Mudra Practice and How to Accept Instructions from Various Teachers

Summary

The talk focuses on the nature of Zen practice, especially zazen, and how practitioners should relate to differing instructions from various teachers. The speaker begins by acknowledging that students may feel confused when they hear multiple teachers, including Tatsuyomi Roshi, Ryoshi Dara Roshi, Dogen Zenji, and Keizan Zenji, offer different guidance. However, the central claim is that there is ultimately only one true practice, and that confusion disappears when one understands the essence of Dogen Zenji’s teaching. A major portion of the talk examines mudra and posture in zazen. The speaker explains that teachers may describe hand position differently: Keizan Zenji advises placing the mind on the mudra or in the palm, while another teacher emphasizes placing the thumb over the middle finger, and another suggests a vertical alignment between thumb and pointing finger. The speaker warns against extremes in posture. If the thumb is too far one way, the mind becomes rigid, narrow, and contaminated; if it is too far the other way, the mind becomes overly open, loose, or careless. The correct posture is presented not as a mechanical rule but as a balanced condition in which the hands, body, and mind allow zazen to practice itself. The talk emphasizes a key Zen idea: the practitioner does not merely control the body into a fixed shape, but rather lets the mudra, hands, legs, neck, and every part of the body participate in zazen. In this view, zazen is not something the person does to the body from outside; instead, the whole body-mind is practicing together. The speaker describes this as a kind of independence in practice, where one’s own practice includes all practice, even the Buddha’s practice, and where each part of the body is itself practicing zazen. This is presented as the real meaning of practice. At the same time, the speaker addresses a practical concern: beginners and those struggling with pain or difficulty in posture may need explicit rules, effort, and a sense of right and wrong. Dogen Zenji is cited as teaching that beginners require some standard of good and bad practice, because without such guidance they cannot establish true practice. The speaker agrees that most students need to make a deliberate effort to maintain correct posture. Yet this effort should not become permanent control or rigid self-consciousness. In true practice, posture becomes natural, and the body is no longer forced in an artificial way. To illustrate this, the speaker recites Dogen Zenji’s poem about an abandoned boat on a lonesome shore, with the tide ebbed, no wind blowing, and moonlight shining in the midnight sky. The poem is interpreted as a complete image of zazen: the still boat, the calm moon, the absence of disturbance, and the whole seashore scene together express the practice of the world in stillness. The speaker suggests that one may focus on the boat or the moon, but the deeper point is that both are one whole picture, not two separate points. This image becomes a metaphor for the unity of practice, where apparent opposites are not in conflict. The talk also clarifies that Keizan Zenji’s advice about placing the mind on the mudra should not be taken as a rigid rule. Rather, the mudra itself is practicing, and the practitioner’s mind naturally belongs there when practice is mature. Similarly, Dogen Zenji’s teaching that true practice must include everyone’s practice is interpreted as a call to actual lived experience, not abstract theory. The speaker identifies this as shikantaza, or just sitting, in which practice is direct and inclusive. Finally, the speaker encourages students not to be confused by comparing teachers superficially or judging one as right and another as wrong. Instead, they should understand the purpose behind each instruction, ask questions carefully, and seek dokusan, personal guidance from a teacher. The speaker stresses that actual zazen cannot be fully explained in books because each person has different difficulties. Teachers are necessary, but they can only help those who have roots in their own practice. The closing metaphor compares practitioners to sesame seeds: without roots, they are washed away by heavy rain, but with strong roots, even difficult conditions can support growth. The talk ends by urging listeners not to lose the opportunity to practice sincerely and carefully.