Awe, the Satipatthana Sutra and Zen Practice

This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning everyone. Good morning. What a thrill it is to be here at Green Dragon Temple. My name is Tim Wicks and I currently serve as Kanto, which means head of practice at our San Francisco Temple, the Beginner's Mind Temple in San Francisco on page three. And it's really truly a great honor to be here with all of you. Something I know from a long time ago and new faces. So what I would like is if we can co-create this talk. So it's not just me giving it to you, but it's you receiving as well. And thank you all for making time in your busy lives to come here. Welcome to the people who are online and the people who in the future maybe will listen to a recording of it. So I'd like to speak today about one of the foundational texts of Buddhism and it's called the Satipatana Sutra. And I'm going to talk about the Satipatana Sutra and I'm going to talk about awe. Thank you. Like awe shucks, except deeper. So the Satipatana Sutra was the first sutra that I read when I first came to Buddhism. It opened up a whole new world for me. The world that I inhabited, the world of my internal experience where I didn't really know what it was that was going on. Inside I was really just existing in the world like many of us are, surviving, tossed around by the need for food and shelter and pleasure and getting them in the fastest and easiest way I could. In Buddhist terms I was subject to the conditioning of existence. My existence conditioned how it is that I acted, how it is that I was in the world. But I didn't know how to identify what it meant to be me. And the first form of Buddhism I was introduced to was by a Theravadan teacher. Theravadan Buddhism is different from Zen. Zen came later than Theravadan. Theravadan Buddhism considers itself to be the original Buddhism. Some people debate this of course as we are want to do. And in fact the word Theravadan means the way of the elders. And the Satipatana Sutra is one of the most important sutras to Theravadans. Sati means mindfulness. It means memory. It means recollection. There's a sense of knowledge, a sense of returning to something familiar. And the second part of the title is Utpatana which means to establish or to verify, to look at closely, to investigate. It also means presence. So in its compound form, Satipatana means mindfulness, present mindfulness. And it gave birth to the practice and theory of Vipassana which many of us are familiar with. Which means a deep insight. Vipassana means deep insight or to see things as they are. This is mindfulness. And this concept and experience of mindfulness, this training of mindfulness was delivered by the Buddha to his disciples in the Satipatana Sutra. And when I first came to Buddhism I was as I mentioned completely disconnected from my internal experience. I knew very little of what it was that was happening inside of me. I needed some kind of a framework for identifying what my internal experience was. What were these crazy things that were happening inside of me? The Satipatana Sutra created an opening up for me by helping me to understand what it meant to be a human being. By identifying my experience and how this great jumble, this interior jumble of activities inside of me could begin to be understood. What was pleasure? What was suffering? Now I'm not a scholar but I am thirsty. I'm not a scholar but so I'm not going to go through the Satipatana Sutra in a scholarly manner but I'm going to just kind of quickly mention what's in the Sutra before talking about how it was that it was helpful to me. This is how it begins. This is the Buddha. Monks. This is the direct path for the purification of beings. For the surmounting of sorrow and lamentation. For the disappearance of dukkha. Dukkha as many of you know we usually translate as suffering but actually what it means is when an axle is placed off-center on a wheel and how it is that that wheel turns in an uncomfortable way. For the disappearance of dukkha and discontent for acquiring the true method for the realization of nirvana namely the four Satipatanas. So then the Buddha goes on to mention what the four Satipatanas are and they are four mindfulnesss of the mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of feelings, mindfulness of mind. What's going on inside of my mind? How am I naming things? How am I identifying things to act on? And finally the mindfulness of dharmas which basically covers all conditional phenomena, all conditioned reality. And these four Satipatanas are studied in an objective way. Focusing on the body, focusing on the feelings that we have, what's happening in the mind and what exactly we call reality. What is this cushion that I'm sitting on? What is this room right here? What does it mean to hear sound? And when I first was introduced to this sutra I still had a scatological 14 year old in me that loved the detail. So this is the mindfulness of the body right here from the Buddha. In this body there are head hairs, body hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, bowels, messain tree, contents of the stomach, feces, bile, flampus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, grease, spittle, snot, which I wonder what snot is in Pali, the ancient language. Oil of the joints and urine and I just loved all that detail right there, but I had actually never really considered my body in that way nor had I considered my feelings in that way. So he does the same with feelings and with mind. He identifies the the different parts of our feelings and gives us the opportunity to look in a very objective, analytical way at all phenomena in the dharmas, the Satipatana of dharmas. He lists in the sutra the five hindrances to awakening, sensual desire, aversion, sloth or tiredness, anxiety, and finally doubt. He identifies what it is that we're made up of. He calls them aggregates or we translate them as aggregates, which are sometimes called heaps, what it is that we cling to, which is form, sensations, perception, volitional activities, and finally consciousness. These are what it is that we cling to. He breaks all of these down to their individual parts to show how it is that we do not have a permanent self. We are empty of permanence. And by breaking down reality into these parts, I was able to begin to understand what it meant to be this human being named Tim Wicks. I was able to begin to identify fear, anger, joy, depression, anxiety, and inspiration in their subtlest forms as they began to arise in me. By identifying them, I was able to