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. You're standing up here speaking, and then you hear some God-like voice. It sounds like you're selling. Michael just said to me, how does this go? And I said, well, we'll walk in, and your room will fall ominously south. So thank you for that. Thank you. Here's a quick note, Mike. The big part of our agenda is to hear your questions.

[01:03]

Both of us are going to tell you about our background in practice, in particular our relationship to yoga and our relationship in training in Buddhism. And we both have some overlap. It's my observation in the West. In these two fields, there seem to be a growing number of people who practice in both. And it's seen as complementary. Not only compatible, but complementary, as Michael and I did. We'll tell you a little bit about how that has been for us and is for us. And then what we'd like is to hear from you any questions you have, maybe from your own personal relationship to the children, or in general, from your own personal relationship to practice.

[02:10]

And for those of you who don't know, I'd like to say a little bit about Michael. Michael is a teacher in yoga. and in meditation, and has trained, not only extensively in yoga, with Patel Joyce in the Astana tradition, but in other traditions too. Then in the Buddhist world, he has trained in Vipassana extensively, and he has qualified as a teacher of that, and has trained in Zen. So, I think, It's wonderful that we have someone of that resource, that resource experience and personal commitment and personal involvement. Share with us, Palette.

[03:16]

Maybe I'll start by since I'm ready. Okay. Is the mic on? How's that? No? No? Someone just told me a Swedish job that... I mean of someone like you. You look down at your shoes and smile. Okay, I'm not going to review everything I said, but I felt like it. And I'll give you a very brief description of my adventures in the world of practice.

[04:24]

I stumbled into the panel. very interested in Zen. I read many books prescribed by someone who was trying to be a Soviet priest. But then I went to Thailand and I became a very glad monk. I had spoken in that tradition for several years. Although my mind that Zen was my primary reference, my primary agenda. Eventually, I mean, as the monk who lived in the hut next to me in Bangkok, we kind of go in the West to practice Zen. And he said, San Francisco Zen Center, 300-page screen. Forty-one years ago, that's what I did. And then since I've come here, for reasons I'm not quite sure about,

[05:26]

I've also ventured out at times to study in the Renzi tradition. I studied with three different Renzi teachers. And from very early in my Buddhist practice, I realized meditation was a core part of the traditions I was interested in. And to do that, it would be very helpful to be able to sit across life. And to do that, it would be helpful. to practice top yoga. So throughout that time, I've always still begun and continued yoga practice. So that is not anywhere close to the depth of practice and the depth of study that my practice. But I think more than maybe many others, It was in the service of developing flexibility, uprightness, muscle tone, work with the breath.

[06:36]

And then incorporating that back. In general, I find what I was taught in the Soto tradition to be mysterious about some fundamentals of my body and breath. And what I was taught in the Renzo tradition was exactly and particular. And what I was taught in the Vipassana tradition, the Theravali tradition, was this wonderful array of engagement in the body, engagement in the breath, engagement of states of money, of psychology, And I have found the three of us together to be a very rich mix. And that's my piece. Thank you, Paul. Is it okay if I sit? And the volume's okay?

[07:38]

I just want Paul to keep going. I feel like we're at camp and it's time for bedtime. We're being told stories. So when I was a kid, the person who was my closest companion was an uncle of mine, and he was diagnosed when he was a teenager with schizophrenia. And so he was mostly institutionalized, not because of symptoms of schizophrenia, but just because he was really drugged. This was an era when people who were diagnosed with schizophrenia, there was sort of one route. which was pharmaceuticals. And I used to go visit him in the hospital about three times a week, starting when I was eight years old. And the first thing we'd do was we would sit together quietly in the smoking room.

