This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. I think it's a little, is it a little bit too loud maybe? Is this better? So first of all, I want to apologize to everybody on the right side of the Zendo. Leslie, after I gave the last talk, came up to me and said, you're turning your head 90% of the time to your left and almost never to the right. And I was so grateful that she told me because I didn't... realized that at all and I don't know exactly why but when I came back to the Zendo you know I sat here and I tried to imagine turning my head to the right and I realized yes this is simple and this takes an effort and I think that's just a fabulous discovery so because it's

[01:26]

a discovery of a one-sidedness. Somehow, for some reason, but I'm sure it's not only in the body. So, in somatic experiencing that I occasionally take sessions in, the guy who is doing it with me, I mean, who gives me the session right now, the first time he walked around me and he walked kind of close, I mean, way closer on the right side than on the left side. He said, actually, if I would really follow the boundary of your energetic boundary, I would have to leave the room. It was not a very big room. But there is a total difference. So I thought, that's so interesting. That's also in turning. So I will make an effort, and I apologize for...

[02:27]

having that blind spot. You know, I remember last time, two days ago, somebody was pointing over here, and it took me a long time to realize that they were pointing at you, Michael, who had your hand up. So it's really a very interesting thing. So thank you, Leslie. I also want to thank the tanto for the talk yesterday, and I want to thank all of you on the left side and on the right side. for your practice. Because your presence and your practice here is what makes this happening for all of us, which encourages all of us in exactly the way you practice. What you struggle with, what you call it, this is not practice, this is something else, that we all stick with it and hang in there and keep showing up sometimes wondering why and what for, is what creates the container we're in and in which transformation may happen.

[03:37]

It's like we're doing a three-month, I want to say a nine-month, three-month ceremony. Norman Fisher said once, a ceremony, everybody, that is at the ceremony is equally important, not just the people that have an obvious task, like swinging the whisk or offering incense or bowing or chanting. It's every person's presence. All present together create a space in which transformation may happen. Not necessarily does, but may happen. And it takes everybody. So I just want to express my appreciation for all of you. It's nice to look to the right. My horizon gets bigger.

[04:40]

I also want to thank Leslie for her talk on the first day. And that poem by Harry Roberts, that he created. And Harry Roberts was actually an Irish person, but his family spent the summer up on the mouth of the Klamath River with a Yurok family, because they were friends. The fathers had kind of to do business, like to do with each other in a canary, fish canary. And so he spent his summers up there, and the... Yurok person was training him, became his spiritual teacher. So that's one of his responses to a question that was asked, and now I can't remember the question, but that seafoam is a bit of ocean caught by wind and a bit of wind caught by ocean.

[05:52]

And it's such a lovely expression of the ephemeral nature of all being and how things come into being for however long and then fade out of being. And I also was inspired by your talk, Tanto, yesterday because it kind of just connected. We all course in the same stream. It's very interesting. Schusser said, don't give the talk that I want to give. And I said, you know, my experience was when I, he didn't say today, yesterday or today, but before. And I said to him, you know, good luck. Because when I was Schusser, rep, was giving all the talks, he would inevitably... I would have the talk appear in my mind, and I was so happy, and I knew what I was going to talk about, and I could bet on it after a while that he was just going to give that talk, just before I was about to give mine.

[07:10]

And, of course, I thought way better than I could ever do it, but he was doing that, you know. So it's the old course... in the stream together, and the talks are actually inspired by your practice, by what you come and tell us, or don't ever come and tell us. It's all in there. It's all, we are so connected. So, yes, two days ago I said that Suzuki Roshi said something about dying. and I found a quote. I don't want to die. I don't know what it is going to be like when I die. Nobody knows what it is going to be like. But when I die, I'll still be a Buddha.