begin the process of understanding them. And by understanding them, I started to see the root of where it is that many of them came from. And by identifying suffering, by simply acknowledging it, it begins to diminish, to simply acknowledge suffering. It means to take some of the heat away, some of the energy away from it. And this to me was a profound experience and insight. For the first time in my life, I began to understand the workings of the self, suffering and what it was made of, and how not to try and push it away or feed to it in any way. The Buddha ends the Satipatanasutra. It's not that long. You can read it pretty quickly and then read it again several times. Monks, if anyone should develop these four Satipatanas in such a way for seven years, one of two fruits could be expected for them. Either final knowledge here and now, so sudden enlightenment, or if there's a trace of clinging left, non-returning. And non-returning is basically nearly enlightenment, let alone seven years, he says. Six years, five years, four years, three years, two years, one year, seven months, six months, five months, four months, three months, two months, one month, half a month. If anyone could develop these four Satipatanas in such a way for seven days, one of two fruits could be expected for them. Either final knowledge here and now, or if there's a trace of clinging, non-returning. So it was with reference to this that it was said, monks, this is the direct path for the purification of beings, for the surmounting of sorrow and lamentation, for the disappearance of dukkha and discontent, for acquiring the true method for the realization of nirvana, namely these four Satipatanas. That is what the blessed one said, and the monks were satisfied and delighted in the blessed one's words. So this is objective meditation. It's meditation that focuses on something specific, the breath, the body, the feelings, sensations. In Zen, we talk about way-seeking mind. It's our stories of how it is that we came to the Dharma. And way, the word way in the beginning of way-seeking minds, is usually capitalized. And this sort of comes from our, not sort of, actually does come from our Chinese ancestors. As most of you know, Buddhism started in northern India, and then it traversed through really diverse cultures through the rest of India, and then came to China. And the capitalizing of W on way is from Taoism, which is the spiritual precursor to what in China was called chan, and later in Japan was called zen. So Taoism sort of began to merge a little bit and influence the way it is that Buddhism entered into Chinese spiritual culture. The way in Taoism, with that capital W, literally means path or road, but it also means the source of the foundational principle of the universe. We refer to it perhaps a little bit lazily as emptiness. So we use our stories to tell the way that we came to this path, and the Buddha used the story of his early life to explain his understanding of the way. He said, I teach one thing and one thing only, suffering and the end of suffering, which always kind of sounded like two things to me, but welcome to Buddhism and non-separation, non-dualism, everything is connected, especially suffering and non-suffering. The Buddha, as many of you know, is protected as the prince by his father, the king, who was a black belt codependent, in my opinion, his father gave him everything he thought his son needed in order to be happy. He protected him from harm, sheltered him from suffering, but the future Buddha still saw suffering in the form of old age, sickness, and death. So even if you have everything that you think you need in order to be happy, just the fact that we're alive means that we'll suffer from the aging process and fear of dying. So in this way, I use my own story to help me to understand the Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha. I try to stick mostly to what it is that I can verify as my own experience. And the Satipatana Sutra helped me to identify the suffering in my life and how to begin the process of ending that suffering. We talk about karma, as many of you know, which means intentional action. Our actions have consequences. We speak of karmic consequences, things that we did and how it is that they affected what happened after. There are consequences to what you do and there's consequences to what you don't do. Because of life, this is the way that I am. The way that life had affected me by the time I came to Buddhism, and in fact the reason that I came to Zen Center 25 years ago was because the way that life had affected me was that I had become an addict. I was a drug addict and an alcoholic. And after getting into recovery and immersing myself in several years of vipassana practice, I started coming to Zen Center in the city, which is where I live now. And I was coming there because there was a meeting on Monday nights where people in recovery were interested in meditation and it still happens, 7.30 on Mondays. And I didn't like Zen Center very much at all. I didn't like the statues, the bowing, the bells, the robes, the downward glancing. I didn't like the incense, I didn't like anything about it. But you have to be careful. So watch out because slowly it started to creep up on me because I kept coming to that one meeting a week and after about six months I thought I'd check out a Dharma talk and look at me now. So in Zen we sit. We just sit. And other schools of Buddhism feel in some ways that we kind of throw people in at the deep end. We just sit. Chikintasa, it's called, just sitting, facing the wall. Zen claims to be non-objective sitting. There's no objects. We're simply, we sit and face the wall, we try to let go of everything, noticing everything arises but not activating it or feeding it in any way. Noticing but not pushing away. We're witnessing life as it arises and as it fades away. In our Zen practice we're observing impermanence. That's what it is that we're studying. Study this. Study this, said Dogen Zenjir, our 13th century founder in Japan. Investigate. Investigate. He was always admonishing us. So I had this objective basis for my meditation experience. I'd already been trained in mindfulness awareness. And now I was being told to sit with non-objective sitting. Don't add to or push away what arises in your meditative experience. I did this for a couple of years. I found a teacher, which you're encouraged to do in Zen. I find a teacher to ask questions, to learn about the path. And I had, after I'd been working with him for a while, I started to have some anxiety coming up