Zazen is ultimate trust and ultimate relaxation

[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. Well, welcome. Good to see Nyozon back in the Zendo after foot surgery. Morning. And Corey, is this the first time you're here at the Dragon? Welcome. What will happen now is I'll say something and then maybe we'll say something to each other. And I think that Bob Bryant, I might have met you on email, but you might be here for the first time. Is that right? Yeah. Welcome, welcome. And I think I saw Dennis Moran back in action. So despite illness, bodhisattvas just keep coming back to this Sendo, which is great. I don't know if anyone can hear it, but the Cardinals are kind of vociferous right now. Outside the Sendo and in the backyard is an explosion of lilies. So it's really wonderful to be sitting here in the Lincoln Square Zendo on the ground and then in the cloud. Today. About 10 of us in the Sendo have been engaged in a half day sitting. So we began sitting a couple hours before this morning program and we'll sit for another couple hours afterwards. Kind of a relaxed sitting day without too much mumbo jumbo and whatnot. You know, our last kind of intensive sitting, I think was our May3day Sasheen. Seems like a year ago, but somehow it was just in the middle of May. And that concluded eight weeks of a practice commitment period where, you know, at least a third of our Sangha, probably our regular Sangha, was really committed to, to practicing for these eight weeks. And there was a lot of things going on, ceremonies and practice, immersion. So there's just something nice about sitting together today in this morning, entertained by the birds and our own delusion, dancing around during Sachin. You know, during that practice period, the Sangha was really concentrated on these practices for caring for all beings. The first practice that we looked at was zazen, grounded in compassion in the Bodhisattva's compassionate Vow. This is a vow to live a life devoted to harm reduction, to supporting all beings unconditionally and relieving comforting beings as much as possible in this world. Then we explored many other caring practices that are offered in Buddhism, like offering the positive energy or the beneficial energy of our practice, giving it away to others, cultivating attitudes and hearts of goodwill, caring, empathetic joy and equanimity. And you know, you'd think these sweet practices, simple practices, would be easy. But I really found that they were quite challenging and required a lot of effort. Like you start practicing loving kindness and then like after maybe an hour or so of chanting it to yourself, may all beings be happy, you get kind of sick of it. You know, I want to do something else. And after the practice period, people were kind of exhausted. You know, in some ways it was kind of easy teachings. But learning how to be present, aware and warm hearted in each moment just kind of brings up resistance and limitation, you know, experienced as frustration or boredom or confusion. But often you can see that the practice that we are involved in, of turning the ship around, of pivoting away from hardened habits and patterns, takes some effort. And that's okay. Sometimes it's okay to be exhausted in practice. And the Buddha really understood, really studied intimately how habits and patterns and our histories of hurts, both from inflicted on by our families, ourselves, society, can create this taxing, I call it a kind of stressful misalignment that we're out of balance. And Buddha really understood that we get caught up in the nets of our own foolishness, you know, dramas and nonsense to kind of get away from what really is. You know, last week Stephen Hein, he, this wonderful scholar, put a picture of a heron, long legged crane and a duck. And he said something like, you know, Zen teachers, duck has short feet and the heron has long feet. And if we want to make them different, you know, but we often do this with reality. It's like, oh, this is what it is. It's like, well, maybe I want it different. Maybe I can like put amputate the feet of the crane or something like that. But, you know, it's hard to stay with just the moment. So Shakyamini Buddha and our Zen ancestors and all of our Buddhist ancestors, actually the entire universe is continually offering many teachings to help us return to alignment with reality. Not the reality that we get from, you know, the Instagram feed or you know, the New York Times or whatever. But what we really know is true and that honors the deep interconnectedness of every being and place, as we say. And these teachings all point to this path of returning, returning to our beginner's mind that's open and flexible and not caught in the net of self involvement and nonsense, the nonsense net, but also returning to our basic wisdom. You know, wise flexibility or wise responsiveness is always possible and that we can, you know, there's something kind of joyful to know that it's always possible to pivot, to pivot from self absorption to Acting based in our vows and from this unconditionally caring awareness that we call Buddha nature or awakening or the fundamental mind or the Buddha Mind ground. But this is actually just the way it is. It's sad that we can't always reside in that place. As I was preparing for this talk, I was taking a walk in the neighborhood yesterday, and I saw this sign. And it says. It says something like, there's always things to be grateful for. There's always reasons to be gratitude. Somebody had that little sign on like a free library box. People do such things in this world. I