[08:13]

I may be a Buddha in agony, or I may be a Buddha in bliss, I will die knowing that this is how it is. And also I want to thank Ki, are you here, for your comment yesterday that the inconceivable is in your mind conceivable. And you used the example of the Taj Mahal and I think so today I want to talk about that we are Buddha that about what is it that is meant with inconceivable and also

[09:19]

I'll go back to Yun Yan, who was asked, why do you work so hard, and why don't you let the one do it that's requiring it? And he said, that one doesn't have tools. So where do I start? When Suzuki Roshi says, I don't want to die, and then he says, I don't know what it's going to be like when I die. That is true moment by moment. We do not know what the next moment is going to be like. We don't. But we all behave like we do. I'm sure about 95% of you here already know that you're going to go and leave after tea, regardless of whether you need to go to the bathroom or not.

[10:28]

The first day I was here, there were eight people in here, and yesterday there were five people remaining. And I don't know how many will remain today, but if you look into your mind, you already know you're going to do that. Who does? And what happens, this is management. This is totally something different than living. Unless you... Think you're going to do it, and then when it's time, you actually pause and check in whether you need to, whether there is a need to go, or whether it's how you think you have to manage to get through the sachin or get through the next part. That is kind of creating the life and the container that you create. You create your own repetitive experience by these management techniques.

[11:37]

I drink so and so much water, so I have to go. Can I just trust that I know when I need to go? So the inconceivable, going back to the inconceivable key, you're inconceivable. Like each one of us. Um... So, I'm just playing on your example, not saying that's exactly what you meant, because I don't know exactly what you meant. Is that okay? So, the Taj Mahal is conceivable because I can see it on a picture. Is that what you meant? Yeah. Okay, that's true. You can see a picture, and you can make, you can, based on that expression, picture, you can create an idea about that building.

[12:44]

But that picture is absolutely incapable of transmitting the experience you would have with your body if you were in front and in and around that building. That's the inconceivability. That's The actual experience of every moment is inconceivable. It can't be conceived. It can only be experienced. That's why in Buddhism it keeps pointing to, it says, words cannot reach it, but words can come from it. So One day, Huizu Suzuki used to come here for practice periods to sit the Sashin. He really disliked Zazen at that time. It was way before he became Tanto at AHE, where he sat Zazen probably, I don't know how much.

[13:50]

So he would come here during practice period for 10 days and sit the seven-day Sashin with us. And one evening service, he's the Doshi. And, you know, the Japanese have such a fluidity in their body when they move with these clothes that we inherited, which, you know, and bow. And so the Daihi Shin Duran is going on. And I'm just standing there with everybody else chanting. And all of a sudden, so this is me telling something afterwards. Because while it was happening, there was nobody there. It was just happening. There was nobody there going, okay. So all of a sudden, all the Daihi Shindurani, it's even hard to describe.

[14:54]

All the Daihi Shindurans that have been ever chanted, ever chanted, in this universe and all the ones that are going to be chanted in this universe were here, happening at the same time. And the moment something went, wow, it was like and I was outside. The I, the person that thinks me, me, I was outside. But as it was happening, there was no me. There was just happening. And in which sutra does it say, object in realization, mind and object merge? Jewel, mere samadhi? That's inconceivable.

[15:58]

That's self-receiving. Okay. Anyway, it's in many places. You find something similar. That's the beauty of it. He brings it forward in many, many forms. But that's something that I just realized. I had started again talking over there. I can tell you that. I can remember the feeling, but the feeling is not exactly how it was, and what I tell you is not conveying the experience. It may be encouraging, it may be reminding you where you have maybe something similar happen, you know, and there is a saying, actually, in reality... In ultimate reality, there is no time.

[16:59]

There's no coming, no going. There's no past, no future. It's all happening now. And it was an amazing, I mean, it was just the most amazing thing. And they were all there and chanted at the same time. So there was past and future now. right now. So that's one thing about inconceivable. So then the instruction is try, really take on that an idea is just an idea. It's not reality. A picture is just a picture. It can either draw you to go to Taj Mahal, or it can tell you, well, no, that's not where I want to go.

[18:00]

I want to go there. And that's fine. But that doesn't mean you know anything about Taj Mahal. You know something about what it looks like to you. You don't even know what that picture looks like to another person. And we cannot convey... or know the experience of the moment when your body and mind meet the moment. So when we know Sashin is coming, and we had experience of many Sashins, or the experience of Tangario and one Sashin, our minds, our self-concerned, self-worrying, self-preserving, self-protecting, self-preserving,

[19:42]

enforcing minds will immediately create a plan on how I am going to get through this. And the sad part about it is it may get you through this, but each time we do something based on an idea, the idea A shapes our because we only look for what confirms the idea. So the teacher of Harry Roberts said something, one who does not make his own trail can never approach creation. So, you know, when we give each other advice about how we did it, It's not really helpful.

