Today is the third day of this, October, November, 20, 24/7, day seshin. And I'll read again from the book faith in mind, a commentary on sang songs classic by chan master Sheng yen.
When we stopped yesterday, he was, he's talking about the stanza that says, just calmly, see that all is one, and by themselves, false views will go
and he said, if you take an equal attitude towards Everything, all differences will disappear, along with existence itself and
of course, it isn't as if we don't exist. It's not a thing, not a construct, not caught in differences, so we're free. Move freely. He says, Once I handed the incense board, and by that he means the kiosaki, the Kiyosaki to a student, and asked him, What is this? He grabbed the kiosaki and shook it a few times. He did that because there was no name for it. We may call it an incense board, but this is only our mind making distinctions. Why must we call it an incense board or a kiosk? During a retreat, I stood in front of a certain person. I asked him, who is standing in front of you? He replied, an egg. I was very pleased to be an egg. When the retreat was over, I asked him, Why is Shifu an egg? He answered. When Shifu asked me the question, I did not have any thought whatsoever in my mind, since I had to give an answer, I just said something, and the word egg spontaneously came out of my mouth. Later, I thought it isn't quite right. How can Shifu be an egg? But I said it, and it said, when he said an egg, it was the correct answer. In fact, whatever he said at that moment would have been correct because he did not have any thought in his mind. He was in an absolute state, not making any distinctions. Once he began to entertain doubts, he lost the answer. Perhaps in this retreat, I will also stand in front of you and ask who is standing in front of you. Then recalling the story I've just told you may try to give a similar answer and call Shifu a horse. However, this would not be correct if you have an idea of giving a good answer. This is the mind of distinction. This is not the mind that treats everything as equal,
the mind that takes in everything, the mind that's okay with everything.
It's, it's what Joe COVID called a bigger container. We can we can hear descriptions and anecdotes, and it seems far off and not achievable. How could I be in such a state? We can enter such a state. It's very hard to stay in such a state. For us normal human beings, but what Joh gobeke calls it is a bigger container, ABC. You.
And she's talking here about dealing with anger, but really dealing with anything that's caught us, dealing with distinctions, dealing with ideas of right and wrong, me and you, good and bad.
She says, If we truly step back and observe, and as I said, it's extremely difficult to do when angry, we will be capable in time of seeing our thoughts as thoughts that is unreal and not as the truth. So hard to do when we're in a state. Thought seems real. We don't even think about it. Just buy into it.
She says, Sometimes I've gone through this process, 1020, 30 times before the thoughts finally subside. It shows really, what a determined practitioner she was keeping at it. I know it feels hopeless. You're caught up in something to just keep going back to the well, but that's practice. Dogan said Zen practice is a practice of continuous failure. You uh,
1020, 30 times before the thoughts finally subside. When they do, I'm left with what I'm left with the direct experience of the physical reaction in my body, the residue, so to speak, when I directly experience this residue as tension or contraction. Since there is no duality in direct experience, I will slowly enter the dimension which knows what to do, what action to take. That is into Samadhi. I and out of the realms of distinction, says it knows what is the best action, not just for me, but for the other as well. In making a bigger container, I taste oneness in a direct way. I
we can talk about oneness until the cows come home, but how do we actually separate ourselves from others? How the pride out of which anger is born is what separates us? And the solution is a practice in which we experience this separating emotion as a definite bodily state when we do a bigger container is created when we come back to our body. In this way, we're no longer bewitched by our grievances, by our thoughts, especially by our strong emotions. What is created, what grows is the amount of life I can hold without it upsetting me, dominating me. At first, this space is quite restricted. Then it's a little bit bigger, and then it's bigger still. It need never cease to grow. And the enlightened state is that enormous and compassionate space. But as long as we live, we find there is a limit to our container size, and it is at that point then we must practice. How do we know where this cutoff point is we are out. We are at that point when we feel any degree of upset, of anger. It's no mystery at all. The strength of our practice is how big that container gets,
that upset, upset. We can, we can run up against that and immediately spin off into recrimination, feelings of unworthiness, despair, judgment, start looking for someone else to blame, or we may blame ourselves. It's really the same thing. But instead, to take it as a wake up call to notice. Notice. Is what's going on.