[08:40]

And you weren't allowed incense, but you could smoke. And he would take a cigarette and he would put it in an ashtray and he would put it on top of the speaker, and then we would sit down on the floor in front of the speaker, and he would put on the Beatles' White Album. And then we would watch the cigarette smoke lift up, and then as the music started, it would start making shapes. And he would call this meditating on the shape of sound. And we would watch the shapes as we would listen to the music. And I remember having these experiences where I could see my mind. Like, I don't know if you remember your first experience of like seeing that your thoughts are not actually who you are. And although this sounds kind of idealistic in retrospect, at the time it made me feel very isolated and kind of lonely because I couldn't talk to anybody about

[09:48]

any of these things. So the hospital was actually the most sane place in my life, and the kind of conservative Jewish community that I was growing up in seemed crazy. And anyways, after we would meditate, we would read, he had two books, the Bhagavad Gita and the Dhammapada. I was telling the group a couple days ago that he actually only had half of the Dhammapada, it ripped at some point, so we only had a good half. So those teachings stayed with me, but I never knew that meditation was a practice that you do, or that yoga was something you actually do. I thought it was kind of like a set of ideas. But when I was finishing high school, I struggled a lot with depression, which runs in my family. And I had a hard time in university managing my moves.

[10:55]

And my girlfriend said, we should practice yoga. And so we went to a class. And as the teacher was teaching, I mean, I couldn't do the movements. But I felt like I knew the next thing that was going to come out as well. It was like I'd found home. And the same week, I went to a Zen temple in Detroit. And the teacher said, sit facing the wall. You ever heard this instruction? Follow your breathings. And so I realized at that time that I would probably not be able to go forward in my life unless I really learned how to work with my mind. Given the experience that I saw with my uncle who died just a few years earlier, before I graduated high school, he died because a lot of the chemicals he was taking, particularly lithium, really wore out his kidneys.

[11:58]

So he died at 50, right young. And I just kind of felt really disoriented. So I started practicing yoga and meditation at the same time, first in Zen. But then I found that the language that was being taught in the Vipassana world, especially in the inner sight meditation world, I found the psychological language was very, very accessible. And I liked the way they mapped out meditation techniques, which I didn't get at first in Zen teaching. So I sort of wound up that way. And then I also eventually ended up going back to school to study psychology and eventually psychoanalysis. So kind of my interest, I always think of it as being a synthesizer. You know, it's just the way I've ended up. It seems to be part of the culture that I'm in is seeing these different traditions and how they work together.

[13:06]

But the last thing I'll say, like outside of the kind of like year by year biography is just that because we're teaching this workshop and we're focusing so much on breathing, I feel like it's also amazing how these different traditions have mapped out ways of meeting the breath, working with the breath, refining the breath. and how decades later it's still so fascinating and helpful, which it seems like Paul has agreed on this point. And so that's where I'll leave my biography, which is I feel like just as motivated in practice as I was when I first started. So we've set up our piece, and now you are Invite it and hopefully will accept the invitation to ask the questions that seem relevant to you about your practice or practice in general or about the synthesizing of traditions or anything related to that.

[14:29]

Yes. I'm Hank from Houston, Texas, and I'm trying to learn about notation. I had some instruction in Tobias, though. I like the notion to compliment her. But... So for somebody who just assumed I know nothing about meditation, and I'm trying to get started, and I'm almost 74 years old, so the mortality table says I've got 10 years to go, so I don't have time to learn all the traditions. So what would you recommend to somebody who's interested in finding spirituality in some way through meditation, starting at grounds of earth with no experience whatsoever?

[15:33]

I mean, I can go if you want. There's a wonderful story where somebody comes to the Buddha who's elderly and says, I want to learn... about meditation, and I don't have much time. Please teach me. And the Buddha says, I'm on my alms rounds right now. This isn't a good time. Come back another time. And so he comes back, and he says, okay, now could you teach me? And the Buddha says, now's not a good time. And he says, you or I could die at any moment. Please teach me the Dharma. And then the Buddha says, well, since you've asked three times, I'll teach you. And the Buddha says, in the scene, there is only what you see.

[16:37]

In what you hear, there is just what you hear. He goes through all the sense organs. In what you feel, there is just what you feel. And in what you think, there are just thoughts. And if you look at that closely, he says, you'll see that there's no you in there. And that's the teaching he gives. So maybe one student wouldn't get that teaching if they just showed up and said, hey, I'm kind of interested in meditation. But this person really felt like they didn't have much time. They wanted the deepest teaching. Now, the story is that student got enlightened on the spot. So I don't know if that's just happened for you. Maybe I'm just like, I don't have that. I don't have that many years. But what I will say is that you can sit, follow your breathing, have the senses open all the time.

