Today we have the wonderful opportunity to practice sitting meditation, zazen, and also walking meditation and standing meditation. Like our great ancestor, Dogen Zenji, The Zazen I speak of is not just concentration. The Zazen I speak of is the Zazen of the Buddhas and the ancestors of our tradition. In this Zazen, In such a zazen, we have totally culminated enlightenment, living.

[01:09]

In Buddhas and ancestors, wisdom and concentration are united. there is concentration in the sitting meditation and there is and they are very intimately supporting each other. The zazen of this school is the zazen of bodhisattvas and bodhisattvas practice six transcendent practices, six paramitas. And although this is not linear, there is an order to these practices. The first practice is giving.

[02:24]

The second practice is ethical discipline. The third practice is patience. The fourth practice is heroic, courageous effort. The fifth practice is concentration and the sixth practice is wisdom. And they are practiced in that order The perfection of wisdom is based on concentration and heroic effort and patience and ethics and giving. So again, our practice is not just one of these practices. It is all six. In our wisdom practice,

[03:30]

There is concentration, there is heroic effort, patience, ethical and giving. When we first start practicing giving, we can practice giving without practicing the other five practices. But it's not the full giving, it's the beginner's We can also try to practice ethical discipline without first practicing giving, but if we are not being generous, if we don't practice giving together with our ethical discipline, discipline will not be fully functioning. Ethical discipline based on giving is the bodhisattva's ethical discipline.

[04:32]

bodhisattva's practice ethical discipline as an act of generosity. So, these first four practices of the bodhisattva, giving, ethical training, patience, and enthusiasm, they set up the practice of education. So when we practice concentration, when we practice developing calm, these first four practices have their... So today I'd like to talk a little bit about the practice of concentration.

[05:37]

Right now it seems like everyone is sitting still. And so I wonder And I ask you now, do you wish this stillness, this sitting still, do you wish it to be a gift? Do you give this practice of sitting still as a gift to the Buddhas, to all Buddhas, to the ancestors? Do you give your sitting right now to the welfare of all beings?

[07:10]

Sitting still in this generous way develops and will come to fruit as concentration. Sitting in this way of giving your sitting as a gift will support and nurture a calm, tranquil, bright body and mind. Next, as you sit, are you practicing ethics? Are you being careful and observant? When sitting in meditation to develop calm, it is often

[08:34]

recommended to sit in a certain posture, to sit upright. So the effort to make the posture upright is closely related to the practice, because ethics is also the practice of being upright. So sitting and generously attending to the body being upright. The body being honest. And the mind being upright and honest.

[09:39]

and careful. Carefully care for the body posture, and the body posture supports the mind being upright. Attending to the upright body, the upright body supports the upright mind. And again, how do we best take care of supporting, generously supporting an upright posture? I just said it. We generously support the upright posture. Gently, kindly support the posture. and let the upright posture support the upright mind.

[10:46]

Moment by moment, upright body and mind. Next, patience. Patience with what? Patience with what might come. Patience with any fear or confusion that may arise. Patience with forgetting to be upright. Patience also means to be very much in the present moment with this posture. If we practice giving careful ethics and patience, our energy will not be wasted.

[11:59]

The energy to practice what we wish to practice. And we may consider how good it would be to become and concentrated and how good it would be to concentrate we are now ready to directly develop concentration which is not different from the first four practices a little bit more emphasis on being completely relaxed. Now, I sometimes say that the posture of sitting is like an upright or an erect swoon.

[13:05]

Swoon is like when you kind of like go like you faint and yet you're sitting upright upright like a mountain that's melting into the ground that's melting into the earth there's an effort a great effort to sit upright and still and there is also a great effort to relax completely Everyone now is sitting upright. I see here. Everybody. I think that's wonderful. And I guess that takes for you to sit upright now and now and now and to go all day long sitting upright walking upright standing upright

[14:17]

I hope you had a good breakfast so you have some calories in your body so you can make this great effort of being upright and also now that you're upright just completely relax in this upright posture such uprightness that's completely relaxed and calm is ready for wisdom. It's ready in mind to drop off. Every moment ready for wisdom. Right here, not someplace else. generous and careful, completely relaxed, ready for awakening.

