This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. in honor of this cold morning, a poem by William Merwin called Cold Spring Morning. At times, it has seemed that when I first came here, it was an old self I recognized in the silent walls and the creek far below. But the self has no age.

[01:03]

As I knew even then, and had known for longer than I could remember, as the sky has no sky except this self this morning in March with frost hiding on the barns that are empty now and hiding on the mossed limbs of the gnarled walnut tree and the green pastures unfurled along the slopes. I know where they are and the birds that are hidden in their own calls in this cold morning. I was not born here. I come and go. The sky that has no sky except this self on this morning, white morning. When we'd finished breakfast, the Jisha, as the Jisha does, came around and opened these doors.

[02:32]

And I stole a glance out and saw the frost on the dorm roof. And it sparked a kind of delight. Not sure why. This cold March morning, stirs up something. Here we are. An interesting play of the two words, nowhere. If you move the W over, you get now here. Nowhere and now here. somehow some moments just assert themselves.

[03:48]

Eakin Roshi said, it's like an accident, that coming into presence. You can't make an accident happen. but you can make yourself accident-prone. If you think of those many great stories, the monk sweeping the path in Eve, and in his sweeping, he flicks a rock against a bamboo, and the snap of this rock hitting a bamboo sparks something. how many times we've missed such things, and we'll miss them.

[05:06]

In Merwin, the way he plays with the self, the self and the no self, and the ancient self, that has no self the way this sky has no self. Each experience is itself not as an elaborate construct, but a lived event. the context of Buddhism this is shunyata the lived event of interbeing and sometimes it's a wordless marvelous marvel or a thoughtless marvel

[06:18]

often just so simple and direct, so much nothing special that we pass right on to something more important, like what we're thinking about or feeling or dreading or yearning for. But every now and then, just the frost on the roof, white, cold morning. Maybe that means we are indeed alive. And then the concept of shunyata in a way is a dangerous one. That somehow we can take this aliveness and package it.

[07:34]

inside an idea, and then somehow take that idea as living. That's a dangerous practice. The aliveness of being alive can fit inside concept that my wonderful mind can construct. Always we're being asked to step beyond that mind and experience directly. And yesterday I was talking about the other side of this. how the passage of this life that we're living that has brought us here entails a narrative.

[08:51]

Call it what you like, a long poem, the developmental sequences of a human life. It brings us here And we carry it with us. Or our most usual version of it. And here, hopefully, we meet it for what it is. Hopefully here, in meeting it, we discover how to be skillful with it. in experiencing it more fully than before, some things come to resolution. And usually it's not the resolution we hope for. All our past enemies and fears have been destroyed and all our hopes have been fulfilled.

[09:58]

Usually it's a different kind of resolution. It has more to do with acceptance and forgiveness. And this karmic life and shunyata, they move together, they intertwine in a way that not only helps us go beyond the dictates of our karmic self, but also the shunyata illuminates the self and the self illuminates the shunyata. This is what we chanted this morning. The sandokai.

[11:10]

Maybe we do ourselves a disservice translating it into a language which we understand. Maybe just the rhythm of the Japanese, which probably none of us except Hiro understands, even if he understands it in that form. Maybe just the rhythm of it being chanted gives us more clues as to what it's pointing at. If we step outside the self, and then it reappears anew. That old saying, the fish doesn't know the water. You know, the bird doesn't know the air. The thinking mind doesn't know beyond its own constructs.

[12:20]

The context it creates. Book of Serenity. There's a koan with Yangshan. The monk comes to Yangshan and Yangshan asks, where are you from? Where do you say you're from? Do you really believe your own answer? Is that it? In exhaustive accuracy? I was born in the inner city, lots of little streets, in a time that was put together before the automobile dictated how things were constructed.

[13:29]

And in my mind, I would remember the names of the little streets. Lady Street, Marchioness Street, Tun Street, Slate Street. Behind us, Devonshire Street. And it occurred to me, visiting my old time, that I'd go and see the old neighborhood. And it didn't exist. It had been torn down and rebuilt. And it was this startling feeling, you know. My old neighborhood is right here, and it doesn't exist. And then to make it even more confusing, they just raised the whole neighborhood, reconfigured it, but kept the same names. And so there I was, standing in the street with the name of the street that I was born on, the Culling Tree Road.

