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Awakening and Non-Thinking - Chozen, Roshi · Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks

• 0:00
  Jomon: Hello and welcome. This is the Zen Community of Oregon, making the teachings of the Buddhadharma accessible to support your practice. New episodes air every week.
• 0:22
  Chozen: That chant reminds us of how fortunate we are to encounter the dharma and to have the freedom to practice it. We're truly, truly blessed. This is Rohatsu Sashin for the year 2025, celebrating the enlightenment of the Buddha, which started the wheel of dharma turning and brought us here. I'd like to talk about something that everyone has heard of, but barely anyone talks about, that is the experience of awakening. Awakening to what?
• 1:14
  Every day we awaken, we awaken to what? In the chant world, the Zen world, it means awakening to what lies behind this ordinary world, especially beyond this ordinary human world with its often terrible, terrible suffering, with its pervasive anxieties and with its temporary joys. I could say it lies behind the ordinary world, but it doesn't lie anywhere. It doesn't have a where or a who or a when, or a center or an edge or a me or a they, it is beyond description. We chant, Buddha nature pervades the whole universe, but it isn't bounded by our universe.
• 2:28
  As our chant says, The way is beyond all space, all time, one instant is ten thousand years. I'm smiling because there's this young woman on TikTok I showed it to Hogan because he likes to talk about time And she's just realized that there's no time and no place, there's nowhere and there's no when. And she's just dancing with joy. She's so excited about it and the implications. And then there are mathematical implications beyond that, like we are a shadow of a four dimensional reality, etc, and she's just like dancing with joy.
• 3:18
  But she's had an experience of awakening, that's what's so remarkable about this. She has had an experience of awakening to something beyond this existence that we call my life. We say it's an experience of awakening or enlightening because it's not that you have one experience and then it's over and then you can go and play tennis, make money and lose money and have children who get mad at you, etc. As we continue with Committed Practice, we will continue to have openings into what we could call true reality. Every name is, of course, absurd for what it is.
• 4:15
  And one of the ways to tell that people have an awakening is they can't describe it. They try and then words don't work. In Zen we call it kensho or breakthrough, which must be followed by further training, which deepens whatever the initial insight is and then allows one to learn to express it in daily life, and then gradually removes the remaining dark corners and areas that haven't been clarified. So life will help us clean up what we could call our awakening experience until it becomes thoroughgoing in us. And we have to clean up our ingrained habitual harmful thought patterns and behaviors, as you all know from Zen teachers who've gotten into trouble.
• 5:24
  There has to be a thorough, thorough housecleaning of this house. When the Buddha was enlightened, said, Oh, housebuilder, you will build this house no more. It has to be that thorough. And often after an initial awakening experience, if people don't keep practicing, then our ingrained habitual harmful thought patterns, harmful to ourselves, harmful to others, and behaviors will come back. There are many descriptions of the Buddhist ancestors having studied for years with one teacher and having an enlightenment experience or experiences.
• 6:18
  And then they go on pilgrimage to test their new understanding, and they meet a new teacher, and often they come strutting in and interrupt the assembly and walk around the teacher, you know, standing there like a sumo wrestler. And that teacher says essentially, Don't be so puffed up, you turkey, your understanding is completely lacking. What a moron! So we can't talk that way anymore as teachers because we would get a bad Yelp review. That's true!
• 7:08
  So a monk's understanding is rejected and they're rejected, but one thing that can happen is new determination arises. And that monk might stay with the new teacher, practicing with new ardor and going deeper into practice. So Master Joshu Xiao Zhu is an example. He was ordained at 18 and then stayed with his master until Joshu, was 50. And I'm sure he heard many hard words from his master.
• 7:42
  And then at age 50 he went on a thirty year pilgrimage until he was 80 years old saying, If I meet anyone I can teach, I will teach them. If I meet a child who has more clarity than me, I will learn from them. And then he settled down in a monastery when he was 80 and taught until he was over 100. Sometimes the seeker is discouraged practice and goes off to sleep a graveyard, like Kyogen, Jiang Hwan. He was supposedly seven feet tall and an accomplished scholar of Buddhist sutras, But for many years he didn't make any headway in his meditation practice.
• 8:37
  One day his master, Gui Shang, asked him, What was your original face before you came out of your mother's womb? And he came up with all sorts of answers, but Gishan rejected them all. So he couldn't find an answer that satisfied himself or his teacher. He consulted all of his books and all of the notes he had taken while studying and he couldn't find an answer. So he burned everything and left the monastery.
