This podcast is offered by San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. Lovely to see all of you here tonight on a very balmy, another beautiful spring day. And for those of you who may not know me, my name is David Zimmerman, and I'm a resident here at I've been here for 13 years or so, and priest, and I also, and the program director for Zen Center. And so I'm kind of curious, I always ask this question, because I simply like to know, who's here for the first time this evening? Yay, a couple people. Great. Well, welcome everyone. It's good to have you here. So... I also want to thank Rosalie Curtis for the invitation to speak tonight and then also to express gratitude to my teacher, Tia Strozer, for her ongoing encouragement, her clarity, as well as her inspiration.

[01:07]

So she's in Brooklyn right now leading a practice spirit there. So anyhow, she's here in my heart, even though she's on the other coast. In our time together tonight, I'd actually like to touch upon the themes of inner stability, not arguing with life, and returning to silence. And I'm going to introduce these themes by first sharing with you the opening stanza of Case 29 of the Mumon Khan. And the Mumon Khan is a book of Zen koans. And the title of the case is The Six Ancestors, Your Mind Moves. The wind was flapping a temple flag, and two monks started an argument. One said the flag moved. The other said the wind moved. They argued back and forth, but could not reach a conclusion.

[02:10]

The six ancestor, Huenang, came up and said, it is not the wind that moves. It is not the flag that moves. It is your mind that moves. The two monks were dumbstruck. So it's now in the case of China long ago, that whenever a Zen master was going to deliver a sermon, a flag was hoisted up at the temple gate. as a way to let the public know that a sermon was happening. And therefore they could come and listen to it if they were interested. And I would imagine that there's a flag right now. And it's right outside the gate. So I would guess the modern version of this flag would be the website, San Francisco Sun Center's website. So we'd kind of just send out the announcement and everyone comes and here we are.

[03:14]

This koan, I started thinking about this a little bit more on Saturday when Abbot Steve gave the Dharma talk on Earth Day. And he had brought with him a small flag, a little white flag that had a picture of the planet Earth on it. And that was the Earth Day flag. And he said that this is the only flag that he could actually see pledging allegiance to. And, of course, I can empathize with that particular sentiment. I also see that we're all one people, we're all one planet, and we're all one life. And how we constantly can give ourselves over to that affinity. I also was thinking after the lecture that maybe we should have a flag out here in the courtyard with the Earth Day flag, you know, flying in the breeze. And then I got thinking about what it would actually take for that to happen here at Zen Center.

[04:14]

I'm sure there would be lots of arguing and debating happening about where exactly it was going to be, what size flag, what kind of image of the planet would be on it, who's going to take care of it, which ceremonies is going to be included in, and so on. So for those of you who don't live in community life, that's what it's like often. You know, kind of lots and lots of discussion about everyone's views and ideas about how we can live in harmony. And within that comes a lot of disharmony in some way, the appearance of disharmony. So whether we're... Referring to the guys in this koan who was talking about the flag, debating the flag, or whether or not we're actually talking about us who are residents here at Zen Center, it's very common for Zen monks, typical if you will, to have arguments about something very mundane, such as a flag. But this is also a very common human occurrence.

[05:19]

we often find ourselves in conflict with each other about something minor and in many cases ridiculously trivial, such as who's going to take out the trash and where's the best place for pizza and which car gets to go first in a traffic jam. But don't be fooled by the simplicity of this koan and what's going on here. the seemingly superficial argument among the monks. As always is the case in koans, something much more significant is being pointed to. We might initially be inclined to think that this koan is about cause and effect, that the monks are arguing about how and why it is that things happen, that they're debating about the karmic conditions, about how it is that a flag appears to be moving, And we can see their debate as representing two traditional views about causes and conditions.

