Jomon: 00:00

Hello and welcome. This is the Zen Community of Oregon, making the teachings of the Buddhadharma accessible to support your practice. New episodes air every week.

Bansho: 00:23

Good afternoon. Sesshin is well underway. You are taking up your practice of silence and stillness. Our text, one of our chants. Though great way is not difficult for those who do not pick and choose, when preferences are cast aside, the way stands clear and undisguised, but even slight distinctions made set earth and heaven far apart, if you would clearly see the truth discard opinions pro and con to founder and dislike and like is nothing but the mind's disease, and not to see the way's deep truth disturbs the mind's essential peace.

Bansho: 01:23

The way is perfect, like vast space, where there's no lack and no excess. Our choice to choose and to reject prevents our seeing this simple truth. Another translation. From the Zen Buddhist Order of It's not difficult to discover this is the same passages. It's not difficult to discover your Buddha mind, but just don't try to search for it.

Bansho: 02:05

Cease accepting and rejecting possible places where you think it can be found, and it will appear before you. Be warned: the slightest exercise of preference will open a gulf as wide and deep as the space between heaven and earth. If you want to encounter your Buddha mind, don't have opinions about anything. Opinions produce argument, and contentiousness is a disease of the mind. Plunge into the depths.

Bansho: 02:39

Stillness is deep. There is nothing profound in shallow waters. The Buddha mind is perfect, and it encompasses the universe. It lacks nothing, and it has nothing in excess. If you think you can choose between its parts, you'll miss its very essence.

Bansho: 03:08

Sesshin is underway, and you've done many periods of meditation and many, many hours of zazen. At this point, practice begins to become more and more refined. At first, of course, it's all we can do to sit still, work with our discomfort, settle into the schedule and routines of sashin. Now we may have experienced some ease, some glimpses of ease, relaxation, some disentanglement from our thoughts, where at the beginning we'd get distracted and spend a lot of time away from our method, away from the monastery, somewhere else, now we catch it a little bit sooner, not caught at all, able to have some distance or space around the experience. I once asked someone not so long ago, Why do you practice?

Bansho: 04:25

And they said, I want to be free. I want to be free. This is a very clear and direct response. But in a way it brings up more questions. What does it mean to be free?

Bansho: 04:55

Do you want to be free? Do you not feel free? From the perspective of awakened nature, of the Great Way, or as the other translation translates it as Buddha mind, From the perspective of awakened nature we are already free, but we don't feel free. We don't feel awakened, enlightened. Why is this?

Bansho: 05:29

Why don't we feel free? So if we're not free, or if we don't feel free, then what is it that binds us? What binds you? This is an important investigation. This is why everything that comes up in our zazen is a teaching, an opportunity to learn what hooks us, what binds us.

Bansho: 06:00

In the Song of Zazen, we chant in the evening, Hako and Zenji says, From the beginning all beings are Buddhas, and ends with, The earth where we stand is the pure lotus land, and this body, the body of Buddha. One of the predicaments of being a human being is that we don't feel free. There is this grating friction. The Buddha described this as a sense of dissatisfaction, discontent, dukkha, friction, kind of a grinding feeling that things are off. And this friction in this particular culture, the place that we spend so much time and money is figuring out how to make things frictionless so that we can spend money.

Bansho: 07:15

We don't want some dukkha getting in the way of that, our one click. So, this dukkha, the Buddha diagnosed this as coming from clinging and aversion amid impermanence. It's not desire per se. That's too broad a word. It's good to desire to eat.

Bansho: 07:42

It's good to desire to go walk in the sunshine. It's not desire, it's clinging. Thirst is another word that these are all pointing to a felt experience. When things align with our preferences we want to keep them the way things are. We don't want people or situations to change in a way that we don't like, we don't like how things are, and so we try and change them, We want to change people to be more like how we want them to be.

Bansho: 08:22

We all know how much people like you to try and change them. It's hard enough to change ourselves, much less change another person, but still we try, don't we? Think about all the ways we would like things to change or not change. So this clinging to what we like, pushing away what we don't like, amidst impermanence, is this activity of dukkha, of the root, the source of it. Now, of course, the other thing that gives us so much power is that this activity of clinging and aversion amidst impermanence happens, the stakes are high because there's a self that is involved that wants to be defended, protected, assertive.

