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 thank the Tanto for inviting me to speak this evening. And I give homage to Shakyamuni Buddha. I give homage to Shakyamuni Buddha for the teachings being presented tonight and homage to my teacher, Zinke Blanche Hartman. So tonight I thought I'd talk about how to engage in this world of turmoil and suffering, how to engage effortlessly. I wonder what that looks like. what it would look like and whether or not it's something we can trust, whether or not we can do it without doubt and distrust.

[01:13]

Hello, my friends. Okay, so when we hear that word effort or effortless, you know, I'm wondering how many of you feel like a tightness, like something has to get done. Okay, effort means push with some synonyms for that. You know, what words would you use? When you hear the word effort, what comes up for you? Work. And what else? How does it feel? Horse. Hard. I didn't hear you? Obligation. pressure. Struggle. Here we go. We're getting there. We're getting there. So it's been a wonderful week here and I'm studying with my sangha still breathing and we have been studying the way of poetry and that way of poetry being a gate in which you enter

[02:28]

a way of doing Zen practice and Zen training. And so therefore, looking at some of the ancient Zen poets who taught in that way, their only way was to simply give maybe a two-line haiku and end the Dharma talk and we'd be in the bed. And you say, got it? So I didn't do that to you. I thought about it. But... One of the things that we are learning is sitting in the silence and listening and having the silence speak and not going after and not grabbing for and not reaching for something that we think is poetry. Is it okay for you to hear? Yeah. Okay. Some people aren't able to hear. Yeah. I know when I put my head down, it works better, but I can't do that.

[03:35]

Okay, let's try that. So I'll try to speak up. So part of that work is how do you express what's coming to you, coming through the silence without imposing yourself upon it? How do you express nature, express life? express your experience without imposing yourself upon it. And that's the way many of the Zen poetry holds. And not holding preconceptions or constructions or having descriptions or adjectives or anything to embellish and make the experience something to convince someone of. It's just the experience as it is just in the moment. And so that when one hears it, that there's a vastness, that you hear and feel that silence.

[04:36]

You hear and feel that silence you may experience when you're doing zazen. So constantly as we're writing this poetry, because we did some poetry writing, it was the constant effort. We're not writing it. And the constant... effort of waiting for something to arrive and being maybe having tension about something not arriving. You know, not a message, not a teaching, and nothing. So then we might begin to put in what's called effort. You know, we start to pressure ourselves, you know, around whether or not anything is happening. And so one of the questions I put forth in the class was, when you're in Zazen, what are you doing? You know, what are you doing? And maybe you might not have an answer right away about that, but it's an exploration, again, about silence, stillness, sitting, yourself, your life, and what are you doing?

[05:37]

And it's a good question to keep asking over and over, what are you doing? Even if you have an answer, then what is that? Whatever your answer is, and then another answer, and then what is that? And you keep going until you're not sure, because... The answer is, I don't know. Often. And that's a fine answer for a Zen practice. So that's what makes Zen kind of like, well, why bother? So, I didn't know when I came, and now I really don't know. It's worse. So... I began to look at this notion of effort. And even in writing and writing the poetry, we did a lot with Basho and his poetry. And, you know, because he was known to be one of the best. We did look at Chione or Chione. Sometimes they have different ways of saying her name.

[06:40]

And she was one of the top women haiku artists. And so we looked at that and we looked at some poetry from a book, Daughters of Emptiness, Chinese, the early Chinese nuns. And we looked at this and how it impacts our lives. Like, why are we doing all this? And this is like, you know, way, way before we're born. And what is in these teachings and what I felt is connected to this notion of effort and effortlessness. and how we're in this world and we find ourselves being pressured to do something or not, you know, feeling hopeless or helpless or confused or, you know, feeling like we're making mistakes and we're not doing enough and this kind of thing. So, you know, so much is happening, why would we even consider something like effortlessness? You know, like really pulling ourselves back and not imposing ourselves. So I began to look at the... You know, the word effort exists in the cessation of suffering.

