Tanto Talk

[00:00:00] Speaker A: For more information on Ancient Dragon Zen Gate, please visit our website at www.ancientdragon.org. our teachings are offered to the community through the generosity of our supporters. To make a donation online, please visit our website. [00:00:16] Speaker B: I'm sorry to say, Hougetsu came down with something unpleasant at the last minute yesterday. So she's asked me to step in and I thought I would give a tanto talk, which usually takes less time than a dharma talk. And that gave us a chance to do some. And hopefully that will make you a little more receptive to the tanta talk. Is it even here for the first time? I don't think so. I don't think we can. Well, yeah, you're an old timer, so you don't really count as a first time. Margaret Schmidt is here in the zendo. She's been a dragon for a long time. So as Tonto, one of my responsibilities is to oversee forms and ceremonies in the zendo and to give training in forms and ceremonies. Today we'll talk a little bit about the forms. And there's always the question of, well, why do we have these niggling forms? Why is this really necessary? What we're really, really here to do is to do zazen and the zendo. And why are we throwing this extra stuff on top of that about, oh, I have to walk in the door, starting with my left foot and I have to bow and then I walk around in shashu and we bow to our cushion, bow away, all of that. And the answer to that is that, you know, forms are not different from zazen. Zazen is a form, it's a way of sitting. And zazen and all of the other forms that we do in the zendo are. I've lost my screen. We're still home. I can't see. Can you run over here and pull me back? Okay, just go to full screen. Okay. In performing the sort, the forms and in doing zazen, we are using especially awareness of our body to bring ourselves back to presence in this moment, to step outside of our small mind, our distracted, deluded mind that's all caught up in discursive thinking and emotions, desires, and come back to right here, not exactly as a method in the. In the very act of performing the sitting or performing the forms attentively, we step out of that small mind that's self absorbed, self preoccupied, selfish, and open up to this world, this open world in the moment in which we are all, we all exist together. So the forms in the form of zazen, sitting a certain way, breathing a Certain way act as a sort of, I don't know, you could use different metaphors. Maybe a bell to wake us up, to make us awake to being here right now. Or they can be an anchor to hold, help us stay right here. Not just to remain undistracted, not drift away. They bring us back and they allow us to recognize this open mind and this presence of the world which contains, of which we are a part as presence. Our being is a presence. We appreciate our presence as part of this greater presence. You know, Uchi Yamaroshi will talk about the self with a capital S. And I like to think of it more as, as our, our big life. We recognize that we are a part of this greater life, which is the world. That doesn't mean that we have some special conceptual understanding or we have some special awareness. Oh, it's all one. But just stepping, we step into it. We step off of the 100 foot pole of Deluded, distracted small self to find ourself right here in this greater awareness, bigger awareness, more expansive awareness, this bigger self. And that's, I think all that needs to be said about that, about why we do this. And if there's time, I hope there will be time, we can talk a little bit about it. But I do want to just run through some of the forms just to remind people of them. You know, they aren't just nibbling things that we do in order to keep this so that we can sit zazen in the most efficient way possible. Some things sure are obviously sort of for zendo administration. So, you know, we try to be on our cushion facing the wall 10 minutes before the beginning of zazen. We walk quietly in the zendo so that we don't distract other people. And we walk in a clockwise direction partly, but not entirely, in order to avoid a pile up of people, a melee which people are walking in a chaotic way that interferes with people's practice. But really most of this is, is that by taking. We take these ordinary activities that we perform all the time, just standing, walking, sitting, and we add a tweak so that when we're standing and walking in the zendo, we hold our hands in shashu, so that we hold our thumb, the thumb of our left hand and fist, and put it right below our sternum and cover it with our right hand with thumb on top. And we hold that position whenever we're standing and walking in the zinda. It's an arbitrary form, absolutely, except that it is a traditional gesture of respect in East Asia. But it's it could be done other ways. There are certainly traditions which would have you rotate your hands and you would hold them like this, with your right hand on top of the entire fist. So when we come to the zendo, recognizing that whenever we walk or stand in the Zen do, we hold our hands in Shashu, we come to the door of the zendo. We enter with our left foot first and take a couple of