Good morning. Last night, during the last period, I offered a guided meditation. You know, often towards the end of the day, and sometimes at the start of the day, too, we feel like we've depleted our body and our mind and what we have to offer.

[01:12]

to the glorious activity of zazen. And when that arises towards the end of the day, usually we're in a suggestible state. Usually in that diligence, in that purposefulness, is woven in the persistent constructs of how we engage the world, how we think of the world, how we think of the self, what we think of practice. And we've just spent the day diligently working with all of that. And there we are. Just one period between you and going to bed.

[02:18]

And then some fool starts talking. An intriguing point in practice where... does seem that we use our own karmic tendencies to go beyond our own karmic tendencies. Now, in this fascicle, Zazen Shin, that I've been obliquely referring to, I think this is woven in there. The very process of thinking draws up some form of concepts.

[03:25]

Now, we could say, well, the evolution of our practice is that as we have more and more direct experience, that becomes our reference rather than our karmic constructs that have arisen from what we want and what we don't want in all the ways that has engaged being alive. So there, dangling in time and space in the last period of Zazen, to rediscover hopefully experience directly just the simple practice of hearing seeing and experiencing the body and in our susceptible suggestible state sometimes the dharma arrives

[04:45]

in a simple form like that. And then just to mess it all up, I said, the original mind finds its true home. Many years ago I was in India And I came across a little booklet. And in it, it was Shindo's guru who died about 20 years ago. And he said, what is God? He says, think of it this way. There's a father and a child. And the child says, well, Who made that sweeping bird?

[05:49]

And the father says, God. And then the child continues, well, who made the tree? Who made the earth? Who made the sky? Until the father runs out of answers. And I got it wrong. He says, who made the bird? Well, the bird's the product of evolution. Well, who made the sky? Well, that's a product of the big pie. The child continues until the father runs out of answers and doesn't know. And then he says, God. A little bit like that. I mean, what the heck does it mean to say original mind finds its true home? And yet... When we're in the realm of direct experience, often something comes across something that goes beyond the conventional constructs of this existence we're in the midst of.

[07:09]

Something's affirmed. some things evident. It's my notion that often it registers more like a feeling. Sometimes leaning towards an emotion and sometimes leaning towards a kind of sukha, a spacious energetic sense of being and yesterday i was talking about a continuous practice what is it to continually keep opening in the midst of our karmic formations to keep opening

[08:12]

more than the karmic construct. To experience directly and let that, not only let it register, let it open. I was marveling as I was rereading this fascicle, or the first section of it, in preparation for this talk. And marveling at how, as I mentioned before, the different translations translate what seem to be the pivotal phrases in different ways. It reminded me of an old Native American tradition, which is when something happens, can you construct five different narratives for that experience?

[09:35]

Oh, it was like this, or it was about this, or it was because of this. So whenever something's obsessing with you, you can try that. Make up five different narratives for that story. By the time you finish the fifth one, they may all seem plausible and somewhat implausible. This is... in the language of Buddhism, this is the play between the particular and the context. The particular of this single being and the context, the multiple possibilities and the interplay of interbeing.

[10:48]

And such is our human consciousness that experiencing the particular... I hope that guided meditation offered you something. So what if it didn't? But when there is directed attention and contact and experience something is energized that particular of the moment and when it's energized it's like it speaks in a language beyond that which our karma knows.

[12:02]

And yet, something in us connects. And to me, that's what Dogen's trying to talk about in Zazan Shin, you know. This interplay between within the realm of karma, what was it that brought you here? Well, some marvelous mix of your karmic experiences. And then if you continually, while you're here, just live inside the very same constructs, some realization is being inhibited. Some way in which all that can be dropped, all those karmic constructs can be dropped and then picked up and seen in a different light.

[13:23]

shift from they are reality they are the vehicle on which this being alive travels they are the medium through which this being alive is expressed and of course that distresses us because it has its own fixed view it has its own limitations It has its own known and unknown statements like, I'll never be happy until. If that happens, I don't know what I'll do. It'll be terrible. And for almost all of us, somewhere within us, there is the hope that this Zen practice is going to fix

[14:33]

all those constructs. It's going to create some grand resolution for most of us internally. And in an interesting way it does. As we look back into our history, we see, oh, I tend to think of these vignettes. And I tend to think of them like this and feel about them like this. And as we see that, it opens up to possibilities. And those echo forth into the present and the tendency to replay the psychological templates that that so-called history has created.

[15:45]

I remember my therapist saying to me once, he said, He said of himself, I think of it like a five to one. If you think all the people here are nasty and unfriendly, and one person frowns at you, you need five people to smile at you to kind of counterbalance it. If that's your psychological predisposition, It gets five points for one instance, and the five smiles get one point for five instances. And then as we continue to practice, and the bias of our own makeup starts to dissipate, things tend to balance out. And then very interestingly, Even our past tries to balance it.