[14:48]

And it bare no resemblance. And this is what Merwin's talking about. this self older than these houses, this self older than these notions that I create for it. And at the same time, just a convenience to let this world be known. The sky has no self called sky. It's being.

[15:59]

It's interbeing. So Yangshan asks the monk, where do you come from? Place it straight. No fancy. Nowhere now here. Everywhere. From the place before my parents were born. From the place where the white frosts shimmers on the cold morning. He says, New province. The Culling Tree Road. When I first started going back there to promote Zen practice in Belfast, that is, you know, they always were looking for things to write in the newspaper and sometimes they'd say, Paul Haller from the Lower Falls.

[17:19]

Where are you from? What makes you you? And the form and emptiness of it, it's so incredibly influential. And at the same time, it's nothing but a bunch of constructs. The monk tells it as it is. I'm from Yu Province. And Yang San says, do you ever think of there? He says, oh, I think of there all the time.

[18:24]

Looking out at the white frost on the roof, memories of looking out at the white frost on the roof. Fortunately for me, fond memories. For many of us, Tassahara conjures up contradictions. Yes. Cold mornings. I'm sitting here this morning and then during the second period I was thinking, it's not that warm in here today. Or is it just me? quintessential Tassajara winter experience.

[19:46]

It's not that warm in here. Something asked of us, something not allowing us to just snuggle down into our comfort zone, where we can quietly muse on the workings of the self, but asking us to enter more fully into being alive. On a cold March morning, whatever March means, how wonderful being here and not knowing what day of the week is it.

[20:48]

And to be able to see in its nowhere now here-ness, what do I think about? What do I feel? this unique and precious time in Sashin, where the capacity to do that is enhanced, that we have become excellent proud. Yesterday I was walking towards the bathhouse and there were three deer They stopped and I stopped. Then we had a bit of a stirring contest, as if they were saying to me, well, I'm not moving. And I just stared back as if to say, well, I'm not moving. And then after a while, we had a negotiated separation.

[22:06]

Those dark eyes. Tender presence. It was a patch of new grass that they were interested in eating. And they were willing to wait me out rather than leave it. Sometimes presence is very simple. It doesn't require some special Buddhist term or some ancient story of a teacher and disciple interacting. And that simplicity, that electrical charge of interbeing, it offers us access to being alive.

[23:43]

It gives us some hints, some clues, about this visceral agenda we have about living. Maybe we could say the challenge for us is to connect to that as thoroughly as we connect to the karmic constructs, the passion of the karmic constructs we have. and they charge in with authority and demand to be taken as the reality. On such occasions, it's utterly futile to try to clever our way out of it by saying, mere appearance.

[24:53]

when it's imbued with the energy of our passion for being alive, it's not so easily dismissed what arises for us. When that energy of being alive has tasted and touched and smelled and seen interbeing in the present moment, Like we have a counterpoint. We have a cross-reference. And in Buddhism we call this cross-reference the two truths. The truth of the formulation of our karma and the truth of what arises in the moment. And somehow or another, even though this teaching has been there since early Buddhism, This cross-referencing has become the wind of the Zen school.

[26:06]

It's become an important feature in how Zen proceeds with the process of awakening. The world, according to me, is true and not true. The moment goes beyond thinking and construct it conceptually. And the concepts, the constructs are how it's accessed. young Chan has a wonderful answer for the month a wonderful response and an instruction but before we get precocious in resolving the human dilemma just to appreciate it

[27:28]

And as I say, sometimes stepping out of it helps us see what it is to appreciate the human condition, the interplay between the constructs and going beyond the constructs. Just to see it. the white frost on the roof, and then without quite realizing it, being reminded of Merwin's poem.

