paramita. One of the trainings is to develop an awareness. Awareness that is undistracted from Huh? What? It's undistracted from distraction. It's undistracted from virtue. It's undistracted from compassion. It's undistracted from wisdom. It's undistracted from the Buddha Mind Seal. It remembers the Buddha Mind Seal. It is aware of remembering the Buddha Mind Seal.

[12:17]

That's one of the Bodhisattva practices. The jhana practice is, again, it's a special kind of training which develops special states of concentration and the Buddha did not. And he taught jhana to his students. So it is part of our tradition. So dhyana is part of our tradition. Concentration is part of our tradition. Ethnicity is part of our tradition. Wisdom is part of our tradition. Study is part of our tradition. Recitation of texts is part of our tradition. Serving others is part of our tradition. Paying respects to each other and to teachers is part of our tradition. Serving teachers and serving the community is part of our tradition.

[13:21]

All these things are part of our tradition. But the main point in the Zen school is the Buddha Mind Seal. And if in order to take care of the practice of the Buddha Mind Seal, it's to not be distracted. And not being distracted includes being focused and also being flexible and open and bright. So I think right now I'm just going to mention that there's various levels of jhana practice. And if you look in Zen texts in China and Japan and so on, you will not even mention of the specific training techniques that are involved in developing jhana.

[14:27]

So it looks like jhana practice was not being promoted by the Zen school. But it doesn't mean Zen people never did it. It's just that that teaching was taught in the Buddhist community. The teaching of how to develop jhana was in the Indian community, in the Chinese community. It's part of our Buddhist culture. But Zen didn't seem to mention it much because Zen had a special thing. So it didn't mention things that were just sort of understood as part of the tradition. Sometimes it didn't mention much about ethics either because it was understood that people were practicing ethics, especially people living in monasteries, but not just them. So ethical teachings were already part of the tradition. Patience was already part of the tradition.

[15:28]

Giving was already part of the tradition. And concentration practices were already part of the tradition. The new thing or the special thing of Zen was When we're concentrated, concentrate on the Buddha mind seal. Concentrate on the precious mirror. Concentrate on the teaching of suchness. Concentrate on the intimate transmission. That's what we concentrate on. But we do need to be concentrated. Take care of our consciousness so that we're not distracted by what's going on in consciousness. which is one of the main things that's going on there, is discursive thought, which is easy to be distracted by unless you let go of it. And in order to let go of it, in order to let go of discursive thought, in order to let go of your thinking, you need to be generous towards it.

[16:34]

You need to be careful of it. You need to be patient with it. You need to be diligent with it. If you can be that way, if you can practice those practices with your karmic consciousness, with your thinking, then you can relax with your thinking. And you can and then you can be intimate with your thinking. In other words, then you can enter into the intimate transmission of the Buddha Mind Seal. If you want to, I'll go through and give you some teachings about the jhanas, but I won't do it unless you beg. Marie? You said it was important to be undistracted, open and bright. What do I mean by bright?

[17:43]

I mean really awake, even if you're tired. That, yeah, if you actually give up discursive thought, you'll be very buoyant. and bright. And in some places, when describing this shamatha, this tranquil abiding, or samadhi, which again can be used, these samadhi and shamatha can be used to develop these special states of concentration. When they describe it, they say it's not just being focused, it's having a flexible body and mind and when you have a flexible body and mind so that you then you can let go of the discursive thinking and be focused and be focused and flexible so you can let go of the changes that are going on and that are coming

[18:51]

and being given to your undistracted mind. If you're undistracted, if you're focused and you're not flexible, the challenges to your focus will toss you about. So we have to be undistracted and also willing to let go of our undistractedness. Be generous in order to be undistracted, and then once we're undistracted, be generous with our undistractedness to give away and not hold on to it. Like I often quote Suzuki Rashi saying, sometimes when I'm sitting, I feel like I could sit forever, but when the bell rings, I get up and do kin-hin. And over the years I've seen many people who actually got undistracted and they really enjoyed it, but then the bell rang and they didn't want to get up. They wanted to hold on to this.

[19:55]

Finally they were calm. They didn't want to disturb it by getting up and doing Kenyan. But we say, please, usually we say, please do Kenyan with us. So I've been saying, remember stillness, which is also to remember samadhi. And remembering samadhi and also then remembering the precious mirror samadhi. remember the intimate transmission of the Buddha Mind Seal. We can, right now, we can remember the intimate transmission of the Buddha Mind Seal, which is the main point.