[17:37]

All the time. So not just like, I need to get on my cushion once a day or twice a day, but how all day you can be connected with your breathing. And notice how in the scene, in what you see, there's just what you see. And when you add a lot of drama to that, just come back to see it. In what you hear, There's just what you hear. And not adding anything to that. And just to treat that as a continuous meditative practice, rather than idealizing, like, I only have so many years, and that means I can only do so many retreats. All day long we're practicing. It is what I would say. I encourage you to do some yoga. And all sorts of studies show it doesn't matter what age you are when you start, it's really helpful and the body responds.

[18:44]

Having a comfortable seated position, you know, is foundational to the passive tradition and the Zen tradition and traditions that emphasize open awareness. They all have the wrong way of cultivating that in most of the vitality. The Zen tradition tends to be more particular, more defined in its structure. Some people love that, and some people hate it. The Vipassana tradition tends to be more open, more secular than religious. And the rest is fine. And some people love that in contrast to this education. So check your mic and see where your logo goes. Do you want to stand up so everybody can hear it?

[20:00]

I'm wondering if you guys had experience with dream work and meditation. You've seen the two. And I guess specifically with Tibetan Buddhism and their dream yoga. If either of you have gone down that avenue and found some interesting ways. I have. If you haven't, I shouldn't speak to it because then we both won't have a chance to talk about it. Okay, so can we save that question for meal time sometime? Absolutely. Okay, great. I have spent my whole life saying I'm not a good person. Me too, funny enough. pressure upon myself to sit in full wellness either. And that's why people are saying, well, I'm a Zen student and I want to sit in full wellness.

[21:07]

Could you talk a little about mind and body and yoga as a meditation practice? I think of yoga as a psychological practice and meditation as a physical practice. So When I teach meditation, I try to focus my instruction on the physical and anatomical details of practice so that the awareness is really grounded in the body, so that the body and awareness become one thing. So when people are in sitting meditation, I spend a lot of time talking about palate, the mouth, the pelvis, tongue. I can give you an example. When your mind is busy, it shows up as tension in your tongue.

[22:11]

You can even notice this right now. When there's clinging in the mind, immediately there is tension in the tongue. If there's a lot of clinging in the mind, you can just release your tongue. Then it's like, Can you feel that? Yeah, so I always say to people, when you first learn both yoga and meditation, the first thing you should learn how to do is leave your tongue alone for five years. Imagine how easy high school would have been. So leaving your tongue alone means just like letting the tongue be and noticing how whenever the mind is busy, the tongue is like an embassy of the mind. And whenever the mind is busy, the tongue is busy. And just learning how to release that. And so starting to see these very intimate connections between what the mind is doing and how that shows up in the body. Another example could be when you're learning how to do zazen and you're learning how to just let the breath flow, sometimes there are a lot of habits

[23:21]

in the vocabulary of the body, in the vocabulary of memory, so that it's hard to just let the breath go. Maybe there's trauma or unprocessed grief that is kind of preventing you from just letting your body breathe. So you can see that our emotions and our physical holding patterns and our psychology are also bound up together. So That's why it's really important to have a physical practice in addition to the sitting meditation practice, because you start to wake up the intelligence of the body and find new patterns of vocabulary in the body. That's part of our process of awakening. So I think these complementary practices really need one another in order to create a holistic a holistic path. And I would like to write, Catherine, I think it's not coincidental that these meditative techniques grew up in cultures where people sat on the ground and were used to sitting cross-legged, and that that was a common feature of the people who would turn up to do the meditation.