It's all dependent on the mind, mind of oneness, mind of separation, mind of warmth and openness, mind of recrimination, same experience two people can have two completely different responses and
it so again, Sheng yen says this would not be the correct if you have the idea of giving a good answer. This is the mind of distinction. It's not the mind that treats everything as equal. Goes on to the next stanza in the poem. Attempts to stop activity will fill you with activity. Says, originally, your mind may be in a relatively stable state, but when you realize that your mind is not completely unmoving, you may try to make it even calmer. However, the effort to still your mind will cause it to become more active. I uh, trying to shape your mind somehow, as if we could get our fingers into it, is counterproductive. He says, the mind that makes no distinctions is unmoving. There are no ups and downs. If you try to eliminate the ups and downs. It would be like observing a pan of water there are gentle ripples on its surface, but you want the surface to be completely still, so you blow on the water to flatten it out. This creates more ripples. Then you press the water with your hands to stop it from moving. The outcome is even more agitation. If you were to leave the water alone, the ripples would eventually subside and the surface would be still. Common sense tells us that we cannot force the water to calm down or to become calm when it comes to practice, however, it is difficult for us to apply the same principle just a foundational understanding. We want to settle the mind. We have to leave it alone. It's why we always bring a snow globe out during an introductory workshop, shake it up, set it on a table, and it settles.
Sheng yen says, When practicing it is sufficient just to keep your mind on the method. It's unnecessary to reflect on how well you're doing, or compare whether you're in a better state now than you were half an hour ago, during the evening talk, I may ask you, how are you doing today? At this time, you're allowed to express your feelings, but when you are practicing, you should definitely not investigate your mental state and judge your practice. Someone said to me, Shifu I feel very ashamed. I come to retreat time and time again, yet I never make any progress. I said, the very fact that you are still coming to retreat and practicing is proof that you are making progress. I i
see it so often in people, but as long as we have our mind on where we're at, we've blocked off the route to progress. Really has to be a more open and generous state of mind approach to practice. Have to be okay with the way it is before we can do anything.
Sheng yen says, practice with an equal mind, and don't distinguish between good and bad. Do not compare your condition before and after the retreat or judge whether the method you are using is right or wrong. Of course, is not the spirit of our times. Uh, everywhere you turn there's a new top 10 list, top 10 best colleges, top 10 best cities to retire to. Everything is measured and ranked, often arbitrarily. Somehow, as a culture, we're in love with this idea of ranking things becomes a big business, it's very important to a college or a medical facility to be ranked high on that list. And of course, it creates distortions, because whatever the criterion they're using, the arbitrary criterion, then the school or the hospital will perhaps emphasize that pour resources into that simply to get a better rating.
Says, Don't judge whether the method you are using is right or wrong. If you find you cannot use the method, you may change it, but first understand why you cannot use the method. You should not let curiosity dictate your practice playing with one method today and another tomorrow, or switching methods from one sitting to the next, you should see that there are no real differences between the various methods. Hold on to one to one method and go into it as deeply as possible. All the different practices unify the mind, whether it's the breath or a koan.
He says this is like your love relationships. When you love someone, you should persist in that relationship and not continually change partners. Likewise, keep to one method and do not keep changing your conception of practice to change frequently will give you only trouble.
The next lines read, remaining in duality, you'll never know of unity and not to know this unity lets conflict lead you far astray. And Sheng yen says, Whenever you make distinctions, your mind is in opposition. Opposition implies duality. How is this relevant to practice? A practitioner usually wants to attain enlightenment or ultimately Buddhahood. But this creates a duality of subject and object. The person who is seeking to attain is separate from the attainment the object of his search. In seeking to become one with the Buddha, he separates himself from it. This is a state of opposition, or perhaps the practitioner knows very well that he has never been separate from the Buddha, but since he has not yet experienced this unity, he seeks the Buddha within himself, yet even seeking the Buddha within himself creates opposition between his searching mind and the Buddha within this way, oneness can never be attained. So just hammering the same point again and again. This is reminiscent of that case in the Mumonkan. Number 19 between ordinary mind is the way the interchange between Joshu and nonsen Nonsense says, If you direct yourself towards it, you go away from it.
It's the problem of having a goal, and that's why Sheng yen says so often practice for its own sake, have faith in the practice
he says, If this is true, is it correct to practice without seeking anything at all? Every day we chant the Great Four vows, the four great vows, the fourth is I vow to attain supreme Buddhahood, as we say, at the great way of Buddha I vow to attain what is the purpose of chanting this vow? If aspiring to attain Buddhahood sets up an opposition. On the other hand, if we do not define our goal, how is practice possible? If you really believe there is no separation, then it is possible to practice without opposition. It is if you have faith, faith that we are Bucha. From the very beginning, all beings are Buddha like water and ice outside us. No. Ice outside water, no ice outside us, no Buddhas.