[20:58]

And then we can forget, and then we can remember again, and we can remember, and remembering is part of samadhi. It's part of, we're not distracted from remembering. Remembering the teaching of suchness, which is intimate transmission, which is remembering Buddha. And while we're remembering Buddha, karmic consciousness is still functioning, but we're remembering Buddha. And like letting go of it, the more we let go of it, the less it distracts us from remembering what we want to remember. So when the Buddha ancestors they may look like they're practicing jhana, and they might be, but if they are practicing jhana,

[22:11]

they are also remembering the Buddha Mind Seal. If they're practicing concentration or calm abiding, they're also remembering the Buddha Mind Seal. And also it is taught that without samadhi, without samadhi, you don't have prajna. Or without shamatha, you don't have prajna. a word that's often associated with Samatha is vipassana, which means insight. So some people have insight, but they don't have Samatha. So it's not called vipassana. Vipassana is the type of insight that arises in a calm abiding. Some people are quite witty and insightful, but they don't have a calm, flexible, open mind.

[23:18]

So the insight then... ...of insight. Or the wisdom is not the wisdom of the Buddhas. The wisdom of the Buddhas arises with samadhi. The precious mirror arises with samadhi. There's a precious mirror and no samadhi. It's not the precious mirror of the school. If there's intimate communication but there isn't samadhi, then we say that's not the intimate communication of Buddha. The intimate communication of Buddha has all these virtues and supporting it. And it supports them. Does that make sense? So, as students of the Buddha ancestors, we have the opportunity to the intimate transmission of the Buddha mind seal.

[24:26]

We have the opportunity to make our life the remembering of it. We can have the opportunity to serve it. Now I'm here. talking to you, and my being here talking to you could be my service of the Buddha Mind Seal. I remember it and I offer my words and my postures and my thinking to you and to the Buddha Mind Seal. Also, my life can be worshipping the Buddha Mind Seal. My life is the act of worshipping the Buddhas and the mind seal of the Buddhas. My life can be the performance of the Buddha mind seal. When I'm sitting in the zendo, that sitting can be offered as the performance of intimate transmission of the Buddha mind seal.

[25:34]

When I'm sitting in the zendo or walking or talking to you, my sitting, my walking, my talking can be acts of obedience to the Buddha. Obedience comes from to listen. to listen to the teaching of suchness without even putting I can listen to it, I can be obedient to it moment by moment, or I can get distracted. But I aspire to being obedient to the Buddha Mind Seal. So in the song of the precious mirror samadhi, towards the end, as you know, it says something like, when the wooden man begins to sing, the stone woman gets up dancing.

[26:53]

It's not within the wooden man begins to sing, the stone woman gets up to dance for intimate transmission of the Buddha mind seal. This is an image of intimacy. when our inconceivable life is responded to by our inconceivable life. When the wooden man begins to sing, like the story that we've been studying in the koan class, a monk goes up to Jaojo and says, what's Jaojo? This is the wooden man singing. And then Zhaozhou says, east gate, west gate, south gate, north gate. This is the stone woman dancing.

[27:59]

I see. Then the song goes on and says, it's not within reach of feeling or discrimination. How could it admit of consideration and thought? What's it? What's it that's not within or discrimination? What is it? Yeah, right. It's not, you can't feel what it's like to ask that question. You don't know where that question comes from, and your discrimination is about where that question comes from. It's not within the reach of those discriminations. Nobody can figure out why the monk asked Zhaozhou. What is Zhaozhou? That question comes from Buddha Mind Seal. How could it admit of consideration thought?

[29:11]

No matter how much we think about it, we'll never, our thinking will never reach that wooden man singing who sounded like this. What is Jojo? So if I ask you, what is Sean? What do you say? Good. What did I say? Then it says something like a minister serve or ministers serve their Lord. Children obey their parents. Are you ministers of the empire of the precious mirror samadhi?

[30:18]

Are you administering the life of intimate transmission? Are you one of the ministers? If so, serve. Serve the samadhi. Ministers of the samadhi serve the samadhi. Children of the samadhi are obedient to the samadhi. They listen to the samadhi. They listen to the teachings. Transmission. And they're obedient to those teachings. They serve, but what they're serving is not within reach of feeling. What they're serving does not admit of consideration and thought, but they do serve.

[31:26]

They serve the inconceivable Buddha mind. And when serving the Buddha mind, Part of serving it is to remember it and remember you're serving. And realize that serving the Buddha mind seal is the Buddha mind seal. Nobody can get a hold of the Buddha mind seal. Nobody can control it. There's no problem about that. Nobody can control it, fortunately. But we can all serve it. And serving it is this samadhi of the precious mirror. Now,

[32:38]

was sitting and I was taking care of my posture, which actually I do do. When I sit, I take care of my posture. I'm mindful of my posture. When I get up, I want to be mindful of my posture. When I walk, I'm mindful of my posture and my breathing. I walk with my breathing. Inhaling I lift my heel. Exhaling I step. I am aware of my posture and breathing. I practice. When I come to the dining room, I often take a hold of a piece of wood and pull it to open the door. And I practice mindfulness of that. And I am a servant of mindfulness of my body.

