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. I don't know how it is for you, but for me, when we chant these things, I more and more see how they're all talking about the same thing. in different ways. It's like a weaving of, you know, what has the... I can't remember the title. To do with what we talked about. You made yourself Everything is expounding the Dharma.

[01:08]

So it says, you know, oh, can't you hear me? Oh, I'm not even. Like this. See? We help each other. That's what I also want to talk about today with Sarah. Good morning. Can you hear me? Okay. This is a new beginning. And it's like it always is. You know, I can't just continue because that is gone.

[02:11]

Now is another moment. So in Bhutan, Marsha and I went to Bhutan two years ago. Yes, two years ago. And we originally signed up for a group event because that was all we could afford. We should have had 8 to 12 people. And so about six weeks before we leave, we get an email saying we are the only one in the group and it's happening anyway. And in Bhutan, which is the smallest, very small country, and is I think the only remaining country where actually the whole administration, the whole life, is based on Buddhist teaching and Buddhist practice. So the young king, who was getting married about two weeks after we had finished our trip, was living in a monastery for a while, and everything is based on Buddhist teaching, which is an amazing experience.

[03:29]

So we arrived, and because he was getting married, The flights in which are limited, the numbers, were booked out. So when other people wanted to sign up for the same tour, there were no space. But they didn't cancel the tour. So we had a private tour. The four-wheel SUV is a fabulous guide, fabulous driver, and we became family. first thing that happens at the airport, we are greeted by our guide with one of those white scarves. And he says, welcome. You are family. That we meet here means we have met in innumerable lives and we will continue to meet again. And that's how they treated us.

[04:32]

And this is what Buddhism is talking about. So I want to propose that all of us being in this practice period, our family, we've met innumerable lifetimes before. That's why we meet again. And we will again. We've been each other's mother, fathers, lovers, children, dogs, cats, birds. Everything. And Pema Chodron says, and I read it everywhere, that all the ingredients for each one of us to be fully awake or to fully wake up, to fully be alive and be fully human, Because the human potential is to be completely awake.

[05:39]

That is inherent in human nature, in human birth. All those ingredients are always present in every moment and in every experience and in every circumstance of your life. There's never one missing. So that means also each one of us is an ingredient. And if one of us wakes up, we all made it possible. Each one of us was one of those ingredients that made that possible. We're part of that awakening. So everybody, regardless of how they appear to our habitual mind and our habituated perception are actually an ingredient and a catalyst and a doorway.

[06:44]

Dharma gates are boundless, vowing to enter them, or a Dharma gate for us, are actually here to help us wake up by being who they are. So, You know, a while ago, I think two days ago, I said, how about treating everybody as Buddha, including this being? Treating every situation, every experience as awakening, as a potential for awakening. So when we do that, we can also formulate it differently. We can say... How about practicing radical respect? Radical meaning everything gets equal, space, respect, independent and regardless of whether likes or dislikes arise.

[07:51]

I don't like you. I like you. I'm angry. There's sadness, resistance. In the Maha'ati, The Perfection of Wisdom, it says, The whole universe is open and unobstructed, everything mutually interpenetrating. Since all things are naked, clear and free from obscurations. There is nothing to attain or realize. The everyday practice is simply to develop a complete acceptance. Suzuki Roshi would say, see things as they are.

[08:56]

A complete acceptance. that everyday practice is simply to develop a complete acceptance and openness to all situations, emotions, and to all people, experiencing everything totally, without mental reservations and blockages, so that one never withdraws or centralizes onto one's self or ideas of self. So in this sentence it says, when we are not open to the experience because we don't like it, or we don't know what to do with it, or for whatever reason, we create a separation. And it's that self, that idea of self that can or can't or doesn't want to or doesn't like it or wants something else.

[10:04]

God gets in the way. These are the blockages and obscurations. The everyday practice is simply to develop a complete acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions and to all people experiencing everything totally without mental preservations and blockages. That hinges us to fall into self, that self, that is our habits and ideas about ourselves, the world, and people, and what we can expect and what we can't expect. and how it's going to be, always has been, and always will be forever. When we have that, that's a sure sign the self is operating. You can't just say, thank you very much, but I'm not going to just go with that.

[11:10]

When it's that forever, it's always been that way, and here I am again, and it's always happening to me, and it won't change. And then when somebody offers you another view, you go, but, yes, but, that's also a sure sign. So we have a lot of help. You know, yesterday after Leslie's talk, what kept coming to my mind was that phrase, the unbearable lightness of being. And it just kept coming through. And I know there's a book by Milan Candera who wrote as a title, but it's just that phrase came through over and over, the unbearable lightness of being. And I thought, oh, it's unbearable.

