This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. and red over there in the kitchen room. It's great. When I spoke to you on the first day of Sashin, I mentioned from the Fukun Zengi the instruction to take the backward step that turns our light around to illuminate the self. I imagine that you've all been doing that.

[01:10]

And this morning when I was trying to settle what do I really want to say today on the sixth day of Sashin in this rare life that we're living together I thought I felt that there were several things that become apparent when we do that. When we sit quietly, focusing on what's happening here. And there are many ways of saying different things that happen there. So just for today, I'll say, I think I'm going to say three things. that happen, that we notice. Not that happen all the time, but that we notice when we are turning the light around.

[02:16]

I think we notice, or I notice anyway, that there isn't permanence here. You know, there's change that happens. There may be something that feels stuck. There may be something that lasts a while. There may be something or things that last longer than I would like them to. And yet, even in stillness, there's some sense of flowing or of movement. That's number one. Number two, that Some portion of that change can be pretty directly attributed to things impacting me.

[03:18]

Things being other people. Things being, you know, the sun coming up, the temperature changing, breakfast arriving, a memory coming up. So these things can be internal or external, but there's some responsiveness to them. If I'm sitting there still, as still as I can get, eruptions can happen. Big movement can happen, or small movement can happen. But it's a kind of, it doesn't... Some of it may seem like it comes out of the blue, but watching it, kind of being there with it, most of it I can see, oh, it's responsiveness to something or to maybe many things.

[04:21]

And number three, I think... Anyway, for me, Zazen and especially Sesshin has led over the years to seeing more and more subtly, actually, kind of in smaller doses, how I can and do increase the suffering of myself and others by holding on, that the suffering has to do with tightening or grasping, and that if I increase that, this flowing system gets some kind of a kink in it or some kind of a knot in it, and that knot can be manifested in various ways, but a lot of it happens, or starts anyway, in my body.

[05:34]

Like, I will have an emotional knot that goes on and on and on, you know, in defiance of impermanence, for, I don't know, you know, can go on for days or minutes that feel like days. And that when there's either, you know, for some known reason or more often from some unknown reason, there's a letting go of that there's movement again. And sometimes it's amazing how gone the suffering is. How something that was causing a lot of suffering is then just like, where did it go? So I think this... of how things work is pretty accurate and pretty transferable to everyday life.

[06:50]

That we actually do make our world, help make our world, help make each other. That we I think a lot of people when they come to Tassajara think, I'm just going to go there and sit quietly. And, you know, I don't know, get to know myself, be enlightened, something that will be monastic. You know, it will be like me meeting me. And then they come here and they're very surprised at how interactive it is. How, what a big... We're supposed to be having a practice period, and there's a lot of silence, and there is, but then there's a lot of non-silence, too. There's a lot of day-off meals and work time where people are telling you what to do, or you have to tell them what to do.

[07:54]

Or there's somebody sitting next to you that does these things, which are not leaving you alone. Where's my alone time I was going to get? You know, this elusive alone time, which really doesn't exist. I mean, I personally can't really imagine going out and being a hermit, but people do that. Maybe some of you would like to do that. But I imagine that even out there, that there's like big impacts, you know, from all kinds of... creatures, great and small. So I think this is how things actually work. This is how the world is made. This is Indra's net. This is where everything is actually reflected in us and we are reflected in it. And reflected is such a nice, calm word.

[08:59]

But it's really much more alive than that. It's like someone says something to you and something in you goes and then the next thing happens. Some kind of energy exchange happens or maybe actually words happen. Right now, again, it's pretty simplified. We aren't exchanging very many words. We're perhaps... not even exchanging very many looks. And we aren't having any day-off meals. Isn't that wonderful? For seven whole days, no day-off meals. And even then, we are communicating with each other. We're having an effect on each other. But it's simplified enough that we can see this movement in us. And maybe we can... get a taste for how fluid it is, how, you know, it's not stuck.

[10:02]

I once said to Reb, my teacher, I can't remember what it was, but I confessed some habit that I had, and I asked him, would he tell me if he saw me doing it? And he said, no. No, I'm not going to take up that practice. He said, a lot of other people will probably tell you if they see you doing it, now that you've seen it. And I'm busy. I'm looking. I'm acting for me. If I have a reaction to it, I'll tell you. But I'm not going to promise to go around watching you. I thought, oh, that was very interesting. That's not really his job. His job is to be who he is. Each of us, our job is to be who we are in this very, very alive mandala that's functioning.

