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. So as you may have noticed in yesterday's coin, neither of the two fools actually answered the question. This great problem we have, now we're all enlightened, How are we going to conduct ourselves? How are we going to enter the world? How are we going to participate, discover intimacy wherever and however we make contact? Fortunately, we have a new koan. Joshua asked Tosi, After the great death, then what?

[01:04]

So, all practice period, we've been trying to kill you. You sort of got that message at times. This is killing me. This doesn't stop. I'm going to die. Yep. And here you are, sort of still alive. And Tosi says, don't go in the dark. Come in the daylight. So there you are. Now you know. the great death, dropping off all forms of clinging, all forms of constructed definitions of reality, dropping off the habituated responses that go out into the world.

[02:30]

looking to recreate themselves finding your father here and your competitive brother there your loving mother over there getting in touch with even in your body the holding that holds together me, that holds together old hopes and old sadnesses. And we sit and we sit and we sit and despite ourselves, despite our valiant efforts to stay alive, we experience

[03:32]

maybe even without noticing some form of release, some letting the hand open and what's being grasped fall away. Then what? this incredible effort and at best it's only halfway you know we can ponder wisely the influences of the hormones and other neurochemicals they influence our neurology physiology and the likes but in a way it's no more informative than looking at the electrical impulses run along a telephone line and try to say that's what a human conversation is

[05:01]

For better, for worse, we're extraordinarily complex. We don't just register on some binary code, some curious pattern on an fMRI. We are... We take the point of data We associate it. We respond to the association. We let that association ripple out and influence and touch the world. Iroke puts it like this. I live my life in growing circles. This notion, you have an experience like dropping a pebble in a pond and it ripples out.

[06:14]

And you watch that influence of that experience. And yet our life is more like a... It's raining on the pond. all sorts of curious patterns being set up, circles within circles, circles, intersecting circles. I live my life in growing circles, which ring out over the things around us. Perhaps I'll never finish the last, but that's what I'll try. I've been circling, for a thousand years and still don't know. Am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song?

[07:16]

So sometimes we go inward. We take the backward step. we explore diligently and thoroughly unconstructedness in stillness what is it to just sit and just be and leave it at that what is it to die the great death what is it to cease even for a moment the unrelenting narrative that weaves together a life, that gives it continuity, that gives it identity and character and personality. When I was coming down to the practice period, I was packing and my grandson's 15 months at the time

[08:36]

sort of got wind that somehow felt something that I was departing. And I went to the bathroom and he started knocking on the door crying. And I came out and I kneeled down beside him and I said, everything that comes together Everything that comes together will inevitably come apart. And he was fully enlightened. I really did say that.

[09:37]

He did stop crying for a moment and he had a funny look on his face. And it reminded me of something I'd heard Sogyal Rinpoche said. Sogyal Rinpoche was talking about... I think he became a novice monk when he was about four. And he... He had a teacher. I guess he was more like a surrogate father. And when Sogle Rinpoche was about eight, they went to do a funeral at someone's home. And the teacher did the funeral, and Sogle Rinpoche was watching. And then they were going back to the monastery. And Sogle Rinpoche was becoming upset. You know, oh. It's sort of starting to become apparent to him, clear to him, that this person had died.

[10:50]

And he said to his teacher, he said, but he's okay. He'll be coming back, right? The teacher said, no, he won't. He's dead. And dead's dead. And Suga Rinpoche was crying. In his recounting of the story he said, the teacher didn't try to lessen it. He didn't say, everything's going to be okay. That's how it is. The fierce truth of impermanence. Chancha held up a glass and said, this glass is already broken. And because of that, I can really appreciate it.

[11:59]

I can appreciate how it is. I can appreciate how well it functions and holds the water. So in this curious way, as we discover when we explore unconstructedness and stillness, the arisings of our mind and heart are just amazing, what we can come up with. I mean, thank goodness my grandson has started his practice already. a backyard and we're working in the backyard so I made a pile of dirt and I said to him move the pile of dirt from here to here you know handful by handful and so he did staying focused

[13:29]

feeling wonderfully engaged. How life, no matter what age we are, always offers us a way to enter practice. Anyway, that was my notion of it. in our diligence about unconstructed and stillness endless risings the great enemy the versatility, creativity and genius of our mind and heart at making up a story and then the very same enemy in its constructs, in its passion, sharpens, clarifies the Dharma.