[06:27]

One view is that things happen or move, if you will, because of our surroundings, because of our environment and our society. To say that the wind or our environment moves us is to say that the objective world moves us. The other view is that we as individuals are the ones who make things happen through our own self-power. This is the subjective worldview in which we see the flag moving itself. Another way to frame this is in the context of how we experience our own suffering and unhappiness. And we can view this also in two ways. We can either blame the world around us for our unhappiness, or we blame ourselves for the world's unhappiness.

[07:29]

Either way, we are looking for a cause or blame in some separate other, whether we perceive this other as existing outside or inside. knowing the importance of cause and effect in Buddhism, you might be inclined to join the monks in their debate. And while we need to keep cause and effect in mind, in view, if you will, we shouldn't be blind to it. Much more is at stake in this koan than determining how a flag moves. Closer to the heart of the matter is the very inclination to engage in any kind of debate or contention or discrimination at all, regardless of how subtle or major a point.

[08:32]

As Muman says in the verse to the case of this, wind, flag, mind-moving, all are equally to blame. So is there... Therefore, any way that we can escape our culpability and our suffering. I think that one of the things that this Cone is trying to illustrate for us is how each of us has our own personal flag. A flag of self, if you will. That is constantly in motion. And our... our personal flags are constantly flapping about in order to maintain our identity, our relevance, our authority, and the ongoing breeze of impermanence. Furthermore, the primary way that we keep our personal flags in motion is by creating a wind of contention, an argument, if you will, with the way

[09:47]

things are. So I've recently been making an effort in my practice to examine the ways in which I engage in this ongoing inner argument and recognizing at the same time how this ongoing argument creates for me a sense of internal instability. I affectionately call this kind of ongoing arguing mind whiny mind. And it's something like, why is everything so difficult? Why is everyone so annoying? Why can't I have what I want for a change? Why can't things be different or better or easier or faster or slower? More this and more that. This is why? Why? All the time. Ongoing, it seems. So you guys might... Recognize this whiny mind for yourself. Does anyone have a whiny mind here? Yeah?

[10:47]

A few of you? Okay. So I'm not alone. I'm not the only one with a whiny mind. That feels very good. I would suggest that it isn't so much the circumstances, the causes and conditions of our life that are the cause of or contribution to our unhappiness and our suffering and disease. But rather, it's our relationship to them. Or more so, it's our relationship to our ideas and concepts about how things should be. So, as I understand what Buzin proposes, that this rivalry between the way things are and the way we think they should be, lies at the root of our suffering.

[11:48]

Buddha taught that the normal way of perceiving things creates a fundamental dualism, a sense of separation at the base of our being. Whenever we fall into this dualistic perspective, whenever we fall into the gap between reality, and our capacity to be in harmony with reality, then we're going to experience suffering. To be free of suffering, to regain our balance and our stability, we need to return to silence and to embody a stillness and an openness of mind that is free of dualistic thinking and perception. It's in this place of silence and stillness that neither the flag nor wind nor mind moves.

[12:55]

Or perhaps we could say more accurately, we are willingly in accord with their movement because we don't experience any kind of separation but simply are the flow of dependent core rising. So again, the case. The wind was flapping a temple flag, and two monks started in an argument. One said, the flag moved. The other said, the wind moved. They argued back and forth, but could not reach a conclusion. The Sikh's ancestor, Huenang, said, It is not the wind that moves. It is not the flag that moves. It is your mind that moves. The two monks were dumbstruck. I appreciate the use of the word flap in this koan to describe the flag's motion.

[13:58]

Flap means to cause to swing or sway loosely, especially with noise. And our minds have a tendency to flap, often uncontrollably, back and forth in reactivity to appearances and circumstances. And usually in regard to nothing in particular. Particularly important, I should say. And we have a tendency to accompany all this flapping with a lot of noise. Either in our heads, or loud in the form of thoughts, words, and reactions. The word dukkha is often translated as suffering, dissatisfaction, or disease. And dukkha comes from the Pali word meaning a wheel having a poor axle hole, which leads to discomfort for the rider because the wheel is out of balance.

