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 morning. And thank you for coming on such a wonderful morning. Don't know if you made the right choice, but here you are. Recently I gave a talk with a neuroscientist, and a lot of people turned up, which was gratifying, but also left me wondering what is so appealing about neuroscience to us. And now I have my own answer. Hopefully it doesn't draw a conclusion to my inquiry.

[01:04]

When I was reading the workings of our emotional life from the perspective of neuroscience, there's a wonderful binary that happens. We have this process triggered by the amygdala, which is where we store our deep-seated quick response. We have an experience, and what better than to have an immediate emotional visceral response? What a great way to get into trouble. The amygdala, when it's prompted, which it often is, into a state of alertness, either positive or negative, sets in motion a visceral, physiological, deep, emotional charge.

[02:15]

And with a wonderful surge of adrenaline. And then we make up a story about it to justify it, to make it fit into our world, or not. I think most of the time we do. I think when you look at neuroscience from this point, when we look at just the mechanics, the conditionality of our being, from that perspective, there is a kind of forgiveness and acceptance. Okay. That's the way we're wired. if you didn't have an amygdala, guess what? Your brain would not work. Can we extend that and say, if you didn't have this attribute to deep felt immediate emotions, that your life would not work, that your personality would be missing an essential ingredient.

[03:29]

And this is one of the deep teachings, the foundational teachings of Buddhism, that this is profoundly, inextricably a conditioned existence. There's a common process and then there's this wonderfully unique, personal, intimate expression that we bring it forth in. We bring forth the common process in a very unique way. And really the process of our practice is to look at both of those. Look at this common ground of being. And then look at the particulars of the person that we are. And to take it personally and to not take it personally. When I was thinking of this, I remembered an incident in my own life.

[04:36]

Now it's like three years ago, but it was so sharp and vivid that it stuck with me very well. I was at Tassajara. It was the middle of the practice period. I was feeling like a good Zen student should feel calm, relaxed, concentrated. Yeah, yeah. We just meditated for hours, it was early in the morning, the sun was shining, and then I went to meet with someone. And then they said something, and then I had this sort of thunder flash of intense emotion, negative emotion. LAUGHTER And it was in such stark contrast to my spacious coolness I was feeling like three seconds before. That I was both utterly convinced by the emotion, utterly surprised by it, and sort of disorientated by both.

[05:49]

when they come together, the impersonal and the deeply personal, what can you conclude from that? In the moment, in the flash of the moment, it had almost the tinge of a moment of insanity. This person said something and now Three seconds later, my whole body is quivering with charge. And then I tried to fake it and say something. You know, profound, reasonable. But the person heard it all in my voice. They weren't fooled for a moment. And in fact, it took us a while to unravel that.

[07:00]

It's part of the challenge and the joy of practicing together. You touch each other deeply. And we did, thankfully. And thankfully, it helped us to draw closer. But it took some work, took some very honest disclosure about what was going on for both of us. It helped me to really see and understand this process. And it helped me to see a certain mysterious element to my own intimate workings. It was a surprise and somewhat of a mystery that I could be so susceptible to perceiving the experience a certain way and have such a charged response.

[08:03]

It's a very interesting thing to have happen. It didn't occur to me at the time that it was just my amygdala doing its thing, as it's designed to do. In evolutionary psychology, you know, they say, well, you needed this quick trigger response when we were being hunted and were hunting. Now, of course, those things just happen in the context of our imagination. But they do happen in the context of our imagination. And that brings it to life. this willingness to hold both of these.

[09:07]

How that trigger, that passionate, mysterious trigger can give rise to intense being, and how that intense being can then surround itself, develop meaningfulness. nature of who we are, the nature of what this experience is, and the particulars of it. And I would say there is indeed a mysterious aspect of it. And then much more interestingly, the charge evokes within us something of the traits of our personality. Part of the challenge of practice is, can you see it and learn from it rather than see it, insist it's true?

[10:21]

See it, become filled with regret and remorse about who you are or resentment. Be filled with shame. I would say something about acceptance, something about forgiveness, and something about humility. It was humbling to do that. Up until then, I was having a good Zen day. Chilled. Intentive. I thought, ready for anything. You know, humbling from the word, same root as humus, you know, come back to earth, you know.

[11:33]

Okay, here's who you think you are, but how about you come back and touch the earth? then how do those moments, how do we relate to them as opportunities rather than disasters? How do we relate to them rather than react? And part of the humbling teaching of our amygdala is we're so quick to react. How far we go with it is another question. You know? Is it just a surge of energy? Or do you declare in that moment, I will never in the rest of my life speak to that person again?