[11:06]

It's functioning, and we're part of it. So we wonder, well, what should I do? If I'm like a crucial cog in this alive mandala that's our world, and I want to benefit beings, what should I do? And in the harmony of difference and equality, you know, it says light and dark are like the front and back foot in walking. They pose one another like the front and back foot in walking. So light and dark can be translated as knowing and not knowing. For instance, knowing what to do and not knowing what to do. knowing how to act, knowing how to respond, and not knowing how to respond. And this poem of ours says they're opposed to each other. Light and dark are opposed to each other. You can know something, you can not know something.

[12:09]

And we feel that opposition. But they're not opposed to each other in the normal way of polarizing and pulling on each other. They're opposed like the front and back foot in walking. They're opposed in a totally necessary way. Like, you know, one steps forward, the other responds. So knowing steps forward, and we have some idea about what I should do. But not knowing is right there, having its place, having its effectiveness. And not knowing steps forward, and we don't know what to do. But some knowing is there, holding the backward step. you know, holding the balance while we step forward with knowing or not knowing. So this is the, you know, we could say precarious, unsafe, or vital way that we live. We live with some reactiveness, responsiveness happening in us, and knowing more and more, knowing that this is having an impact.

[13:18]

So what kind of an impact should it have? How should I hold it so that it has a beneficial impact? Not knowing is there. It is very unsafe if our goal is to be right. Then it's really hard because we don't know. We've got this huge back foot of not knowing. And then it becomes the front foot. We really don't know. So, you know, if we need to be right, or we need to be good, or we need to be sure that they're going to like it, it's pretty unsafe. On the other hand, that is the way it is. There's so much that we don't know. There's so much that is not under the direction of our thinking mind.

[14:25]

There's so much that's just happening toward us and from us, from our responsiveness to something that's happening now, from our responsiveness to something that happened a long time ago, something that happened when we were young, something that happened before we were born. There's a lot happening. It's not really our job to be totally in control of that. It is our job to essentially do zazen with it, to be upright, as upright as we can be in our precarious circumstances, and have our eyes open. Sho Ako Akramora says this. A baby, just being 100% a baby, has the energy to negate babyhood. Now, if you know any babies, which all of you do, you happen to know my granddaughter, you've seen her a little bit at least, this is really true.

[15:35]

If you watch a baby, you may not have had the chance or been inclined, for that matter, to watch her as closely as I have, for instance. But... It's like this force inside them. It's like a force to grow, to learn to walk, to learn to talk. Ryo will say, she'll be doing something, and then she'll look up and she'll say, hot, hot, just to remind you that, or it feels like, just to remind you that she knows hot. Now she knows hot. And then she'll say the next, some other thing that she's learned. It's like this, I have to practice these things. There's a force inside me that says, move my legs, try to stand up. When they're just learning to stand, it's palpable. This is like this force that's saying, stand up, stand up, stand up.

[16:36]

And so a baby, when it's being just 100% a baby, has the energy to negate babyhood and become a boy or a girl. When we do something wholeheartedly with full attentiveness, that focused practice provides the energy that enables us to grow. In this sense, a baby is not simply a baby. Within wholeheartedly being a baby, the baby negates babyhood. Our zazen practice is the same as this. Within wholeheartedly being us, This energy to grow and to change and to respond is fully there. And it's mainly, maybe the only hampering of it is our holding on to some idea of how we should be.

[17:36]

Or how, yeah, mostly how we should be. I mean, it might reflect how somebody else should be, like they shouldn't be like that because it makes me an unhappy person and I should be a happy person. It's kind of some complicated thinking going on there, but it's basically holding on to some idea of how I should be that stops this energy that negates how we are and makes us into the next thing. This is... I'm doing the same thing I told you. I've been looking over this way the whole time. For some reason, you guys. are hard to look at. No, you're not. You're really beautiful. Sorry. Now what was I saying? Does anyone remember? Negating. Negating.

[18:38]

It's all right. Say it again. Negating what you are to be what you're going to be. I think, so let me think. It's so interesting. This is this poem that I've read before here that came to me from my dear friend Tia Strozer, the Shuso's teacher. We used to have some intense times here at Tassajara, she and I. I want to tell you about a different friend first.