don't know why they're not publicized more, but I'm publicizing that one. Take a walk around your neighborhood and see what you can find. There's a coffee shop, actually, that has a neon sign that says, love everyone. It appeared during the pandemic when I would walk. But every day I feel grateful, especially grateful to be part of this Dragon Sangha, where we support each other on this path of returning to this great awakening and trusting our ability to pivot. And during the practice period, I was really amazed at how much people supported each other. And people in the sangha really noted this, that supporting each other in this hard work of zazen, of studying the self, bumping up against the self, or getting caught in the net of self, and the hard work of losing, loosening, not losing, but it is losing the rust that hardens us, that gets in the way of the pivot. The pivot. You know, I think in Hongzhi, maybe the guide posed for sign illumination. It talks about the mysterious pivot. I do want to acknowledge, though, that in addition to the demands of the practice period, many people in our community have been experiencing a lot of heavy stuff. Life challenges, existential challenges like job instability, illness, relationship loss, regular old grief. So this morning, I just want to appreciate the effort and care and importance of our dharma friendship. It's pretty great. You know, as. As someone said about the first noble truth, shit happens. The second one is we make it worse and we don't have to. And I think at Ancient Dragon, when stuff happens, we actually try to help each other, not make it any worse, to reduce some of the harm, discomfort. I also this morning, because we're sitting together a little bit extra, I want to appreciate saen, this simple practice of just sitting rooted and cultivating the seeds of our bodhisattva vow, our wish to benefit the world, to live in that way, you know, in some ways, there's nothing else to do but sa Zen. Well, at least for this morning, maybe. But you don't have to read a sutra. You don't have to cultivate the four measurables. You don't need words. You know, even I'm saying way too much. Apologize for that. But just stay close to the moment and relax into the reality that your body and mind and heart actually knows. This is known. You don't need to read about it in the news. I can't tell you. And something we relax into reality. You know, after all of the trials and tribulations and joys, you know, we had a wonderful shiso ceremony or Jerry, our now Eno was the head student and answered questions in lively encouraging ways. After all that, maybe we dragons can just spend the summer relaxing into reality. You know, we're in a hard time, bizarrely hard time. But there is a way to relax with it. Like we can relax with how a certain reflecting pool in front of the White House has turned into an algae pit that even the world behaves in unexpected and wonderful ways if we relax and be a little patient. So I want to encourage people to relax into your zazen. You know, I was talking to someone earlier who was recounting many sachines where like, you know, you sit all night. You sit like your head is on fire. You know, I mentioned I used to have wars with like the other like younger male Rinzai practitioners who could stay up later. You know, the silent wars during sachin. Let's relax. When you really relax, you can sit forever. You can sit in every situation, you can meet every situation. But this kind of relaxation, this dharmic relaxation has some relationship with trust and faith or wise trust and wise faith. You know, in some ways zazen is ultimate trust and ultimate relaxation. In zazen, moment by moment, we just trust what is carefully, attentively, diligently. Trust your breath, trust your life energy. I mean, I could say things that refer to this long tradition we're in. Like you could just trust the reality that the entire universe is the, the true body of the self. You could do that. You could relax with that. But I don't want this part of my body. Well, we're not going to cut our hand off. Even if it looks like a wild orange haired creature or we don't want to mess with something, even if it looks like the most beautiful offering, we just accept it with gratitude or even a harder one. We could just trust that you're really okay. Can relax with the world that has its own wisdom and goes beyond our ideas of how it should be. Was or will be the three times. So our beloved amazing great teacher, Suzuki Roshi, who lived dozen or so years in California and left us with our practice of Soto Zen in Zen mind, beginner's mind. It's a nice version of it. Zen mind, beginner's mind. Most people have read it. He invites us to live in this moment, in our breath, in our life energy. So I'll quote a well known passage from Suzuki Roshi that I think we can use as some encouragement when we practice sazon. Our mind is always following our breath. When we inhale, the air comes in to the inner world. When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world. You're like, what outer inner world? I thought were non dualistic. Well, wait a minute. Suzuki Roshi says the inner world is limitless, boundless. And the outer world is also limitless, boundless. We say inner world or outer world, but actually there is just one whole world. In this limitless world, our throat is like a swinging door. The air comes in and it goes out like someone passing through a swinging door. If you think I breathe, I'm doing it. You feel that it's not relaxed. The I is extra. There is no you to say I. What we call I is just