[16:57]

So it's not that our karmic disposition is nothing but a nuisance and irrelevant. It's just that it's not the whole story. not only does it create that kind of bias, it also creates the bias of separate existence. In the morning, while we're waiting to march off around the altars, the Jisha and I stand in the little abbot's garden and look at the stars. the first director of San Francisco Zen Center, City Center, in a talk he gave recently.

[18:08]

He's now a world-famous artist. I only remember his first name, Narcissus. Does anyone remember his last name? No? Okay. Well, his first name is Narcissus. How could you forget that? He's a... a stained glass artist. And I heard it said that a stained glass, a very large stained glass he made in Taiwan is the most visited piece of art on the whole island. But in the talk he gave, he said, before he sits does it, he looks up the screen constellations, the location of the star constellations in the sky, so he can see in reference to all these constellations where he is in that moment of doing zaza.

[19:09]

I was impressed by that fact. He said it used to take quite a bit of work, now he has an app on his iPhone. And with the wonders of GPS, it just gives them a snapshot of the sky. Oh, Milky Way? No, Orion's Belt? Okay, I know where I am. He also said, Suzuki Roshi approached him and said, would you be director of City Center? And he said, well... you know, Roshi, I'll do whatever you ask me to do. However, I don't really want to. And you know and I know there are other people here who would love to be a director of City Center. And Suzuki Roshi said, yeah, and that's why I'm asking you.

[20:17]

So he said yes, and he was the first director of City Center. back in the days when they decided to throw all the bads out and turn off the heating in search of the pure Zen way. Yeah, who would want to be director then? telling now, you know, it seems an oddity, you know. I suspect back then it seemed wonderfully appropriate and dedicated to some people.

[21:29]

Probably some others thought something else. And for each of us to acknowledge and recognize and experience, we all have our past. Oh, that it was just quirky. But it has its own ferocious intensity. I had my Dharma brother Gil Fransdell offer this example once. He said, imagine a plank like the ones on the floor of the zindhu. And you're tasked with walking on the plank, on one of these planks, and not stepping off.

[22:37]

If it's just resting on the floor, make your effort with a certain uh settledness now imagine the plank is suspended 25 feet in the air and the very same activity takes on a kind of intensity maybe a kind of fear anxiety somehow in some ways our karmic patterning patterning adds to the simple task of walking the path of practice and every now and then hopefully moment by moment

[23:46]

path of continuous practice. Every now and then, we need to return to the simplicity for two reasons. Following the path is being experienced and that this echo of anxiety and fear and dread and need for healing can be seen for what it is. we can learn to relate to it with patience benevolence and compassion maybe it was your exquisite intellect that brought you here but most likely it was your suffering

[24:53]

Narcissus said that he was an artist, a painter, and he said that he decided to take a class somewhere in San Francisco on making stained glass art. And the very first two pieces he made, now hanging at City Center, the guys show of Suzuki Roshi and Katakini Roshi. And I thought, what a talent. The very first time he attended something, it came out extraordinary. That's unusual. Usually, our learning process is messy.

[26:02]

No. Patience. No. Sometimes I think that we hold back from totally committing to this period of Zazen because we doubt our own ability to be totally present. If you don't totally commit, then falling off the plank doesn't matter so much. When you totally commit, it matters a lot. notion that our practice says totally commit feel get back on and feel again great Irish playwright said get back on and feel better feel bigger

[27:28]

the echoes of our past. How each way-seeking mind talk electrifies. We see it ripple through the person. We hear it in their tone of voice, in what they say and what they don't say. Each of us is capable of experiencing the moment. Each of us is capable of noticing, acknowledging, contacting, and experiencing. I would say the key is lowering your standards.

[28:55]

Maybe you want the experience to be the exquisite stained glass window that everyone in Taiwan goes to see. But maybe it's just some odd miscellaneous feeling. doesn't seem to make sense when you're just walking to the bathhouse in a lovely place like Tassajara maybe it's just that jab of pain in your right knee it sends a tremor of apprehension through your body seems to call forth the same thread of apprehension that runs back into your past.

[30:01]

And in the experience, benevolence. compassion. You know, it might seem that such an approach is empathetical to non-attachment. It might seem that wouldn't it be more skillful to just greet them with the neutrality of declaring just mere appearance. The random miscellany of interbeing. Very interestingly, the whole way back

[31:24]

the early suttas, a different strategy is suggested. Remember the first time I read where it said, when joy arises, saturate in joy. And I thought, since I knew everything, that's not such a good idea. That just leads to attachment. Much better to cast aside the joy and return to neutrality, seeing deeply conditioned existence in mere appearance. Such is the nature of human life.

[32:29]

Whether the plank is on the ground or 25 feet in the air, we're inclined to feel intimidated. We're inclined to feel apprehension. We're inclined to have some to become skillful. I just had this impish thought that I should say something outrageous and irrelevant just to kind of confuse the tanto. But sorry, Greg, nothing came to mind.