[19:43]

Over this weekend, I think Saturday, I think Saturday, Steve Stuckey gave lay entrustment to Elizabeth Sawyer. Some of you remember Elizabeth. She was here just a couple practice periods ago when Steve was leading the practice period. And she had some other ideas about what she wanted to do in terms of progressing in her practice. And Steve got cancer, and he offered her lay entrustment. As she said to me in an email, I didn't argue with him at that point. So they had, I think, a beautiful ceremony where she received a green rakasu. And I'm really happy, and I think this is one of the things that Steve was really wanting to do something, do something with Elizabeth, because she's been practicing a long time. She was at... Zen Center before I came.

[20:44]

She was here with Suzuki Roshi, she and her husband, and also then at Tassahara. When I first came to Tassahara, they were both here at Tassahara. And she's practiced really hard. She has two sons, one who is a little bit older than my girls and was one of the First, along with Darlene Cohen's son and David Chadwick's son, were some of the first children at Zen Center, and they paved the way for many other children at Zen Center, sometimes in kind of painful ways for them. While they, with their energy, with their just being babies and young boys, made Zen center into a Western Zen center, a place where families and children were living and practicing. And then years later, Elizabeth and Ken had another baby who is Jonathan, who is and is until this day very, very disabled.

[21:59]

And basically her whole life was turned toward taking care of Jonathan for 20 years. I mean, he has never been able to stand by himself. He can communicate, but he was a full load of mothering and caring for him. And it was amazing to watch. I mean, here was this person who was just having a baby like the rest of us. I think her second son is younger than both of my kids, so I had two children. And you have a baby, and it takes a lot of energy, a lot of energy. But still, life goes on, and you're enjoying all this babiness changing. And then here's this child that's not going to do all of those things. And she just totally took it on, just changed her whole life, both of them, and took it on. So before she had Jonathan, that's just kind of a tribute to Elizabeth and a way to practice, a way that she practiced really wholeheartedly.

[23:04]

And when he was 20, just to finish that, he went to live in a home, which was actually better for him to have some independence from his parents, actually. And so then Elizabeth sort of had a life again. and had to figure out what to do with it, and came back to practice. They have a Zando at their house, and this lay entrustment ceremony is kind of a capping of that, of Steve saying, yeah, this is great, carry on being yourself wholeheartedly. I don't know if this fits in, but one of my main memories of Elizabeth, we're kind of different. She's pretty expressive emotionally, And her emotions go through really high. When she was here, she had about, I don't know how many meltdowns that she would call me to her room and say, I've had another meltdown. So, you know, her emotions kind of go through big sweeps. And, you know, I have emotions.

[24:09]

Some of you may wonder, but I do. But mostly they go through, you know, they're kind of like smaller. and probably usually slower. And back in those days, I didn't really, and maybe still, I'm not sure, didn't look for contact with people who might be pulling my emotions in big sweeps along with theirs. So we were both practicing at Zen Center, and it was fine. There wasn't any big problem that I knew of, but... We weren't close friends. And then one night I had this dream. And I'm not totally sure. Anyway, what I think it was was that she was riding on a camel and coming, like, straight toward me. And then I don't remember what happened. But something like that. It was, like, you know, somewhat maybe I went between the camel's legs or I don't know what.

[25:11]

But anyway... A non-disastrous encounter happened, but it was kind of intense. It was this Elizabeth riding on a camel and coming directly towards me. So it was just a dream, and I think I wrote it down. I could probably find it. But then I was in Zen Center, and I think I was going out the door, and she happened to be coming in. And for some reason, it just came out of my mouth that I'd had this dream, and I told her about it. that she was riding on this camel and coming, kind of charging toward me. And she said, oh, you had my dream. I've always thought of you as a camel. You carry your own water, and I want to, I'm jealous of you for that. I want that capacity, and I've resented you somewhat for it, you know, that you could carry your own water. And I was like, whoa. It was like all new information, you know, like that she resented me, that I had this camel capacity, which, you know, rang somewhat true.

[26:23]

So anyway, it was interesting. It really put a whole other element in our relationship. I don't know if there's anything more to be said about that, except we are having this impact on each other. We're probably having each other's dreams. And a lot of the time, we don't know it. We spare each other telling us about it very kindly. Don't tell everybody about the dreams you have about them. We often don't. But once in a while, we do. And once in a while, it's like, oh. Wow, how are we interconnected? So Tia, also, I'm very interconnected with. And we had, as I say, a very alive time here at Tassajara with several disagreements about different things, most of which I can't remember now. I would love to tell you a story if I can remember any, but maybe it's better that I not.