• 9:14
  A kind of cleansing of who he thought he was. And one day, though actually he appointed himself to go be a caretaker at a temple cemetery where the national teacher at the time was buried one day when he was sweeping the ground with one of those rough bamboo brooms, a stone flew out and struck a hollow stalk of bamboo. And as the sound resonated in his quiet mind, the mysterious pivot turned and he burst into loud laughter. And he went back to his teacher and offered incense and thanked his teacher for their deep kindness in not giving him an answer. And he wrote this poem: One stroke and all is gone.
• 10:16
  No need of strategies or cure. Each and every action is manifesting the ancient way. My spirit is never downcast. I leave no tracks behind me. Enlightenment is beyond speech or gesture.
• 10:36
  Those who are emancipated call it the unsurpassed. So what conditions lead to an awakening experience like the ones we read about in the collections of stories of the ancient masters. So we talk about sudden enlightenment or gradual enlightenment, but always, almost always, there was sustained gradual work until there was a sudden experience. So the prerequisites are most often deep sustained concentration through which one becomes free from the sense of the self. So for example, the idea of I am breathing, I am counting to 10 and I am successful, that all disappears and there is just And at some point the ground, we call it the figure is the breathing, so so called breathing or however you're concentrating on breath, at first that is what we concentrate on and the ground is ignored.
• 12:22
  But at some point it turns inside out. So those pauses at the end of the out breath, that bit of silence, becomes the ground. And the breath can shrink down like a little icon on a screen, an enormous screen, a screen without limit. And the breath just breathes itself, and the awareness is immense. So deep sustained concentration, to the point that the solid sense of an individual self begins to dissipate.
• 13:07
  That solid sense of self is fed by all of our inner voices all the thoughts about our past, recent and distant all the thoughts about our future, Who will I be after I finish on go, graduate from college, get a good job, what kind of job will I be of success, will I get married? All the fantasies, wonderful or fearful, are woven around the starring actor, which is myself. Constant thought weaves an idea of a self. Constant thought perpetuates the idea of a self. Constant thoughts hide the original self.
• 13:51
  Thus, awakening requires cultivating a quiet mind, actually a silent mind. Of course, the first day of session we often discover that our mind is more active than we thought, which is true of me too. And the sense of self can be seen, vivid and weaving constantly. That's okay. It's okay because we recognized it.
• 14:24
  It's okay because we have to practice to gently calm the mind. Gently calm the mind. We don't want to frighten the mind. As the mind quiets, sometimes the mind gets fearful. Who will she be without my help?
• 14:52
  Who will she be without my constant advice and criticism? Something terrible will happen if I'm not talking to her all the time. So, in the first day or so it's very hard to let go of the sense of I, me and mine, which is constantly fed by inner dialogue. I meditated well that last period, I was so concentrated. I was surprised when the bell rang.
• 15:24
  Maybe I was in the first jhana? I think I should read up on the jhanas. I can't go to the library after wait till the session is over. Or, I'm hopeless at meditation, my mind is never quiet. If I'm following my breath, my mind just talks over the out breath or jumps in when the in breath starts to flow.
• 15:47
  Now I'm extending my out breath, but where in my body am I most aware of the sensations of the out breath? In my chest? No, no, no, let's see. The nostrils? That's what the Goenka people practice.
• 16:00
  But what about cultivating my hara? My hara, my hara, how do I do that? What are we going to have for lunch? I hope it's Our practice gives us the time, space, and ability to not have the mind ruling us all the time and continually constructing an idea of self, whether it's wonderful or defective. Dogen Zenji said, To study the Buddha way is to study the self.
• 16:46
  To study the Self is to forget the Self. Forgetting the Self is what can happen when we really throw ourselves into seshi, even for short periods of time. And when we're really tired and this is the power of Yasa practice When we're really tired, sometimes that whole mechanism of chattering to us about who we are or aren't, we'll quiet down too. And our practice simplifies and becomes spacious. To forget the Self is to be enlightened by the 10,000 dharmas.
• 17:45
  To be enlightened by the 10,000 dharmas is to free one's body and mind and the body and minds of others. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this traceless enlightenment continues forever. The eminent modern Uchand Master, Master Shen Yang, who's the teacher of two respected younger teachers who've taught here, Chan Master Guo Guo and Rebecca Lee, taught that the mind quiets down in stages. And it doesn't mean that it goes, Yeah, it goes, bounces around. But it's helpful to recognize the stages.