steps, walking, taking those steps in shashu, and put our hands in Gasho, and we bow to the room. And in shashu, I mean Gasho, we hold the tips of our hands about a hand's breadth in front of our nose, with the tips level with our nose. And we hold our hand with the thumb up against the fingers. Not like this, not the hand like this. We're not holding our hands up over our forehead, just in front of our nose, and bowing like that. And then our hands return to gasho, and we walk, not rushing but not dawdling, to our seat, and we find a cushion. We bow toward the cushion, toward that side of the zendo, and we turn to the right, clockwise, and we bow to the rest of the room. In Gasha, we turn clockwise. All of our turns are going to be clockwise in the zendome. And then you can sit down on the cushion and turn to face the wall, or you can turn around, step over the cushion and sit down. It doesn't matter. It would matter in a different kind of zendo, more formal zendo, where you're sitting on top of a platform and you're just not going to be able to put a foot up and climb onto platform in the same way. Once you're seated, if someone comes to sit on either side of you, when they bow to their cushion, you will return the bow. And that's for someone coming to either side of you. Or if there's an empty cushion between you and that person, the next person over, when they bow to their cushion, you'll return that bow. And if you're facing the room and someone is directly across from you, they bow toward their cushion. They turn and bow to the room. You'll return that bow to the person standing directly in front of you, sit down, and then we're going to sit zazen, as I said, zazen is a form, not so much. The importance of the form isn't so much in the way you might twist your legs into lotus or half lotus position. Most significant part of the posture is that you're going to sit upright and with your hips rotated forward, opening up your lower abdomen and providing support for your lower back and spine. So you can just push the tips of your pelvis out, push your tailbone backwards. Or you could lean forward, put your bottom onto usafu and then let your head come upright, imagining that there's a very thin thread lightly pulling your head up toward the ceiling so that you can then rock back and forth and forward and back, finding a pointing balance to sit. The importance of sitting, of having that curve in your lower back, nothing drastic. You're not going to try to. You're not going to strain your lower back, but just a little bit of tilt will put you sitting in front of the bones in your bottom. Sort of really, sort of sitting on your perineum, really. That opens up your abdomen for breathing and it provides support for your spine so that no muscular effort or very little muscular effort is required to sit up straight. You're sort of draping your upper body across your spine and you can relax completely. And if you're sitting in the. Especially in Sachin, you can sleep that. Although that's not what we're here for, but. But maintaining the awareness of the posture and of the breathing. Because you've opened up your abdomen, you can breathe and breathe from your diaphragm so that when you inhale, your diaphragm will drop and you'll feel like you're. Your breath is coming in, your nose is going all the way down into your stomach and your lower abdomen underneath your navel. It's not really going down there, but that's what it feels like. And it allows you to breathe in a relaxed way, getting plenty of air. And the combination of remaining aware of your posture, aiming at that upright posture and breathing in that relaxed way, not breathing fast, not breathing shallowly, not holding onto your breath, not trying to breathe very slowly, but just naturally and deeply will take you out of that, lead you to that backward step that shines the light within, takes you out of that, of the distraction and delusion of that conceptual thinking or imagination and fantasy. And just bringing back, not just back to the posture, but back to this room, back to the world. We are sitting with other people. There are other tools that can help with that as well. And that's just. Say you're just rem. Whenever you do this, whenever you're aware of your posture, aware of your breathing, you're not focusing on them, you're not concentrating on them. You're just remembering to stay in touch. It can be helpful to count on the exhale in order to do the same thing. It doesn't matter if you get distracted, you'll come back. And when you come back, you've come back to big Mind. You're right here. This is awakened mind. A just check your posture, check your breathing, and have the intent to stay right here, aiming at this upright posture, being relaxed, full breathing, and that's it. The one thing I want, one thing I do want to say is this isn't a way of somehow getting around, avoiding the thinking or seeing through the thinking so that you can see the real world, to see the big self, to experience big mind and see the big self. The thinking mind is part of big mind. Big mind includes the room. It includes the people in it, the furnishings, your body, but it includes your