If you really believe there is no separation, then it is possible to practice without opposition. You must have faith in the fundamental unity to truly begin practicing. However, most people remain in duality. They acknowledge only one God, but they also see themselves as separate from God. There is still a duality, but in chan at the very beginning of your practice, you must have faith in non duality. It is the same unity and unity in the koan, the myriad Dharma is returned to one, to what does the one return? In other words, if all existence comes from one God, where does God come from? YOU? HMM. The emphasis of faith in mind of this poem is on practice. Many of you are practicing counting the breath. The goal of this method is to reach a unified or single minded state after you get to the point where there are no thoughts other than counting. Eventually the counting just naturally stops. The numbers disappear, the breath disappears, and the idea of counting, the breath is gone. The only thing left is a sense of existence. This is a deep samadhi, a deep breathing Samadhi using a chan method, such as the WA TA or the koan, may have a similar result in the beginning stages. At a certain point, it may disappear, or you simply cannot use it anymore. But this does not always mean that you have reached a single minded state. You may still have the thought of trying to use the wa Ta only when the thought of practicing is gone will your mind be in a peaceful state of oneness. A person who has experienced oneness is different from an ordinary person. His faith is stronger than one who can, at best, intellectually understand what it means to have no distinctions in one's mind, to personally experience it is quite another thing.
This is something that's possible for all of us.
Of course, that's not the end of practice, is it? Everything passes, everything moves and changes. Can't hold on to an experience.
So skipping a little bit. He says, the practice of chan should progress in this sequence, scattered mind, simple mind, one mind, no mind. First, we gather our scattered thoughts into a more concentrated or simple state of mind. From this concentrated state we can enter the mind of unity. Finally, we leap from the unified mind to the state of no mind. This process can be accomplished more quickly using a huato or a koan. Of course, this leap from the unified mind to the state of no mind is an accident. It's not anything that we do intentionally, no one can predict how or when it will happen.
He says, to go from one mind to no mind does not mean that anything is lost. Rather, it means that you are free of the Unified State. Someone who dwells in one mind would either be attached to samadhi or would else feel identified with a certain deity. Suppose that somebody doing a deity practice, like praying to Kannon or some celestial Buddha, which is a way, a way of practice and a way to get into Samadhi. But he says, It is only after you are freed from this unity and enter no mind that you return to your own nature, also called Wu or Chan, and in Japanese, that's mu or Zen. Even though this progression in the practice takes place while you are actually practicing, you should not think to yourself, I'm striving to concentrate my mind. I want to get to the state of one mind, to the state of no mind. If you have such ideas of seeking, you will be in trouble. Just concern yourself with the method. Persist with your method to the very end. This in itself, is close to a state of unity, if you hold to it, eventually you will reach a point where the method disappears and you will experience one mind. Once, a meditator in his 60s, said to me, Shifu, I am very old. I may not have many years left. I really would like to get enlightened as soon as possible. If I don't get enlightened before I die, I will have wasted my life, I said, precisely because you are so old, you shouldn't have any hopes of getting enlightened, just practice. The man asked, How can you tell me to practice and not show me how to get enlightened? I replied, If you have the idea of enlightenment, that is already your downfall, you cannot make much progress if you do nothing but practice, at least you will approach the state of enlightenment, even if you never get enlightened, the effort is never wasted. Take some faith to understand this, it's not a matter of accomplishment. It's not a matter of reaching any certain point. Could say, if anything, it's a matter of direction. What direction are we going in? Are we opening up or are we shutting down? Can be it can be a little confusing what Sheng Yen has done here, laying out this road map of how practice can ideally proceed, because you just have to throw it away. But for some people, it's helpful to have an understanding of what we're doing and why we do it. I
in the next line to the poem, the way we have it is when you assert that things are real, you miss their true reality. But to assert that things are void also misses reality. And Sheng yen brings up a story. He says, In the Song Dynasty, there was a famous Prime Minister by the name of Chang yen who was opposed to Buddhism. He wrote many essays purporting to refute Buddhism, and he would spend every evening pondering over how he could improve the essay he was then working on his wife, observing his obsessive involvement and struggle with his writing. Asked him, What are you doing? He said, Buddhism is really hateful, trying to prove there is no Buddha. His wife remarked, how strange, if you say there is no Buddha, why bother to refute the Buddha? It is as if you are throwing punches into empty space. This comment turned his mind around. He reflected, there may be something to Buddhism, after all, so he started studying Buddhism and became a well known, accomplished lay practitioner of chan. In fact, he had the same master as chan master da Wei, and that, of course, is Yuanwu, two of the great Tang Dynasty masters. And Sheng yen says, Thus, if you try to destroy something, you are still bound up by it. For instance, suppose you try to clear a blocked pipe by pushing another object into it. Whatever was originally in the pipe is pushed out, but the new object is now blocking the pipe. When you try to use existence to get rid of existence, you will always end up with existence. It's the problem with fighting negative thoughts, because we're fighting them with negative thoughts. We don't like them, they're causing damage. Have to find a different way, don't we? Sheng yen says, when you throw something away, it's gone. But does it cease to exist in local terms, yes. In the broader picture, however, that's not the case on this earth. No matter how hard you try to throw anything away, it will stay somewhere on this earth. There's a Chinese novel called Monkey. The hero is a super monkey who is so powerful that he can travel a distance of 180,000 miles in one summer. Salt. In the story, he was journey, journeying to the Western paradise of Amitabha. To on the way, he came to a tall to upon five tall mountain peaks. He figured it would take one leap to get to the other side. First he took a rest, urinating in that spot, then he somersaulted over the mountains. After he landed, he noticed a funny smell. He thought some shameless monkey must have taken a leak here. Actually, he had never gotten to the other side of the mountains. He had just somersaulted back to the original spot. The five mountains in the story symbolize the five skandhas with wind within which sentient beings are trapped. Many people know about the five skandhas, but not everyone. This is part of the Buddha's original teaching that existence is composed of five heaps, or five composites, five bundles, and they are roughly form, feeling, perception, Mental Formations and Consciousness.