[15:29]

Whatever comes, whatever pleasure or pain, whatever confusion or fear, meet them each with complete relaxation. And if you can't, be generous towards your inability. Be patient with your forgetfulness and meet your forgetfulness with generosity and carefulness and patience and enthusiasm to be kind to forgetfulness. And then you're again ready to relax. And relax. And relax with everything that arises in your mind, every thought that comes. Relax with it.

[16:32]

Don't reject it. Don't cling to it. But be kind to it. Don't ignore it. Don't ignore any experience. And don't reject any or grasp any. And be kind to each experience, moment after moment. And again, this kindness has complete relaxation and this develops into concentration. Concentration itself is the state of calm and brightness and ease that comes from meeting whatever arises with relaxation. If you look at the teachings of ancestor Ehe Dogen, he does not give so much instruction on concentration.

[17:47]

Most of his instruction is wisdom instruction. But this wisdom instruction is given to us with the understanding that we are already practicing concentration. And we receive these wisdom teachings into a state of ongoing cultivation and care and maintenance of a calm mind. Someone said to me recently, that he thought that Zen was to starve the ego to death, to starve selfishness to death, to starve self-clinging to death.

[18:55]

He was thinking that maybe that was not necessary. Maybe that the Buddha would not want to starve anything to death. That the Buddha would want to feed, would want to nourish all beings. So we think, we don't want to feed the ego, we don't want to feed self-cleaning because then it will get bigger and stronger. No. So someone else tells me that they're afraid of their ego. So I would say if you're afraid of the ego be generous towards that fear of the ego.

[20:04]

Be careful of your fear of the ego. If you see somebody else's ego walking around Be generous towards their ego, but be careful of their ego. Actually spend a lot of their time being careful of other people's ego. I think being careful of people's ego is good. Being gentle with people's ego is good. And being gentle with our own is good, too. Be generous towards the ego. Be generous towards self-clinging and self-concern. Be generous towards suffering. If we can be completely compassionate towards our self-clinging, towards our

[21:13]

self-centered the self-centered body and mind will drop off. And part of being compassionate to in ourselves and in others is to be careful of it is to be honest about it and relaxed with it feed all beings with compassion Tomorrow we'll do a ceremony where we will feed, we will feed living beings.

[22:31]

We will feed spirits. We will practice compassion towards those who have difficulty receiving compassion. We will have a special practice of compassion for these beings. and for all beings, to encourage beings to open. And we will also send compassion to our ancestors. We will feed them all with our best gift of compassion, with our greatest compassion. We do not have to control anything to be calm and concentrated.

[24:15]

As a matter of fact, control promotes tranquility. Noticing the impulse to control and letting it be promotes tranquility. Fighting control or trying to get control creates the illusion of agitation and instability. And impulses to control may arise in yourself or you may see the appearance of impulses to control in others. Meet those controlling impulses with generosity.

[25:19]

Control them. Give up trying to control them. I should not say don't try to control them. Give up trying to control them. Because you might try to control them. And if you do, then relax with your attempt to control. One of the first instructions I saw for practicing Zazen was control the body, control the breathing, and control the mind. I heard that teaching. I won't tell you who told me. And I tried it. I tried to control my body, control my breathing, and control my mind. And actually I got my body and my breath under control. but my mind said, I don't want to do this anymore.

[26:20]

This isn't what I came to Zen for, to control my body and control my mind. I was not inspired to come to Zen practice because I heard stories of people who controlled their mind and controlled their breath. When I arrived at Zen, I got the impression I should control my body and control my mind. So I tried and I tried and finally I succeeded and got myself under control and I realized this was not what I came to practice for. And since that time it's now about 41 years since I got to that time for the last 41 years I have not been trying to control myself and I know that's been difficult for some of you. And I also, which I think you will appreciate, sometime after I stopped trying to control myself, not right away, but actually quite a while later than that, I stopped trying to control other people.