[15:02]

And the word dukkha itself is said to be an onomatopoeia, for the sound that an off-centered wheel makes. Now, to me, this sounds similar to the sound of a flag flapping in the breeze. And I can also imagine that's the sound of the mind flapping, if you will, in the breeze and the wind of our thoughts. So dukkha is basically a result of our mistakenly thinking and arguing that the world needs to revolve around us, that we are the hub and the axle of the wheel of life, the center of the universe. Yet this way of thinking is off-centered and in balance.

[16:02]

It doesn't take into account the truth of our interdependency, that we in all things are dependently co-arisen, and as such, everywhere and nowhere is the center of the universe. When we try to argue otherwise, we suffer. As Wei Nang points out to the two monks, the apparent flapping The flag is due in part to the flapping of their small minds, our small minds, our small selves, our ordinary consciousness, which is centered around thinking about ourselves. And our conditioned minds have this habitual tendency to flutter about mostly in self-defense. It's as if we imagine that the more that we flap or struggle, the more we might truly prove that we exist as a separate, persistent self.

[17:05]

As if we imagine that the greater the wind or noise that we produce by our thinking, or the louder the argument that we have with life, then the more relevant and real we might become. Now, I'm sure you can already recognize many of the ways in which you are in conflict or argue with life. For me, on the most apparent level is the mundane kind of arguments that I have, the ways in which I complain and kvetch about everyday things, such as when the internet isn't working, when the grocery store is out of my favorite orange juice, when someone has left the window open again and there's a cold breeze coming in and I'm uncomfortable. And then there are the slightly more significant arguments levels, if you will, of argument and conflict. Times in which we feel a greater sense of indignation.

[18:09]

When I don't get the job that I want or in life seems unfair. When I realize that my body isn't what it used to be and that I'm getting older and frailer and it kind of sucks. But when a loved one is diagnosed with cancer, And I realize that once again, I'm going to lose someone that I love dearly. And then there are the ways in which we are not living the life we already have. How much time and energy do we spend seeking something? A different friend? A partner? A different opportunity? A different circumstance? Anything. Other. than the one that's right in front of us. We also do this by dwelling in the past and daydreaming into the future. My life was better when I was younger, in my 20s, and I had hair and more sex.

[19:19]

Or my life is going to be better when I'm in my 50s, you know, and I have more money and more security. But of course, being a monk at Zen Center, that is not going to most likely happen. I would suggest that this not being present for the life we have is another form of contention, of being in opposition to reality because we think that another life, a better life, somehow magically exists and Elsewhere. Any place but here, we think. I notice how often whenever I hear bad or disturbing news, for example, on the radio or I read it online, that the first thing that I say to myself is, oh no. When 20 children die in a mass shooting or a bus accident,

[20:23]

when there's a major fire or oil spill that hurts our planet, or when someone is brutally assaulted for being gay, I hear myself say, oh no, this cannot be. Immediately, my habitual condition response is one of contraction, a knee-jerk reaction in opposition to what is. rather than simply choosing to observe and study the apparent conditions for what has occurred, I instead traffic in resistance. A resistance that stems from wanting things to be other than the way they actually are. How often is it that we can simply allow ourselves to take in the information provided by our senses, and not react.

[21:25]

To not label or grasp or push away or evaluate or reject in some way our sentient experience. We are sentient beings. It's how we know our world, through our senses. Can we discover and cultivate the capacity to meet without prejudice that which we don't want. The taste of burnt kale. The persistent sound of a car alarm at three o'clock in the morning. The smell of a homeless person soaked in urine. The sight of a body torn apart by a bomb. Zen is full of coins that point the ways in which we create contention through the simple dualism of preferences, in which we separate the world into dichotomous piles of I want this and I don't want that.