[28:38]

An interesting subterranean process that goes on for us. And we can see what bubbles to the surface, the particular emotion, the particular response, the associated memory, the physical sensation. And Yongshan's teaching for the monk was this. He said, Rather than focus on what's being thought, look at the mind that's thinking. Look at the mind that's thinking, and then also notice what's being constructed.

[29:42]

What's being thought into being? What's being felt into being? What's being acted into being? And I would say to carry this inquiry with us. the inquiry of this interplay, to make ourselves accident-prone. Like we're playing a game. Like we're involved in an anthropological survey. of human existence.

[30:47]

And the person we're surveying is our own subjective self. I'm going to the bathhouse. Am I excited by that? Am I neutral about that? Is there something about that that I'm hesitant? What's the state of mind of the slightly chilled body going to the bathhouse? What's the state of mind the body that has a glowing warmth leaving the bathhouse how does that affect perception of the moment and of course to say it like that makes it seem like it's all some heady game but more feeling it feeling it

[32:14]

from the pulse of aliveness. Feeling it from an embodied being. Without this kind of curiosity, Without this kind of playfulness, Yangshan's statement, it's almost like they bored us before he's finished saying them. Turn the mind around to look at itself rather than its content. Yeah, yeah. Heard that before. What is thought of in the translation, it says the environment, but I think it means What is thought of is the way the world is constructed.

[33:14]

To start to see it. To start to let it appear everywhere. To start to let it disappear everywhere. notice that when you pause and experience the solidity of thought of reality wavers in the conditions of the moment so in your sitting when you notice something distinct Her nose might even be pained. Experience it as fully as you can.

[34:24]

In experiencing it as fully as you can, to notice how it influences the state of mind. to notice what definitions of reality it conjures up. And in staying with the experience, when that experience can go beyond even the notion, my right shoulder hurts, and just be sensation, That sensation, unbinded by construct, it's like it takes on a life of its own. It's like right there in our own body, we start to see interbeing, uncoupled by construct, sensation.

[35:38]

There's all sorts of interesting things. Sometimes it moves from the right shoulder to the left ribs. Sometimes it contracts, sometimes it expands. The interplay is available at any time. Part of the yoga of sitting is to invite. With our directed attention, we make contact. We bring forth a process of making contact.

[36:41]

And then within that contact, the experience opens up and allows what is to not just simply be the product of mind thinking. And as I was mentioning yesterday, it's very helpful to have a well-established process for directing attention. I would say to you the heritage of the Zen school is attention to body through posture and attention to breath. And we attend to them not in the service of a desired result, but in the service

[37:52]

of fully experiencing what arises. And this is, in the Zen school, particularly in Soto Zen, this is the character of Shikantaza. Directed attention, receptive attention. Directed attention, receptive of what happens. If the strategy of directed attention has within it a fixed result that it's attained and trying to attain, this is staying within karmic beings. It's the willingness to inter-be. It's the willingness to live what happens.

[38:56]

that opens the Dharma gate of liberation. This is Dogen Zenji's interplay of practice, directed attention, and realization, simply being what is. And to have that, and in the midst of this playfulness of happenstance, of presence, of experiencing this steady beat of staying connected to the body, to the breath, to the thoughts,

[40:03]

to let it become, in a way, to let it become a big deal. Not because of what it produces, but because what it helps loosen up. It helps to loosen up the unrelenting thought patterns. As long as they keep fooling us, there's no way we can see them as a coincidental codependent arising. And keeping this process alive can become how we gauge

[41:15]

we're making our effort it's so easy for some agenda to slip in and usually a fixed agenda reflects something of our personality traits do I tend to hold back do I tend to push too hard if it's unexamined it will become how we make our effort. I'll end with this poem by Marilyn again. cold spring morning.

[42:18]

At times, it has seemed that when I first came here, it was an old self that I recognized in the silent walls and the creek far below. But the self has no age, as I knew even then and had known for longer than I could remember. As the sky has no sky, except this self, this white morning in March, with frost hiding on the barns that are empty now and hiding on the mossed limbs of the gnarled walnut tree and the green pastures unfurled along the slopes. I know where they are and the birds that are hidden in their own calls in the cold morning. I was not born here. I come and go.

[43:23]

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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