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Guided Meditation: Think Not Thinking

Well, good morning all of you. It was wonderful to hear all the names of the places where you're coming in from. You're probably a little surprised to see me this morning, knowing that this is Gil Fronsdal's program that he does in the mornings. If you haven't heard already, Gil, Paul Haller—who was teaching last week—and myself are sharing these three weeks during what we're calling a Zen and Vipassana^[1] intensive. We've also been sharing this morning program, very kindly offered by Gil, so we can introduce ourselves to you.

My name is Fu Schroeder, and I'm the abiding abbess at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in Marin County, California. Gil was a young farm apprentice here many years ago, and so I've known him for a long time. I have admired him ever since as a teacher of Vipassana style meditation practice. Gil welcomed us to participate in this program to share our own versions of meditation instruction.

First of all, I want to say that I have never done a Western-style Vipassana retreat, and therefore I am not familiar or trained in guided meditation. I have, however, done many years of Zen style meditation, and that's what I'm here to share with you this morning and for the next four days.

Throughout this three-week intensive, Gil, Paul, and I have been focusing on one of the three classical categories of training through which the Buddha taught the Dharma. He taught ethics or morality (Sīla)^[2], meditation (Samādhi)^[3], and wisdom. The first two weeks we focused on meditation and wisdom, and this week we are focusing on ethics and morality, which are basically the guidelines by which we humans not only learn how to live and work together but also how to take care of one another.

So for the next 20 minutes or so, we are going to enter into a period of silent meditation together in what Soto Zen^[4]—which is the tradition I've studied in—calls silent illumination.

To begin this period of silent meditation, I want to just briefly remind you about the points of your posture that help support upright sitting. First, find a comfortable and stable position for your legs and your torso. Then gently allow the energy of your core body to move upward toward the top of your head, like a spring that's bubbling up from dry ground.

Now, let the muscles of your face, your shoulders, your back, and arms relax. Like the water of the spring, let the tension just pour down over the surface of your entire body, allowing it to spread out and to nourish the space around you as far as your imagination can reach.

Allow your eyes to remain open with a soft focus on the wide space that's in front of you. Take a couple of deep breaths through your mouth, and then return to your normal breathing through the nose.

And now, as we are instructed by the founder of our school of Zen, Dōgen Zenji^[5]: think of not thinking.

"How do you think of not thinking?" a student asked. "Non-thinking," he says. "This is the essential art of zazen^[6]."

Meditation and Precepts are One

Welcome back from wherever you might have been. Perhaps you were with the parts of your body, or with some feeling, maybe some sensory awareness, or thoughts about the past, or plans for the future—most likely all of the above.

I probably should introduce myself to those of you who just joined expecting Gil Fronsdal. Gil and another close Dharma friend, Paul Haller, are sharing for three weeks a teaching on what we call the harmony of Zen and Vipassana. We've all practiced in both of these traditions. Well, actually, I haven't in Vipassana, but I have now, listening in on Gil's teaching, and it's been quite wonderful. Our idea is to help us here at the Zen Center, as well as inviting all of you who are most familiar with Vipassana teachings, to have a taste of one another's style of practicing the Dharma.

The Buddha called the many parts of our lived experience the "ten thousand things," which basically means reality itself, in which a lot appears to be going on, and all the time. This we know. When we become aware of just how much is going on, as you experienced this morning, it often helps to take a bit of time and enough space to quiet ourselves. We can slow the many processes of our thinking and the activities of moving around, just long enough to take a look at ourselves and the internal clockwork that is driving our busy lives. Given how deeply we are conditioned not to stop moving except for dreamless sleep, we're almost always busy, both inside and outside.

The Buddha met his own busyness by sitting down under a tree for many days on end, something that all of us do when we go on retreat—either Vipassana or a Zen sesshin^[7]. And even for a brief time this morning as we sat together, and as we're doing now: just stopping, taking a break, resting a bit.

The Buddha didn't give us too many words about his experience that morning on the eighth day of his silent sitting, when he looked up at the star and then said, "Wonderful, wonderful. I and all beings on earth attain enlightenment at the same time."