[22:34]

Yet as our Zen third ancestor reminds us in the Shinshin Ming, which is often translated as trust in mind, the great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. All our complaining and seeking is a product of our human tendency to constantly judge and evaluate. to measure and compare our life and the things around us by some yardstick of perfection that may or may not exist. Comparison mind, if you've noticed, quickly leads to rivalry and striving. Often we rely on comparison mind to validate our worldview, whether good or bad.

[23:40]

My teacher, T.S. Joseph, says that comparison mind is death. We die on the inside to the life that we have. We die emotionally because we don't really value who we are when we compare ourselves to others. And we also die literally because when we compare, we fight wars to prove that we're better or more deserving or more right. than another person. Obviously all this judging and evaluation and comparison is stressful. It contributes to anxiety, depression, physical tension, pain, as well as an aversion to intimacy and real connection. Pushing and pulling and weighing in the mind is literally transmitted and experienced in the body.

[24:42]

This becomes embodied. And the body responds by becoming destabilized and out of kilter. Dukkha, Dukkha, Dukkha. The body becomes imbalanced, shaky, perhaps tense and hard and ill at ease. We experience having tight shoulders, tight faces, agitated hands, knotted stomachs, aching hearts. Dis-ease becomes disease. The desire and aversion that's rooted in preferences also has a similar effect on the body. Desire is contention in the form of, I want, I want more. And aversion is contention in the form of, I don't want, or I want less. And either of these positions or postures of the mind, if you will, is one in which the mind is not upright.

[25:53]

Have you ever noticed how the body mirrors the movements of the mind? Whether leaning forward or backwards or sideways? You might notice this in zazen. Whenever you're daydreaming or planning, somehow the body tends to move around and get off kilter. You're no longer upright as when you first started. Practice has revealed to me again and again how my mental complaining and resistance to the way things are, to reality, have a parallel consequence in the body. And I think for most of us, this is typically felt as a contraction. Literally, a moving away from or drawing in, as if to defend some inner entity. This contraction is the embodied expression of the self.

[26:58]

Whenever I feel this contraction in my own being, I know that sensing is happening, that selfing is happening. Selfing is created. The small mind grasps onto this contradiction, this contraction, excuse me, as if to say, see, someone is here, really existing, separate from everything around me. I believe that that contraction is me. And this contraction can either be very dramatic, such as a heart-dropping, knife-stabbing pain in the body, or it can be very, very subtle, just like a nanosecond flicker in the mind of orientation. Either way, we risk losing our inner composure. when we can allow the mind of our egos to become still and the flag of our small selves to be lowered from its pull, then we can drop our judgmental and thinking minds in our argument with life.

[28:18]

When this happens, suddenly a space can open up for us to notice another possibility. So returning to the koan for a moment, is it the flag or the wind that is moving? So when Huenang arrives, he doesn't join the monks in the argument. He doesn't get involved in either side. In fact, he cuts off the conversation. He tells the monk that they are wasting their time. The wind and the flag are just apparent phenomenon. like the images projected on a screen of the movie theater. Look, he says. Stop. Shut up. And look directly at consciousness itself. And with that, the monks are literally dumbstruck.

[29:22]

Their minds go blank. And that blankness, that momentarily momentary space of don't know mind or of not being an expert or having to be right in the argument that they're having is their door into a larger world. And this is Huenang's intention. He means to break through the monk's normal way of thinking about things and throw them into the spacious don't mind free of extremes. So exchanging one idea for another, switching from one conviction about the flag to an opposing view, won't help us to relieve our fundamental experience of dukkha. Exchanging any idea still leaves in place our mental habits, our clashes, our familiar forms of cognition.

[30:29]

which underlie our suffering. Instead, we have to step out of these habits into a bigger mind, a mind that is not bound by concepts. This place of awestruck silence experienced by the monks in which their mind's flapping is muted and all movement ceases is the nascent ground of inner stability. Our capacity to be upright and composed in the midst of life's challenges and our seemingly mundane daily activities comes from an ability to be open to an inner silence or stillness that's found in don't-know mind. It's a mind that's absolutely free of debate or contention with what is. It's in Zazen that we can learn to become more comfortable with this don't-know mind.