[12:16]

Being is not something we have to bear. And we can't stand it. We are so used to bear our life, our mistakes, our terrible being, you know, what we think we are and how we can't be happy because, or that we bear. And we're so used to bear, so it's unbearable. If we treat everybody differently, As Buddha, it's very simple. We don't have to think, do I like it, do I not like it? We just go like this, and with curiosity, with openness, because it's teaching us something. So shikantaza, shikan means wholeheartedly, wholeheartedness. so it goes back to the perfection, the great perfection, to develop a complete openness and willingness.

[13:27]

It's a developing that. It's not like we have it right away, but can we develop it? Wholeheartedness. And then it means also exactly becoming one with the process. It's not watching the process. It's being the process. So for that we have to drop being engaged and feeding the commentary that goes and says, well, this process is not exactly what I want it to be, or... whatever is going on, we have to just come back to being, experiencing, allowing to experience yourself what is here, being the experience itself.

[14:30]

So Dogen says, you know, to study the self, we should study the self. But that is not an intellectual study. It's not somebody sitting here, and here's the self doing its thing, and I'm kind of studying it. It actually comes from the Japanese word narau, which comes from nareru. I have this out from a book. Which means to become familiar. to get used to, to become intimate with. That's what's meant with study the self. Intimacy is not somebody observing from outside at the distance. Intimacy is being the process. When you eat, Eating is happening.

[15:45]

Walking is happening. Sleeping is happening. It's not somebody says, oh, now walking is happening. It's being walking, being the movement in the body. It's hard to talk about because our language always separates us. So can we let everything just be the way it presents itself? And not making something out of it. Not adding something. So if I put my oreo kibbles away and then want to get up from my seat and see that the lap cloth is still on my lap, there are several options.

[17:11]

One option is putting it away hopefully nobody has seen it and looking if somebody has seen it. Another one is freeze, don't know what to do. Another one is stupid me, I'm such an idiot. Again distracted, I'm so bad. and sink in total desolation and depression. And another is, which is actually not something you can plan, you can kind of try, but happens sometimes is not missing a beat, folding this up, putting it back, getting up, and not thinking about it anymore.

[18:21]

Because it's not a big deal. It's just a variation of the theme. And it wakes me up. It wakes us up. It's, now I'm here, here, lab class, you know, brings me right here. It's my helper. It's not saying, it's not looking at me and saying, you're an idiot. That is the self. If that happens, that's the self that grabs the situation and makes it about itself. It gives it a lot of juice. And we can carry something like that to the rest of the day. At least I can. I don't know if you do, too. So... So the unbearable lightness of being.

[19:28]

There is a lightness. When that happens, it's not something I do. It's something that is a process. Lap cloth, arms folding, putting it there, getting up, not getting... or cold or a racing heart, just happening. And that has a lightness to it. And an encouragement in itself, a kind of an energy that just goes, doesn't even have words. It's like a child that then looks for the next, is ready for what is next. And you become a little bit stranger to yourself because you're leaving the house of your happy self that thinks, I'm only good if I don't make any mistakes.

[20:40]

Or whatever version we have of that. I have to work very hard to have a place in the world. So another example of that was in 1998, I think it was. I was Reb's Jisha. I was supposed to leave then the next spring, and I had the agreement to be a year his Jisha for a year. So I walk him home after Zazen, and he stands on the door, and I stand, step down, you know, And we bowed to each other and we said, oh, by the way, the practice committee at Tassar asks if you will be tanto for the practice period, which we were going to go in the fall, he and I. And I say, well, I have the agreement to be your chisha for the year. And he said, you can choose. And I'm standing there.

[21:46]

Did I tell you that already? I'm standing there and... It happens. The I did not do anything. It's like elevators, pros and cons. And I, not I, it's really interesting, it just was being the process, feeling any, making any of those pros and cons that just come, up and down, like those paternoster elevators that just go around. Any feeling, any grasping of any of that to make a decision, make it a defining aspect, is a trap. It will shape what I will experience at Tossohoro. It will shape what I see, perceive, think,

[22:51]

It's trapping. And so standing there, and out of my mouth comes something that I never considered as a possibility. The I never considered as a possibility. Out of my mouth comes, I'm not going to choose. Anybody who wants can make the decision. So before, for my I, for my sense, was... if I'm given a choice, that means I have to choose. That that doesn't mean I have to choose was not in the realm of possibilities till that happened. And he says, okay, be the tanto. And I came here and was the tanto. And I had the most fabulous, amazing time I was only playing.