[20:44]

Because each of us has to find their very own way. And it's not the way it was yesterday, and it's not the way it was tomorrow. Every sesshin is a totally different situation. So the more we... don't have space. So there's nothing wrong with this management technique. This is what I need to do and how I'm going to get through and when I need a rest on day three and I will have to go to the bathroom every kinhin just to get out of here or I stand outside and look at the mountain or I just leave. I have to leave. I can't do kinhin in here. Right? There's nothing wrong with that. If we understand it's just an idea, and when the time comes, we make a little space and see, is it really a necessity?

[21:52]

Can I actually trust and find out? No, actually, I don't need to go to the bathroom right now. So maybe I stay here and make it stay here. And then I sit the next period of Sosen and I do walking meditation. I don't break the boundary. And trust that actually if in that next period of Sosen you really, really, really have to go to the bathroom, you get up and leave quietly. So are we willing to actually meet the reality, or are we ahead of time organizing around an imagination? So, Yunyang, so I asked Tanto, can I have your notes? And he said, yes, because I will not remember.

[22:55]

I will only remember he said something. So that was important. that I want to play off of because it needs something. Yunyan, Ungan Dongzho, asked the master, every day there's hard work. Who do you do it all for? The master said, there is someone who requires it. Yunyan says, why not have him do it himself? The master said, he has no tools. So, Buddha nature, the Buddha that we are, his tools are our body. Buddha nature, per se, has no tools. Our body are the tools of Buddha nature.

[24:00]

You know, there is this Avalokiteshvara statue with a thousand arms, and each arm has an implement, and it says she who responds to the cries of all sorrows, all possible, she has the appropriate response. Actually, she's empty-handed. She's... so present in the moment that the tool appears in her hands when she hears those cries. But that's not so easy to depict. So she has all these things in her hands. Her embodiment brings forth the tools. So Hakuin says, thank you Tanto, from the beginning all beings are Buddha. like water and ice. Without water, no ice. Outside us, no Buddha. So, the thousand-arm avalokiteshvara is empty-handed.

[25:22]

is not caught in ideas or conceptions, preconceptions, ideas. Oh, this is what I'm going to meet. So that's why I find, want to really emphasize in this practice period that this is the embodiment of your life. And it's the only one each of us has got. And how can we be at peace with it and let it actually be fully alive? So how do we practice that this body is the tools of the one who requires all that work of Buddha?

[26:40]

That we are. You know, are is a being, is a verb. It's not are like it's actually something that's being. And So I want to read you a poem that tells something about that. And the poem is called Lost. It's by David Wagoner. And, you know, the teaching tells us we are usually lost in confusion. because we like and dislike all the time, most of the time, something or other. Either we dislike being overexcited, or we dislike being underexcited, or we dislike being not the right way excited, and all those variations that we have.

[27:43]

So this poem tells us something about how to practice lost. Stand still. Leslie would say stay. Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost. Wherever you are is called here. Isn't that nice? Wherever you are is called here. And You must treat it as a powerful stranger. Must ask permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen, it answers. I have made this place around you.

[28:46]

If you leave it, you may come back again, saying here. Not two trees are the same to Raven. Not two branches are the same to wren. If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, you are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows where you are. You must let it find you. So this also could apply to every moment. Wherever you are, whatever you experience is called now, here, or here, now. And you must treat it as a powerful stranger. You must ask permission to know it and be known. So it's not, oh, here, oh, I know what that is.

[29:52]

Mm, or yay, or it's needs to be treated as a powerful stranger, something you don't really know. So that requires an openness, requires an inquiring attitude. Here is the plan, the expected, the feared, the hoped for, etc., our ideas. And actually here is now the actual experience. How is it in this moment? Can I allow to feel what is here to be felt?