[31:37]

The fundamental instruction, Zazen, is essentially to do nothing. And doing nothing means not to move, not to engage or try to fix or change anything. Instead, we soften into simply being, to not resisting, or moving away from what is happening in this moment. We make the effortless effort, if you will, to just be the presence that we already are. And let everything else just be as it is. So we relax. Do nothing. Hold no particular view or goal. And simply observe. what happens. To note the various experiences, images, thoughts, sensations, and feelings that arise as we sit there, not moving.

[32:46]

We watch with our inner eye as phenomenon arises and falls away. And our minds react or not. when our intention is to do nothing, then we can more easily notice how quickly we can be pulled off balance by our conditioned habitual mind. Being completely open in this way and open to the way that things really are, to both the relative and absolute realities, to what Suzuki Roshi called things as it is, is shikantaza. And shikantaza means just sitting. And it's an antidote to our ongoing argument with life. It's taking the posture of an open, upright, receptive mind.

[33:49]

A mind in which all thoughts and phenomena arise and pass, just like clouds in an empty sky. Shikantaza is the presence and the space in which the flag and the mind and the small self can all coexist without conflict, without prejudice. Nothing is left out. Shikantaza is a radical act of affirmation, of being fully in accord with life. It is the ultimate expression of yes and the consummate antidote to our various contentions with life. But saying yes to life and being in accord with the way things are doesn't necessarily mean that we have to like everything that we experience. It involves a larger affirmation that says yes, even when our small selves are saying no, no.

[34:57]

Some experiences are painful. Some are unpleasant. This is just the way they are for us as humans. And as the Buddha noted in the First Noble Truth, there is suffering. There is the satisfaction. But when we can welcome these and open to the full range of experience, then we can open to the fullness of our lives. our lives become broader, wider, more expansive. When we abide with a mind of Shikintaza, then the winds and fires of life move through us rather than against us. And we can rely on a deep quiescence that permeates everything. The primary argument is that we as humans have with life is the fact of our impermanence.

[36:03]

I was reminded of this again due to the recent death of my friend Rig. Rig had died of a heart attack very suddenly and unexpectedly. And I was reminded that we all die and yet we seldom fully embrace this truth and live in full recognition of it. Like everything else around us, we too are impermanent. Moment-to-moment change that's happening. When we can no longer contest this, when we can learn to relax into the soft animal body of our mortality and allow ourselves to be consumed by the fire of life itself, and we can be free in the ceaseless flow, our golden wind, if you will, of impermanence. When we do this, we can simply die over and over again to the moment as it actually is.

[37:14]

And our body is the same body as the flag, the same body as the wind. the same body as all our fellow monks and humans here, and the same body as the light of the stars have been burning for millions of years and now have died out. We are not separate from this present moment conflagration. I am reminded of the words of encouragement that Suzuki Roshi offered one period during one period of Zazen, I think it was in the middle of a Sashin once, he said, don't move. Just die over and over. Don't anticipate. Nothing can save you now because you only have this moment. Not even enlightenment will help you now because there are no other moments.

[38:20]

With no future, be true to yourself and express yourself fully. Don't move. I understand Suzuki Roshi to be saying that to be true to ourselves and to express ourselves fully is not to cling to an idea of self. Instead, we allow ourselves to be fully manifested by the bountiful flow of moment-by-moment life. When we can open in this way, then we can naturally be in accord with form and emptiness. And when being in accord in this way, we can experience a more deeply realized stillness in which there is no such thing as enlightenment. So then zazen does zazen. And Buddha is just being Buddha.

[39:28]

So whenever I find myself in circumstances where I am arguing with life, whether internally or externally, I try to remember again and again this encouragement not to move, to not turn away, to simply be with this experience, my whole body-mind. allow it to move through me and allow myself to continue to simply flow in this present moment. So thank you very much. 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, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[40:29]

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