[33:42]

I want to be obedient to mindfulness of my body. And I also want to be obedient to my intimate relationship with all beings. I want to remember that while I'm taking a break. I do have a feeling about my posture and my breathing. Being mindful of my posture and breathing, I'm mindful of my feelings and thoughts about my posture and breathing. So I'm aware of my feelings and thoughts. But my feelings and thoughts and my mindfulness of them are all in service of the Buddha Mind Seal. That's the special thing about the Zen school. And part of being, and part of developing samadhi, as I mentioned I think also, is taking care of solitude.

[35:01]

Did I talk to you about that? And as I mentioned, there's quite a few people sitting at the silent table. Maybe later the people who sit at the silent table can tell me if when they're sitting at the silent table, if they're practicing solitude when they're there. But part of practicing samadhi is to give up social busyness. Part of Zen practice is to give up social busyness. Solitude is part of it. give up social busyness for the sake of realizing social intimacy.

[36:11]

The intimate transmission, face-to-face transmission of Buddhas is a social reality. But it's not social busyness, it's social intimacy. Our practice is a social practice beyond all of social, including all of our ideas of social and beyond them. But it's not social busyness, it's social intimacy. The teaching of suchness is social, is intimate social transmission. And to be undistracted by social busyness is appropriate to the samadhi of that intimate transmission.

[37:18]

You can sit at the silent table and give up social busyness. You can sit at a table and talk to people and look at them and give up social busyness. Bodhisattvas who are devoted to the welfare of all beings, who are devoted to the welfare of the entire society, who want to develop intimacy among the entire society, give up social busyness. And their social life is the life of serving social intimacy, which means serving solitude or intimately relating.

[38:21]

Solitude is to give up distractions from this intimate transmission. In some books they say the definition of solitude is to find a place which is, I forgot how many, oh, to find a place that's out of earshot of the noises of the city, out of earshot. Or another definition is 500 bowspans. 500, you know, lengths of a bow. Do you understand bow? A bow this long? 500 of those. It's far away from noise. With the Zen school, we don't get 500.

[39:24]

We go into a Zendo, and we're about 500 miles, 500 bow spans from the noise of the highway. we go in the zendo to practice solitude. When we come out of the zendo and continue to practice solitude, we need to until, not until, we need to. In other words, we need to go among people and talk to them without the conversation distracting us from the teaching of suchness. So some Zen centers, not Zen centers, but you have some Zen centers, but also other Buddhist centers, they have places where nobody talks, which is fine. But what happens when they start ? Do they then lose their solitude? How can we interact socially without it being busy and distracting?

[40:32]

How can we talk with such sincerity and carefulness and patience and diligence so that the words do not distract from the teaching of suchness? In other words, how can we be in samadhi when we're talking and when we're listening? And to other people, and also be listening to the teachings of the Buddha ancestors. We need to learn this in order to take care of the samadhi of the Buddha Mind Seal. The Buddha Mind Seal is already the case everywhere. We don't have to make the Buddha Mind Seal. It's already been given to you.

[41:34]

You have it. So this is some talk about how to take care of it. So I have this thought that you understand me very well. And then I have a thought that you might be thinking, this sounds rather challenging to live a life with all beings and not be distracted by our life together from the intimacy of our life together. And it is a challenging skill to learn. Thank you for listening.

[42:49]

And I pray that we can be good servants to the Buddha's teaching of suchness, if we want to be. And if we are good servants, we will open to this teaching, this inconceivable intimacy which you've already been given. Remember stillness.

[43:52]

Remember solitude. Remember the samadhi. And remember that you already have this teaching. It's with you all day long. We can't get away from it. We can't move towards it. We already are it. That's why we remember to be still. and undistracted and present and relaxed and not holding on to stillness, solitude and concentration. it might happen that someday all of Green Gulch will be sitting at the silent table.

[45:17]

The table doesn't say silent table. That people would just sit down with their friends, their dear friends, who they are devoted to, and nobody will talk. And then the next day maybe there will be lots of talk and there will be solitude. Maybe that there's talk but no social business just intimate social life together and we are the servants of intimate social life tonight

[46:27]

This intimate social life is not within the reach of feeling or discrimination. You might feel, oh, this is a pretty intimate evening together. Or you might feel, this is not so. Or you might discriminate. Ah, yes, this is truly intimate social life. But our feelings and our discriminations don't reach it. My opinion about it, even though I might think, seems like we're pretty intimate. I might think that, and that's okay. But my thoughts, what I'm thinking, what I'm seeing as the intimacy of this group, what I'm thinking is the intimacy.

[47:41]

And my service of this intimacy also doesn't reach the intimacy. My service of it is the intimacy. My obedience to it and my remembering of it is the intimacy. I don't know what my service is and what my obedience is and what my performance is, but that's what I'm trying to do. How about you?

[48:18]

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