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. Thank you very much for coming tonight. Thank you also to Abbott Ed for inviting me and for my teachers, especially Joshua and Greg, for supporting my practice. My name is Zenkai Curtis-Fabins, and I'm here tonight to talk with you about finding your place where you are. It's my hope that you will find something useful and or encouraging from this talk this evening, and I do intend to leave time at the end for questions in case something I've said doesn't make sense or something else comes up for you that you'd like to, that I haven't addressed.

[01:01]

So let me, I'd like to begin by telling you a story. So this is, there was, there was once a young Zen student who had, he'd been practicing a little under a year and was in his first semester of graduate school. And he enjoyed Zen practice quite a bit. He found a lot of value in the feeling of settledness and presence that he found at the Zen Center on the weekends. But during the week, he was, while he was in graduate school, he found it was extremely difficult for him to stay present while his mind was swirling, you know, in the abstract ideas and so forth. So he presented this issue to his teacher and asked how he could possibly integrate this feeling of settledness and presence into the actions of his academic life, like sitting at a desk writing a paper. And the teacher looked at him for a moment, and then told him, you should know where your toes are at all times.

[02:08]

You should know where your toes are at all times. So the student tried it out, and he realized that, indeed, he was so heavily up in his head that he literally had no idea where his toes were down by the foot of the chair he was sitting in, and had to... had to figure it out and and so he found yeah bringing some attention to them maybe wiggle them a little bit or just tune into whatever those nerve endings whatever signals they're sending to you and it instantly brought him back to this present moment that there's nowhere else that he was at that moment and so this was clearly a very effective practice but importantly perhaps this is why that practice works so effectively, is that it isn't some sort of esoteric theoretical teaching. It's very basic. Be where you already are.

[03:11]

Be in your body. Know where you are and be there with your whole body and mind. So this fall at the Zen Center, we're studying the theme of Zen. is our everyday life. We're studying how our practice is basic. Our practice is bodily. Our practice ultimately is being human, being authentic and vulnerable, and being who and where we are. So that's what I would like to talk with you about tonight. The specific text that we're focusing on during this fall practice period is Dogen Zenji's essay, Genjo Koan. So I thought I would focus on one passage from that essay tonight and explore its relation to how we can be present with this body and moment where we already are, and then more generally how it relates to the broader practice of the liberation from suffering in which we're engaged.

[04:22]

So the passage I'd like to cite is, it's in the second half of Genjo Koan when Dogen is talking, just when he's finishing up, talking about the bird and the fish moving in their elements, finding where they are. And the line is, when you find your place where you are, practice occurs actualizing the fundamental point. When you find your place where you are, practice occurs actualizing the fundamental point. So quite often students will come to the Zen Center and they'll wonder what they ought to do. You know, how should I practice? What should I do? You know, what way is correct? And we can learn a lot from that statement, how it's structured. Dogen says, find your place where you are. He's not saying imitate someone else's place. And he's not saying find your place where someone else is.

[05:24]

You know, find your place where you are. present tense. And so for people who are new, or for that matter, even people who've been here a while, not knowing what they should do can be very unsettling, particularly if they perceive that other people around them, like senior students or teachers or so forth, seem to have figured something out. Although, if anything... those senior students, what they've figured out, if you want to call it that, is what they need to do, or more likely what they need not to do, to be them. So... Suzuki Roshi said, when you are you, Zen is Zen. And I think this is really the sentiment behind the teaching... of finding your place where you are.

[06:27]

Don't feel insecure. There's not something else out there that you're not doing. You're doing it already. It's in your body. It's in the blood coursing through your veins, in your beating heart. So you're already doing it. You're already manifesting... wholeness, and awake in nature. And the key, then, according to Dogen, is to find your place where you are. You see the distinction there? You don't have to get someplace or create someplace. You're already there. Find your place. Find you. So here at the Zen Center, we have the advantage of having a lot of support for this endeavor. So, for example, we have a schedule and a set of forms and practices. And we're surrounded by other people who give us support and serve as an example or an encouragement. But ultimately, all of that is geared toward you discovering where you are, to you discovering you.