• 18:41
  So there's tangled undisciplined mind. Often when we first sit down and we've brought a lot of stuff with us from home or work or living in the monastery with a bunch of other people you wouldn't be friends with if you weren't in the monastery. And so the first stage is we sit down, tangled, undisciplined mind. And then the mind begins to be simplified. So there's much less going on in there and we have more ability to focus on our method.
• 19:19
  That's such a relief. But it's not 100% of the time. Sometimes we have a good sitting period and then the next one we're really, really sleepy. So, ways to deal with sleep, since we're going to be sitting longer periods. The one that's recommended in all the Buddhist scriptures is to let light into the mind.
• 19:44
  So that can be literal, like you can look up at the lanterns and actively take that light into the mind, or out the window in the daytime and take that light into the mind. So tangled, undisciplined mind becomes simplified mind, just concentrating on our method. And then eventually we have intervals of open, quiet mind. Open, quiet mind, spacious, quiet mind. What a relief.
• 20:23
  And then the mind starts talking again, because the mind really thinks the way to protect us from harm is to keep talking to us. But then open, quiet mind, when we least expect it, can open into no mind. Shen Ying describes, Calming and collecting the mind, shamatha practice, a scattered mind cannot see its own nature. So developing stable attention, body relaxed, breath natural, mind settled. No chasing thoughts.
• 21:12
  Then two, unification and clear awareness. When body and mind are unified, awareness is bright and open. As the thoughts thin out, the mind becomes more unified and awareness feels open, steady, and relaxed. You begin to experience samadhi that is not dull or rigid but clear and spacious. Then silent illumination, which we heard about with Rebecca Lee and also Guo Gu.
• 21:46
  Stage one: Relaxed Presence. Just sit, aware of sitting, aware of awareness. The mind rests on the whole body, just sitting, nothing special to do. Presence itself is the method. The mind is calm but not tight.
• 22:07
  Next, silent illumination stage two, body and mind drop away. When the self is forgotten, everything is vividly clear. There's no sense of someone meditating. Experience is vivid but without a center. Thoughts may arise but they don't form a self.
• 22:29
  Master Shen Ying describes this as samadhi without clinging. And then silent illumination stage three: boundless clarity, beginning non dual awareness. The world and mind are no longer two. The sense of an observer dissolves, so there's no longer awareness of awareness, because that's an observer. Awareness and phenomena appear as one continuous field.
• 22:59
  This is not yet full awakening, but is the threshold. Once I realized that silent mind is a necessary condition for breakthrough So I had experiences studying at Zen Center in Los Angeles with Maizumi Roshi of breakthrough, but I didn't realize that one condition for that was silent mind until I began teaching. So I began then looking for what the ancients said about this, and I found that they all said something about silent mind, It's ubiquitous, it's in all of our chants. I don't know how I could have missed it. Really, so obvious.
• 23:49
  In his basic instructions for zazen, which we frequently chant, Dogenzinji gives instructions on how to settle the body. So you settle the body, quiet room and so on, and then you rock back and forth like this. We might say push up with the top of the head and down with the bottom. Rock back and forth until you find center point, and then rock side to side. We always did this at CCLA when we sat down.
• 24:21
  So in smaller and smaller arcs until you reach the center point. And then he instructs us, Think of non thinking. Not thinking, what kind of thinking is that? Non thinking, one word, non thinking, non thinking. This is the essential art of za zen, Dogen Zenji says, non thinking.
• 24:49
  In The Treasure of the True Dharma Eye, a monk asks Dogen Zenji, How do you think of non thinking? Dogen Zenji replies, Non thinking! This is the essential art of zao zen. So he actually writes about it in many places in his writings, this non thinking. So non thinking implies it's something that we have to actively move into.
• 25:18
  And Dogen Senji was referencing Master Yaksan Igen. It might be Roshi spoke about this in a Dharma talk. So Yao Shan Wei Yang, who was a Chan Master, who lived in July to 08/27, so lived eighty two years. So one day Master Yakson, which is what he's called in Japanese, was sitting and a monk asked, What are you thinking about so still an intent? Yak San replied, I am thinking of that which is non thinking.