[27:28]

Anyway, it was intense. And then one of the times when we had probably made up again, she gave me this poem. It's from a koan. I don't know which one. She just wrote Genro down here. I don't know who Genro is, but that's who said this, I guess. True friendship is beyond intimacy and alienation. Between meeting and not meeting, no difference. On the fully blossomed plum tree, south branch owns the whole spring, north branch owns the whole spring. True friendship is beyond intimacy and alienation. It doesn't feel that way to us most of the time.

[28:31]

You know, we feel like, you know, if my friends or my friends were not alienated, you know, we're intimate. But intimacy can be connectedness. We think of, well, connectedness would be pleasant, right? But connectedness is not always pleasant. Connectedness is sometimes unpleasant. Sometimes we have a negative impact on each other. Just because. Because we sneeze in a certain way, and the other person has receptors for sneezing in that way that says, ugh. Or we laugh in a certain way, and the other person has spaces in them where that kind of laughter makes them feel put down. Or sometimes we get close enough to each other that... You know, we touch areas that are sensitive, and we respond, and we hurt each other.

[29:39]

And life at Tassajara is really a test of this. Are we true friends? Can true friendship be beyond intimacy and alienation, between meeting and not meeting no difference? And I think Zazen and Sashin especially is really an exploration of this. It's like if we sit as upright as we can or lay, if we're laying or standing or walking as upright as we can and are really trying to be in touch with or be present for. I change that because being in touch with can sound like we should be mentally... able to control it or name it. But that's not so much the point. We don't have to control or name what's happening here.

[30:44]

We just have to be open to it. And open to it mainly means we aren't doing our habitual way of getting away from it. We aren't pushing it or pulling for something else. We're just present. with what's happening here, which does not necessarily mean calm, like a pond with no ripples. It's a very alive thing, and sometimes it means telling the person your dream, or sometimes it means out of your mouth comes a painful word, or out of your body comes pharognomes, whatever they are, and they have some impact on people around us. So it's a very alive thing, but we, through something like Sashin, we can learn to see, oh, this is a flowing, alive, out of control, and yet totally interactive with my intention and my energy.

[32:02]

life that's happening here. South Branch owns the whole spring. North Branch owns the whole spring. Everybody is one of these active jewels. Everybody's having a flow, sometimes a rampage of things happening. Everybody, everything. Every flower, every... bug walking on the ground is reacting. Having a reaction, putting out their energy, creating our world. One more. This is what Uchiyama Roshi said on the last day of his life. And... We can imagine that on the last day of his life, he was, you know, fairly, what do you call it?

[33:15]

What do you call it when, you know, all the waters evaporated off and it's just down to the essence? It's like he was distilled. He was fairly distilled. You know, here's what I want to say. I mean, I think he died of old age, so it wasn't like he just died in a car accident and happened to say this beforehand. He had been preparing to die, and this is what he said on the last day. Just bow. Putting my right and left hand together as one, I just bow. Just bow to become one with Buddha and God. Just one to become one... Just bow to become one with everything I encounter. Just bow to become one with myriad things. Just bow as life becomes life. Just bow.

[34:16]

Putting my right and left hands together as one, I just bow. Just bow to become one with Buddha and God. Just bow to become one with everything I encounter. Just bow to become one with all myriad things. Just bow as life becomes life. So this is one way of expressing our possible attitude toward the world, you know, and all the parts of it, all the individual parts of it, that is just bowing to it, just receiving, just becoming one with. What he doesn't go on to say is when we become one with something, when something comes to us, it changes us.

[35:23]

We're then a different thing. And we might just be bowing, But we are also communicating. We're also sending back energy. We're making the world into its next incarnation. And yet we can have this attitude of just receiving, just being. Just receiving, just being. Just receiving, just being. And with that wholehearted energy, Leslie negates Leslie. Each of us negate ourself and become the next self. I think as we see that this is what's happening,

[36:26]

At the same time, this question comes up for us, is this all right? Is that okay to just be the next being? Shouldn't I have a plan to be a better being so that as something comes in and I react to it, I go in the right direction, not in the wrong direction? But also, this is the wonder in a way of zazen, that these two things happen simultaneously, that we see this is happening and we see it can't be any other way. And I believe what we see is it's okay. It actually, part of what we see is how we create suffering and the capacity to not hold to our ideas, to not tense, as things are moving comes at the same time.

[37:30]

Some capacity to not tense, to not hold on, to not try to make people and things into what we think they should be. And that that is actually less suffering. And still we don't know. We don't know what we should do. We don't know how to you know, save the world. But we can go the next step. Put our knowing step forward, and then our unknowing foot comes forward, and then we put our knowing foot forward, and then our unknowing foot comes forward, and we walk. We bow. We walk. So I'm wondering, do any of you have any questions or comments? Yes, Aaron. Something like that.