[07:36]

And all that stuff is also, it's only significant in as much as it serves that purpose. In fact, sometimes, if engaged with... with a different approach, it can actually send us down the road of trying to be somewhere else. We want to be at this other place. So if you see somebody like a teacher who appears to be very settled, very present, I would wager that chances are pretty good that they know where their toes are. So find your place where you are. That's what we're doing here. That's what this business is all about. You don't need to worry. about the other stuff you don't need to worry about the achievement the robes being invited to do various things you know that stuff will come that stuff as a matter of fact it flows from that settledness that you can manifest and the composure that you will display when you know where your toes are when you know the back of your elbow and tip your noses when you walk through the day not just doing things out there but being a part of things happening

[08:48]

while you're here there's a big difference there and that's precisely what practice requests of us i believe so this seems like it would be easy i mean you're here it's logical right but it's actually one of the more difficult things we can do our whole society seems to be structured around you getting somewhere else compared to where you are right i mean we see television advertisements for example that suggests that attractive women will flock to you if you use a certain kind of shampoo or drive a certain kind of car. Our schools, media, children's stories, cultural norms, almost all of them seem to be structured around the assertion that you are not okay. You're not okay, but you can do these things that will allegedly make you okay. You can go forth and do these things that will make you okay. But you're only able to be okay by being somewhere else than where you are.

[09:50]

That's the premise. So you wash your hair with that expensive shampoo, and you get into that car you bought, and you're not where you are. You're over here, you know, in this place you've created, presumably waiting for the attractive women to flock to you. And so then we can feel as if, regardless of what else we do, primarily we need to be somewhere else. In each moment we can feel we need to be somewhere else. We can feel uncomfortable in the moment and want to get to the next moment. But this is simply, this is not the case, according to Dogen. Find your place where you are. So the next thing that Dogen says is that when this happens, when you find your place where you are, practice occurs. And I think that the structure of that is important too. It doesn't say that when you find your place where you are, you can do something called practice. Quite to the contrary, it says practice occurs.

[10:54]

It's an organic thing. It's not something you need to do. In fact, it's not some sort of thing you can do. When you are you, Zen is Zen. You don't have to fake it till you make it. You've made it. You're right here. be here. And then you can see that practice is occurring. But importantly, this isn't a philosophical or theoretical teaching. Again, this is a practical instruction, and there indeed are tangible methodologies, practices we can employ to enact this teaching of finding your place where you are. So I'll mention a couple of them. One very effective And accessible methodology is what I referred to at the beginning of the talk about the thing with the toes. This is body awareness. So the advantage of body awareness as a practice is that your body, your physical person, is always in the present moment.

[12:02]

Your body is always here, wherever you are. And so if you can reconnect with where your toes are... Or if you can reconnect with the back of your elbow or tip of your nose, where those are, it snaps you back to this place at this time. So you're not somewhere else, and you're here. So body awareness is one of the most basic, but it's also one of the most powerful methodologies of finding your place where you are and getting familiar with your place where you are. So because of the nature then of human beings and their strong discursive minds, many of these practices, these methodologies, they involve harnessing the mind and its various mechanisms, apprehension, cognition. So for example, one way you can do this practice is by using your normal cognitive function to locate yourself within your physical surroundings based off of some neutral identifier.

[13:09]

So one specific practice that can achieve this is going around and identifying five green things. So you can use any color, but green seems to be a good one. I would suggest not black at the Zen Center because you'd be done like that. But you just look around, this gentleman's jacket there, and the edge of that window frame, and you go around there with five green things. And so by the time you've identified five green things, this neutral identifier, you're Check it out. See if you aren't more present with where you are. Where you are in your body is one part of finding yourself where you are. Where you are in relation to your immediate surroundings is another way of finding where you are because they're actually not that different. So doing some kind of centering practice like this, and by the way, they're not mind tricks. These are just, it's not some trick. It's your mind. It's not something else. It's a practice that you can do to harness your mind. And so they not only are useful in getting us back to here, but they also illuminate how we perpetuate our own suffering, particularly in regards to identity and storylines and grievances.

[14:23]

So by finding ourselves where we are in our bodies, in our surroundings, we can pretty easily see that we create myriad identities, not only for ourselves, but also for those with whom we relate. But because these identities are inherently insubstantial, right? I mean, they're just qualities that we've imputed onto the situation. They need something to support them. And the thing that works best to support grievance-based identities is a storyline. So, for example, say I have some interaction with someone and then there's some negative aspect about this interaction. Well, I, you know... If there's a negative aspect to it, I might likely imbue that person with some negative identity. I could say, that person's a jerk. Now, sure, maybe the things that that person's doing are not good, but I'm not talking about the things they're doing, am I? I'm talking about them. I am talking about this fixed thing that I've created called jerk.