[33:38]

I was going to say something like, and then the whole thing burst into flames. but instead I'll labor on with the intrinsic healing of our practice. And in the process of experiencing, of noticing the echoes, the associated thoughts and feelings. There's a connecting, there's an integrating and an interbeing. Like internally, not that we figure it out,

[34:49]

But as we feel these feelings, as we notice these constructs, as we allow them, how they impact us to be experienced, there's a kind of integration of the disparate parts of what we are. And entering the moment just as it is. Just hearing the sound, seeing the sight, feeling the sensations in the body. Seems less like a separation, an avoidance, a dissociation from this karmic being. starts to seem like and that too no we could say the form is the constructs we create the interbeing the shunyata is this particular arising illustrating conditioned existence illustrating that each moment

[36:19]

there's a particular arising. Each moment has its own unique expression. And then it passes away and something else arises. And then the interplay of the two. And if you think about it, how much this is what happens in Zazen. How quickly the mind, the mind can be quite settled, quite concentrated, and then caught in thought. And usually if it's settled and concentrated, that's noticed quite quickly. but not always.

[37:21]

So the patience with the karmic arisings, and the more thoroughly they're experienced, the more they take on the hue, the demeanor of... simple hearing, simple seeing, simple sensations in the body. We can start to see and almost feel the weight of a certain thought. Sometimes it's floating, it's whimsical. Sometimes it's heavy. Cohen had a phrase in one of his songs and he said, a thousand kisses deep.

[38:32]

Some of our thoughts are almost like a thousand pains deep. What a deep message it has. What a great gift. to just see it for itself. Not as something that emphatically, authoritatively creates reality, but just itself. Just the interplay of conditioned existence bringing forth this powerful thought feeling. So continuous contact, both of what's karmically stirred and what seems to go beyond that, continuous contact of them both starts to make evident into being.

[39:49]

It starts to make evident that this human consciousness intertwines the two, form and emptiness, form and shunyata. In Shin Shin, in Zaza and Shin, Dogen says, well, since ancient time, people have been talking about this. question is, how? How is it engaged? How is it brought into awareness? How is it experienced when it comes to awareness?

[40:52]

How does it reveal in that fascicle, what he's calling beyond thinking. And what I was saying yesterday, and what I'll say again today, for good measure, have a clear set of basics that you engage each time you sit I would suggest even have a clear kind of like, almost like, now what am I doing again? What is this thing called zazen, this activity called zazen? And what's it not? It's not something that fits into my agenda and gives me what I want.

[41:59]

It's experiencing the experience that's being experienced when i like it when i don't like it when it seems profound and in true accord with the zen way when it seems irrelevant annoying when it's clear and focused when it's muddy hard to experience, all of that. And I would add to that, quoting Prajnatara, reading the Sutra of the Breath, hundreds, and thousands of times.

[43:08]

Across the schools of Buddhism, awareness of breath is held up as a powerful and appropriate practice. I would say for the first 10 or 20,000 times, the very first yoga teacher I had, he showed me a breathing exercise, and I said, how often should I do it? And he said, 3,000 times a day. And being wonderfully gullible, I thought, okay. Much, much later I thought, I wonder if he'd just make that up right there and then.

[44:23]

Did he just make a whole lot? So for the first 10 or 20,000 times, allowing the inhale. Start there. And then, of course, pause, release on the exhale. And then after 20,000, start with the exhale. So we're in the heart of Shishin. We're in the heart of the practice period. This is it. This is what we came here for. This is why it seemed like a good idea at the time we made the decision.

[45:31]

Maybe you're not so sure now. Maybe you're not even sure whether things are going really well or really badly. Whether you're getting quite saddled and concentrated or whether you're getting spaced out and distracted. Could very well be a mixture of both. in those moments of connecting, in those moments of experience. Maybe saying original mind finds its true home does have some relevance, some plausibility, some appropriateness to that moment.

[46:49]

some affinity for that energetic expression and engagement in interbeing. Something in us sees through the impulse to separate into me, a separate self. and become wrapped up inside its concerns. Something in us sees and tastes liberation. Something in us sees that wisdom and compassion weave together I can't resist ending with this poem, so I won't.

[48:08]

Coincidentally, the last poem Seamus Heaney wrote before he died. In Time. And then underneath, for Siofra, his granddaughter. Energy, balance, outbreak, listening to Bach. I saw you years from now, more years than I'll be allowed. Your toddler wobbles gone, a sure and grown woman. Your bare foot on the floor keeps me in step. The power I first felt come through our own cement floor long ago. Palps your soul and heal and earths you here for real. An oratorio. would be just the thing for you. Energy, balance, outbreak. At play for their own sake.

[49:11]

But for now, we food it lightly, in time and silently. Maybe he's just saying, savor the journey. Savor. Appreciate. Maybe even all the way up to gratitude. maybe despite ourselves, it was a smart thing we did coming here.

[50:16]

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.

[50:46]

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