a swinging door. There is no you to say I. It just moves, that's all. When your mind is pure and calm enough, let's just say when you're really relaxed, it just moves, that's all. You can follow this movement. Then there's nothing. No I, no world, no mind, no body, just a swinging door. We could relax and contemplate that swinging door for a summer. Suzuki Roshi goes on and says we should live in this moment. So when we sit, we concentrate on our breathing and we become a swinging door. And we do something, we should do something we must do. This is Zen practice. In this practice, there is no confusion. You should establish this kind of life. You have no confusion whatsoever. So this lack of confusion is. Is this deep wise trust, knowing. You know, some people call this prajna paramita, you know, the super knowing, the ultimate knowing, the knowing that goes beyond. Let's say I like that. But this is a wise trust that enables us to relax and then pivot, which is really to meet a moment. Somewhere in my journals I had this quote that I came across, but I didn't really do research to see if I know the original source. But maybe some of you do who have Taoist backgrounds. It's from and it says where. Neither that nor this finds its counterpart. I call that the place, the pivot. I call that place the pivot of the path. As the pivot finds the center of the socket like a hinge, it responds without constraint. So the Zen pivot is a turning, a free turning? No, it's kind of a radical ability to shift and respond. And this pivot is the core of liberation. Sometimes it looks like a cat sleeping under peonies when all of a sudden claw comes out and grabs a little snack. Could look like that. But when we respond to the moment naturally, not stuck in fixed ideas or in confusion, which is just another kind of fixed idea, I'm confused. I know everything in our way, they're equivalent in absolute value, you could say. So please also don't get stuck in an idea of relaxation in your zazen. When I'm relaxed, it's supposed to look like this. You can be relaxed on what I call the razor's edge or on this pivot point. You know, our Zen literature or tradition, the stories that have been passed down, are full of images of deep trust and pivotal response, or pivoting response. You know, you've heard this one of the bodhisattva reaches back for the pillow in the middle of night, in the dark night. You know, this is an image of comfort that's there, that we know where it is and we know how to respond. And there's also one of my favorite images now, when you walk into the zendo, if anybody noticed there's a wind bell there. Take a look. Sometimes this little wind bell in the lilac tree next to the Buddha statue, kind of floating above the Buddha statue. So there was a poem about a wind bell, which I'll share with you. But this is like being really relaxed and ready at all times to pivot, to pivot away from the usual suspects. You know, all of our self preoccupation, all the anxiety, all the outrage at what's going on, which are all great responses. So maybe part of our pivot is to turn towards those responses with relaxation, like you hold a child, or that you give someone a pillow to comfort them. But this poem goes like this. This was apparently a poem given to Dogen by his teacher Ru Jing a long time ago in a land far away. It says, the whole body is a mouth hanging in emptiness. The whole body, a mouth hanging in space. Like the whole body might come in breathing, boundlessness, not caring which way the wind blows, east, west, north or south. I wonder if we can be like that. This morning I noticed there were breezes coming from various Directions in the sendo. And I thought, when they stopped, do I want more of that? Do I want the breeze from another direction? Nah, let's just be with the air as it is. How wonderful that we all can breathe it, not caring which way the wind blows. East, west, north, south. This is also seeing reality as it is, without our judgment and control. And then it kind of ends like this. All day long, this wind bell sings wisdom, prajna paramita for all beings without discrimination. This wind, this breath, this life energy flows and sings the wisdom of peace, of ease. Ding dong, ding dong. I don't know what that is in Chinese, but that's what the poem says. It ends with this Ding ding, a ling it tinkling, a sweet sound tinkling. With each inhale and exhale, we relax completely, breathing peace into the world, receiving peace from the world. And this teaches us flow and response that comes from non separation and is beyond our ideas. So I just want to encourage everyone this morning in the Zendo and in your lives to continue to sit in stillness like wind bells. Is that a great image? All of us are wind bells, just hanging in empty space. And in this relaxed state, this you emit a melodious sound, your own melodious sound. That is the song of prajna and caring. So don't be afraid of trust and faith. Don't be afraid to trust this moment as it is. Don't be afraid to care about this moment, this life, this world that arises and ceases. So that's enough already from me. Thank you all very much. My windbell dragons and anybody have anything you want to say about this or any other thing before we. Yeah. Oh, Emil, Mahesha, right next to me. [00:25:14] Speaker B: Thank you so much for your dharma talk. Hougetsu. I think one of the things I would like to understand more is that what is Buddha nature? And is how my delusion and my anger? And is Buddha nature and my goodness also Buddha nature? This is my question. [00:25:38] Speaker A: Where did