[30:54]

You know, in this other part, in that... quote out of Rilke's letter to a young poet when it says, maybe all those things that we fear or hear because they need to be loved by us, which is the same thing as really treated as in a radical, respectful way. Not, oh, I know what this is. Or I know, you know, we so often, I mean, we all probably have gone through variations of how we have kind of placed the other people around us, in which way we see them and kind of make little boxes around them, what we can expect from them and what we won't. And then we get put together in a new configuration and maybe we realize that's actually not how it is. You know, they're actually different than I thought they were at the beginning and I was convinced they were that way.

[31:56]

So... So that's, intimacy requires radical respect. Tenshin Anderson once said, you know, the more intimate it gets, the more formal it has to be. And in this culture, we often think the more intimate it gets, the more casual I can be. And it's totally the opposite. Because the more intimate it gets, the more vulnerable it gets. And the more respect, radical respect, and carefulness, full of care, is absolutely crucial. Ask permission to know it. So if something that you think is so familiar, can you treat it as a powerful stranger and ask permission to know it? If you think that's a totally different attitude than going saying, I know who you are or what you are, and I like or don't like you.

[33:00]

go away or stay. So, and welcome. Somebody's coming in. So, can I allow to be open to what presents itself as an experience? And let the seeing or the seeing just be seeing. Let hearing just be hearing. Let feeling just be feeling. Let conceiving or thinking just be thinking. Without making a future out of it, or without making it a definition about you, about me, I, mine, myself, and I. Not grasping. That was also so eloquently in what the tanto talked about yesterday.

[34:02]

All those, if you cling to it, you're outside of it. If you cling to this or that or the other, it separates you. And to quote Hakuin again, also from the Tanto. Nirvana is right here before our eyes. In each moment, Dharma gates are boundless. Each moment is a Dharma gate. Each experience in which ever way presents itself is a Dharma gate. This very place is Lotus Land. This very body is Buddha. So I wanted to encourage you to really see, because what it seems to me, too, is I want to encourage you to pay attention to transitions from sitting

[35:27]

walking, from sitting to unwrapping the balls, to eating, to being served, to cleaning the balls, and be in your body and hear what your body's feel, the kinesthetic feeling, hear the sounds you're making, how you're walking up the stairs. It seems to me when Zazen is over, in some ways you leave your bodies, it feels like that. The bodies are left and kind of run behind the head. That goes wherever it's going. So also, after this talk, when there's open Zazen, can you move with that same... presence in your body to where you're going to sit and not think, oh, I'm going to sit there.

[36:29]

And from here to there, you're somewhere else. You're not with it. You're ahead already where you're going to sit. Or I don't know what you're going to do. But can we try to stay stay while we move with the embodiment because your body is what expresses your Buddha nature or what expresses Buddha nature. It's not your Buddha nature, but it comes through you in a very particular, individual, inconceivable way because it's an alive thing. It's all the time changing. It comes through in key way and in Grant way and in Catherine way and in Elizabeth way and in all these ways. So when we're caught in this is I, this is myself, this is me, when a familiar feeling comes, oh,

[37:49]

I have these fears since I can remember. So if we have fears or anger or whatever since we can remember, we have managed, we have developed management techniques around those to minimize them, distract ourselves, not feel them. When they come up and it's like, oh, this is so old, this is so me, so myself, then it's time to stand still and treat it as a powerful stranger. Really become interested in getting to know it beyond what you always thought it was, because it's not what you thought it was. And if it was then what you thought it was, it's definitely not the same today. When it was 60 years ago, how could it be the same today?

[38:50]

It's not. Can we become interested? However, I want to qualify that. If you feel that what you're facing or what's coming up when you're sitting gets bigger and bigger and bigger and you feel like you're... you're drowning in it or you're being overwhelmed by it, then maybe it's high time to go talk to one of us. Because sitting, for example, is not necessarily good when you are prone to very deep depressions or clinical depression. It may be very good, but it may not be. And so it's not like, oh, then I should just sit more and that's better. If you stay really in touch with your body and your mind, you can feel when it's time, when it's not helping you to get more free, but making you more afraid or more incapacitates you.

