So good morning everyone. Today I wanted to talk about
Zazen. We had a meditation practicum
retreat a couple of weeks ago and since they Dennis had
suggested that a theme for this year be Why we do what We do,
looking specifically at zazen and the other meditation
practices that we teach. So the order of pragmatic
Buddhists, well you make Sensei or Abbott classified meditation
techniques into two groups, primary and secondary.
And the primary, there were six meditation techniques, Zazon
bell flame walking, mantra or chanting and dynamic breath and
dynamic breaths is secondary. Is it wanted to say The Walking
is the secondary. The Walking might be a
secondary. OK, So it's either 5 or 6.
And then the secondary techniques primarily are
visualization or body movement meditations during the retreat.
Since the Joe said that he thinks of them slightly
differently. He thinks of them as one primary
technique, zazen, four or five secondary techniques, bell
flame, mantra, etcetera, and then the rest as tertiary
techniques. And I actually like that
arrangement. I may have to suggest it to you
make so and so. And the reason I do is that
Zazan really is our primary technique is what we do every
Sunday is what we teach as the thing to do.
So what is Zazan in the order? We also call it open awareness
meditation because that's what it is.
It's opening your awareness to the present moment.
It is not trying to blank your mind or regulate your breathing
or calm down or any of those things.
It is simply the open awareness of the present moment.
Sounds easy, doesn't it? Oh, we just sit here.
Sit here. Well, that's exactly what you're
doing. Except that it's not easy.
Because what we end up doing, what our mind ends up doing, our
mind's a tricky little bastard. It doesn't like concentrating on
one thing. It likes flitting around.
In Buddhist teaching, we refer to the mind as the monkey mind,
and it's like the active little monkey running from one thing to
another to another to another. But to be totally aware of the
present Mama, you need to still that monkey mind.
You need to have it concentrate on the present Loma.
This is the heart of mindfulness meditation, whether it's taught
in a secular circumstance or within Buddhist teaching or even
I know some Christian churches are teaching mindfulness in a
Christian context now. Why when the Buddha was talking
about mindfulness, he used the term sati.
And sati is a Sanskrit term that means remembrance of the present
moment, which I think is really indicative of what it actually
is, because to remember the present moment you have to
experience it first and then call that experience to mind.
So you're doing all of that in one site 1 continuous cycle.
You're experiencing the present moment, calling it to mind and
experiencing the present moment and calling it to mind because
the present moment obviously keeps moving as well.
Zazen is the practice of being aware of this present moment and
focusing all of our being on this present moment, not getting
lost in worries about the future or the trap of falling into the
past. And oh, this happened in the I'm
still carrying around this hurt. Zazen frees us from all of that
and allows us to experience only the present moment.
Now, that being said, it doesn't mean that the present moment is
a peaceful, wonderful place to be, because sometimes the
present moment isn't, but we're still called to experience it
fully. And it doesn't mean that it's
not influenced by the traumas and hurts of the past.
It very well may be. And if it is, we need to be
aware of that too. So I'm not saying that zazen
should be this totally peaceful, sitting in a quiet Meadow and
retreating from the world. That's not it at all.
Zazen is participating fully in the world while you sit because
you have to be fully aware of the world as it is, not as you
want it to be. Those who are new may have
noticed that the recording that runs during our meditation, it
starts with the bells and then runs through the silent
meditation and ends with another bill.
There are noises in the background, there's traffic
noise, there's wind. All these things are going on
because that's real life. We don't live in a secluded
glade cut off from everyone else.
We live in the midst of society, and being aware of the present
moment sets us firmly in the midst of society.
Zazen, at its heart, it was really defined by Zenostradogan,
and he said of it that it's not a technique, it is simply being
the Buddha. When you sit zazen, you are a
Buddha. When you are fully aware and
immersed in the present moment, that is awakening.
That is the awakened state, because it is from that state
that we can act in the world in ways that enhance the betterment
of all beings. It is in that state that we're
able to bring our own dissatisfaction to an end.
Doesn't mean that just because you're sitting on the cushion,
you're actually practicing. So you're in that state of
Buddha and that's why we keep practicing it because it takes a
long time to get it right. Suzuki Rishi praised a bad
practice session, a bad meditation session.
He said that the best thing in the world was to get up from the
cushion and say, damn, that was a bad session.
I did not do anything right. Because when you have a bad
meditation session, it gives you the pointers for what to let go
of next time. Without bad experiences, we
don't grow. If you sit in a quiet locked
room all by yourself and you sit for 15 minutes and you come out
of that locked room and you go, Oh well.
I I set for my 15 minutes and I didn't think about anything and
I was totally there in that dark closet.
A, you probably weren't and B, you're not going to progress in
your practice because you think you're already there.
As long as we acknowledge to ourselves, I still have work to
do, we're going to get better each time.
We're going to be more present each time.
Zazen is also called the Japanese shikataza, which means
just sitting meditation because it is just that.
It is simply the act of sitting on the cushion or the chair or
wherever you sit. The zazen to me also takes us
off the cushion because the purpose of zazen is that we
allow it to fill our entire lives, so that we move from just
sitting in our Sunday practice to just cooking lunch
afterwards, just doing the dishes, just cleaning the house.
But in all of those moments, we are simply experiencing that
moment as it is, without the prison of the past or the
concerns of the future. We are doing that activity fully
and wholly. We're doing that activity as a
Buddha. So that that's why for us, in
the order of pragmatic Buddhists, zazen, open awareness
meditation is the primary technique because it's the one
you can take off the push. It's the one that can be allowed
to penetrate your entire life. You can't carry bell meditation
off the cushion. Yeah, you can get an app and you
can put your headphones in and you can listen to a bell ring,
but then you're isolating yourself from the world.
You can't carry flame with you to meditate on all the time.
You can't chant all the time. You can practice zazen all the
time. All these other techniques feed
in and make it easier to practice zazen.
The reason we start with bell meditation is it gives us a way
of stilling the mind and coming to this present moment by having
a focus, that sound of the bell strike.
And then when the bell is over, we can simply continue that
focus on the present moment. So throughout the coming year,
I'll be talking more and more about the meditation techniques.
I I always find it interesting when we get together as the
order and talk about the meditation techniques that we
teach. Yeah.
My first thought is, yeah, we don't teach any of them.
We've we bring the bell 21 times at the beginning of practice,
but do we say anything about it? Do we tell what anyone what that
is? Do we ever practice flight
meditation or mantra meditation? We do chat the image, you could
kind of go, but for how many of us is that a meditative practice
when it should be? So throughout the coming year,
I'm going to be talking more about our meditative techniques,
what they could do for us. Because some of them, even
though I say zazen is not for anything, zazen is simply the
practice of being a Buddha. Others of them are for things.
Any of the visualization techniques are for enhancing A
compassionate heart. Others are for stowing the flow
of stress in the body. So we'll be talking about all of
those things and hopefully each of those will deepen your
practice of zazen and allow you to carry it off the cushion into
your daily life.