Bansho: 09:33

This experience that we call me, myself. In a way, the small self knows that it's contingent on it relies on the external world for validation. In a way there's a way in which the small self knows that it's empty, that it's made of non self elements, thoughts, feelings, body sensations, conditioning, but it keeps us occupied. So clinging to what we like, pushing away what we don't like, It's amazing how our thoughts revolve, we see in sasheen about liking and disliking, Oh, wish the wind would start blowing again. It's a lot easier to practice, do sound practice, when the wind is blowing, isn't it?

Bansho: 10:38

I think so. I'm chilly, I wish it was warmer in here. Afternoon rolls around, Ugh, I'm feeling hot and sweaty. In that sweet spot. We ruminate on something we did, maybe what we did, what somebody else did, what we wish they had done, wish they were different, wish we were different.

Bansho: 11:08

What have you noticed that binds you? Thoughts of past, thoughts of future, inner criticism, outer judgment, sense pleasure, I want to feel this and not that, restlessness and worry, doubting ourselves, clinging to our beliefs, opinions. And then in the midst of all this, the mind becomes subject to the three poisons: greed, anger, and delusion. Greed, trying to get something, hold onto something, in order to deal with the dissatisfaction, it shows up in all kinds of ways. Anger or ill will, we are thwarted in getting what we want, or keeping what we want.

Bansho: 11:57

So we get mad at whoever whatever appears to be thwarting our great ideas about how the world ought to be. And delusion checking out, imagining a different reality. The delusion of the small self, the delusion that there's something that needs to be defended. Not so easy. None of these are so easy.

Bansho: 12:29

It's very easy to identify their activity, but it just takes time and patience and practice. It's tricky because now we notice the content of thought, and it's very easy to say, I need to have better thoughts. These thoughts are not working for me. And there are teachings of the Buddha that really point to that, replacing unskillful, harmful ill will with something else. This is very helpful and useful, because the mind inclines itself to the negative.

Bansho: 13:22

It inclines itself to the negative. So, way that we can replace the thought with something more helpful is, for example, someone we regard as someone as irritating, Someone is irritating me. They're doing this to me. They're irritating. Instead of dwelling on whatever that irritation is, we practice metta for this person.

Bansho: 13:49

Immediately the mind can turn into wishing them well, because of course we wish them well, even if they're doing this annoying thing. So, replacing thoughts with skillful thoughts is foundational teaching of the Buddha. And because karma is real, it has an effect. I once knew someone who they were inclined to look at things in such a way that their refrain was, Why does this always happen to me? Why does this always happen to me?

Bansho: 14:35

And it could be anything from being in a restaurant and the soup comes out and it's cold, to a rental car reservation not working, to becoming ill, to the cable being out, Why does this always happen to me? So their mind was inclined to see everything that was against, that had any friction, taking it personally. So, working with our mind in this way at the level of thought is useful. But the Faith Mind poem that we read, Affirming Faith in Mind, it comes in and says that the specific contents of thoughts matter, I'm sorry, faith mind comes in and says, It's not so much the specific content of thought that matters, that's not the only thing, but the very activity of the mind getting caught up in comparison is the issue, the very activity of the mind getting caught up in comparison. The poem, the verses, goes through all the ways in which we do this.

Bansho: 16:01

This is from Chozan Roshi. She was writing about this particular verse, and she says, At Grey Vazan Monastery we chant this poem every day during our week long meditation retreats, and it is a favorite among many people because it gives such clear instructions on how to proceed toward liberation from the tyranny of the mind. In many different ways the poem makes one essential point: Don't let the mind fall into comparisons at all. There's an exclamation point. It abjures us with a listing, line by line, of the many opposites that we should not let arise in the mind.