[24:48]

And it's not a common feature for us who like to go up sitting in chairs that use the body in a different way. And it just is a common sense aspect of it to my mind. Well, if we're going to practice in this tradition, it would be helpful for us to have our bodies able to accommodate fundamental postures of it and then as michael was saying you know as we able to adopt that posture we discover a significant part of the teachings which is the wisdom of the wisdom of body and how they can hold the mental processes the emotional processes in a way they start to be eliminated not the same kind of that sitting in the chair But even sitting in a chair, sitting upright, rather than like this, is a yogic challenge.

[25:56]

It's a physical challenge, too. It requires flexibility of the spine, muscle tone, and release in different parts of the body. This is the way in which I feel like it's just a common sense to those who choose to pursue these Asian traditions. What special ideas would you have for people who want to meditate? It's a great question. Thanks. Of course, talking like this, it could seem like There's some idealized physical ability and breath ability and even mental ability that needs to be accomplished to enable the process of awareness.

[27:04]

Anyone who has a body, who has breath, who has a mind, as the viewable conscious experience that can illustrate the nature of reality, that can illustrate the nature of the human experience. And with that kind of affirmation then to discover within the condition, what's the skillful approach? haven't actually worked with anyone who was quite strategic. I don't know how to read my comment. And you know, we can extend it. You know, we can say that every single one of us has our own physical, breath, mental, psychological challenges.

[28:13]

We all have that. And really what we're doing is we're trying to create a capacity of a and awareness that can illustrate it for us and let it become a teaching rather than a simple affliction that leaves us confused and distracted. I think the only thing I might add to that is just it's really hard to do it by yourself and so I would probably encourage somebody with whatever condition they have if they felt like if it was a condition that set them apart in some way and they wanted to do a practice that I would encourage them to find someone else to do it with also. Whether that person had the same condition or not. Find someone else to practice with. That's the only other piece that I would add. Will you stand up just so everybody can speak really well?

[29:16]

My name's Katie. Part of what is attractive to me about zazen is that I'm generally sitting for a period of time and I'm just surrendering to whatever either time the schedule has been set up or I set on a timer. And that feels very freeing. And then if I'm practicing yoga, especially if I'm practicing yoga, by myself. Volition seems to enter more into it because I have to make a series of choices about the series of poses that I'm doing. And sometimes that series of choices feels very intuitive, connected to my body, and sometimes it feels less so. But I also wonder, even when it's intuitive, if it's because it's habitual in some way and I often am doing the poses that my body likes to do and is comfortable doing.

[30:27]

So I wondered if you could talk about that, about practicing especially self-directed practice and sort of solition and surrender. Wonderful. Yeah. Can I start it from a slightly different angle? So the first thing is, I find the hardest people to teach sitting to are yoga practitioners, like modern yoga practitioners and dancers, because they're like sensation addicts. When they feel sensations, they want to like move with them, go into them and change them. And then when you get them to sit still, it's really, really hard to sit still because they're used to wanting to do stuff with sensations all the time. But there are internal yoga practices that are really important to learn around bandhas, which are energetic patterns in the body, diaphragms in the body, ways of breathing, ways of using the gaze, where...

[31:41]

instead of the practice being so volitional, you're focused on an internal dimension that's not as a wheel oriental. So that's number one. And within that, you're learning meditation technique. It's the same technique you learn in Zaza. The second piece is, I think it's important to keep asana practice and meditative practices as separate silos so that even though they feed each other, like any two things do or can do, that in the movement of yoga practices, even though there's energetic patterns we're meditating on and with, you're not going to enter the kind of stillness and see the same kind of patterns that you will in formal meditation practice. And that's why different yoga systems have different number of limbs, like six limbs, eight limbs, five limbs. So they say, you know, one limb is asana practice, three limbs are meditation practice, and the rest are basically conduct.

[32:45]

So I think it's really important to see the practice within that context and to see, yes, there are practices that we do that are more willful. And then there are practices that we do where we're using, we're using the technique or using control the control of the zazen posture to let go of control. So I think we need both, which is my answer for everything we've said tonight. And at the same time, I think it's really important to learn the practices inside zazen that are yoga practices and the practices inside the yoga tradition that are meditative practices. So that if you have like postures like, oh, should I do this today? Should I stretch that today? I feel like I should do this. There's that going on. But inside, there's other things you're paying attention to that are more connected to the sasa.