that question come from? [00:25:40] Speaker B: Your talk, because you talked about that we have Buddha nature and I have been attending all of this time, all of the talks, and we talk about Buddha nature even when I read. But what is it exactly the Buddha nature that the Buddha himself realized when [00:25:59] Speaker A: he said I don't have to ask Buddha? [00:26:02] Speaker B: It's a good question. [00:26:04] Speaker A: What do you realize when you sit and you are relaxed and abide in non abiding? [00:26:12] Speaker B: Sometimes I realize that I'm alive and sometimes I realize that I'm just being. And sometimes I struggle with the thoughts. So There are so many times that is different. Yes. The question is, what do I realize when I sit? And every time I think I sit, I realize different things. Sometimes I'm quiet, with the quietness and the stillness. Sometimes I have rushing thoughts, and I try always to bring myself back and say, open the hands of thoughts. Sometimes I just be. And sometimes I'm not. So many things I realize when I sit. [00:27:13] Speaker A: So thank you for that. And keep on realizing and hold on to nothing. Even your idea that you're realizing something. You have our Eno in the house with a comment. Amal, I liked what you said. Sometimes I realize I'm alive. It is nice to sit and realize you're alive. Being alive is. I don't know, it's a pretty cool thing. [00:27:38] Speaker C: It's just. [00:27:39] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a cool thing to be alive. What interests me about being alive is we walk around on our own and we don't have to plug into anything. I just. I don't know why I find that amazing, because everything I know that runs, it needs a battery or it needs to be plugged, and we just go out on our own. It's just. [00:28:00] Speaker B: That is. [00:28:01] Speaker A: That's just amazing to me. Are you sure we're on our own? I'm not sure of any. Yeah, good. Because some of this is actually that we're not doing it. The whole world is somehow supporting us at all times. Even when we're. Even when things aren't turning out the way that we think we want. But when we're relaxed with that, we're relaxed with it. When we're relaxed with being alive, then we actually live. Howard? [00:28:34] Speaker C: Hi, Ogatsu. [00:28:35] Speaker A: I think I can see you on your screen. Yeah. [00:28:40] Speaker C: Thank you for your talk. I've been thinking a lot about this word relax lately because I. I know that I have a lot of notions and assumptions about what relaxation looks like. [00:28:51] Speaker A: Right. [00:28:52] Speaker C: And I actually had good fortune this morning to sit with it because I was like, oh, my body's in a way more pain than it usually is. And I. For the first 40 minutes, it took an eternity because I was just, like, clenched around the pain, but also clenched around. Like, you gotta relax. You gotta relax. You gotta chill. Like, do some progressive muscle relaxation or something. And then I just stopped caring the second. During the second period. And it was a different kind of relaxation, right? It wasn't like, all right, now we're gonna. Sometimes it helps to, like, do the. Clench the muscle relax. Like, it helps to do something, but then there's something. There's this other step of having to like unclench or as Amal said, like to open the hand of thought, doing that kind of like loosening of that grip that I have about what my experience is supposed to be. And just be here with the fact that my shoulders really hurt for some reason, I'm carrying a lot of tension in the back of my neck for some reason, I don't know why. And me sitting here trying to figure out why not gonna do much for me right now. I'm just, I can just relax into even that pain. [00:30:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:30:02] Speaker C: And also just to add on to the. You quoted the Zhuangzi, which is my favorite text, and it sounds about right. I don't know what translation that is, but Brooks Aporin uses, translates part of that phrase as the radiance of drift and doubt. So there's something about, there's a lot of stuff in there about not knowing. Like neither this nor that. [00:30:24] Speaker A: You're gonna make a this in that chapter, right? I think it's the second chapter. [00:30:28] Speaker C: The second chapter. So if you're going to make this and that, but even though you're going to, and it's kind of inevitable, you let go of that too and let go into not knowing what happens if you don't fall into this and that all the time and learn how to sort of swim in that, however the [00:30:48] Speaker A: waves come, you don't partner with it is what I like about this. Like you don't grab onto it to either this or that, but actually you're partnering with everything. So you partner with the discomfort in sitting. And sometimes you need to shift your position and sometimes not. You know, it's like when the massage therapist says relax, it's like, that's what I'm here for, you know, so when we do it to ourselves, it's, you know, relax. And it's like, you know, trust. You know, trust that you can bring a different kind of relaxation that's non coercive and non acquisitive, but natural. And then, you know, sometimes we have to reach back and get a pillow for our knee or, you know, I mean, I'm surprised everybody doesn't have upper back pain. We're like this all the time in front of our devices. Poor Howard. I made him techno today, or I offered him the position and he accepted, let's put it that way. But it's hard to say no sometimes to a Zen teacher to be like, my neck hurts. I don't want