[12:39]

There's an Irish joke which is the definition of Alzheimer's. You forget everything except your grudges. Maybe we're all told some of that. To realize there's some aspect of our being that's mysterious and not quite under our control. interesting proposition but how far you go with it how long you hold it what you add to it and become convinced by and so how to work with that is what I'd like to talk about and I'd like to first well I'd like to talk about it in parts of two poems or one poem and one part of one poem

[13:57]

First one's by Naomi Shihabnai. Crossing the Creek. Which stone do you look at? The one you're stepping onto or the next? This one's a little slick but can't get across without it. This moment, this way of touching the earth, this moment of touching your being, this moment of feeling that surge of emotion, positive or negative, or confusingly both, or delightfully both. It can't quite be grasped. It can't quite be fully known. It has its own

[14:59]

ephemeral charge. In some ways you could say the aspiration of practice is to be so fully in the moment that its resonance and fullness and its non-separation from all being is so full that the vicissitudes, the desires and aversions of our psychological makeup just fall away in a state of relief and deeper knowing. So, nice work if you can get it. And really what you discover as you continue to practice, you discover those moments are not so far away. They don't just happen on exalted mountain peaks after 30 or 40 or 50 years of training.

[16:11]

They're moving into our daily life. Except usually we're too busy. Usually they happen, but there's much more important things to worry about. and to try to achieve to dwell on such a triviality as the fullness of your first sip of coffee or that sense of space when you look out the window So this profound curiosity about which stone are you stepping on? What is the groundedness of this moment? What is it that's being experienced? What is it that's being touched? Which stone are you looking at?

[17:18]

Are you looking? Are you experiencing where you are? Or are you already... preoccupied with what you're anticipating about where you're going. Naomi wrote this during a workshop we were doing at Tassajara, I think about three years ago. So, casually, we were having a little writing exercise. Okay, for the next, I don't know, five, ten minutes, write something. She wrote this. I mean, I think the world of Naomi, I think she's an extraordinary person and poet and all sorts of other wonderful things. But at the same time, I also think this expression is within us all.

[18:21]

right in the midst of all the other ways of being that are going on for us how do we let something of our appreciation of life stay closer to the surface stay closer to the foreground of our mind how does it that such a way of being such a way of appreciation of letting something as simple as walking across the creek teach you one of the fundamental principles of practice of life. How do we do that? It's not the product of discipline or deep concentration. It's more about curiosity. And I would say it's also about staying close to what inspires you.

[19:34]

Somewhere in your life, what nourishes your being in an inspirational way? I remember being asked that a long time ago by Angelis Ariane. anthropologist who studied many of the wisdom traditions. And she said, fundamental question is, what inspires you? I must say, at the time, I felt I had a lost answer. Which is often a great place to start. If you feel like you have the answer right away, You should probably proceed with caution. Or even better, set that answer aside and think, okay, what are the other 50 answers?

[20:41]

But what inspires you? What quickens and reignites and gives some guidance to what it is your life is about? What helps you hold in a tender way this way of being that neuroscience is now parsing and describing for us, you know? Your amygdala stimulates your hippocampus, your hippocampus presses the panic button, the adrenaline gland starts pumping adrenaline, and you're off to the races. charged, ready for action, ready to strike at all your foes or run away from them. How can you accommodate that aspect of your being?

[21:55]

How can you discover an acceptance and patience that allows it to be the slick stone that you're walking on at that moment. Recognizing that it's just part of your journey through the day, through that moment, through that relationship. Okay, I think we've got something to work out in our relationship. And maybe the next step is me apologizing. What inspires you to do that? Is it poetry? Is it sacred scriptures? Is it just taking a breath? And of course, the heritage of the Zen tradition

[23:07]

is Zazen. That something in the process of Zazen, something right in the process of humus, of being of the earth, of being of physical form, of being of breathing physical form, something is remembered, something is rediscovered. Something is allowed to be what it is. This is Shikkhantaza. This is Sazet. It's not something you do from your place of excellence. It's something you allow from the entirety of your being. And just like this poem, it speaks to the many dimensions and aspects of our human life.

[24:09]

It's so easy to sit in a mechanical, half-attentive, half-destructed way. Or fully-destructed way. but to let it be a process, an engagement that has a conviction and a wholeheartedness that almost paradoxically has nothing to do with the outcome. We don't sit to produce a particular outcome. We sit to engage just as it is. And here's the second poem. It's part of a poem by Mary Oliver that was given to me by Kim Rosen.