[33:49]

That's where I'd start. And I would agree with that. And here's what I would add to it is that in watching ourselves, is there something I'm avoiding? You know, is there... an emphasis on self-reliance. I will chart out my own map of practice. Or the opposite side. When I'm not being told what to do, do I just sort of fall apart and give up? And to learn from that how to be skillful with our own tendencies. And another thing I would add is I think it's wonderful to step out of the tradition that you're familiar with, and you're familiar with, and go off somewhere else. But that's what drew me to the Rinzai practice. This is not subtle.

[34:49]

And they, you know, they chant different, they walk different, they relate to their breath different. So it really lifts me out of my comfort zone and my familiarities. And I learned so much about what that produces, and I learned about the tradition that I consider my root tradition. Is that an insane title? Hello. My name is Mark. Just first hearing you speaking, given the introduction about the various traditions, you are familiar with my mind kind of immediately went to this question or this maybe topic that I've kind of been wanting to explore. But then it kind of sets down a little bit and like, wait, maybe that's not even a question to be asked. But can you just speak to like the vehicles and like what you maybe think is appropriate for the West and just, or not the West, maybe in general, but like America or America specifically, because I know that like Buddhism and all these traditions,

[36:06]

changed as they go from country to country and kind of adapt to the characteristics of that particular place. Um, do you think there's some kind of like endogenous tradition that is beginning to form or like, especially like with, um, your, and I think yours as well, um, exposure to both like psychotherapy and these kind of Eastern traditions. Great question. You might reference my own experience as to be steeped in a Soto Zen tradition where we diligently try to preserve the core teachings and methods and liturgy of our founder, the Japanese Zen teacher. And what I've observed over the decades is that...

[37:07]

It's a little bit like each one of us. You know, we say, oh, this is what I'm doing. And then, you know, that's what we say we're doing. But if we pay more close attention, we'll see that's part of what we're doing. And then there's other things going on for us, too. And I would say the CMO of San Francisco Zen Center. This is what we say we're doing, but there's other things going on. We're preserving the heritage of our teacher. But then how come we check the medicine? Nobody ends up in these transatlantic systems, but we do. And how come we now have a lineage of women's ancestors? They don't have that in Japan. That is, as we continue, these things have arisen for us, and somehow we compare what we do. And so it leads me to say, Have some vehicle and tradition that you are sticking yourself in to learn from.

[38:16]

And stay open to other traditions and other learnings. Let your root tradition in your vehicle. I have two, two comments. So the first is just biographical, which is for me, the teacher that I've developed a relationship with has always been more important than the lineage. So, um, I just, I'm kind of a loyal person. So the first teachers I studied with, I'm still in relationship with them. And what's happened is I just met somebody and just, not that the relationship's always been great, but I felt something where something about the way they behaved and their presence inspired me. And, um, to me, that's what moved me more than I want to study Soto or Rinzai or, you know, um, and then it just so happened that the teacher, you know, teaches koans or whatever.

[39:26]

Um, when I was being kind of groomed to teach in the Vipassana world. I was at a retreat center called IMS, and they had a journal they were producing called the Insight Journal. And there was an interview with this Zen teacher from Manhattan named Enkyo Roshi. And the first question they asked her in the interview was in the journal, what's your practice? And her answer was Manhattan. And I felt something. And then I went to go find her. Because I thought, this is the person I want to sit here with. And that's her. That's her. That answer is her. So that's the first thing. The other piece, I think, is that the Dharma is an organism that changes in the host country that receives it. And in most countries that Dharma has moved to, they have built monasteries.

[40:32]

In our culture, as the Dharma comes into the culture, I feel like it's not going through a transplantation process as much as it's going through a translation process. Most of the people teaching meditation in our culture are not wearing robes. They're in hospitals, they're in psychotherapy offices, they're school teachers. who are learning a secular practice. And so I often ask this question, which is like, does the Dharma have a DNA, like a nucleic acid that is the DNA of the Dharma that moves through different cultures that's recognizable? And I think it does. And I think it's the teaching that when suffering arises, you can open to it. That when you open to suffering, reactivity arises and you can work with it. And that when you transform reactivity, a path emerges.

