As you have all read and said so many times, in general, in this world and in other worlds, in India, in China, in Japan, and now in America, overall prevails the character of this school. which is simply devotion to upright sitting, total engagement in sitting still. These are the words of Heihei Dogen Zenji. He was trying to encourage people in this practice

[01:04]

of upright sitting, and for 700 years since that time his disciples have continued to encourage people to sit upright in the midst of elements of self and other. So, total devotion to upright sitting, total is redundant. The word devotion means, the D means complete or total, and devotion part means vow. Devotion to sitting means the complete vow to sitting. To make your life completely the vow to sit upright.

[02:08]

In some ways, vow is better because it's not a karmic act to sit upright. It's something you do with all sentient beings, give your life over to this essential process of the Buddha Dharma. Devotion to upright sitting. So, what is this uprightness? You're all sitting, what makes it upright? Prajnatara said, this poor wayfarer, when breathing in, doesn't dwell

[03:15]

in the realms of body or mind. When breathing out, I don't become entangled in myriad circumstances. So, to sit in the midst of body and mind, self and other, coming and going with your breathing, and not to get involved, not to get entangled, not to cling, not to shrink away from or grab on to the appearances of body and mind. This is the uprightness of the ancestors. Or, if you make this practice of the ancestors your ultimate concern,

[04:27]

that means that whatever happens, you're not concerned with. In the midst of all your concerns, you're not concerned with the practice of the ancestors. In the midst of all your concerns, you have no concerns. So then, Bodhidharma says to his disciple, outwardly, in the realm of all objects, in the realm of all elements of awareness, don't activate your mind. Don't get involved in your involvements. And inwardly, don't be coughing or sighing with what's going on with you. In other words, make your mind like a wall. Walls don't sleep, however.

[05:35]

They fall down sometimes, but when they fall down, they don't sleep in their ruin. They sit still in their fallen state. Bodhidharma's disciple, Huayka, hearing this instruction, went and practiced it, I don't know exactly how long. He came back and said to Bodhidharma, I'm unconcerned. I'm uninvolved in the objects of the world. So Bodhidharma said, well, is that nihilism? And he said, no way. Bodhidharma said, prove it. Huayka said, I'm always clearly aware and no words reach it.

[06:45]

Bodhidharma said, have no more doubt. This is the way of the Buddha ancestors. Uprightness is just clear awareness and no words can reach it. Someone was talking to me. Some monk was talking to me and he said, blah, blah, blah. I forgot what it was, but it was something. Blah, blah, blah. And then he said, but that's not uprightness, is it? And I said, no. Whatever you fill in, blah, blah, blah, that's not uprightness because

[07:53]

no words can reach it. And also, that's not uprightness doesn't reach it either. Nothing adheres to it. It's just complete openness to what's happening. That's how you enter into the study of what's happening. You don't bring any fixed fixations with you. So recently, one of the monks came and she said she was kind of sleepy, kind of not sleepy, weary from a busy day. And before he came to see me, he had been sitting here in this meditation hall and

[08:55]

going over in his mind some work he had done during the day. If I say what the work was in too much detail, you'll know who it is. So I'll just say, going over some work that she had been involved in during the day, going over it again in her mind. And she was telling me this because usually in the meditation text, it doesn't say sit and think about how you installed various kinds of equipment in the shop or kitchen. It doesn't talk about how you sit and think about how you prepared evening meal. And if I had my way, I never will. Of course, if you write a book like that, it will sell like hotcakes because that's what people want to do. They want to read about what you think about.

[10:02]

But this upright teaching is not teaching you what to think about, it's teaching you how to think. So he said, I knew in some sense I wasn't supposed to think about that, but I felt like if I tried to stop myself from thinking about it, it would have been worse. And I said, I think that's right. I felt from him as he was describing his mind that was meditating on this work review, I felt some uprightness in his mind as he was telling me this. So if you're sitting upright, anything can come and appear before you. A childhood memory, a 16 foot golden Buddha, a memory of work that day, an image of some person,

[11:16]

anything can appear. You're not sitting there saying only certain things can appear. You're open and sure enough in that openness, anything does come and actually eventually everything will come. As Thoreau says in Walden, all you need to do is sit long enough in an attractive spot in the forest and all the inhabitants will exhibit themselves to you in turn. And I always emphasize in their turn. You don't get to say, now I want to think about power tools, now I want to think about raccoons, now I want to think about mountain lions, now I want to think about boys. You don't get to choose. The universe delivers you and reveals itself to you happily. And the attractive spot is,