[15:30]

And in response to this fixed thing that I've created, I... I'm not the actions I'm performing at that moment. I am also a fixed thing. It's unchangeable thing that is the object of the situation. I'm the victim of this jerk or whatever the scenario is. So we can see those are just imputed characteristics. And they're not, as far as the labeling, they're not inherently substantive in any particular way. And as such, they need something to maintain their existence and to keep them, if you will, airborne. Otherwise they'll collapse. And so the thing that can best keep them airborne, again, given the way the human mind works, is a storyline. So this person's a jerk, and they're inflicting their jerkiness on other people. This is a storyline, right? So without even being cognizant of it, then, our mind will keep perpetuating that storyline. As long as we can do it, we will keep doing it in order not to let these identities fall.

[16:31]

So, for example, the next day I might see this person doing something else. seeing things through the lens of this storyline, chances are pretty darn good that I will find some evidence in whatever that person's doing to reaffirm the storyline from yesterday. And it doesn't need to be much, and it doesn't even need to be based in facts. All we need to do is to see the person doing something or not doing something, and chances are pretty good that we can find something negative about it, and it will... reaffirm that storyline look I was right that guy really is a jerk and look at that other thing he just did or alternatively we can see the person doing a nice thing right like doing somebody a favor and we can write it off and perversely it also becomes fuel for the fire of this storyline like oh look at him doing that favor oh he's clearly just being manipulative and insincere so once we concretize these storylines and sets of identities you can see there's very little breathing room there. There's very little room for change.

[17:33]

And so this does a few things in terms of Buddhist teaching. So first of all, we have incorporated our part of the identity into our self, into our sense of self. And this means that if and when that storyline falls apart, some part of us falls away. Some part of us dies. if you will. And this is why, on a completely subconscious, nonverbal level, it's utterly important to keep that storyline in action. We often don't even know why, and we may even dislike having that storyline. But that's why we do it. It's a form of self-preservation. It's incorporated into our identity, and we need to preserve that chunk of our self, or else it will die. And so I need to see this person being a jerk, Because if I don't, that chunk of me won't be there anymore. And so second of all then, it sets up a framework of the reality that depends on permanence.

[18:39]

We can't allow any part of that storyline to change for the person to be anything other than what we have made them. And we almost then will it to remain permanent with our minds worrying about it or something. And so, you know, anyone can see this is not going to work and it's not going to be sustainable proposition. Things are going to change. So then this puts our survival at risk once more. You know, we have now incorporated this identity that can't change into ourself. So if that identity shifts, then again, the same self-preservation problem. So to return more closely to the topic, though, this whole dynamic... of grievances and storylines puts us purportedly at least 100% somewhere else from the place that we are. You could even say we're creating a place where this drama can play out. And it is exactly this tension, this contrast between where we are asserting ourselves to be, this over there place that we've created, and where we are, being actually here,

[19:53]

that is suffering. You could say that is what suffering is. So how then do we get ourselves back? How do we recognize and acknowledge where we have been all along? So what we need to do is to find some way of finding our place where we are and letting practice occur. By the way, it's extra helpful if the way that we find is somehow connected to the mechanism by which our delusion is manifesting itself. In other words, for example, if we daydream and we put our minds somewhere else, we almost always tie it in with something. We almost always have some bodily action that ties in with the daydreaming. So, for example, when we daydream, we almost always put our eyes at a different angle. You know, looking up and to the right, that might be where your eyes go when you're thinking about something that you might do in the future. And up and to the left,

[20:54]

That might be where your eyes go when you're ruminating something from the past you're chewing on. So, I mean, try it out and see. Different people obviously have different specific body mechanisms around this. Those were two examples there, the angles of those. But the point does hold to all people for some degree. There's a physical tie-in. So if we can incorporate then a practice where you're engaged, if you see that you're engaged in this kind of unhelpful, discursive, suffering thought, And then to bring your eyes or whatever your physical tie-in is, bring your eyes back to center and probably, you know, like slightly downcast as in Zazen. And we're... So, by the way, in Zazen, how often do we do that? I mean, check it out. Tally sometime. What percentage of the time are we actually having our eyes open and softly downcast and soft focus? And how, what percentage of the time are we sort of thought surfing? You know, it's a kind of... But what you can do, you can, oh, I've noticed, I'm bringing the eyes back.

[21:59]

And you're harnessing that motion, snapping yourself back to where you are. It's like a yoke for your thoughts, you know, tying the team together and bringing your mind and body back in concert with each other here. So that's something you can try. But that's, you know, how do we do that? How the fact that it runs so contrary to our normal way of doing things. to set ourselves up in this kind of endeavor. It runs very contrary. And so how do we actually do that in practice? And one key to discerning that is to find out what it is that is hindering the effort you're making in that particular part of your awakening. So actually we all inherently have the desire not to suffer. And that's actually what prompts us to do many of the actions that end up perpetuating our suffering. We want not to suffer, but we might go about it in a clumsy or ineffective way.