• 26:00
  The monk said, How can one think of non thinking? And Yaksa san said, It isn't thought. It isn't thought. So this is a master who lived, what, five hundred years before Dogenesen Ji. And Dogenesenji picked up what he said.
• 26:28
  And then in another passage, Yaushan was sitting and she too, who was Yausan's teacher, asked him, What are you doing here? Yausan said, So we're going back a generation, right, from Yausan. What are you doing here? And Yausan said, I'm not doing a thing. And Shito said, Well then you're just sitting leisurely.
• 27:07
  Yashan said, If I were sitting leisurely, I'd be doing something. So his epitaph on his memorial stone, which we saw some of in Japan, says this is one of his teachings: The numinous mind numinous is cloud like and carries a sense of illumination too. The numinous mind is pure by itself, but it is obscured by phenomenal appearances. If you can dismiss all phenomena, there will be no dual things. So as I was contemplating thinking, Dogen Sanshi's non thinking, I sent out an email to my teacher colleagues asking what they thought Dobin Zenji meant by non thinking.
• 28:07
  And this caused a shower of replies from So to Zen teachers, as Fuho observed as I sent him the 15 pages, as Fuho observed, lots of words and thoughts and opinions about non thinking. So in Japanese non thinking is shi, which means thought by itself, but then ryo is added to it, which is not a common thing. But ryo means measurement, So it means thought that's directed to things like big or small, in or out, self or other, man, woman, good, bad, and so on. Measuring and measuring is a way of dividing. So the word that's used in dopaminergic used was gideo.
• 29:05
  This is why the verses of Faith Mind admonish us over and over, The great way is not difficult for those who do not pick and choose. Discard opinions pro and con. Cut off all useless thoughts and words and there is nowhere you cannot go. And if all thought objects disappear, the thinking subject drops away. Oh, housebuilder, you will build no more.
• 29:35
  Unless we stop practicing and then it gets built back up again because it's so habitual. So non thinking has also been translated and this is part of the argument of the different teachers non thinking beyond thinking, it's been translated as beyond thinking, before thinking, which is good for me to think about who were you before you emerged from your mother's womb, before you had thought because you didn't understand words, beyond thinking, reaching a place beyond thinking, which we all have in peak experiences. We've all had peak experiences where the mind stops. And then the mind comes back in and talks about what just happened. So non thinking more fundamental than thinking, another way people have described it, or the foundation from which mental activity arises.
• 30:40
  So resting in that foundation, you can watch mental activity arise, but then letting go of all that mental activity, you're in the foundation. Eckhart Tolle recommends, If you want to have a quiet mind, ask your mind, What am I going to think next? And then you watch. Which is close to a meditation I used to teach, which was sitting at the source of thought, Like, you know those mud pots at Yellowstone, places like that, where it's mud and then a bubble comes out like and then it bursts. So to sit at the source of your thoughts in that way, and when a bubble starts, you hold it, you hold it, you hold it, and it will disappear.
• 31:37
  It's really interesting. So then sometimes, you know, one thought produces more thoughts. It just happens. Then we catch it, and then we stop it, and we go back to something like the source of thought or non thinking or before thinking. So here's what Maisam Roshi said about Dobenzhenji's non thinking: A phrase like this could certainly be elaborated quite a bit for our purposes.
• 32:30
  We can plainly take it to mean that we should stop grasping at thoughts and just sit. The unconditioned state is a state of non thinking. Another time we experience this sometimes is when we've had a long sleep and we wake up and the mind is very, very quiet, and then you think, I need to make a list of what I'm supposed to do today. Unconditioned state is a state of non thinking. So what is the unconditioned state?
• 33:03
  Don't develop or cling to any thoughts. Don't develop or cling to any thoughts. It is very important not to hold on to your ideas, opinions, emotions, all the forms of thinking. So emotions are body sensations plus thought. That very unconditioned, unborn state of mind, that's the state of non thinking.
• 33:29
  Sit in that state, don't even think of becoming a Buddha, Trying to become Buddha or trying to become enlightened becomes a hindrance. This kind of re conception is a hindrance because we don't know what enlightenment is until we experience it firsthand. Thus, whatever we think of as enlightenment merely becomes an idea, and enlightenment is not an idea. As soon as we form an idea, right there a gap opens. By sitting, we empty ourselves of ourselves and of our objects, including mind objects.