[40:06]

So that's what... practice discussions and doxans are for. So avail yourself. Thank you, Kitchen. And I'll read one more little thing from Rilke and then I'm closing. He says, also in letters to a young poet, only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude anything, any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.

[41:07]

So I think I would say only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with all beings as something alive and will himself or herself sand the depths of his or her own being. To the degree we deny or exclude what presents itself to that degree, we estrange ourselves from our own being. We separate ourselves from our own being. It's nice to look to the right. Anybody would like to say something?

[42:11]

Yes, Eli. I do try to go to the bathroom as a reflection so that I can sit more. Or if I don't manage myself to get up at 3.50 in the morning, days in advance, and get up to the moment, I will stay. Have you tried not to manage three days ahead to get out of bed?

[43:23]

I think an intention, so Blanche has a great way of doing it. She says, I get up, and I just get up, and when I get up and get dressed, when my body tells me it's not a good idea, then I stay. I don't go. So she doesn't, she finds out. So I don't think all intention or implementing a practice is only bad management, or all management is bad. But if we don't pause and look, what is it? So some of them are helpful in the long run, and we find they're helpful, because I want to do the practice period, so what helps me get up? So that's good. But all these ideas we have, I can do this or I can't do this or I have to do it this way, there's more options is what is encouraged.

[45:06]

So our intention really does help us, like coming here helped you to say goodbye to Kat at Jamesburg. But also something helped you to decide you she wouldn't come here, and you would be here for a few days, and then she would leave, which was an earlier idea, right? So there was some life in there that shifted the idea. You didn't just stop with it. Is that helpful? But maybe that's also something to talk more in detail. Thank you. Yes, Kim. Is there some sort of way of adding to that experience of exercise?

[46:18]

No. So when I say when fear comes up, then meet it. It's the instruction. But if we're ready, if we're available, if we're ready to meet it, we might actually find out this is not a good... environment to experience my fear. So then we leave the environment, or we go talk to somebody, or we use our usual techniques in which how we don't feel the fear that is around. But sometimes, like maybe in the Zendo, it's a good place, or maybe by the creek is a good place to When it comes up, it's not like, oh, I should study my fear now. You try to pull it up. That doesn't really work. But when it gets triggered by something, then it's like, use your body rather than your head.

[47:18]

Where in my body is it actually manifesting? Where do I feel it? Is it sitting in my throat? Is it sitting in my neck? Is it sitting in my stomach? And how? Is it a clump? Is it cold? Is it jittery? What kind of energy is it? Because it's an energy. Ultimately it's an energy. And can I just feel it and notice when my mind spins a story and says that makes it more fear because usually fear has something to do with an imagination that is in the future. I'll I don't know what it is. I mean, one of mine could now be, oh, wow, my brain injury is going to create dementia for me. It's in the realm of possibilities, of all the possibilities. So that would be, I feel not quite uncertain in my body, uncertain in my feelings.

[48:28]

like two days ago, and then my mind goes, oh, is this because of that? And what is going to happen? And then just the day before I came, Marsha told me of somebody in the group who has Alzheimer's, who I knew, who a totally intelligent, creative person has Alzheimer's since a few years, and she tells me she now doesn't know how to walk anymore. And I thought, oh. I have a little moment of, because usually when I come in here, my body just knows what to do, but that day it was just uncertain what to do. And I thought, oh, I can relate to that. It's possible not to know anymore how to walk. That your body mind doesn't know anymore how walking goes. And I thought, oh, that's actually wonderful to... it's a gift to have a little bit of feeling. But if my mind goes in the future with that, I become fearful.

[49:31]

So fear very often has something to do with a projection into the future from what you feel right now. So then you come back and go, no, we're not in the future. I have no idea. I can't know what's going to happen in the future. Here, right now, it feels that way. And the lifespan of an emotion is 90 seconds. So for us to have those long experiences, it has something to do with how we think around them and how we act around them. And it has also something to do with what chemical reactions the feelings produce, which take longer to go away. The feeling doesn't have to stay. It comes, goes, comes, goes, comes, goes. And if we don't spin it and entertain it, then we can watch the coming, going, coming, going, and then it gets smaller because our body regulates.

