This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzz.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. moments ago i was standing outside the abbot's cabin looking over at those mountains to see if it was going to rain and the jisha assured me it wasn't so so i didn't bring an umbrella but it did occur to me

[01:01]

traveling all the way from Kazakhstan and all the way from Ireland to stand outside the abbot's cabin knowing each other's history and all that merging into that moment It was a sweet moment. Who knows? Maybe we'll both cherish it. Maybe we'll both, in our confusion, embellish it in some wonderful way. And get wet, too. You know, our life always moves forward.

[02:17]

It's not a repudiation of our past, a denial of our past, but still it moves forward. And there's something that often occurs to us about our past, a sense of unfinished business. Watch yourself in zazen. Something arising. Some unfinished business. you think about that poem I ended up reading yesterday where he's sitting and he said the image was his father's walking through the cattle yard looking straight at him.

[03:26]

I think he's about six years old. And then someone calls his father and he looks away. And I felt loss before I knew the name for it. And then that six-year-old went on to be invited to teach in many, many prestigious academic centers across the planet, won a Nobel Prize for literature. and wrote about being six sitting on gate. You know, yesterday I was mentioning the three marks of existence.

[04:36]

This interbeing. Could that conversation that Jisha and I had, could it be exactly the way it was if it didn't have the history it had? If each of us didn't have the history we have? If there wasn't a kind of a misty rain over the far mountain? interbeing, always bringing forth something. Sometimes something we think is precious, affirms, encourages, and then sometimes something that feels limiting, constricting.

[05:42]

interbeing, and always changing. We had our discussion, took all of almost a minute. We dallied some, and then we headed off because we had important places to be. Interbeing, impermanence, in the grind of being that calls forth, that brings forth dukkha or sukha, dukkha and sukha. So we immerse ourselves in shashin. And then maybe a thought

[06:53]

pops into our head, this world we've created called Shashin will come to an end and will return to normal, which is a bit of a joke, right, given where we are? But still, if you watch, there's a normal in there somewhere. personal day. But we can't go back. We can only go forward. And somehow that can leave us with a sense of unfinished business. Yeah, I sat all week and yet. Many years ago when I was a student here,

[07:55]

A good friend, a Dharma brother, said, I feel like I've graduated. I'm going to leave. And I thought, wow, I don't. And he left, went on, started his own construction business. Not to say one's right and one's wrong, but just moving forward with our life, it's dense with experiences. It's dense with momentary interactions that put together what we casually call our life. Part of the very term sukha, the su implies openness, spaciousness, alleviating some of the density, the impulse to contract.

[09:18]

When we grasp the world, the possibilities of what the world is shrink. and it becomes a certain way. And then this koan I was mentioning, you know, in some ways, the first part of it is really straightforward. If you cling to a fixed notion when you're doing zazen, that's going to hinder opening to whatever is. What part of that do you not understand? And yet, in just living our life, there's always some assertion of being.

[10:26]

It is true. It's saturated with fixed ideas. A deep sense of what you really want to have happen or should happen. And this interplay between such concrete ideas and holding it all in a spacious way. And as you know only too well, I've been annoying and annoying you and boring you with the notion of just experience the experience. Hopefully that each of us in that process

[11:31]

starts to become more intimate with momentary existence. Starting to see and feel, and how's this me put together? How's this world put together? How's this sense of time, of place, put together? And upon simple observation or simple acknowledgement, there's not much to it. Okay, if you cling, you get in your own way of just being open to what is. Got it. Like the high school student at City Center who came to take a look and...

[12:38]

We were talking, and I said, well, do you know much about Zen? He says, oh, yeah, we did it last semester at school. Yeah. There's not that much to it. It's only when we pause and feel into it a little deeper and pay attention, then it becomes intriguing. Then you start to see what a divine mystery it all is. And that's where Dogen goes with this koan. He takes the seemingly obvious. poses a very interesting question, very interesting proposition.

[13:47]

But can you realize if you don't, within your foolishness, make a committed effort? If you're not willing to be the foolish basal sitting down diligently doing zazen, can you realize the formless suchness of each moment? Can you see within it the interplay of causes and conditions? Can you see within it the ever-changing character of it. Can you see within it that contracting and grasping causes suffering in subtle ways and in gross ways?

[15:00]

Jisha and I were discussing whether or not to take home brothers. Actually, we were just playing a game. The outcome wasn't that important. Interacting was the name of the game. What helps bring about such a state of being, such a willingness to participate in life. And how well it is that in entering in the Zaza, in engaging it, It has a mysterious density so often.