[41:37]

I mean, this is the Four Noble Truths. And there's something about that vision that I think is unique to the Dharma, no matter what country it's in. And I think it's going to be our job as the Dharma comes into Western soil. to find out what the DNA is of the Dharma that can be brought to light. And it will be brought to light in a secular language. And that's going to be really interesting. And we're also going to make lots of mistakes. My name is Nate. Uh, I have, I suppose, less, less a question, but one just, uh, curiosity. Go for it. Uh, the topic, which is sort of everything to me, um, which is, and there's next, uh, system theory, generalization versus specialization, um, holism.

[42:49]

Uh, I, I, I, I've been feeling a lot of, uh, a lot of that was involved in speaking. Uh, and, and a lot of times I, I feel very drawn in many different directions. Um, and that's very invigorating and very, uh, amazing to, to, to be interested in lots of different things, but I also feel very scattered and pulled apart and sort of at odds. especially about how I spend my energy and how I see myself spending my real time really digging in. And I'm very interested in sort of the implication, both of myself and also just of knowledge and strengths in general. And again, I'm not really sure what the question is, but it's more of a, I wonder how whenever you've attempted to explore different avenues, any matter of the show where they're going,

[43:52]

how much time you've been doing them, how you're able to find something that's very deep within one thing and then spread out and then go back to the yoga and the meditation thing that you still keep separate but at the same time they feed each other. I mean, two things come to mind. The first is I feel like I'm just tuned into how I suffer. And well, that seems to be the motivating thing always. Like you practice and then you recognize you've got some blind spots. And there are certain ways that you need to, there are certain areas where you need to wake up. or there are certain habits you need to undo. And, um, and that for me has always been what motivates me to go deeper in an area.

[44:59]

And if I'm doing a kind of practice where I feel like it's not really addressing some place where there's conflict for me, then I might need some other tools somewhere else. And sometimes I'll consult with the person who I'm studying in one tradition with and say, Hey, you know, the concentration practice is really good, but like, you know, it's not helping me forgive my dad or something. I'm making that up. And then I'll, you know, go study something else. So that's one piece. The other piece is I think we're living at an age because of digital technology, especially where we all feel like we're not doing enough. And this is part of bodhisattva practice is that as you become more still and more sensitive, you start to feel the pain of others more deeply. And you start to feel like you need to do something. And you can never do enough.

[46:00]

But also to remember that this simple practice of sitting still on your cushion is a profound practice for our planet. When you are able to work with your capacity for greed and your capacity for energy and your capacity for multitasking and your capacity for distraction, then you don't act that out in the culture. And that's a profound form of social action. So I think of meditation as a political tool that really affects social change. So I only mention that because sometimes when we're involved in a lot of things, because we think they're gonna do good, unless this organism has balance, sometimes the good that's done can also be a reinforcement of fragmentation and distraction. And technology only reinforces that.

[47:04]

So that's probably where I start, yeah. Which is basically all just saying, Where are you suffering? Work with that. And I had similar thoughts, Nate. Almost all of us are prompted by dissatisfaction, disease, some form of suffering. And almost all of us need a kind of healing. a kind of stabilization, a kind of regulation to the system of this organism. And either, like I was saying, a teacher or a tradition or some environment that supports us to discover how to do that, quite particularly for ourselves.

[48:11]

And then as we do that, as Michael was saying, we will see how that is inclusive. It does reach out and touch others. Even if it's just our own attitude, it becomes more generous and considerate. And I would say if we find somehow in the way we're practicing that that's not happening for us to look at that. Wait a minute. I tend to be staying closed and feeling separate in some way. I think that's a good signal for us to sort of review where we are, what we're doing, and ask ourselves that challenging question. Is this how... How should I be relating to this feedback that I'm getting?