[27:41]

Especially people called my students. I eventually stopped trying to control them. And many people come to me and ask me to control them. And I say, I don't agree to control you. You know, please control the Buddha way. I'm not going to control you onto the Buddha way. If you want to walk the Buddha way, I totally will support you. I will give my support to you. I will be careful of you while you're trying. I will be impatient with you if you don't. I will be enthusiastic to support you to walk the Buddha way, but I won't control you into the Buddha way. And you won't control yourself. I will be calm with you if you walk the Buddha way and I will be calm with you if you walk the other way or the other ways. Tranquil with you even if you walk the non-Buddha way.

[28:45]

I will do that. I will do those practices because those practices are the practice of the Zazen, of the Buddhas and ancestors. Those are the practices which promote wisdom and concentration being joined. So not only that I did not want to control myself and did not want to control other people. But I also saw people over the years, many people very angry that they couldn't control themselves. They came to this room day after day, year after year, and were very angry at themselves that they couldn't get themselves under control. And many of them quit practicing because they couldn't control.

[30:01]

And they quit before I realized that I could say to them, it's okay that you didn't get yourself under control. That's not what the practice is. The practice is to be devoted to be that cannot be controlled. That means be devoted to all beings, because no beings can be controlled. But all beings can be objects of compassion, no matter what they're doing. And we're not being compassionate to get them controlled and get them onto the Buddha way. We're not trying to control them into Buddhahood.

[31:02]

We're supporting them to be themselves. And we support them by being generous towards them and letting them be. And we support ourselves by letting ourselves be. And letting ourselves be is the practice of concentration. And letting ourselves be in this moment is stillness and develops concentration. And letting ourselves be is a great effort. It is a great effort and it is doing nothing at all. It requires all of our energy to let ourselves be. It requires all of our energy to let our energy be completely. All of our attention, all of our kindness to let ourselves be, and it's not doing anything at all.

[32:06]

And in order to let ourselves be, we have to be completely relaxed now with this. the fourth ancestor, I believe, the fourth ancestor of Zen, Daidoshin Daisho, I think his instruction was that there are innumerable ways to develop concentration. But basically, actually, it wasn't him. He said that, but then Bodhidharma said, concentration Calm the body with no contrivance. I asked Dhanja to look up at contrivance.

[33:13]

Contrivance means a plan or a plot or a scheme. Clever way. So calm your mind with no plan. Calm your mind without doing anything other than letting yourself completely be yourself. In the back of your mind or in the front of your mind, remember that in order to let yourself be, you have to be generous and careful. Letting yourself be, you have to be generous and careful and patient. Letting yourself be when you're Pain means you have to practice patience with that pain. So letting yourself be involves all these great practices of giving, ethics, patience and enthusiasm. And then you can practice concentration of letting yourself be.

[34:19]

By making all these efforts, you can do the practice of doing nothing with what's going on. And that practice is concentration, which gets you ready for reality. If you're ready for reality, you're concentrated. If you're concentrated, you're ready for reality. If you're really kind to yourself, you will be concentrated. if you're really compassionate towards yourself and all beings, you will be ready for the truth. Another thing that comes to my mind now is that the sitting posture of this school is a prayer.

[35:57]

This sitting posture is an address. This sitting posture addresses or speaks to the Buddhas. This sitting posture addresses the whole universe. This sitting posture is an expression of our relationship, of our true relationship. the whole universe and with all living beings. Another way to say this sitting posture is a gift to all beings.

[37:06]

to all living beings, to all Buddhas, to the whole universe. This generous relationship is our true relationship. And this is an expression of our true generous relationship. In that sense our sitting is a prayer. And the whole universe responds to this prayer. At the very moment we give the gift, the whole universe says thank you. At the moment we give this gift, all beings say thank you. And this is the truth that we can open to. This intimate, supportive relationship is the truth of the Buddhas.

[38:09]

expresses it, our sitting realizes it. Our sitting speaks to it, our sitting addresses it. The green dragon sings in the dark unknown.

[39:43]

And the valley becomes quiet. May our intention equally extend.

[40:33]

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