[12:21]

the attractive spot, you are an attractive spot because you're upright. Your openness is very attractive. You make the spot you sit attractive and the universe gives you gift after gift. So he said, if I try to stop my mind from thinking about that, it wouldn't have been right. I think that's right. Just letting that come up and being there with it, it seemed more upright than for him to try to stop himself from thinking about the work. He said, if I had thought about it, if I'd gone over it a second time, he said, that would have been not upright. Maybe not. And he said, but I could stop it. In other words, the second time around he could stop it. And I said, that's karmic thinking. To think that you can let yourself think about it,

[13:22]

or you can stop yourself from thinking about it, that thing of, I can do this, that's karmic thinking. So here we are, an attractive spot. Motorcycles are coming. See, there must be something right about our practice. And then the same monk said to me, thinking of some examples of not uprightness, he said, she chose my daughter as an example of not uprightness.

[14:23]

That story I told you about when my daughter was playing baseball, you know, she was at bat, holding the bat over her shoulder, and looking at the boys on the side, and he wondered if that was an example of not uprightness. And I said, I don't know. You don't know. It's possible to be playing baseball and be looking at the boys on the sideline. It's possible to be upright in that state. In fact, anyway, you know, you think, well, she came to play baseball, but she's not playing baseball. She's looking at baseball players. But that's why she was playing baseball in the first place. She had no interest in baseball. She was interested in two things, the players and the uniform, a new outfit.

[15:29]

She did that with several sports. Get the uniform and quit. So I have one uniform from several sports if you need anything. Now she wants to do a new sport called filmmaking, so she wants video cameras. So we say, you remember diving, swimming, baseball, you know, you remember those? She said, oh yeah, that's right, thank you. Okay, it's all right, forget it. So it's not the content of your mind, it's not the objects of your awareness that make uprightness. It's the not getting involved in the objects. It's the unconcern with whatever is appearing that's the uprightness. It's the wooden horse romping in springtime, dashing through fields of flowers,

[16:44]

that's the uprightness, not the kind of flowers that are appearing. So it's kind of scary for me to say this to you, but finally I would say to you, don't use objects or content of your awareness to realize peace and security. Don't like concentrate on your breath or on your posture and make that content of your mind be sort of what you hold on to, to make yourself peaceful or at ease. But I don't say that to forbid you, I say finally if you meditate that way, if you focus on your posture and breathing as something you hold on to, that when you have that content you feel okay and when you don't have that content you feel upset.

[17:48]

That's not going to be healthy, that's going to cause you disturbance. That's not going to be upright. If you want to you can choose some content, like you can concentrate on cutting vegetables or driving a car or your breathing process, that's fine. But if you think that concentrating on cutting vegetables or driving the car or meditating on your breath, if you think that's going to give you peace, what are you going to do when that stuff gets taken away? And it will. But uprightness can never be taken away. If you make an object or the content of your awareness that which you hold to, you're just delighting in a liar. You're just holding on to a reflection and projection of obscuration, of something solid.

[18:57]

That process will go on anyway, this reflection and objectification of your internal state will keep happening all the time anyway. And it doesn't mean you should ignore what's going on either. Matter of fact, the only way, ironically or paradoxically, the only way to realize that you're unconcerned with something is to be really aware of it. So if you're breathing and you're not paying attention to your breathing, there's no way to experience your lack of attachment. It's as the thoughts are appearing and you're aware of them that you're unconcerned. To be unconcerned with something you don't care about doesn't count. That's just being spaced out. Uprightness is to be unconcerned with what you love most.

[20:03]

It's not to be unconcerned with what you don't care about. Uprightness is to be completely aware and thoroughly attuned to what you don't care about. If you have some content in your mind that you use to verify that you're practicing, then that content will become an obstacle to your awakening. And also you'll hate other people and degrade other people who don't have that in their mind. Because after all, you've decided that you're concentrating on what's good and what's helpful. It doesn't mean that you don't have convictions about what is correct. It just means that you let go of them.

[21:09]

And rather than hold on to what you think is correct, you study how it arises. So if you, for example, wish to be mindful of your breathing, that's fine. Your breathing deserves your attention. But also you should be mindful of not your breathing. Uprightness is not just that you respect your breathing. And your posture. And you don't respect your greed, hate, and delusion. Now when I talk this way, I start to open up into the self-fulfilling awareness. Uprightness and the self-fulfilling awareness are very closely related. So in one sense,

[22:21]

what uprightness is, is to respect everything. To respect everything, including disrespect. Some people really respect respect. They really respect love. But they don't respect disrespect. They disrespect disrespect. It seems reasonable. Disrespect is a bad thing. So then we should disrespect it, right? In other words, we should be bad too. But respecting disrespect, this is uprightness. And respecting doesn't mean you like things and delight in them. Respect means look again, brother and sister. Look again. Respect. Respectus. Respectatum. Respectitas. Respect. Look again.