This statement has been talked about now for several millennia: just what did he see and what did he mean by what he said? One way of understanding what the Buddha meant was that the star he saw, the earth, all things, and all beings—all the objects of his awareness—were not separate. They were not outside of himself. In other words, awareness and the objects of our awareness are not two separate things. Although we can reason how that is so, that is not how we normally think, and that is not how we behave.

Explaining the Buddha's enlightenment experience in this way is called the teaching of non-duality, or of "no two things," and is a very important understanding for us to have in order to know the deep meaning of what the Buddha taught. One of the things that we're endeavoring to learn on meditation retreats is how deeply ingrained inside ourselves this notion of existing separately from the world around us is. We humans have even created languages that confirm that notion all day long: my home, my children, my friends, my enemies, my country, my job. So we say, in which all of these possessions belong to me, which then leaves me as separate, singular, and isolated—and in extreme cases, causes great suffering. There may in fact be none worse than the belief that we are truly alone.

Along with the wisdom teachings, the other body of teachings that point directly at this type of suffering are the teachings of ethics or morality. Ethics, precepts, and moral guidelines have been given to us in order to connect us to one another, in order to bring harmony to humankind through connecting practices such as generosity and patience, and of course, through wisdom.

As Buddhism and the Buddha's teaching traveled through many cultures and crystallized into these many forms and expressions, one of the expressions that I'm going to talk about with you this week is called the Sixteen Bodhisattva Precepts^[8]. These are in truth one precept: the precept of how I, over here, promise to take care of you, over there, as an enactment of the Buddha's awakened vision that I and you are in truth not in any way separate at all.

We are interdependent and we are free. These are two sides of the same coin, as the Buddha declared at that moment of his awakening: "I and all beings awakening at the same time." One whole being, one whole life, one whole precept for embodying just how that is so.

The one whole precept, when broken into many parts that make up our complex human life, sounds like this. It begins with what are called the Three Refuges: I take refuge in Buddha as the enlightened teacher. I take refuge in Dharma as the enlightened teaching. I take refuge in Sangha^[9] as the enlightened life.

And then there are the Three Pure Precepts: I vow to embrace and sustain right conduct. I vow to embrace and sustain all good. I vow to embrace and sustain all beings.

And then finally, there's a more detailed recitation of those actions that we take against others that cause the greatest harm—and we can read about these every day in the newspaper, breaking the bond of our shared humanity. These are the Ten Grave Precepts, or promises that I make to each of you: I vow not to kill you, to steal from you, to sexualize you, or lie to you. I vow not to poison your body or mind with intoxicants. I vow not to slander you, praise myself at your expense, withhold my possessions or my knowledge from you, or harbor ill will toward you. And as a kind of summary vow, I vow not to disparage the Three Treasures: the teacher of awakening (the Buddha), the teaching of awakening (the Dharma), or the community of those who are devoted to awakening (the Sangha)—that's us.

Studying the Buddhist precepts is studying the clockwork of our actions in the world and the consequences of those actions, wherein saying and doing are the primary elements through which each of us together creates either a world of bondage or a world of freedom. Saying and doing both arise from how we think, which is why one of perhaps the best known of the Buddhist teachings is from an ancient collection of verses called the Dhammapada^[10], "The Footsteps of the Truth":

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is a creation of our mind.

If a person speaks or acts with an impure mind, suffering follows them like the wheel of the cart follows the beast that draws the cart.

If a person speaks or acts with a pure mind, joy follows them as their own shadow.

"He beat me, she hurt me, they defeated me, he robbed me." Those who think such thoughts will not be free from hate.

"She insulted me, he cheated me, they defeated me, he beat me." Those who think not such thoughts will be free from hate. Hate is not conquered by hate; hate is conquered by not hating. This is the eternal law.

Many do not know that we are here in this world to live in harmony with one another. Those who know this do not fight against each other.

Not fighting against each other is the main effort that we are all making as teachers and as students of the Buddhadharma. The teacher who inspired my understanding of the Dharma was a Japanese Zen master, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi^[11], who came to America in 1959 to share with us his own unique, inspired vision of the Buddhist teaching. He came looking for us. Many of you are undoubtedly familiar with Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, published over 50 years ago now. Among the many things Suzuki Roshi said, some of them were directly about the Sixteen Bodhisattva Precepts, also known in the Zen tradition as the blood vein of the Buddhas and the ancestors: "Receiving the precepts is a way of understanding what it means to just sit. The integration of precepts and meditation is the foundation for all of the practices and activities of our daily life."