[23:02]

And actually finding out that our unwholesome actions very frequently, if not always actually, I think strictly speaking, you could make an argument, come from a base of wanting... not to suffer and they get filtered through some kind of karmic construction that we have some kind of twists and knots that we have and comes out in it you know squirts out in this way that's not so useful but it you know it's not you're not doing unwholesome things because you're evil you're doing them because you want not to suffer and it's just kind of getting a little crooked in based on your mental situation so so yeah so what noticing the time and wanting to leave some space for questions.

[24:09]

So... Yeah, let me talk about the... To continue on this, what is hindering us, right? Find the unwholesome bits. So... A negative reaction we have to someone, like a crew head saying something to us that on the face of it is pretty neutral, but we have a strong reaction to. Why do we have that reaction to it? Well, we can investigate that. We can find where is this reaction physically located in our body? You know, where does it come from? Where does it hurt when that person speaks to me in that way? And physically, like where's the... the sensation located. Where is it housed? Where's the location? And so then we can get to know what that sensation is like. And that too is your body. That's also like getting to know where your toes are. Instead of running away from it, you don't need to dwell in it, but to check it out and be where you are.

[25:28]

And so then when we tune our ears into these little hurt... unresolved bits of ourselves that are sensitive these nerves that get struck we can discern or visualize something about their characteristics and what it is that they you know we can investigate what is it that they need what is it they didn't get what is it i didn't get when i was young that prompted this thing to arise in me when i was five years old and and something happened that i don't even remember but then 30 years later somebody says something and it strikes a nerve. So whatever we got or didn't get, it's usually a pretty basic need that wasn't met in those times. So then these unresolved pieces of us, we can offer those pieces of ourselves whatever it was we didn't get. And we can offer that thing to ourselves. to that piece of ourselves and to our former self, like our five-year-old self, we can call it up in our mind and pat our five-year-old self on the head and try to give whatever it was, whether it was a hug, whether it was a slap in the back, whatever.

[26:51]

And then these unresolved bits, once we investigate them, get familiar with them, they will be at peace. So this is way better than the alternative that we usually do, which is running away from them or trying to buffer ourselves through some big superstructure of protection. Because if I find some way that crew head who spoke to me in this neutral way, I don't like it and I leave the crew, then yes, that crew head isn't going to speak to me anymore. Like that's not going to happen anymore that they tell me how to do something in that way. But I will guarantee you that on the next work assignment or maybe later in some completely unrelated novel way, when that same nerve will get touched and that same response mechanism will be activated. So today's unresolved things, if we run from them or bury our heads in the sand, they will simply be triggered in a new form by future situations.

[27:58]

so given that knowledge you may as well resolve them now right because then whether you stay on that crew with that person or whether you change crews or go to some completely new place all together then you'll be free you won't keep having that nerve retouched this is like this distinction between attempting to cover the whole world in leather because it hurts to walk on the ground and wrapping a piece of leather around your foot. You know, this resilience of knowing where you are, this can be the shoe that allows you to walk on any ground that you might encounter. And now I'd like to offer here also a very important caveat to this, which is that sometimes situations truly are damaging. So, for example, you're in an abusive relationship and your partner is beating you. That's not on you. Like, the problem in that situation is not your reaction to the circumstance, but rather the damaging nature of the circumstance to begin with.

[29:08]

So there's a skill that we can develop to discern which things are actually damaging, which is actually, when we analyze it, pretty small number of things, and then which things might simply not be the way we would prefer them to be. So in other words, there's a big difference between incurring actual damage and just feeling discomfort about something because it doesn't go the way we prefer. So if I'm in the kitchen and the Fukuten asks me to chop carrots and I proceed to suffer about that because I really want to cut the potatoes instead, chances are pretty good that that's on me. There's something I haven't resolved yet about my relationship to carrots, which I may not even have identified. But there may well be some situation that is actually damaging or threatening to us in reality. And discerning which of those is the case, that's a skill that is very important to develop.

[30:12]

But by finding our place where we are and letting practice occur, we can give ourselves the space, perspective, and the settledness that we need to bring attention to and to nourish those parts of us that are hurting. And we can't do that if we're purportedly somewhere else. We can only do that here. And we can only do that now. So by resolving the current manifestation of any pattern, like that, right? These patterns keep repeating again and again, the same kind of nerve gets struck. If we resolve the current manifestation of that pattern, and then by gaining familiarity with our inner workings and our place where we are, we can also resolve the things from the past that are haunting us now. And in that way, you could say that through this practice of attention and resolution and finding a place where you are, that you can change history.