[50:41]

Is that helpful? By feeling it. Feeling its coming and goings. as an experience, tightening of wherever it's tightening the fear. But that's also something that might be good to talk more about in a one-to-one situation. Thank you. It's a scientific thing. Well, I have to look it up again, but it is... Yes, Grant. We keep triggering it.

[52:04]

Physiological reaction. It's an interesting book to read. She was a physiologist, I think. And she had a stroke. And she could actually understand that she was having a stroke. And then she can... describe her recovery and one part that's so interesting in her recovery because what happened is she suddenly was living more her the stroke was in her left brain and she was more located and aware in her right brain where there was connection bliss interconnection and then when her left brain started to recover there was a place where she could feel her own old patterns of self coming back. And she had a choice whether she wanted to re-engage those or whether she wanted to just notice them and not re-engage them.

[53:08]

It's a really fabulous book to read. So thank you. I didn't remember that it was in that book. Yes, Rachel. I kind of have the same question. It lasts 90 seconds, the emotion, but the problem is if I feel love for somebody, it lasts 90 seconds, but every time I see them, the same conditions that created the love for 90 seconds are renewed over and over. And if I hate somebody, my continued hate isn't so much a matter of harboring ill will as that my ill will is constantly renewed by the same conditions over and over.

[54:15]

Yes, but it's a great question. I think it would be really interesting to look where the hate comes from. Ninety percent of the time, hate is based on fear. So below the aggression or the hate is actually a fear. And when you get to the fear, you have another access than if you try to deal with it on the next upper level, It's harder to get to. So you have to really... So that's what Thich Nhat Hanh says, is what you do in meditation. You look at what's the cause of it, what lies below it, and what... And... Yeah. And I would also say, actually, love is not the feeling, ultimately. Love is an attitude, which is...

[55:20]

way bigger than any feeling. That's what's... Unconditional love is not the feeling. Unconditional love is an attitude of radical respect towards everything and is something we can actually train ourselves in. Thank you. Yes? Jane. dogs I work with. I work with rescued pit bulls of unknown history. And some of them can be triggered in progression. And it's interesting to, you know, reflecting on what you just said, that yes, that it's like there's this intensity, flashback for 90 seconds.

[56:22]

Then there's the hormone energy that lasts for about 30 minutes, if we can get them into a quiet place, then if there is a change, a very quick change, they can still be reactivated very easily and see another dog or something like that. But if we just leave them, they'll gradually, the chemicals gradually leave And you can see the agitation, correct? Yes. As long as they're not restimulating. Yes. And the threshold of restimulation gets always smaller. So that's when you have a day, and this went wrong, and this went wrong, and this went wrong, and this went wrong. And then you get home, and then this tiny, tiny little thing goes wrong, and you just blast your partner.

[57:24]

It's totally unreasonable for what it is you're blasting the person for, but it's because the threshold for being triggered got always smaller. It's quicker. She wants it, she wants it now, and if she doesn't get it now, she will attack. So we're just teaching her to wait two seconds. Three seconds. And you can just see it, and then she gets the reward to holding still. And then on down again, gradually conditioning or counter conditioning. I just see us practicing just all the time. With treats. Stay, stay.

[58:29]

Meet it, stay. Now you can have your cookie. But it is the same thing. Can we leave it alone? We can barely leave anything alone. And when we don't leave it alone, when we get in there and say, why me? Why not me? Somebody said, it's a good question. When you say, why me? Just say, why not me? That helps. Should it be somebody else? No, just why not me? But if we get in there with that, we don't get to see what it is. We are immediately deluded. And that's what gives it the power and ties us to it. So it's the stay and let it be. Be curious what it is when you don't get in there and meddle with it. So, okay, so we can all have mental treat.

[59:38]

bowls in front of us. Can I stay with this for one more breath? Anyway, I think we stayed long enough in here. Unless there's something... No, it doesn't look like it. So please, when you see if you can... how you can be connected to this body getting up and going where it's going and pay attention to what your mind is doing and where your body is and can they be one. And that you experience your body doing what it's doing, when it gets up and when it moves, wherever it's going to move. Thank you so very much.

[60:42]

Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

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