[23:32]

So if you see disrespect and you don't respect it, that's called not looking again. That's saying, I know what disrespect is. That's not respect. That's just spect. That's just grabbing. That's just getting involved with objects. That's just coughing and sighing in your mind. That's just not the practice of the ancestors. That's all. That's just self-righteousness. This is right, I hold it. Whatever you hold as most right, as most correct, that is what you let go of. To let go of what you value most is respect for what you value most. As Suzuki Roshi says, what we're doing is far too important to be taken seriously.

[24:42]

What we're doing is so precious, we should let go of it. Our children are so precious, we should let go of them. Maybe the children you don't care about, the ones that are disgusting, maybe those you should hold on to. Maybe. Uprightness has put no limits on respect, and that is the entrance into the self-fulfilling awareness. We say in Soto Zen, there's no place on earth, not even a little spot where you can spit. Spit means, this is not a good place on earth. Of course, you're spitting in your mouth all the time,

[25:45]

but your feeling is not degrading your inside of your mouth. But usually, when we spit, we say, we don't usually spit in the Buddha's face, or spit on the altar, or spit in our loved one's face. We spit in the face of something we don't respect. We spit in the face of someone who we know who they are. They're a bad person, so I spit in them. But really, you should look again at this bad person. This might be Buddha. So, there's no place to spit. Everything deserves our utmost respect. That's the self-fulfilling awareness. I told you, I give you examples of unfulfilled self-awareness. So, I went to a meeting the other day, and I looked at the agenda. And there was an item on the agenda, which I really felt shouldn't be on the agenda.

[26:51]

It's the wrong committee. It was Firewatch. And I thought, that agenda should not be on the list, I thought. And I said, what's that on there for? And no one really could remember, but then I remembered that I put it on. So, the agenda item that you don't think is on there is your true self. Sometimes you realize it, sometimes you don't. True self means it fulfills yourself. All the agenda items that you don't think should be on the agenda, those are the ones that fulfill you. The ones you think should be on there, that's just a self you've got already. And that's the self that says, no more agenda items besides the ones I want. That's the unfulfilled self. And I experienced it.

[27:55]

But then I realized that what wasn't me is really me. And I was fulfilled. So, faith in uprightness is faith in dependent co-arising. As opposed to faith in what's happening in your mind. And faith in thinking about certain things, which is faith in alaya, which is faith in sensual pleasure. And particularly, if you

[28:57]

can bring what you love most into your study of dependent co-arising, that's the really deep faith in dependent co-arising. What we love most, by love I mean, what we delight in most, those things we want to leave them as nice little objects to love. We're afraid if we bring what we love most, even Buddhism, even Zen, wonderful beautiful Zen, to bring Zen into the realm of dependent co-arising, there won't be any Zen left. Maybe. You'll have to let go of it as you start to study it. Because it means what you see there, because you respect, you look again. It isn't just what you saw the first time. To bring your loved one into the realm of studying its causes and effect, you're going to lose it. You'll lose your loved one if you study it thoroughly.

[30:09]

You won't be able to hold on to it anymore. To bring what you love most, what you treasure most, into the realm of studying its dependent co-arising, that's deep faith in cause and effect. It's scary to do that. Not to mention to bring your enemy, the most terrible thing into the realm of cause and effect, because then you might lose your defense against it. You might forget it was your enemy and it will gobble you up. So you want to hold it there as enemy, as terrible. Rather than bring it in and say, well, what is it anyway? What is this enemy? What is this poison? Again, that would be deep faith in cause and effect. And it's scary. You might lose your loved one and lose your enemy and be left with

[31:17]

what? Just uprightness. Just clear awareness and no words will reach it. That's why these ancestors spent so much time encouraging people to do this because people do need encouragement to give up worldly affairs and practice uprightness, to give up our most deeply held convictions, to let go of them so that they can live. As soon as you let go of them, they fill your hand again. But when they fill your hand again, they're alive. If it's really good, let go of it and it'll come back.

[32:23]

That's one of the tests. Something good. Let it go and see if it comes right back. We're afraid to find out whether it will or not. So, even let go of uprightness. So, so,

[33:38]

so, now we sit upright, we vow, we devote ourselves to upright sitting today and again and again day after day and we see what will be brought to us moment by moment. For us not to dwell in, for us not to grab onto, for us not to turn away from. Just being still and aware and all the words that arise, that fly around us, don't reach our awareness. With a deep commitment to Buddha's teaching of dependent co-arising.

[35:17]

Thank you.

[35:49]

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