This identity of meditation with precepts is also one my own teacher, Tenshin Anderson^[12], highlighted; he called his book on the precepts Being Upright. One image for helping us to understand the function of these precepts, as teachers have said, is as a map of the Buddha's world. Taking the Bodhisattva precepts begins by orienting ourselves to the Buddha's example and enlightened vision. As someone recently said regarding the Buddha's awakening, even taking a single step is sufficient if you are headed in the right direction.

Tomorrow, and for the next three days, I'm going to be sharing more of the stories and teachings about the precepts that underlie our sitting practice. The first of those being taking refuge, about which another of our founding ancestors, Dōgen Zenji, said: "The essence of transmission of Bodhisattva precepts is taking refuge." Meaning that when we follow the map, the teaching of non-duality, and enter the Buddha's world, we are taking refuge in clearly seeing reality itself—Vipassana—with all of its dents and illusions, mistakes, stories, and release. Taking refuge in Buddha is another name for intimacy with all the things that we are, or rather all the things that we seem to be. It is another name for turning toward the world.

The Buddha taught that the root of all evil is ignorance, or turning away from the world—a fuzzy, thrilling, unreliable, ungraspable creation where the self cannot abide as separate. When sitting upright in the fuzzy, ungraspable world, with whatever seems to be happening, we come to realize that something we are used to seeing is missing. And that something would be "me." Me, in the form of my old habits of thought, my preferences, my self-centeredness, my fears and isolation, and most of all, my fantasies.

It's at times like this that the "me" tries to take control of the elements of existence for its own safety and benefit. And although the shields go up again and again, they are not holding. So the precepts are a different kind of armor: the armor of taking vows, of making promises. That's what I'll share with you in these next few days.

To end for this morning, here is a brief teaching on precepts by the founder of the Zen Center, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, from a collection of his talks in a book called Not Always So:

In the full lotus position, we cross the right leg over the left, and the left leg over the right. Symbolically, the right is activity and the left is the opposite, calmness of mind. If the left is wisdom, the right is practice. And when we cross our legs, we don't know which is which. So even though we have two, symbolically we also have one. Our posture is vertical without leaning right or left, backward or forward. This is an expression of perfect understanding of the teaching that is beyond duality. When we extend this, we naturally have precepts and the study of how to observe our precepts. This posture of zazen is not just a kind of training, but is the actual way of transmitting Buddha's teaching to us. Words by themselves are not good enough to actualize his teaching, so it is transmitted through activity or through human relationships.

Well, thank you very much. We're just about at time. Kevin offered very kindly to relay any questions you have, so if you do, I'd be happy to respond.

Q&A

Kevin: We've just got one question here from Leslie. She asked, what translation of the Dhammapada is that?

Fu: That's a good question. I know it's an old one that I've had for many years. It is Penguin Classics, translated by Juan Mascaró. It was one of the first books I got, I think in 1973. I know there are many different versions, but I happen to like this one; I like the poetry of it.

Okay, well, then we'll end. I just want to thank you all who have come. I'm sorry I can't see you, but here we are. I'll be back tomorrow and I'll be talking about the refuges and offering some more meditation content or tone from Zen teachings that have been meaningful for me. And then we'll sit together and have another discussion. So again, thank you very much.

Kevin: Fu, we actually had another question come in from Paul. He asked, what do we do with our eyes while meditating?

Fu: I notice that Gil gives people the option, so I would never say that you don't have the option. Of course you do. In Zen, we say to keep the eyes open, partly with the understanding that with the eyes closed, it's much easier to enter into dreams and into fantasies. By having your eyes open, it's a little hard to escape the reality of whatever is sitting in front of you. So it's a way of connecting us to the present and where we're sitting at this time. You can try both. I've certainly tried them both, and I find leaving my eyes open is more supportive for my meditation.

Kevin: Thank you very much, Fu.

Fu: Thank you, Kevin. Thank you everyone. Have a nice day. Please stay safe.