[07:45]

On the eightfold path, there is a cessation of suffering. And effort is one of those. They may say right effort. So we don't often look at that one. We don't talk about it. I think we assume we know what it is. We talk a lot about the more ethical or moral... writes a passage on this path, and that's like right speech or right action or right livelihood. Those are our favorite ones. And because we can feel those and we know those and we think we can manage it. But then it kind of, as it goes down, as the path further goes down and we're talking about effort and mindfulness and meditation, this is where it gets kind of murky for us. So effort... I'm wondering how many people would have ever considered that effort is part of that path of concentration. Yes, it's part of that part of the path with mindfulness and meditation.

[08:53]

So we might have thought effort was right action, right speech, do something. Do it now. Do it this way. Do it that way. And so that whole notion of seeing effort as not part of the concentration, not part of mindfulness and meditation can lead us to some very interesting strategies in our lives about how we engage the world. And so while I'm talking about engaging this world we're living in effortlessly, you know, I am talking about mindfulness and meditation. I am talking about zazen. I am talking about how to engage without imposing ourselves upon everything that we think needs to be right speech, right action, right livelihood. All of Buddha's teachings are interrelated. They're not separate. So you can learn all of this. by reading something else and still come to some of the same understandings of his teachings.

[09:58]

But when I kept hearing this word effort, I thought to bring it. And then within that effort, there's also the right view and the right thought. And so that there has to be some wisdom involved in any of this path. So wisdom for right action, wisdom for right speech, right livelihood, wisdom for effort. Wow, you need some wisdom to take effort? And so maybe some of the pressure that we experience and some of the things that we feel we should do or we do is out of alignment with our own wisdom, you know, and our wisdom that is brought, and when I say our own wisdom, not this, not our thinking, but the wisdom that comes through us when we're sitting, when we're sitting zazen. While we're in the stillness and in the silence, and allowing what is to be heard and seen, what is the message, what are we doing, allowing that to come through without our thinking, without our saying, I'm sitting, I'm meditating, I'm doing zazen, and I got it down.

[11:08]

I've been here every day, every morning, and I know what I'm doing. But what are you doing? Why bother? What is happening? And in my own experience, it's that experience of sitting and allowing. For me, it took many years to unearth and unbury the wisdom that was in my bones, the wisdom that is in all of us. So the Eightfold Path to me is as ancient, way more ancient than Buddha, and it's as ancient as, I think, any life upon this earth. And so it is in us because we're alive. And maybe it's in us when we're gone. I don't know about that, but it's definitely in us when we're alive. And that when we're sitting, we're calling on that. We're calling on that for our lives, not for ourselves, but only, but for our families and our communities, for our song, it's for everything. You know, we're calling on that to come forth and to not even be named when it does. And, you know, so you didn't get up and say, I got wisdom.

[12:08]

You know, I snap, I understand, you know. And then something happens that changes that whole notion of you understanding. And so I've been traveling since June to sanghas all over from New York to, you know, east to west. I haven't stopped and I'm still moving along since June and talking. And it's interesting that... how much concern there is in the world and how much concern there is about how we use our practice with what's going on. Everyone's concerned about it. And everyone is making efforts based on what they think is right or based on what they feel is or what they've been driven to think and believe maybe by the motivations of our own society. So a lot of times we're moving in that way. Even if you don't listen to the news, you listen to others, and you're interrelated with others. So there's a way we can be swayed by what the society is being driven by.

[13:14]

And in that, some of us kind of like herd toward one corner, you know, without stopping in the silence and the stillness to unearth what is it that you would be doing or... Maybe there's something else that may come. Just like in poetry, you can write it, and then something else is unearthed. It's a sentence you never believed existed. It just comes through. And that is that poetry that arrives, not the poetry you make. So what kind of poetry can you make in this society today, right now, if you're sitting still enough to allow whatever that poetry is to come through for you to do, for you to do? And can we... collectively do that as we take on this path of mindfulness and meditation. I have a little bit more light than I did the other night, so let's say that this works. Often we feel like there's no answer.

[14:19]

There's no answer in the Dharma for these things that are going on, but for me, the Dharma is the answer. and otherwise I would not have stayed in this practice more than 20 years because I was in the Nishan tradition for 15 and then in Zen center for 20 years. And so I stayed because I felt there has to be something in these old teachings that speak to what is happening to us and this is not new, what is happening to us as people. And so I challenge students and I challenge some students from New York all the way here, to find even in their language what is the Dharma, say, around decolonizing the mind. What Dharma teaching says that already? So we have taken words from places, but we don't sometimes know how to integrate it. And so the parts that I feel in the Dharma that are important with what's today is that wisdom I'm talking about.