[16:12]

And then sometimes the clouds part and it has a spacious, obvious simplicity. And some ways Dogen just says, don't be so sure. Don't become precocious and simple. Oh, just don't cling to anything, and the moment is just itself. Completely true, but does it embrace the human condition? A little bit like saying, when you're fully awakened, This is how it is. Put the powerful question, how?

[17:18]

How? How to be is as in how to discover, how to realize, how to Experience something that sinks into your flesh so deep that it has more authority than all the remembrances and the unfinished business of your life. How? And then Dogan, puts forth these extraordinarily complex ideas. And when you read different translators, one turns it into a negation, one turns it into an affirmation, one turns it into a question.

[18:26]

And probably all three are in there somewhere in Dogen's statement. And I would say to you on this, the last day of Shashin, that it's a great gift that the normal we're going to return to, or we think we're going to return to, is really very close to more of the same. The gift of that is this interesting way in which in our seeming inability to be fully this moment, we conjure up the next one to save us.

[19:39]

pluck out some little detail. Or a few details. The past arrives in the present as unfinished business to the degree that we flitted through that moment and in a subjective way left it unfinished. And it hearkens to us now. But what about that lingering feeling you have from that experience? When and how will it be resolved? My son once said something to me about

[20:54]

he felt coerced by me when he was about nine or ten into doing his homework with a lot of passion and i was kind of confused and perplexed and also surprised and and somewhat chagrined thinking it's not what parents do And then many years later, he said, I'm over that. He'd gone off to New York, spent five years creating his own world, his own life, his own problems. Oh, yeah, that? Well... doesn't have the definitive authority it had before.

[22:00]

Which of all the details and experiences he had of living in New York was the convincing one that opened the hand letting go and accepting what's next. It's a mystery. We might think we know. And in the Zen school, as Dogen's, suggesting in this coin, there's a paradox. The effort, the engagement is purposeful, deliberate, and concise.

[23:15]

This moment, just as it is, is exactly itself. I once read Djokovic being quoted, and she said, there's three principles in Zen, attention, attention, attention. There's a formidable challenge of us, you know, pay attention and experience the experience that's being experienced. It's not a sloppy whatever. It's not, oh yeah, daydream a little, space out a little. It's exactly this. It's exactly sitting on the cattle fence, locking eyes with your father and feeling the feeling that happens when he turns away.

[24:24]

It's that precise, whether you can name it or not. And the other poem, it's carrying the pan full of hot white ash, straining your wrist, but still holding it horizontal. Doing what you're doing. discovering that we don't live in years. We live in moments. We can set plans for our life. We can come to a Zen monastery for a practice period, but still we live in moments.

[25:33]

And in this wonderful time in Sashin, despite all your efforts to keep yourself together, it has not only worn off the edges, it has peeled back some of the layers. And maybe in some ways you wish it hadn't. So think you'd rather had some cover to them so they wouldn't feel so raw. And then other moments where the freshness of what it is comes forth in that openness. So to allow for that. And let that, in its own workings, bring forth what's next.

[26:55]

And I would say to you, the challenge is, as it arises, will it be a dharma event or a karma event? Will it cast you into a construct that carries the influences and impulses of habit energies that become convincing? Or will it bring forth the very sim collection of contributing factors that display the three marks. Look at that image. Look at the way they spark that emotion.

[28:13]

Look at how that ripples through my body. look at how when it's held with awareness the very act of awareness influences it I once this read this study about mindfulness and depression and the notion was in the study they were calling awareness metacognition and this thing the first thing to do was to establish metacognition and then to skill build and then very interestingly discovered that just in teaching people how to be aware already in of itself was having a positive effect on the attributes of depression the awareness itself creates an influence

[29:23]

the awareness itself experiences the experience and and the more we open tonight the more we get ourselves into trouble the more unedited, the more uncensored the stuff of what we are arises. And then it requires a subtle kind of attention. Do you get busy tidying it up, cleaning it up, or do you experience it right in that state? And often those untidy, unruly, uncensored experiences have a jewel of a teaching.