• 34:11
  Thus, the subject object relationship is eliminated altogether, and you are one. Dazen itself manifests ultimate reality. That is shikantaza. Please understand that it is not denying the function of our mind when we say non thinking. Consciousness is vividly functioning, alive with thoughts or ideas, but that functioning is conditioned.
• 34:41
  And if we don't let go of the conditioned functioning of consciousness, the thoughts and ideas that arise, then we falsely find ourselves in those thoughts and ideas. We falsely find ourself made up of those thoughts and ideas. And to the extent that we do that, we restrict ourselves. When we don't see this fact clearly, we imagine that we have problems, origins outside of ourselves, but this is not so. If there is any difficulty or problem, it's a problem of our own making.
• 35:20
  And this is always the case. It may not seem so, but it is. In a narrower sense it is so, and in a broader sense it is so too. We can't blame others, and yet, if we look at it from a larger perspective, they are also part of ourselves. Ultimately, there is no one at all to blame.
• 35:45
  When we really see into the nature of the Self, then my becomes identical with your, and their, and even its. That is a state of non thinking. So again, we make ourselves as plain as possible. Just be as we are, and then our being becomes an absolute thing. Here is what I wrote after I read those 15 pages full of replies and opinions about translations.
• 36:23
  They were very interesting, I learned a lot actually. So I wrote, This is my understanding and experience, that there is an experience before thinking, which is not dissociation or trance. If anything, it's the opposite, it's clear, clear awareness. But very functional, because discursive thought, which seems to be fueled by anxiety for the self, however subtle, is not in the way. And more energy is available because there is infinite energy in the world.
• 36:59
  And when we stop blocking it, when discursive thought energy is no longer continually sapping our energy, it flows, including into and through us. So some people worry during sashin, especially as it goes on, that they go to bed and they're awake. Well, then you have two choices: you meditate in bed or you come in the Zen doh and meditate. It's free time to meditate because there's extra energy in there. And it came from zazen, so give it back to zazen.
• 37:45
  To me, it's the experience of the body being empty, the arms are inactivity. Or the ruler stays in the kingdom, while the general goes beyond the frontiers. Both from our chance. The mind is then aligned with impermanence, clear and quiet, aligned with the flow of impermanence, not resisting it, which burns up a lot of energy, and things get done. And then, when we're matched with the flow of life, when our mind is quiet or ideally silent, insights occur when they're needed.
• 38:44
  Thought is only needed for what arises that needs thought. And the most interesting coincidences occur. The most interesting coincidences occur. So, let's just for a few minutes, We were doing concentration sprints, remember? First day.
• 39:19
  So let's do silent mind sprints. Adjust your posture so you are comfortable. So we're going to do short intervals of silent mind. And silent mind means awareness is open. Begin now.
• 40:34
  If it helps to have something to hold onto, then do listening practice. But let all the thoughts just drain out of your mind as if you've pulled the plug on a sink. All the thoughts drain out, the mind is open, clean, empty, and aware. Okay, stop. If your eyes were closed, maybe open them.
• 41:21
  Take a few breaths. And we start the next sprint now. Just notice if thoughts start to arise and open awareness wide, wide, wide. Flow the thoughts like a little tiny mosquito. Okay, stop.
• 42:38
  Notice what you do to stop. And we'll do one more sprint. Ready? Go. If there are any thoughts swirling around in the mind, just pull the plug and let them drain out.
• 43:06
  Open the mind wide, wide, wide awareness. All the subtleties of touch, temperature, sound, Color, even if the eyes are closed, light and dark. Patterns. And then stop. So please practice as diligently as you are able.
• 44:09
  If you're tired, sit up straight and then rest the body and mind, although there's nothing more restful than what we just did. And then let the practice pick you back up again. Sometimes during Yaza, for example, we fall asleep sitting up, and that's okay. Then we're refreshed a bit, and we wake back up again, and we continue to practice. And remember that our practice here during this Rohatsu is part of a practice that's going on all around the world: in living rooms, people on Zoom, in Zen groups, in Chan temples, onshin, bonsho are practicing with us: Boushin, Haraduroshi, Shisan, all the people we know around the world who are practicing.
• 45:21
  It makes a difference in your life. And it makes a difference in the life of all of the forms of life that you're connected to, which is everyone and everything. Thank you.
• 45:46
  Jomon: Thank you for listening to the Zen Community of Oregon podcast, and thank you for your practice. New episodes air every week. Please consider making a donation at zendest.org. Your support supports us.