Bansho: 16:54

And then she goes through and has all of them. 34 pairs of opposites are used of examples of what not to think about: love and hate, like and dislike, heaven and earth, for and against, lack and excess, accepting and rejecting, outer things and inner feelings, activity and passivity, one and the other, assertion and denial, emptiness and reality, this and that, right and wrong, dualities and one, object and subject, coarse and fine, easy and difficult, fast and slow, coming and going, free and in bondage, dislike and accept, wise and foolish, one and many, rest and unrest, illusion and enlightenment, gain and loss, right and wrong, stationary and moving, movement and rest, self and other and itself. Large and small, being and non being, one thing and all things, yesterday and tomorrow. You'll have to check that out the next time we do this verse. Again, as she says, Don't let the mind she says in many different ways, and we just heard all 34 of them, that this poem makes one essential point: Don't let the mind fall into comparisons at all.

Bansho: 18:24

Well, how do we do that? How do we do that? How do we practice in this way? Because we've gone from one way of looking at working with thought, which is about the content of thought, and this is the noun version of thought. Now this is the verb version of thought, the sort of comparison dynamic that happens with the specific, the comparison itself.

Bansho: 19:01

So how do we do this? Well, here are some ways. One, we've already been doing, practicing stillness. We continue to practice this. One of the reasons we settle into, as Dogan says, steady, immovable sitting is that it is the embodied practice of not picking and choosing.

Bansho: 19:27

Comfort, discomfort, doesn't matter, we just don't move. At first the mind gets activated, I don't like this. Maybe I could move just a little and they wouldn't see. We start to train the mind. Little by little, we settle first, it takes time for the body to settle.

Bansho: 19:50

This is why we preach patience, patience and persistence. Longer and longer we can stay without moving. Stay with this just as this, stay with that just as that, as Rebecca Lee puts it, stay, stay, stay without moving, experience. We embody not picking and choosing, because when we have an experience of the body that is uncomfortable we just stay with it, we're still, we're not picking and choosing. So while there may be preferences, we're not acting on it in our habitual way.

Bansho: 20:33

Stillness. Silence is the other one. And again this is not just about the silence of not talking. If silence was just about not talking then we've been holding still, we've been silent, and we're still in the process. So, the silence part is internal as well, returning to the method without commentary, without judgment, noticing the inner critic and not listening to them.

Bansho: 21:15

And the stillness helps with that, the silence helps with the stillness, the stillness helps with the silence, these are mutually reinforcing a virtuous circle. One of the reasons why we emphasize staying with one method is because it avoids picking and choosing. This is working, oh, it's not working. Again, should I, shouldn't I? I know there's this other way.

Bansho: 21:45

I could do this other thing instead. Again, it's like digging a well and stopping after digging a foot deep and saying, it's probably not the right spot. Trying another place We'll never hit water that way. We'll get hot and sweaty and tired. So, we have to be careful to not reinforce the mind of comparison.

Bansho: 22:22

And, it's natural that a mind, a beautiful mind, your beautiful mind, that works in this way will still tend towards it. It's useful to, it's skillful, but it's getting caught in the comparison, clinging to comparison. So that's why we emphasize persistence in the method. Thoughts or emotions arise that we'd rather not experience sadness, grief, fantasies, body has itches, twinges, dullness, brightness, doesn't matter, we just stay, stay, stay, gently stay, notice tension in the body, soften, stay. We stop wanting it to be different.

Bansho: 23:13

Right now it's like this. Right now it's like this. So this patience, this important part of sasheen now is to not draw conclusions about whatever your method is that you're devoted to or methods some of you not to draw conclusions there's more to see So, being patient means just, I'm going to see how this turns out. There's more to see. Patience Parmita, the perfection of patience.

Bansho: 23:59

There's a wonderful folk story from China that points to this kind of attitude. Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening all of his neighbors came around to commiserate. They said, We are sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate.

Bansho: 24:24

The farmer said, We'll see. The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it and in the evening everybody came back and said, Oh, isn't that lucky? What a great turn of events, you now have eight horses. The farmer again said, We'll see. The following day, his eldest son tried to break one of the horses, and while riding it, he was thrown and broke his leg.

Bansho: 24:53

The neighbors then said, Oh dear, that's too bad. How are you going to be helped with the harvest? And the farmer responded, We'll see. The next day conscription officers came around from the emperor to draft people into the army and go to war, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. Again, all the neighbors came around and said, Isn't that great?

Bansho: 25:19

Again he said, We'll see. So, ease, lightness, heaviness, calm, tangled, just we'll see, we'll see, stay, stay, stay with it. Stay with it. So, what is this great way? We've talked about some of the challenges of our practice, But what is this great way, this Buddha mind that gets revealed as we practice, that the poem says?