[25:22]

What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us? What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us? Call it whatever you want. It is happiness. It is another way, it is another one of the ways to enter fire. What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us? Call it whatever you want. It is happiness. It is another one of the ways to enter fire. When I was doing that talk with the neuroscientist Philip Golden and Philippe Golden, he asked me a question, which I didn't know he was going to ask, but

[26:30]

He said, okay, you've been practicing a long time. What have you got from it? And do you know how it is? Sometimes your unprepared answer is much better or much, I don't know, closer to the mark than one you might cleverly think through. And in a moment, I said, Learning to trust something about entering into what's happening. Something like that. And sometimes that's like the fire. Like we enter into that ephemeral, passionate heartbeat of our being.

[27:32]

We discover that fierce request. And then sometimes it's the mirror image of that. It's the inverse of that. It's that softening into loving kindness. When I had that exchange with someone at Tassajara, it actually took us both a couple of days to sort of steady ourselves. And then talk. And then discover together how to be vulnerable, how to be honest, how to disclose. and how to hold together the fragility of a human being.

[28:45]

And in that mutual holding, to find a connection. That this is also a way to enter in the greater being. I mean, there's a classic formulation when you look, especially at the early sutras in Buddhism, that in the steady grindedness of being body and breath, something settles and opens. You know, if you look at a sutra like Anapanasati, it's formulated in 16 steps. It's a little terse in exactly how you do it, but the formulation is quite clear. Halfway through those steps to gladden the heart. Letting something of the way we've contracted and separated through our pain and suffering, can something in that soften and loosen

[30:07]

and expand. And there is, amazingly, within the yoga of sitting, a yogic way to engage that visceral contraction. We explore it in the body. But there's so many other ways, as Rumi says, There's a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth. There's a thousand ways to touch the rock we're stepping on. There's a thousand ways to get in touch with what's going on for us. To touch our own fragility, to touch another person's fragility. as you look at a homeless person and witness a life torn asunder by internal forces, by often, so often, some life history that is marked with tragedy and abuse, buffeted by

[31:38]

societal circumstances that seem to be bereft of wisdom and compassion. You know, and we meet it, and in its fierceness, it's almost repulsive. Or it's not almost repulsive. It is repulsive. And yet, this is another human being as worthy of care and attention and respect as any of us. Can we, rather than recoil, can we turn towards? Can we turn towards the fire? Can we learn that there's something in that that teaches us about how to live?

[32:45]

When we do it internally, when we do it externally. So there's the visceral yogic process, and then there's some way of realizing the relationship between suffering and love. between contracting and opening. That in the workings of our human life, this is an important equation to explore. And sometimes it's about the fierceness of intentionality, and sometimes it's about the surrender. what's already available in our lives the gratitude the appreciation the savoring it just as what inspires us spiritually nourishes our being as we open in our life

[34:08]

to what brings forth our kindness, our generosity, our joy. This is the natural complement to the fierce demand of looking at the difficult that we want to recoil from and separate from. That if we only insist upon the difficult, we wear ourselves out. we only insist upon the joyous and the sweet, life will be filled with slick rocks that we slip on. The cold and both. And how do we bring all of that

[35:14]

all of these notions into the wordless realm of Zazen, where we allow a grounded uprightness that stays open to everything and anything that happens. How do we do that sitting cross-legged or in a chair, and how do we do that going into the multitude of environments and relations of our life. What is the thread of intentionality and resolve that helps us to do that? And I would say... come from that which inspires us and we return to that which inspires us.

[36:20]

And we carry it with us. Not as some righteous thing, but maybe more as a sense of wonder. The thing I marvel at in Naomi's poem is that It's almost childish, you know. Which stone do you look at? The one you're stepping on or the next? This one's a little slick, but can't get across without it. I mean, didn't we think that when we were six? Life is mysterious, and then in another way, there's an obvious request that it's so evident, available.

[37:31]

Just the same as I said. Just breathe. Now, what part of that don't you understand? Not to say it's simple to do. Just let your body breathe. Let that breath flow in and out as an expression of non-separation. as an expression of willingness to be alive, as an expression of just trusting and embracing who you are, what you are, what your life is, what the moment is. What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us?

[38:45]

What a marvelous question. What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us? Call it whatever you want. Call it whatever comes forth. Whatever way of engaging it that inspires and instructs. happiness and it's another way another one of the ways to enter fire it's both the fierce demand and a loving embrace how will you know which is which thank you

[39:49]

For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[40:16]

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