again, which was familiar to me. And I asked my teacher, if I could, my Zen teacher, if I could go back and do a little bit of the Pasana around the anxiety, do some objective sitting. And he, focusing, you know, I wanted to focus on the anxiety objectively as the Satyabhatana Sutra had taught me. And he said something very interesting. He said, all of Buddhism before Zen, which Zen happened or developed really in China, several hundred years after the Buddha, all the teachings of Buddhism before Zen are included in Buddhism. And this includes Theravadan Buddhism, Theravadan Buddhism, and for Pasana and mindfulness are included in Zen. He said, and on a closer look, I began to see, and on a closer look, I began to see how it is that we start out in Zen with objective sitting. We, the first thing that you're taught in Zen is how to hold your body, your posture. And then we talk about focusing on the breath, breath, counting the breath. And this is just like in the Satyabhatana Sutra. In Zen, we're opening up our awareness from the particular, the body and the breath to the general, out to the rest of the universe. We're opening, opening. At UC Berkeley, there is a professor named Dacher Keltner. And he's written a book about his research as a psychologist. He's been studying awe, A-W-E, and he has a fabulous book which is called awe. He defines awe as, in quotes, the feeling of being in the presence of something vast and transcend, that transcends your current understanding of the world. This is Zen training. Contemplation of vastness, as we are asked to do in our Zen mind, can be challenging and even destabilizing in its vastness, even threatening sometimes. awe is the verb of action in the face of mystery. It's the motivation to enter into an understanding, an inspiration to open up. awe is the invitation to intimacy. And intimacy is sometimes described as the truth being delivered or shared with someone else without any judgment. If I tell you I was a alcoholic and you don't judge me, I'm being intimate with you. We're being intimate together. I'm opening up. If you judge me, there is a separation you're cultivating and we are together closing down. In his book, Keltner analyzes awe scientifically. He's a scientist. He talks about hair follicles and how they're affected by certain chemicals that are created in the body during experiences of awe, how it is that hair follicles become erect and you have your hair standing on end. He talks about self transcendent states, the beginning of the breaking down of the individual self. Mind states that grow out of the experience of awe. There where there's a healthy loss of self boundary between the individual and the world in which they live in. With awe there's a deep connection, a feeling of oneness and belonging to a greater whole. There's this diminishing of the self centeredness of the separate individual. In awe there's a state of, there can be a state of conflict between in awe there's a state of, there can be a state of flow being so fully immersed in an activity that the sense of time and self consciousness begins to disappear. Peak experiences of intense joy, discovery and transcendence are oftentimes called the highest points of human experience. Witnessing profound human kindness can shift awareness away from one's own needs while experiencing awe. For the Buddha there were three poisons, three obstacles to our awakening, greed, hatred and delusion or ignorance. And in my experience, we're not supposed to rank things but I do, in my experience delusion is the worst of these poisons because delusion is not seeing the truth. And I was trained in order to survive in my childhood like so many of us with a life that was unbearable I was trained to not see the truth. That's why I ended up drinking and using drugs my consciousness was unbearable. The Satipatana Sutra which was at the very beginning of the Buddha's teaching and is included in Zen taught me to see the truth in a way that was gentle and safe a little bit at a time. It opened me up to beginner's mind which is really the mind of awe. It taught me that I can not only survive the truth but I can enter into it with fascination the fascination of awe. I can see what it's made of and how it is that I share it with the rest of the universe and I'd like to have a sip of water and finish with a poem that I found called awe and it's by James Cruz. It's a shiver that climbs the trellis of the spine each tingle a bright white morning glory breaking into blossom beneath the skin it can happen anywhere anytime even finding this sleeve of ice worn by a branch all morning now fallen on a bed of snow you can choose to pause pick it up hold the cold thing in your hand or not few tell us that wonder and awe are decisions we make daily hourly minute by minute in the tiny offices of the heart tilting the head to look up at every tree turned into a chandelier by light striking ice in just the right way thank you very much for your attention and now we have Q&A or arguments against what it is that I have said this is for completely welcome and I'd love it if you could say your name as well please. Okay Jennifer. Hi Jennifer. Hi I used to keep a diary of gratitude but now I've been keeping a diary of awe I do a lot of hiking by myself on the mountain and I find doing it alone and if I sit someplace that there's something going on like red-headed woodpeckers pulling the bark off a diseased tree doing what not science nature does it helps break it down everything has it something to do and I just I was so much awe of that so I went and visited the area like once a month to see how was they were progressing it was really quite beautiful so and I also I'm out in the ocean a lot sailing and I I run into so much awe thousands of jellyfish hatching and witnessing that and they have sails on their back and they they they hatch and they float to the top and then they sail on top of the water so that was just beautiful so I like the word awe it's really I look forward to it what you have just described he the the psychologist asks us to basically do all practice and that's what you're doing yep and he's got studies that he talks about where he shows how it is that everything that comes with awe in the human organism begins to actually alter neuroplasticity it does yeah thank you so much you're welcome thank you good morning I'm charlene hi charlene so awe in the way that was just described is something very joyous and I'm quite familiar with however you ended your talk speaking about delusion and how we many of us don't confront the truth because per