[23:52]

And from time to time I would go, oh my God. I have not been working. I have not had this feeling of toiling and it's almost, you know, a little more and then it's work, you know, that I'm so used to. And I would, you know, it was really, I would look around Are they all mad at me and looking, what is she doing? And then I would go, nobody is. And then I would think, oh, I'll just trust that if I'm too far out, somebody will come and talk to me. Like Leslie telling you, no, you need. Or you should leave this way or this way. And then I would relax and I would play it. Again, just, I mean, the most free time. Not self-conscious.

[24:55]

Not have that self in the way. And then I would go again, oh my God. You know, it would come from time to time. It was like, that has been so part of who I felt I was acceptable. So these things aren't things we do, but they happened. They happen. And what we do here and what we do with Sazen, what Sazen is about, is helping us be more open to these happenings. And when Leslie said, you know, it takes courage to face the life that is living, itself here. And to be this being, this body, and to become, to be intimate, and become more and more intimate with this, takes courage.

[26:00]

And I don't remember exactly how you said it, Leslie, but you said something. It's pretty safe and we don't, we put all the very dangerous influence away and only save people into the kitchen. And we don't hurt each other too much. We do sometimes somewhat, but also, and I think what also came to me is really sitting still is safe. And when we are intimate with the experience we're having of anger, or rage or hate or sorrow or pain, when we are intimate with it, when we are willing to experience it, two things happen, probably more than two, but two I want to say right now.

[27:04]

One is we actually learn and train our bodies to hold intensity. Those feelings that are so intense and so overwhelming are usually old feelings. When a baby experiences anger coming at it or outrage coming from within because it's not being fed, It's overwhelming for a small little body. So we learn to not feel it. We learn to manage it some way, which is a survival mechanism. So that's a wonderful tool. So when those feelings come up, they come up with that same initial feeling that they're on. They can't be, they can't stand them.

[28:07]

They can't stand up in them. They crush us, they drown us, but we have an adult body now. So we can actually sit here and really allow ourselves to experience them and learn that we can actually hold way more intensity than we think we can. Also, intense feelings, because we don't know that we can hold them, have an energy to go out. So if we yell at somebody, we feel better because we've diffused the energy. The other person might not feel better, but we do. And they deserve it. Because they are the cause for that anger. So when we sit in the Zendo, and this is coming up, we're usually not yelling at anybody. So we get a chance. Also, the second thing is that when we are aware and awake to what's going on inside, we start having a choice.

[29:23]

We can decide whether we're going to say something, whether it's actually necessary. The word in German for necessity is Notwendigkeit. That means that which turns misery. Is when I'm saying something alleviating some misery? Or is it not? And maybe we don't need to say anything. I don't know, you probably all have the experience that you're having a really, really horrible time. And somebody comes up to you and says, you look great. What's going on? You're having a great time. You look like you're having a great time. And you're in hell inside. And then it doesn't make sense. But both is true.

[30:25]

Both are true. You are intimate with the inside and it doesn't spill outside. Outside is the result of your tangible. Outside is the result of your tending to what's happening inside. Because you tend to it, it's beneficial. And because you're the process, you don't see the effect of the process. But then somebody comes and tells you. So are you now squashing that, saying, no, no, this person is just totally delusional. I am only, there's only hell here. Or are we saying, oh, there's hell and there's this other reality too. And they can just, not one has to win. So when we are aware, when we are willing to be intimate,

[31:35]

to become intimate, to learn how to be intimate with what the experience is that presents itself. It doesn't spill, and it actually also expounds the Dharma. We learn from it, and we learn from it what is an appropriate response. So that's also reason to really wholeheartedly sit wholeheartedly, whether it's in the center or outside. And to really return

[32:36]

this being. Because it starts here and it ends here and everybody else is part of the interdependence and helps us to wake up. So there are three gates of liberation. One is emptiness. That means the absence of permanent identity of things. There's no permanence, no permanent identity. The other is signlessness. That means the nature of things is non-conceptualization. That is what we do. We see, we cut out the thing and then we put a name on it and then we relate to the name and the idea rather than to the process or the experience or the of what's happening.

[33:37]

And then the third, and that's why I'm bringing this up, is aimlessness. So here is like invitation to be wholehearted, invitation to be willing, invitation to be accepting, not in a defeatist way or in the way you think what it is. Now I have to just accept that I'm just not That's not what is meant by acceptance. It's meant to be open, this is how it appears, and what is happening? To be curious about it, not in a penetrating or dissecting way, but in an openly curious way. So aimlessness is the attitude of someone who does not feel the need to run after anything.