Bansho: 26:12

So, there are all those comparisons that Shozin Roshi said about liking and disliking, all that activity, but the other part of the poem is all these things about the awakened heart, the Buddha mind, the Buddha heart, the great way. For as it is whole and complete, the sense world is enlightenment. The one way knows no differences. Rest and unrest come from small mind, but mind awakened transcends both rest and unrest. When all is seen with equal mind, to our self nature, we return.

Bansho: 26:58

This single mind goes right beyond reasons and comparison. Whole, complete, one, great, equal, unity. This mind is natural, its naturalness, its nature. All the great teachers say that this is completely natural, that we're looking to align with the way things are, which is whole and complete, one, unity. And it's not an idea, it's experienced directly.

Bansho: 27:53

So, Shonin quite beautifully talked about the naturalness of our practice. There's the naturalness of our practice in the way the mind settles, because it's not separate from nature. Some of the great masters have given us wonderful expressions of this naturalness that help to point to this. So, our Faith Mind poem is from one of the great Chinese masters, the third ancestor that we chant. This is another one of the great Chinese masters, Hong Zhi, and he has a number of, the book Cultivating the Empty Field has a number of practice instructions that give us a sense of this beauty and naturalness.

Bansho: 28:49

This one is called The Clouds' Fascination and the Moon's Cherishing. A person of the way fundamentally does not dwell anywhere. The white clouds are fascinated with the green mountain's foundation. The bright moon cherishes being carried along with the flowing water. The clouds part and the mountain appears.

Bansho: 29:13

The moon sets and the water is cool. Each bit of autumn contains vast interpenetration without bounds. Every dust is whole without reaching me. The 10,000 changes are stilled without shaking me. If you can sit here with stability, then you can freely step across and engage the world with energy.

Bansho: 29:40

There is an excellent saying that the Sixth Sense Doors are not veiled. The highways in all directions have no footprints. Always arriving everywhere without being confused, gentle without hesitation. The perfected person knows where to go. Clouds part and the mountain appears.

Bansho: 30:08

The moon sets, the water is cool. Things are just as they are, and the person is not separate from them. This is from another short one called All Beings Are Your Ancestors. Fully appreciate the emptiness of all dharmas, then all minds are free and all dusts evaporate in the original brilliance shining everywhere. Transforming according to circumstances, meet all beings as your ancestors.

Bansho: 30:53

Clear and desireless, the wind and the pines, and the moon and water are content in their elements. Without minds interacting, wind and pines, or moon and water, do not impede one another. Essentially, you exist inside emptiness and have the capacity to respond outwardly without being annoyed, like spring blossoming, like a mirror reflecting forms, amid all the noise spontaneously emerge transcendent. Without minds interacting, do not impede in one another the wind and pines and moon and water. All things are as they are.

Bansho: 31:40

This is why we are practicing becoming into alignment. Dogenzanji talks about this in his instructions to If you grasp the point, you are like a dragon gaining the water, like a tiger taking to the mountains. And this is an expression of, If you grasp the point, you're in complete naturalness complete naturalness is grasping the point. In China and Japan, the dragon was a creature of the water and clouds. In Europe, see the fire breathing dragon.

Bansho: 32:34

The dragon is a creature of fire, here it's a creature of the water. So, you are like a dragon gaining the water, you are like a tiger going into its element, the mountains. And that the true dharma appears of itself. It's not forced by us. We don't make it happen.

Bansho: 32:56

We simply align with naturalness by practicing doing our practice of stillness and silence, and then the true dharma appears of itself. So how do we do this in practice? How do we do this in practice? How do we step outside of this activity of comparison that the poem says obscures moon and water. And this is an important part of sashin, that as we become more and more in touch with our method, our practice, disentangled, have some ease.

Bansho: 34:05

We can't mistake the ease for, It's working. I'm doing it. It's partway there. It's helpful, but we can mistake that and begin to cruise, or mistake that for having an idea, a gaining idea, we call it in Zen, or our own agenda, that this is what I'm looking for. When really, now is the time to become even more intimate with your practice, even more intimate with your nature, become more intimate with nature, So, there's a beautiful koan about this.