to be techno, which I don't think is the case for you. But thank you. How are you anyone online? This fearless practice of relaxation. But try it, try it near zazen just to be like, oh, you know, that opening the hand of thought, but it's visceral and embodied. And then notice it when you get up from sitting, what you do with your body. You know, people think I'm weird because I rock back and forth, but it's like, how do I carry that forward? How do I, how do I stay close to this moment and not not be like, oh, I better get, get up really fast or how we touch things. You know, try to grip something like a book really hard or try to hold it in a certain way. Notice the difference. Think about what a world would be like, what the world is like when we actually meet it with a little bit of softness that's not forced or trying to change things, but just like, oh, there it is. Then the reflecting pool is clear down to the bottom and beyond. We probably can end now unless anybody wants to really say anything else. My online friends. Oh, there's. Aha. Corey, is that. Mm. [00:33:34] Speaker D: Thank you. This, this is probably an absurdly naive question, but that. Yeah. Thank you for, for speaking it as. As a beginner in this. The. One of the challenges for me with deeply relaxing is, is trying to figure out what to do with the responsibilities that I think we all have and just the, the knowledge that, I mean, yeah. The knowledge that as, as an embodied being, right. If I, if I do, I, I feel I cannot fully let go of those responsibilities. Otherwise the, the things that's. I'm. The way that I'm called to relate in the world will be, will be different. Right. If, if I don't do things, then they won't get done. So how do you, how do you deal with those, those real responsibilities and the real calling to impact the world? Or do you let go of those when you relax or do you, you relax with them, Relax with them. [00:34:24] Speaker A: They don't go away. And sometimes when you pick them up, you pick them up in a very relaxed way. And you might see them from a different perspective. But this isn't about zoning out or being so chill. This is about being able to respond, but in a clear, warm hearted, deep way where there's always a little bit of ambiguity. You know, I'm responding to this very difficult situation, but I'm not sure I'm going to try it out. And then I'm ready to pivot depending on which way the wind is blowing. So it's actually relaxed enough to feel the wind even if it's very slight, if that makes any sense. Sounds like a bunch of Zen mumbo jumbo. But this is not about turning away from the world. This is being with the world as it is and knowing your place in the world. But if we're not relaxed, we almost have no chance of meeting things. Otherwise. It's like my way's right and yours is wrong. I think we've had plenty of that. When it's like, wow, wow, oh, that is really happening. And I'm not quite sure, but I'm going to do my best to be skillful in meeting it without adding more problem. But it's very easy to be caught off guard by responsibility. But responsibility, when you sit saws in, when you get up, it's still gonna be there and you still meet it. Just in the same way that you took care of your cushion, you take care of life. And nobody can know that but you. That's why I said to Emil, you have to ask Buddha what Buddha realized. You know, we'll ask Corey what Corey realized. You know, if we're invited to do so. Thank you for that. Great question. Yeah. Anything else? [00:36:26] Speaker D: No. I think I probably understood maybe 50% of the meaning in your words there. But the 50% that I understood is. Yeah, is helpful. So thank you. [00:36:34] Speaker A: That's good. Try not to understand more because it's usually when you think you understood everything, then we're really in trouble. I don't even think I understand what I say. I apologize for even saying anything but this encouragement. Oh, ah, Nicole, back in the corner. Sorry, I didn't see you. Oh, no, thank you. In the spirit of saying things I don't quite understand, but saying them out loud, I've been thinking a lot lately about using two hands. Always using two hands, using this as kind of a mantra. And it occurred to me in your talk and in this conversation that there's such relaxation that comes from using both of your hands to do something or more. So I guess there's less relaxation when you're using one hand. Yeah. When you could be using both. So just my, my little tangent. So that's maybe the opposite of. I don't want to say understand, understand with both hands. But there's an understanding, but it's a tangible thing. Yes. A feeling. A somatic feeling of relaxation. Yeah. So I just wanted to share that. Great. So that's a very wonderful practice of the two handed thing instead of the gripper. There's. There's something else. Or there's this. Not two, not one, niozon Oh, I was there. Oh. Niozon's well trained. Yeah. So maybe this is a good moment to say, ah. Our vows. May our intention equally extend to every being and place with the true relaxation of Buddha's way. Beings are numberless, we vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible, we vow to cut through them. Dharma gates are boundless, we vow to enter them. Buddha's way sunsurpassical, we vow to realize it. Beings are numberless, we vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible, we vow to cut through them. Dharma gates are boundless, we vow to enter them. Delusions are exhaustible. We bow, trust freedom. Dharma gates are boundless, we bow to hell without ways. We vow to realize it.