[14:48]

We take something as simple as a cup and someone says, this cup is already broken. And it touches our heart. Who of us has not lost something we didn't want to lose? Have impermanence reach into our lives and pluck something out. Who of us has not been stilled by that? Hoshi says, don't go in the dark.

[15:50]

Don't enter the world. Don't enter the vitality of life as just an exercise in deconstruction. Go in the light. Enter into this great passion play. And then after about a month, I went back to my apartment in San Francisco and my grandson came in and he just looked at me astounded. You, I thought you were long dead. Isn't that what you said?

[16:55]

And this mix of delight and disbelief. How when we're young We don't know to modify, to suppress the impact the world is having on us. How it delights and dismays us. Something in us says that's too reckless a path. That certainly must be a recipe for disorder and disaster.

[17:58]

And yet here we are, as Pablo Neruda would say, standing on the balcony of life, about to take wings. Is it an inevitable recipe of resuming the habituated intrigues? Is that what Totsi is saying when he says go by day? I would say not. I would say something like this. turn the whole world into a zendo in one way.

[19:14]

And yet in another way we can. How could a zendo possibly have a limit to it? A fixed boundary. And how do we do that? We do that through realizing that emptiness is Interdependence. We do that through realizing that all things that come together come apart. But when they're together, they're together. There is something. They're a vibrant expression of being. that we as human beings have a passionate response to. When we engage, little in our life is neutral.

[20:28]

This is the great torture for us when we are trying to adhere to exactness of unconstructiveness instruments. We want it to be shining, bright, neutral phenomena. We want it to be nothing more than the electronic blips on the telephone line. But it's not. It's two people talking to each other and saying, really? Is that right? I can't believe it. It's awful. And what did you say? But even at that, can that just be itself too?

[21:39]

Maybe we could say something like, can we give it enough space that it just shines bright in its own being? Can we practice receiving and releasing enough that we can let it come into being and let it flower? and let it fade can you walk from the Zendo to your cabin and and just notice the myriad worlds that come and go the ones that create a sparkling present the ones that create murky heaviness. They're all just the flowers of existence.

[22:58]

When Uman was asked this question, being Uman, he said, the flowering hedge And the monk, being stubborn like all Zen monks, said, and then what? What if you keep doing that? And Umad said, golden herd lion. Lion with a golden mane. It has its own authority and its own nobility. But maybe that's Maybe the challenge for us is just to hold the tenderness of a human life.

[24:04]

That as we delve into unconstructedness and stillness, how many... old pains came to visit as we invited spacious liberation many contractions asserted their authority as we tasted those moments of one pointedness their intimacy, their softening, and their energy. How something in us realized our own hunger for being. So not to be in denial of that.

[25:17]

more to stay steady in the midst of it. Not to let it intoxicate us, but more to let the impulse to grasp, to embellish, to be intoxicated and lose connection. the cautionary tale okay and let it go with the exhale how reckless can we be in letting what arises arise how thorough can we be in letting it fall away Sometimes we're watching the circle of a single experience.

[26:29]

And sometimes we're in the throes of raindrops, all sorts of intersecting circles. Is there some way, like one hand clapping, that we're not fighting against it, that it's allowed to have its energy, its flow. And in that, can there be a groundedness? So in a way, Tosi's comment, Tosi's statement is formidable. Can you open up to who you are as it arises from your own being?

[27:33]

Can you open up to who you are in response to all the other beings around you? Can you open up to your environment? Can you open up to the consequences of what you ate for breakfast. All these things, all these ways that this conditioned existence is conditioned. It's not a matter of somehow corralling it all under our control and authority. there is within our human life the capacity to stay present.

[28:35]

So as we enter fully into practice, the basics stay the same. The only thing that changes is that more and more we see how utterly precious and significant they are in discovering how to live a human life. We see more and more the way we have imbued them with some karmic agenda. And we see more and more that we approach them with a humble devotion. And that they open up the full breadth of life. They set the stage for this reckless commitment to being a human being.