Bansho: 35:11

This is from the Book of Serenity, case 20. Sometimes this is called the Book of Equanimity, and it was actually compiled by Hongzhi, these koans. So, this is the twentieth story. At the foot of a lonely mountain there was a small temple. There a pilgrim looked to get out of the rain.

Bansho: 35:38

It was getting dark and more difficult to find the way. The pilgrim knocked on the door and was greeted by an old abbot. He made the visitor tea and they sat down. The abbot, Dizong, asked the pilgrim, Fayon, where are you going? Fayon said, Around on pilgrimage.

Bansho: 36:04

Dizong said, What is the purpose of pilgrimage? Fayon said, I don't know. Dizong said, Not knowing is most intimate. Where are you going? I'm going around on pilgrimage.

Bansho: 36:28

What is the purpose of pilgrimage? I don't know. Di Zong said, Not knowing is most intimate. The other way that this has been translated, Not knowing is nearness. Not knowing is nearness.

Bansho: 37:02

So with these stories, there's something underneath the back and forth. Where are you going isn't just in the koan, it isn't just about interested in the destination. In a way, it's a question of, Why are you practicing? Where are you going? What are you doing?

Bansho: 37:34

I'm going around on pilgrimage. He'd also answer, I'm sitting sasheen. What is the purpose of pilgrimage? What is the purpose of your practice? In a way he's testing him.

Bansho: 37:52

Does he have a gaining idea? Is he trying to get something? Is he trying to get something out of sashin? Is he trying to get something out of practice? Does he think that there's some goodies?

Bansho: 38:10

Do you have a gaining idea? I don't know. What is the purpose of pilgrimage? I don't know. Not knowing is most intimate.

Bansho: 38:18

Nearness, not knowing is nearness. So this not knowing is deep curiosity. How near can you get? How close can you get to your practice? To your experience?

Bansho: 38:42

How close? Can you get so close it's like a mirror in its images? That close. How can I get nearer? It's deep curiosity to the experience moment after moment, closer, closer, closer.

Bansho: 39:11

And we don't need tension. It's not about grabbing tight, gritting our teeth, it's about getting near. It's like being a kid watching ants. I remember that was something that would occupy me as a little kid watching the ants. You might look and see a bunch of ants doing stuff, and that's pretty interesting.

Bansho: 39:47

And then you might look at one ant, what is it doing? You follow it around, and you might even go even closer and say, How is it moving around? Look, what are its antennae doing? The child doesn't get more tense, just more intense. Right?

Bansho: 40:10

Not tense, but more and more intent. Just draw near. So don't draw any conclusions about practice. That is knowing. This is the kind of knowing that shatters intimacy.

Bansho: 40:27

Oh, get this practice. Oh yes, in breath and out breath. Again. That one's just like the other one. But if you pay close attention, the breaths aren't all the same.

Bansho: 40:54

They aren't. They really aren't. The sounds aren't all the same. So not knowing, curious, curious, curious, this is the attitude, this is the stance, it's curiosity, this is how nearness happens. Instead of knowing, Oh, got this, I understand it, I think I'll go to the other practice, I think I was sitting on a cushion when I felt some peace, now I'm in this stupid chair, I'll switch back into the cushion so I can get to the ease that I had.

Bansho: 41:34

It's not the chair's fault, it's the chair's fault. So become more and more intimate with the totality of our experiencing. Breath, particle by particle, body sensations. This breath is intimate. This body is intimate.

Bansho: 42:03

Sounds are intimate. This moment is intimate. This moment is near. Can you get any nearer than this moment already is? So closing the gap between our experience of I'm here and the moment is here, there it goes.

Bansho: 42:33

The whole of experiencing is intimate. Practice this not knowing, be curious, that's the stance, curiosity, nearness. So of course, this is not a straight line. As Shonin said yesterday, sharing the story of the river, how it clarifies with time, she made this observation there's no straight lines, so this is an observation of an architect, Catalan architect, Antonio Gaudi. There are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature, Antonio Gaudi used to say, therefore buildings must have no straight lines or sharp corners.