[31:14]

But at least you can change the impact of history, which, after all, that's the only thing from history that is actually with us in the present moment. So, anyway, this is very good work, and I commend you all for doing it. I wish you the best of luck. And, yeah, through doing this, you know, we can really change our minds, change our hearts. change our lives but perhaps change think more accurately we can rediscover our minds where they are maybe rediscover our hearts where they are and and live our lives maybe that's a better way to put it thank you very much

[32:19]

I hope you all find great joy and liberation in your practice. Do you have any questions? I have about six minutes. I don't know if this will actually be part of what you're talking about, but you mentioned abusive situations or bad situations. where in which you feel like you're being harmed, that's not a time to try to stick with it. But in those situations, there is some harming happening. And what if I was the one that was actually causing the harmful situation? How do I look at what I'm doing? Or how am I able to notice that I'm the one that's causing harm?

[33:25]

And I think the times that I've seen when I've caused harm and I've noticed it is when I am... There are a bunch of red flags that in retrospect I can see, oh wow, if I had been paying attention I would have seen that I'm causing harm. One of them can be disproportionate self-concern. Like if I'm operating with blinkers, you know, and I'm only looking at this one little narrow spectrum of what's going on because of some self-concern, that probably then means that I'm stepping on some toes along the way or doing some damage. The other thing is that if I am utterly 100% convinced of something... and not just utterly 100% convinced of something, but in a way with which there's some sort of agitated energy behind it, this is the way it is, you know, and I'm getting fired up about the fact that this is the way it is.

[34:32]

That's usually another red flag, that whatever actions I take that emanate from that place could very well do damage because they are... by definition, not well considered. I've limited where I'm interacting with that situation. So that confines. Does that address at all what you were... I mean, there are, of course, lots of ways, and it also, by the way, depends entirely on your own personal makeup. So, I mean, I could talk till I'm blue in the face about how I notice when I'm harming others. But it's... Some of it's applicable, but I think a lot of it, too, is personal. So I think that's why, in this practice, working with a teacher is so vitally important, because each of us has such an amazingly unique background in history and makeup that we really need that sort of relationship to have tailored practices and guidance like that. So that's another aspect of it.

[35:35]

Thank you, Lydia. Any other questions? Yes, over there, sir. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, There are lots of kinds of hurt, and physical hurt. Physical hurt is a subset of that, but we don't encounter that much in our life, thankfully. But emotional hurt is often more debilitating, can be more debilitating.

[36:41]

And I think that the less a person knows where they are, the less a person is tuned into where they are and what the heck they're doing right now. And the more they are trying to go out and do things out there that are away from where they are, right, with this kind of impossible situation being created, the more oblivious they will be to any sorts of aggressions they may be committing knowingly or unknowingly against other people. And I suppose by definition they wouldn't be oblivious if they were committing them knowingly. But you know what I mean. If you aren't looking... Again, if you're just confining yourself to one spectrum of things to look at, then that's a good way to... Who knows what's going on on either side of that?

[37:45]

And that's also... If you haven't found... very many of these unresolved places, you're likely to manifest unskillful behaviors in front of someone who has very legitimate reactions and gets hurt by things that you don't even know you're doing. So I think by being more present and conscientious and settled that we can decrease the amount of oblivious damage that we do. Does that Make sense? Yeah. Well, I would say there's two parts to it, right?

[38:51]

There's your reaction and there is the other person's actual action, right? This is the difference between intention and impact. You know, people can have whatever impact they end up having and we actually can never know their intention. But there's two things there. So there's your reaction to it And there's the other person's action. And I think it's almost never a binary situation where 100% of the causality and responsibility lies with one party and the other. I mean, obviously, just some random person going down the street, you know, hitting people with a sledgehammer. It's probably pretty much on them. But in terms of what you're speaking of, I think that if there are things that you're noticing you're sensitive to, it could be both the case that you might be being a little oversensitive or there might be some reason that you haven't figured out yet.

[40:05]

It might be pointing to something in you that you ought to look at. That may be the case. And it may be somebody acting inappropriately who needs to have somebody come and talk to them about it. Just because you have some unclean aspect of your reaction, that doesn't mean that the other person is blameless. And just because they're doing something that's damaging doesn't mean that you aren't bringing anything to the table either. So it's tricky, right? I mean, how do we know? How can we ever know? But I think that Zazen practice establishes us in our bodies in such a way that we get to know... what things, when a threat feels really threatening, and when a threat only looks threatening. You know, we get to know, so I find Zazen practice very supportive for that, too. Thank you. All right, and so we are out of time.

[41:06]

Thank you again all very much for coming this evening, and I hope you all sleep well. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:40]

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