[34:42]

In the Sanskrit meaning of it means to not put anything in front of oneself. So in one of the chants we do, it says, you know, when you step forward and affirm everything, that's delusion. I think it's in the Genjo Koan. When you... let everything come forward and firm the self, that's enlightenment. So aims can be to get better. I think you talked about it yesterday, right? Make others happy. Good luck with that. Be the fastest serving crew. If you look at that, for example, let's take the example of being the fastest serving crew. When that's in front of you, then everybody on your crew, the pots, the kitchen, and everybody who's sitting here wanting to eat,

[36:04]

becomes a player in that aim. And either they're your helpers or they're your enemies. It shapes immediately the event. And you miss, we miss to experience that serving Each moment of serving is completely unpredictable and its own thing, and it's a gorgeous, beautiful dance. Between pot, ladle arms, bowls, bodies, signs, next group, spilling water, utensils falling down or not falling down, And it's only because there's this something in front that I'm aiming for.

[37:13]

Everything gets experienced in relation to that aim and either is good or bad. And it will make you react. You will groan or sigh or... go about this when it's not going the way you want. Oh, we were almost there and now this happened. Because of this person. And we do this all the time. But it's all the time when we have an aim, whatever aim it is, we're lost in confusion. And it triggers our habitual reactive mind and reactive body, which is totally something different than our responsive, able to response, our responsible, able to respond heart and mind. And it's fun when we realize that we can just pay attention and go, wow, yeah, why am I upset?

[38:22]

Oh, I had the same and it didn't work out. And we just, oh, this is great teaching. It's not like we can stop immediately, but it's like learning to play the piano. You keep trying, and that finger has a big difficulty to be regular, so you do different exercises to make that finger regular. So we can keep this also playful. I think it's very important that we don't make this the most serious, terrible, awful thing we have to accomplish, and which we can't accomplish, so then we're, you know, doomed. So, my answer came to, the answer, not my answer, the answer came to, that's also one of the things, I'm really trying to not make mine,

[39:23]

Because that's also kind of, you know, that's one of Buddha's instructions, is not I, not myself, not mine. To say that to every experience. This is not I, this is not myself, this is not mine. Because when he becomes my Anja, then we're both a little bit trapped. So the Anja comes... seeing if I need anything. And I say, no, thank you. And then I say, inspiration. And we bow to each other, and he leaves, and he comes back and gives me this. And it's from my favorite poet. And it fits right in what's on these pages. And it's by Rainer Maria Elke. And I'm going to read it to you, because he... He knows about solitude.

[40:24]

He's a person who fully inhabited his life, embodied his life. Knows about solitude, knows about love, knows about life. And it's just beautiful. So I want to share it with you. You must not be frightened when a sorrow rises up before you greater than you have ever seen before. When a restlessness like light and cloud shadows passes over your lands and over all your doing. When a restlessness like light and cloud shadows passes over your lands and over all your doing. You must think that something is happening upon you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand.

[41:27]

It will not let you fall. Why do you want to exclude any disturbance, any pain, any melancholy from your life? Why do you want to exclude any disturbance, any pain, any melancholy from your life, since you don't know what these conditions are working upon you? Why do you want to plague yourself with the question where it has all come from? And without it... Okay.

[42:37]

Whether it is tending? Hmm? Where does it go? Okay. Okay, where is it going? So much is happening now. You must be patient. Do not draw too rapid conclusions from what happens to you. Let it simply happen to you. It does not cease to be difficult, but therefore it will not cease either to grow. We have no cause to be mistrustful of our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors. If it has abysses, those abysses belong to us.

[43:39]

If dangers are there, we must strive to love them. How could we forget those old myths which are to be found in the beginnings of every people? The myths of the dragons which are transformed at the last moment into princesses who are waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything that frightens us is in its deepest essence something helpless that wants our love. Thank you, Anja. Any questions or comments? Yes, Tautor. Yes, I was, yeah, good idea, thank you.

[44:51]

It's from the Letters to a Young Poet. It's one of the most beautiful small booklets that you can read. Oh, yes, Catherine. Sometimes. What makes the difference? When I get caught in ideas how I should be, how I should be, how I want to be, how I, I, I, how I compare to other abbots, abysses, then I'm not having a good time. When that doesn't happen, there's a good time. Thank you. And I have plenty of those moments. Yes, they do. How is, this goes with Catherine's question, but also something from Allison's question yesterday.