[30:46]

But just like the study on depression that I mentioned a few moments ago, just becoming aware of it helps facilitate a kind of a resolution and integration in our being yes it has some dual teaching about our karmic life but in the awareness the deep ingrained impulse to contract around it to somehow either try to avoid it, reject it, suppress it, fix it, is lessened. And just integrating that part of ourself. So I would say to you, at this point in Shishin,

[32:06]

Maybe there's a feeling like all the major Dharma battles have been fought and we're just steadily and quietly and uneventfully living out the final hours. I'd suggest you turn that on its head and say, what a precious moment after almost seven days of sitting, when consciousness is clearer than usual, when presence and awareness has become an almost instinctive response. precious moment to see this mystery called me how it comes forth to look at and what seems to be my notion of doing Zazen

[33:44]

Or maybe you have a more sophisticated terminology of being done in Zazen, of being Zazen. However, you think about it, what exactly do you do? Someone said to me in Dogusan, oh, yes, someone told me you were quite likely to ask me what do I do in Zasin. Yeah. What do you do in Zasin? Why wouldn't you look at that? What do you do and what do you not to do? What do you intend to do and what actually happens? with some judgmental attitude but more of a kind of a quirky examination of who we think we are who we say we are and what we actually exhibit in terms of thoughts and feelings and behaviors Sazen is asking us to

[35:17]

Find a way to align them. And so Dogen goes to town in this koan. Well, when the cart won't move, do you beat the ox or do you beat the cart? Well, everybody with half a brain knows you beat the ox. Right? And then Dogen gets in there and says, yeah, you beat the ox, you beat the cart, you beat everything. You beat beating. What's that? Oh, don't be silly. Don't be silly. Within the realm of the Dharma, we're using language a certain way.

[36:27]

It doesn't have immediate correlation in more conventional thinking. Not intentionally. mean first of all speak for yourself none of us can say for others and then of course we do all sorts of things because that's the messiness of who we are and how we are But in the Dharma realm, especially in Zen, the language becomes stylistic. When you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha.

[37:33]

Well, that sounds incredibly violent. But it's kind of dramatizing. Don't get stuck in clinging to that. But then if you think how much that term... when you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha, has become part of common parlance. You can see, making it a little bit dramatic seems to help us remember. So when I say, don't be silly, it's like shock therapy. It's like saying, Let's take the phrase out of convention and allow it to be in an entirely different context. But rather than say it in a kind of polite, understanding way, just kind of like say it in a kind of outrageous way.

[38:46]

remember where those words and those thoughts are coming from and allow for other interpretations of what's going on. To hold too tightly onto one, it creates a kind of distraction. Like in this koan, if we hold too tightly to becoming Buddha, we hinder the process.

[39:55]

being Buddha. The Kaisako is a wonderful koan. I've been here when we carried the Kaisako every period. We had two Junkos, persons who carried it. It rotated through everyone in the practice period. And we went through an interesting process to stop doing that. Have we overcome a great intrinsic violence in Zen and find a more appropriate way?

[41:03]

Maybe. Maybe not. Flexible mind. It's not to say, let's make everything wishy-washy or don't have any opinions, but open to possibility. And then the detail of the moment becomes like a koan. And when that mind comes up, it stimulates our awareness. Hmm. And thank you for your comments. So letting this time.

[42:24]

And if you watch, I would suggest to you, often there's an inclination towards nothing special. And accurately so. But right in the midst of it, a precious opportunity. to see more subtly your own details. And it is a good point, the word beat. I hope you can see that it's an expression of deep compassion. When we ask how do we live this human life,

[43:28]

We're asking how do we live this human life in a way that creates connection, in a way that enlivens, in a way that brings warmth and heart. Not in a way that narrows us, makes us more suspicious and conflicted. use the word beat and a couple of the translators use the word beat and a couple of them use the word prod do you prod the ox or do you prod the cart okay what does it mean and it usually means like you would have a stick

[44:36]

and you'd kind of poke the ox to get it going. I guess that word doesn't come up very often, huh? And then Dogon goes on and he elaborates why he says what he says. to your point, he said it all in Japanese, so what's the most accurate translation that captures his thought? I don't know. So please,

[45:38]

Let this day be a special, nothing special day. Let the mind and heart that expresses itself teach. Teach who is this one who is reaching the conclusion of a seven-day sitting. And how is she now? How is he now? What's arising? Is there ease? Is there agitation? Is there persistent thoughts? Is there... free movement of thought and feeling is there a definition of normal is there some sense of returning the normal

[47:11]

is there some sense of opening to greater being? Whatever that might mean. 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 sfzc.org and click Giving.

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