[38:40]

It actually says friendship is beyond intimacy and alienation, but that's OK. Yeah. True friendship is beyond intimacy. You were saying intimacy is beyond preference. Pointing out that non-logic. Do you have an idea of what it might be saying? Yes. Good. That's good. saying that we don't know whether we're intimate, whether we meet. Yes. Yeah, I think that's true. Probably true, that's what the poem is saying, and also I think true in our life, that we, like the dream, you know, like, how was I having her dream?

[39:44]

How did that happen? Whatever, that's what she said, that's one way of looking at it, but what was really going on there? are we intimate with each other I think or yeah what is intimacy are we intimate when we think we are or when we think we aren't what does that really have to do with the fullness of reality Yeah. He said, what are we accepting when we practice accepting our life? If that's what zazen is about, accepting our life, what does that mean?

[40:45]

If we don't even know when we're intimate, when we aren't, or if we are this intimate, that we don't even know who we are because it's constantly being made, yes. what are we accepting, but also what are the options? No, we could not accept that. Interesting. You know, we don't accept it regularly. And then we see, oh, this causes suffering, I think. Thank you. Is there more? Ryan? So you said there's like, you talked about a certain... flow that gets Rio to take her first steps or that gets us to become the next mandala piece or position in the mandala? Yes. And what I'm curious about is, is there anything for us to do other than to stop getting in the way of that flow?

[41:49]

You know, stopping getting in the way of that flow is a really, it's a It's a big order. So I don't know that we... And given that we are so alive, the flow is us and is so intimately... We are so intimately activated by things. I don't know if there's room to do anything more. I think... I mean, there are all kinds of practices one can do, but... Most of them in other traditions, although we do plenty of them here, too. We do oryoki. It's good to eat. It's good to sleep. It's good to come into the zendo in a certain way, sit down in a certain way. But I think really the main practice place is to notice when we tighten.

[42:57]

Now, that's one kind of simple physical way of saying it. And given this is Soto Zen, I think that's kind of what it comes down to. It's like we notice I'm tightening here. I'm tightening around this idea. I'm tightening around this experience. And it's causing more pain. It's causing more pain for me. If I open my mouth now or if I look at somebody, it's going to cause more pain for them. Can I... Let go of that. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. When we notice that and we try to let go of it and it just stays tight, I would suggest you just keep your eye on it because it's a potentially suffering-causing situation because all of our habits, or I don't know about all, but a lot of our habit goes toward how do I get away from this, and that means more tightening. Yes, read.

[44:06]

Well, I think it might be different in different situations. Do you want to say something more? Should you try to go forward? Not necessarily. I think first is just stop. Now, life is flowing along at a pace, right? So we're sitting here in the Zendo and something comes up like that. I would say rather than, okay, let's just dive in and feel it. Let's say it's an emotion or an old feeling, and you've noticed that what you normally do is, I don't know what, divert or get angry or... And it's like, okay, that's causing more suffering. I'm going to try not to do that. So maybe I should try to dive into it and tell myself the story that brings it up so I can... Sometimes, sometimes that might be an okay thing to do, but if you're really at that level of staying with it, I would suggest just stay there and see what happens.

[45:38]

You might go toward it. It might disappear totally. It's just what happens on a more organic level than thinking out what I should do. Again, in life and even sometimes in zazen, things are happening faster than that. And then you might go toward it. But I don't think that's the prescription. Yes, deep, deep. Is there a way to break through it by going towards it? Well, again, if you're right there and an instinct tells you to go toward it, fine. But I don't think it's like, go toward it. You've got to get through this. Because it's not anything, really.

[46:41]

It's just energy tied up. Right? Now, if there's another person there who's bringing it up for you, then, you know, there's a person there. And they're bringing up some old thing of yours, but they've got their own stuff. You know, it gets a lot more complicated. Still, there's not like a right answer. The main, I don't know, main thing. I probably say that about 60 times today, but one major thing is how... Back to the first point, how changing it is. That can be there as a solid thing that has run your life for, in our case, 60-some years. If we don't do our habit around it, it can be just gone. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes there are remnants of it or more of it.

[47:43]

So it's not like that can be our goal, but it can be our goal not to just respond with old habits of more typing. Thank you. Anything else? A few more minutes if anyone has anything else. We will stop. Thank you all very much. For more information visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[48:32]

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