[15:26]

you know, developing that wisdom along with compassion and the mindfulness and the stillness and the silence. We have the path, but we don't often trust it. We doubt it. And so we make, well, okay, this is not enough. Let me do this. And then we do that. And then I've challenged some of the students. I said, so when you do that, is it enough? No. So because it can't be measured. It's just what you do or whether or not it's something you trust as your path. And if it's not something you trust as your path, then that should be explored. It should be looked into. And you recommit or you walk away. You recommit or you walk away. Or you deepen that practice. Oh, there's a clock. Put it over here. It's Army time. So when we practice the wisdom and the companion and mindfulness and the stillness and the silence, quite naturally, it should come to us that there's no superiority, no inferiority among us, no privilege based on superiority.

[16:46]

Even though the society drives us that way, As I said earlier, in our own self, in our own innate self, in the wisdom, we must follow that and walk with that, not preach it. You don't go out and say, well, let me tell you, if you just sit and have some mindfulness and meditation, there wouldn't be this situation. That's not what I'm saying. I'm talking about you and your personal practice and what we call the inner room, not the upper room with the heaven, not heaven, the inner room within yourself. you know, and what we're doing, what we're doing in this container that is set up and resources used to help us do that. So when we eat, it's not just a good time, it's to help us sit here. When we train, it's to help us all sit here. All of it's to get here, to this moment, and to be taken care of and well in it. All of it.

[17:49]

All the positions, you know, it doesn't really matter. They're there to... keep us safe as much as possible while we're sitting here. And we're sitting in the silence and it's the most profound experience to me every time I sit to have such a variety of human beings sitting together and in this powerful silence, this powerful pause that's not happening hardly anywhere in the world. It's profound to me. And it touches me. When the bell rings, it touches me. I've heard that bell ring so many times, different bells, and it's still like, wow, every time. You know, so what, you like the sound? Let me go get a bell like that and I'll feel good all the time, you know? No, because it's not really the bell. It's my heart. The bell is my heart. Where is your heart? You know, and that is where this practice keeps me, sustains me, why I even considered

[18:50]

wearing a robe, not necessarily to become a priest, but to acknowledge my commitment and dedication to a path, a spiritual path, such as the Dharma. I want to say one more thing about going outside of the Dharma. I was just talking to a good friend today or the other day, and I was telling him about a situation when I was teaching at Green Gulch. There's a lot of very young people who come to Green Gulch, very, very young. And like 18, some of them, you know, and they're doing things 18-year-olds do to me because I remember being 18. And so, you know, everybody going, oh, no, and I said, they're 18 years old. And they're doing what they're supposed to do, which is explore life.

[19:52]

And so one young man decided to talk with me about something he was learning, I imagine, around consciousness. And I'm saying this example to show how to bring the Dharma together with what's going on in this world and how not to impose myself. in it, to sit in the silence and the witnessing and the stillness and listen to what this young man had to tell me. And what he had to tell me was about the color of my skin bring up bad images to him and derogatory. And he was sharing this in earnest, you know, derogatory things in his mind. And he was really having a hard time telling me. And I think he was... being courageous in his mind, and he had learned in his workshop to do these kinds of things. And so in the moment, I was like, of course, my human frailty self and my relative self was like, what? You know, like, what am I supposed to do with this, my faith?

[20:54]

And so, you know, and I'm like in the doper song room. And so I just kind of like, I paused and... in that moment, and we were studying the Yogacara, and I understood that voice to be a voice larger than him, and understood that and looked and said, you know, that consciousness, that consciousness, you're caring that we've been studying the Yogacara, and that stored consciousness is going to keep you from ever having an experience of interrelationship That is the core teaching of Buddha. And I said, and it will keep you from me. We will struggle. We will have some falseness. And that's sad to me. And so we're here to sit and to see just what you're talking about.

[21:56]

And so I could have gone another way. I could have, you know, said I have a couple of books you can read and I could have a couple of films you might want to check out. And I could have, could have, could have, could have done everything society does to handle such a situation. But I'm not I'm not of that. I'm not I'm of this. And I can only give that back as a teacher to hand that back in the Dharma. and to offer the Dharma to his freedom. Because his freedom, right? It's our freedom. And so I offered the Dharma back. That's all I had. I cannot be his therapist and help him through that. I can't be whatever. I can't be the activist in the moment to say, you know, well, you know, you better get that together, you know, whatever way. Or like, I have some place you can go and people you can talk. It just would, it would probably be overwhelming. you know, for that person. I don't know. I have no idea. I didn't even dwell into his feelings.