Bansho: 43:39

And so he designed a bunch of buildings like this. Apartment house that rises like eroded cliffs, and undulating roofs, and wrought iron leaves. And his largest and most fantastic work is, this is from a Time article about him, is Barcelona's awesome stone, iron, and cement Church of the Holy Family, which he spent forty years on its honeycomb towers, and the weird grotto like encrustations of its walls, but it was still unfinished when he died in 1926. Spent forty years working on it. So he made this observation, There are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature, and if we're nature too, there's no straight lines for us either in our practice.

Bansho: 44:38

So don't mistake the encouragement as saying, Oh, here's your practice and it's going to go in a straight line. In fact, we can even that where it's settling, settling, settling, settling, settling, oh great, and then it changes and we're like, Uh-oh, something's wrong. So if nature is like this, the example was our mind like a river, well, rivers aren't straight either. It reminded me of seeing rivers in the Midwest where I grew up, where it's really, really flat, in Southern Illinois. So, where I grew up, you'll see a river and it's completely flat, and yet it's curvy like this.

Bansho: 45:31

Why is that? It makes sense being out here in the Northwest with all these mountains. Know, the water goes and there's a mountain, mountain, there's volcanic rock, it's really hard, it sends the water a different way. Why do rivers curve when it's totally flat? So they call these curves meanders.

Bansho: 46:03

So there's a reason for this from Google, talking about these things, Google, but a lot of it was from an Indiana Children's Museum that I found. So there's a reason for this: water velocity and erosion. Water flowing faster on the outside of a bend erodes the bank. The slower water on the inside deposits sediment, so it changes the banks. Water doesn't flow straight along a curve but goes in a corkscrew called a heliocoidal flow, and that contributes to the erosion.

Bansho: 46:43

Then over time, sediment on the inside of the curve builds up, creating new land and accentuates the bend. Erosion and deposits continue and the curves become more and more pronounced, eventually leading to the river cutting across a narrow neck of land and forming an Oxbow Lake, which changes the course of the river. Meandering rivers create diverse habitats, they benefit aquatic life, varying depths, flow rates, sediment deposits. So as a river flows, it is natural for it to change, detour, Just like as we practice, it's natural for us to change. Creates these detours.

Bansho: 47:38

There's a place where I grew up called called Horseshoe Lake, and it just looks like a big horseshoe. Go figure, right? And that Horseshoe Lake is where thousands of years ago the Mississippi River used to flow, and now it's like 10 miles elsewhere. So all that's left is this horseshoe shaped lake where the river used to flow. So our practice is like this, our life is like this, our sasheen is like this.

Bansho: 48:14

Over the course of sasheen we have meanders inevitable. It's not a straight line. As our body changes throughout the day, time, insights, emotions are experienced, it can feel like we're curving all over the place. If you look at the curvy river from space, it looks quite straight. You look from space, or you look at a map, the Mississippi River drops straight down from Minnesota to New Orleans.

Bansho: 48:51

But if we shift our perspective to the big view, an outer space view, the current of our practice just flows along unimpeded. You don't see the curves. So when our perspective is closer, we can get caught. We need to make sure that we don't get caught and worry about the curves, just that it's going to flow along. There's a koan that says, Go straight on a narrow mountain road with 99 curves.

Bansho: 49:21

Our practice is like this: we're going straight on a narrow mountain road with 99 curves. So we keep flowing, we have to keep flowing, we don't want to stay stuck, try and keep where we're at. Water that stops flowing gets stagnant. So we're just becoming more and more in accord, and it's not in a straight line because we're becoming more in accord with nature, which doesn't have straight lines, it just curves right along and keeps flowing. So our sashin is like this too.

Bansho: 50:08

I'd like to end with another translation, another version of this poem, The Ending. The ultimate has no pattern, no duality, and is never partial. Trust in this. Keep your faith strong. When you lay down all distinctions, there's nothing left but mind that is now pure, that radiates wisdom and is never tired.

Bansho: 50:55

When mind passes beyond discriminations, thoughts and feelings cannot plum its depths. The state is absolute and free. There is neither self nor other. You will be aware only that you are part of the One. Everything is inside, and nothing is outside.

Bansho: 51:16

All wise ones everywhere understand this.

Jomon: 51:29

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