[46:11]

How is expectation different from projection? They're often the same. They're often totally fused. Because they come, so the expectation and projection are together because the projection is if this happens, then this will be changed. So expectations are a sure recipe for disappointment. And another word for disappointment is disillusionment, which is actually something positive because you had an illusion. Can we... are we willing rather than hold on to our expectation and just say, well, I didn't measure up to go, oh, that was totally not meeting reality. Yes, Cecilia. How do we use the ego and the small self in a useful way and make one

[47:16]

Baker Roshi once gave a fabulous lecture, he's prone to give fabulous lectures, about the self and the essence of that was the self is not an entity, it's a function. And the problem is we treat it as an entity, as actually being who we are. So how you treat it, how do you integrate it? You appreciate its function, that it reminds you that the bell means this and that your name is Cecilia and where you live and that you get up and brush your teeth. That are the functions of the self. and that you have parents and children and grandchildren, so one of its functions is to keep a certain continuity going while everything is always in continuous change.

[48:28]

So you appreciate that, and when it starts saying, I want, or I am, I deserve, or I don't deserve, then you go, that's overreaching of its function. It's that you just treat like an untrained little dog. Kindly, but firmly. skillful.

[49:32]

The final one, which was available by choice, seemed like maybe the comparable options. I'm wondering, in the absence of being able to choose that reaction, how do you practice with those things that... Yes. Yes. You... I lose my composure because I make a mistake, which happens to me also. At some point, I notice that I've lost my composure. That might be very soon or later. And when I notice, I have a choice. I have the choice to keep feeding having lost my composure.

[50:36]

Because all those old voices and old things are just waiting in the sidelines to get a chance to exert their strengths again. Or I can just notice I've lost my composure and really come to the moment, what is happening now? And it takes a while. You know, I have to keep coming back. I'm here now. I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm doing what I'm doing. and not be in my head kind of rehashing something that happened five hours ago. You know, and that upsets me. But it also has like a magnetic pull because it's so familiar. So that takes the effort to just go up. I got caught. So the interesting thing is when you're caught in a trap, The way you can get out, it's a little bit like those Chinese finger things.

[51:42]

So when you pull, they tighten, and you can't get your fingers out. So our tendency is to pull, pull, to get out of it, and we get more and more entangled, is to relax, to really relax and be still. Just not engage, not pull, not try to get out, and then you can... very slowly take your finger out. But if you pull, you're trapped. And it makes you anxious and you pull more. It's a little bit like the deer, you know, down by the fence. That panics and just runs into the fence. And doesn't pause, can't pause. But we can pause. Or go talk to somebody if you can't pause alone. Keeps that changes it like, as I said, then you say it out loud and already it's in a different space. Is that an answer?

[52:45]

No, when you're caught, all you can see is that you're caught. You can't see something else. That's the willingness to experience then being caught. Without what Rilke says, can you allow the pain to be here rather than try to get away from it? Because if you're with it, intimate with it... The resources are within the experience. When you try to be outside of it, you are also caught off from the resources that are there. And you can wake up caught. Being caught, it's not like you have to be free to wake up. You wake up in the middle of being caught. but not outside of being caught when you're caught.

[54:08]

That's when it says samsara and nirvana is in the midst of samsara. It's not here samsara, and if I'm good enough, I can move over here and live in nirvana. That's not how it is. So experience caughtness completely. Yes, Alison. sometimes we choose the certainty of agony over the agony of uncertainty. Yes. Yes. The unbearable likeness of being. Yes. It's frightening to us to not be... To actually... to actually experience the potential of being fully alive and fully human is frightening.

[55:14]

We are so used to live in that little prison that we've built around us and keep maintaining with a lot of energy. So that's a good answer. And I also think it really is a learning process how much intensity actually we can stand. And that it's not, what we think is going to happen is not happening. So it's a discovery. Okay, I think it's time to stop. Anybody? One more thing, no? Good. Oh, come on. about the intensity that we can't stand. I just feel like all this opportunity that I've had for being in a place where I had more intensities than I thought was possible, and yet the aftermath of it feels really quick.

[56:32]

I almost feel like I collapsed into myself because it depends on me too much. and I just feel sort of wondering about with this mindfulness about our bodies and I know that there's like expanding the program like you don't have to go in the course that like when you don't know where your others are you're telling what those types of how do you do that still? Will you just write yourself? Will you just write down the story? No, no. No, I think You are in the experience. You know the experience knows the capacity and you can actually step back so you don't push yourself into it and you don't retrieve from it too early.

[57:36]

There is an appropriateness in the experience. usually I mean when you have an accident it goes too fast and something can happen so then you need some help to kind of process that stuff but in general if we are gentle and if we are kind and if we are not pushy and not aiming at the goal or having an idea in front of us oh I have to go through this and it has to feel this way and to get there then there's actually body and experience and mind are one organism that kind of talks to each other and does not explode. 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.

[58:39]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[58:48]

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