[22:58]

I stayed with the Dharma. And so that's what I'm inviting tonight, you know, that we stay with engagement in a way I call effortlessness. So the effort is there. So it's an effort at effortlessness. Isn't that Zen? You're still doing, the effort is not the pressure and the tension and the work and the exhaustion and the oh, until you hit your head against the wall and you can't do it anymore. I can't stand to hear it anymore. That kind of thing, that work is going to kill all of us. And it's not going to bring us to the places that we already are. If we could come and recognize where we already are. And so there's a term that is in Chinese philosophy And it's called Wu Wei, W-U. I don't know if I'm saying it completely right. W-E-I is the second word. I don't speak Chinese. And I don't know what dialect it is, but it's old. It's ancient. And how many, has anybody in here heard of it?

[23:59]

Let me just check. Great. Okay. So if you want to speak on that, please, later. It's a powerful way of living, you know, this effortlessness, and especially in the middle when everything is going on. And I'm taken by that idea of a consciousness of not trying so hard, not working so hard, and to allow time and space and silence and open-heartedness to take its place, to trust it, that it will lead to Right action, right speech. All of it. It will lead that. And that's my experience in my own life. So I'm not even talking from a hope or an abstract. I'm talking about how I have seen when I bring the Dharma, without saying it's the Dharma, I don't walk around being all preachy around Buddhism, but to really just walk it and feel into what is going on from the cushion.

[25:03]

like literally from that place. And when I say from the cushion, not literally even from the cushion, but from what happens on the cushion, what is it when you're doing zazen? You know, what is it? And creating an expansiveness around that. So I promised a number of people I would have Q&A. So I wanted to make sure we have enough time for that. And... I think I'll just end in this place where it says having, you know, a sense of, you know, if you have a sense of who you think you are, then it's very hard to operate effortlessly. It's very hard to engage Wu Wei, you know, because you're going to really take an effort to convince people of who you think you are. And it really gets very convoluted, you know. And my teacher, Zenke Blanche, a lot of times, you know, when she would see me getting into that place of that who do I think I am place, you know, I would be like, well, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, and like, well, who do you think you are?

[26:26]

And I was like, well, who do you think you are? You know, we were very sassy together, you know, sassy southern women, you know, so it was fun. And I knew what she meant, and it's always been that place when I feel like I'm suffering while I'm engaging, you know, people that some of that is that. Who do I think I am? It comes from how I might be driven by a society's way of engagement, or I have some kind of a sense of self that is not conducive to being in that interrelationship that is core to the teachings of this practice, of Zen practice, of the practice where there's nothing, nothing to gain. And so I would like to pause there. If there's any questions, I'll take one or two or three questions. One or two.

[27:27]

Or comments. Yes. To steal fear? To steal fear. Fear comes from notions in the mind and thinking in the mind and what the mind is saying about you, again, and what you're thinking is being thought about you and what you're doing and how you're doing it. And I know this also by experience. There would have been a time I would never sit up here and talk. I couldn't talk in front of people. And, you know, the fear was so great I was talking to somebody about when I first did Kokio, and the room was full like this, and I was like, why do so many people come to Evening Zazen? Because people don't come to Evening Zazen.

[28:30]

And I could feel, when I was getting ready to chant, the blood draining from my head. I was about to faint. I couldn't hardly get the title. And I grew to know, and I stayed with them because I could see how my mind was the culprit to most of my fear, most of what I fear. Now, I still have fear, but I can go, oh, yeah, hi. And I recognize it, and it's still as tremendous sometimes. I feel like sometimes it's overwhelming to me. And I just allow to know that that's the mind and to have patience with it and myself and just allow the breath to work for me and the body to be there and not to rely on this fickle mind going back and forth and back and forth. And at night or something happens, I just take a deep breath and I just breathe deeply until I can.