[29:49]

as Rilke muses with it. I live in ever-widening circles. Sometimes when we sit zazen and we watch our mind go back to that again, you're back to that again. We've talked about that a hundred times. What is there left to say? bring forth an old tried and true attitude. Anytime I meet of a person of authority, I respond like this. That mechanical, that wooden, that uncreative, that lacking in adaptation and versatility. How painful that must be.

[30:56]

How can such a condition not elicit compassion? How can such a condition not ask of us to sit and bear witness and realize the path of liberation? How can it not tempt us into this world? How can it not ask us to accept the invitation for interconnected life? Not as some great moral imperative. but more just the very nature of all life is to live.

[32:13]

As Nazim Higmet would say, like a squirrel. They're so committed. Like my grandson. So I got him to move this soil and then in the middle He stopped and he shook with the light. It was like, who says I'm a little kid? I am doing it. I'm in it. I'm part of it. I'm doing it. Yes, you are. You're doing it. Then he gave me a funny look that time, too.

[33:22]

But who doesn't want to be doing it? Who doesn't want to be in it? Who doesn't want to participate? Feel useful. Feel engaged. Feel intimate. Feel valued. Feel respected. I feel like the contribution matters. So something about a kind of reckless courage that when we breathe in, it's like, this is really it. Bring it on. I know there's a background chatter. I know there's the murmurings of the many conditions that come to play on this life. But living, as Nazem Ahmed would say, living is more important.

[34:29]

He says, it's not that I don't fear death. just that living is more important. You should plant olive trees and not just for your grandchildren. Because all life is precious. So we come out of the winter into the spring. We let the diligence of our unconstructed stillness blossom, give birth, participate. And can we let the world teach us

[35:38]

rather than just open up our old bag of tricks? And can we watch when we start to open up our old bag of tricks? Oh yeah, that one. I really like that one, don't I? I think I like how much it hurts. I like that heavy feeling of dread with a tinge of hopelessness. What a mix. Things will never work out for me. Just another flowering. albeit a heavy one, a painful one, we're human.

[36:48]

There is something in the devotion that will support our humanness. In my own mind, I think, here's the formula. I trained as an engineer. Engineers, you have a problem, you create a strategy, you implement the strategy. Actually, the secret of engineering is you make the problem simple enough that you can solve it. We call it simplifying assumptions. Unfortunately, in life, you've got to be careful with that. However, in some ways it is simple.

[38:01]

Everything that comes together will come apart. Impermanence. Everything is interrelated. Any definition is given. is a working definition. It's a working hypothesis. It's a construct. Its meaningfulness, its relevance is contextual, good and bad, in by what standard, success or failure, through what criteria or measurement. So in the particularity, we can keep inviting each thing into the moment by allowing form to be just itself, to allow what arises to be just itself.

[39:18]

And then we watch the ripple effect. We watch how our mind and heart picks it up or tries to push it away. We watch how we bounce off of each other, feeling grateful, feeling annoyed, feeling appreciative. All the amazing ways we respond. The more all this can happen in the field of awareness, the more integration into our being. And what will be the outcome of that? Well, who the heck knows? But it's all, the whole process,

[40:25]

is inviting us to live so that this this is a delicate point you know you can start to save yourself with a rising confidence and hopefulness maybe this practice period isn't going to kill me Maybe my legs are not going to fall off. Maybe my mind is not going to become permanently dysfunctional. Just temporarily. But not to take that as an invitation to unpack your usual bag of tricks. your usual cast of characters, your usual yearnings and aversions and worries and anxieties.

[41:35]

There is no going back. There's only going forward. pick up that imperative? Can we live it? All the great sages say this is what supports a human life. This is what liberates a human life. I live my life in growing circles, which ring out over the things around me.

[42:41]

Perhaps I'll never finish the last, but that's what I'll try. I've been circling for a thousand years. and still don't know. See, he was a good Zen student. I've been circling for a thousand years and still don't know. Am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song? Thank you. 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 SSCC.org and click Giving.

[43:45]

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