Part of the Buddha's teaching that there is no self, there's no person there. It's nothing permanent. It's just patterns.
Sheng yen says all of your actions will boomerang back to you, and you will have to take the consequences. If you throw anything away, it will be you who has to clean it up. You may think that you can avoid responsibility by passing it on to another person in the short term, that may work, but ultimately, you have to deal with it yourself. And in addition, you have caused trouble to others. You
so much of the damage we do is a consequence of trying to escape escape the results of our actions and
Sheng yen says, Therefore you should not try to get rid of your vexations. Rather, you should be willing to accept them. Once someone said, Shifu, my karmic obstructions are too great. Please recite mantras to remove them from me. I replied, and what will happen to these karmic obstructions when I remove them from you? Should they become Shifu is, if you have difficulties, you should not consider them problems. If you are obsessed with these difficulties and try to eliminate them, you are only getting yourself into greater trouble.
Ram Dass the ADEPT who was originally Timothy Alpert, partner of Timothy, or not Timothy Alpert, Richard Alpert, the partner of Timothy. Leary, had quite a remarkable life. He said this he practiced in the Hindu tradition. Had a had a teacher that he found in India. From a Hindu perspective, you are born as what you need to deal with, and if you just try and push it away, whatever it is it's got you. All our problems, all our shortcomings, are what we have to work with. We don't like them, but that doesn't make them go away. That makes them worse and
I want to read part of
mark this here. I.
I try to read a small section from the so called The Big Book of alcohol. It's anonymous. This is probably the most famous page in the book in the fourth edition. It's page 417 you can look up page 417 on the internet, and you'll find it, and it's part of the account by a physician who came into Alcoholics Anonymous and successfully gave up his drinking and also drug use, basically medicating himself. I yourself, he says, and acceptance is the answer to all my problems today, when I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation, some fact of my life, unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation, as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment, nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God's world by mistake, until I could accept my alcoholism. I could not stay sober unless I accept life completely on life's terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as what needs to be changed in me and my attitudes. Of course, he's getting on a little dangerous territory there, if he actually starts to reach in and start changing things, I it. He goes on and says, Shakespeare said, All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. He forgot to mention that I was the chief critic. I was always able to see the flaw in every person in every situation, and I was always glad to point it out, because I knew you wanted perfection, just as I did. AA and acceptance have taught me that there is a bit of good in the worst of us and a bit of bad in the best of us. We're all children of God, and we all have a right to be here. When I complain about me or about you, I'm complaining about God's handiwork, saying that I know better than God,
it's just a change in approach, isn't it, we have to make again and again And again, just like Joh go back. Was talking about stepping back and noticing can't do that until we accept, yeah, this, this is how it is right now. So the mind is, this is how the body is. I it
just moving with each moment so simple. It's kind of encouraging that it's simple, something that can be done, but it can't be done all at once and once and for all, because we have our karma, we have our patterns. No matter what we know or how deeply we understand it, we're still going to go off everybody, everybody. It's good in the worst of us, there's a Little bit of bad in the best of us. And
acceptance doesn't mean that you ignore your faults, that you're oblivious to them, just blundering ahead, irregardless of what damage lies in your wake.
See them, you're okay. You're okay with it being that way. A there's a relief that comes. It's a softness. We feel more connected to other people and
less concerned with what others think of us
be willing to love without demanding to be loved in return. That's a That's a tall order,
but it's one solid way to live life, to aspire to live in that way, and in seshin, running up against all the difficulties that we do, we really get some taste of this,
gradually developing a love for practice, love for dropping our defenses, dropping our opinions, dropping our goals measuring sticks.
Can surprise yourself. Can find yourself actually enjoying seshin. Don't worry if you do, it's okay. This too will pass
and on that note, stop here and recite the four vows. Do.