[29:37]

It's hard. It's difficult. It's not easy. You know, to actually try to compose oneself in the middle of, I call it terror. You know, a lot of people say, oh, I'm fearful. I say, you're terrorized. You know, and we do. We're in so much terror. That's when you have accumulated fear. It's terror. And then that terror either leads to internalized terrorizing or external terrorizing, which we have a lot of, right? It leads to that. So it's important to know where it's coming from. And I think this practice shows you when you're sitting and to keep sitting with it until you're understanding the human nature. You're understanding human nature. You know, we're human beings and what it looks like. And if we can't see ourselves, we have so many mirrors. You know, we have so many mirrors to see, to look at. If we're willing to look, sometimes we're not. We're like, oh, oops, no. You know, I don't want to look at it.

[30:39]

her, I don't like him, I don't, you know, all these kinds of things we have, our guards, you know, and protection, you know, so I worked at actually looking at people as much as I could and really, you know, to be there, not to look just to be looked, but look to see whether or not I can invite the pure interrelationship between living beings. You know, some of us do it with our pets and we can do it with each other in that same way. It'd be really great, you know, be really powerful to be able to do that and not think something's going to happen, you know, to us. And that's not to say some people you might not want to look into their eyes. I've seen people, maybe that's not the best thing, you know, to do. So you have to be careful. You have to judge, develop your intuition. And we're doing that too when we're sitting in Zazen. So any... Is that good for you? Great. Any other questions?

[31:41]

Yes. You mentioned an example of bringing the drama to our efforts and actions. What example or how events are engaging in the world? What example was... How do you find violence in something like decolonizing the mind? I was wondering if you could say more about that. Okay, I don't want to give you the answer because I want you to do your homework. Completely. But, you know, some clues are there are a lot of teachings around the mind and how the mind is sometimes clouded. And how is the mind? Go find how the mind is clouded, how Buddha taught, how the mind gets clouded. What are the things that cloud the mind? You know, so that you can begin to see what actually decolonizing looks like. It's not like someone has, you know, got your mind and, you know, done something unless you allow that.

[32:52]

But that you still have some freedom in how you are... I'm going to approach those blind, that blind clouded part of your life, you know, and that's inside of you, you know, first. And so colonization where we talk about, you know, someone. influencing how we think or who we are, you know, how we, another word might be internalization, you know, but you can internalize, if you can internalize suffering, you can internalize liberation, if you know what that is, if you know how liberation is being taught. The precepts is an excellent way. That's why I love Jukai. I love the precept ceremony because it's actually an actual ceremony in which you are taking on that moment of disengaging what's been internalized or colonized or oppressed.

[33:54]

You're actually taking the steps. It's right there of freedom, how you can be free of some of the things that cloud and interfere. with how you are engaging this life. Not your life, this life. Life. And then you will see your life in it. So I don't know if that happened. So it's a long, I would have to really go through a lot of teachings right here. But most of the Buddhist teachings, starting with the precepts, I think why it's so important to study and study and study them. just because of what it says you know say oh well I already know I don't kill I don't I'm vegetarian I don't eat I don't I don't lie I don't all these things but when you get up under it in which we study we study nine months before we did you got nine months with me intensively a practice discussions you know and we read and in that I asked each one to find underneath each one find one and see what it might be

[34:57]

You might be angry, and then you go to angry management, and really your thing is you're not generous. So every time somebody wants something from you, that's when your anger comes. So go to generous management. I mean, you might be in the wrong place, in the wrong area of what you might need to look at. Or you find that you're more looking at others, but underneath, you're trying to hide. So we really turn those precepts. We really turn them. We really use the eightfold path. We view it. We see the intention. We turn it around. By the time the Jukai comes, you're not just saying what's there. You know what you're talking about for your life. And then my students, they have to make up a vow of their own, and then they say that vow in front of the whole assembly group. just a really short avow about their lives. It's just a way of capturing the entire path.

[35:57]

So these paths that we have are true. They're ancient. Buddha felt them. They're older than Buddha because he sat on the trees. He said it. He was in the woods. He sat silently until the silence spoke, just like in the basho poems. That's what they know about. And so that's what we are, I don't want to give away the answer, what we're doing when we do zazen. But what are you doing when you do zazen? That kind of thing. So I hope that helps. I think, is that it? I think that's it. Correct? Yes, correct. 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 sfcc.org and click Giving.

[37:00]

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