mind as well. We're sitting, being present, and the presence includes your. Your thoughts, your thinking, your emotions. We'll sit for usually 30 or 40 minutes. And we'll have two bells on the small bell for Kinhen. We'll bow to the wall, turn, fluff up our cushions, fold them in half, stand in shashu, and then when the guiding teacher or the doshi or the eno bows, everyone will bow, turn to the left, put their hands in shashu, and take a step with their left foot, taking, stepping the length of half of their own foot. Every time you exhale, take a step the length of half of your foot, inhale, take another step, inhale, take another step. Each time the length of half of your foot. At the end of 10 minutes, there'll be a clapper. Everyone will bow in shashu, go back to their seats, will bow to each other, and return to sitting, either for a dharma taka, for more zazen, as we did today. The other principal activity we perform on a day like this is chanting. When we chant, we hold our hands normal. When we do vows, or when we in parts of the service, when we're invoking Buddhism in bodhisattvas, we'll hold our hands in gasho, but instead of in front of our nose, say just below your mouth, in front of your chin, so that your voice goes into the room. But the rest of the time when we chant, we hold our hands in the meditation mudra. Part of what we're doing is we perform the forms. We perform all of our activities together, which emphasizes the fact that we are part of this presence. We are acting together, that the great earth, other people, grasses and trees, pebbles and tiles, fences and walls, all of us and everything in the world is here together. So we chant together. We try to harmonize. You need to make sure. To listen to everyone so that you're on the same note, so that you're chanting in time with everyone else, so that you're not moving really fast and everybody else is lagging and you're gonna, come on, guys, let's speed it up. No, that's not what we're trying to do. We are harmonizing with each other. We don't chant so loud that we drown out other people. We need to be able to hear other people ourselves so that we can listen. Those things are, I would say, are the main things about chanting. When we hold our chant books, we take care of the chant books the way we take care of everything in this precious presence of big life. So we take care of our cushions. We take care of our chant books by holding them like this, the sort of cradle of our fingers and thumbs. We go to fold them back, and we don't place them on the floor, place them on a cushion or standing upright behind the cushion. What time is it? Okay, time to wrap up. But those are the main forms that we have on a Sunday. And I will give another tanto talk sometime where we will walk through the service. People are really getting, are pretty good in performing the service, in doing the bows and turning at the right times and so on. But I think it would be helpful to walk through the forms of the service sometimes so that they speak. People are just a little bit more aware of what's going on, recognizing what it is that they're doing. We'll do that another time. I think I have time for one or two questions. If anyone has anything to ask or anything they don't say, please, Howard, you're going to tell me if anybody wants online, wants to say something. Oh, thanks for your help. [00:17:59] Speaker C: Thanks for your talk. It's always helpful to be kind of reminded of the different forms. I was wondering about your. You mentioned a preference for rather than like big self, this big world idea. I'm just curious because I think I struggle a little bit too with the work, you know, self and then big self and even like mind and big mind. I, I, I, I feel like I prefer world too. But I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about why you prefer that term. [00:18:33] Speaker B: I like life because it emphasizes the fact that this, our life is this dynamic thing, but it is not separate from whatever is out there. And also when we refer to big self, it just seems to me that we're, we're reifying the world as some sort of fixed thing. And when I think of big life. It's somehow more dynamic and fluid. And so that's. That's my preference for it. You know, Suzuki Roshi almost never says, I think just once or twice in all of this. Dharma talks refers to big self. He talks about big big mind all the time, but he always talks about. He talks about Buddha all the time, but he doesn't talk about big self. Uttiyama does it. This self self of the capitalist all the time. Thank you. [00:19:26] Speaker C: Thank you. [00:19:29] Speaker B: No more. Well then, let's move on to the four vows. [00:19:34] Speaker D: Beings are numberless we vows freedom delusion sightings last you both we bowed at my gates of our bless we fell towards them with us ways unsurpassable we vow to realize it between son nevertheless we vow to free them because the knees are exhaustible we vow to breath through them Our gates are countless we vow to them thus when it's unsurpassable, we vow to realize it Being. Freedom illusions are inexhaustible we outlaw but when it's unsurpassable we vow to realize that.