[49:15]

And I would say that that's not the product of some failure. I think if any one of us looks carefully, we'll see some of that. That's actually kind of a zest for our practice. That will keep us in learning. That will keep us in... that wonderful way we can inquire and be curious and wish to discover. And to me, that's a significant part of the heritage of Suzuki Roshi's beginner's mind. Okay, one more. Oh, I think we'll hold on both of them because class ended up for quite a while. My question is to really both of you. I studied Pashna for a while and then now studying Soto Zen here.

[50:17]

Can everybody hear? No. Do you want to stand up and just... I will just speak very loud. Okay, okay. I guess the question is, well, the initial statement is, I know that the core of both practices are very ultimately the same. However, the approach of practices can be a little bit contradicting at times. And I'm struggling with that. And ultimately, this is about non-attachment. And I think coming from of a passionate background and seeing how all the forms, like having a hard time not, well, being and using the forms and noticing myself becoming attached to the forms, so it's sort of a push and pull between the two traditions, and I know that they are complementary, but I also notice contradictions between the two teachings. Any advice? What contradictions are you noticing?

[51:21]

I think the main one was with the forms and all the you know, buying the robes and incense and all the forms that we use here. And in Vipassana, as far as I'm concerned, there was always be careful with that, you know, just go straight for the practice, you know, focus on the sitting, forget about all of the forms because they can be a gate to become attached to the forms and you forget about the core of the practice itself. I've noticed that that was something that my teachers sort of really talked about a lot. And I come here and the practice is the forms. So just dealing with that is very challenging on a daily basis. Can you see the way that we can look at the basic request of practice?

[52:24]

And both of them have their validity. You know, when we think of, well, what's the fundamental involvement with practices asking others? You know, we can see, well, forms can help and forms can be a hindrance. Just saying, oh, no forms, just do whatever occurs to you can help and can be a hindrance. I've been noticing both a lot. Yeah. And then it's like, well then, this contradiction, this conflict, how does it come into being? Is that going to become definitive in how I relate to Eden? Or is it going to become kind of interesting and informative tension? between what seems to be two different dispositions.

[53:27]

Sometimes difference is actually helpful in having us. What is the fundamental teaching that we both are aspiring to express? Hey, my name is Klaas. I'm going to speak up because I'm very comfortable. I was curious, Michael, would you say like one thing about Paul that you really admire? Oh, don't worry about it. Something about Vipassana. I mean, I can say some things. The first thing I would say is Paul contacted me.

[54:36]

We had met him one second once at the San Francisco Zen Center, which he remembered, which impressed me. And he contacted me after reading one of my books and asked me if I wanted to teach with him. And so I was really honored by that because I know this community and I know who Paul is. And so that really touched me a lot. And he wasn't interested in planning at all. He just said, show up, we'll teach together. More or less. So there's a few things that have impressed me a lot, and we're only in the second day, but Paul has a beginner's mind. He's constantly asking questions. At the end of every session I say, does anybody want to stay and talk? And everybody leaves pretty much. Or there's like two questions. And then Paul stays. Asking all these questions. And telling me all kinds of stories about his experience.

[55:39]

So I really admire that. I also, I admire the spirit he has around practice. Not being something that you do, but something that exists so that you can receive teaching all the time. I mean, those aren't your words, but that's kind of my experience with Paul, is that sometimes you're with experienced practitioners and they're practicing. And I don't feel that with Paul. I feel like he's practicing because he feels blessed. And when I'm in his presence, I feel that and admire that and look up to that. And I also hope that I have the same kind of joy that he has when I'm a little bit older.

[56:40]

All right. Can I just add one more? The last thing that I'll say is that I have a radar for teachers who are parents, because most of my teachers are not parents. And I am a parent of three kids, and so I'm always really interested in how someone combines a practice that still values the concentration and the meditation of the zendo with what it's like to actually be in relationship. There you go. Well, thank you. I got the bar, so... The first thing that impressed me and have a deep appreciation for it, is Mikho's dedication.

[57:52]

He's dedicated to the Dharma. And that dedication has a kind of omnivorous expression. Whether it's this, I'll study this, this is what's appropriate, I'll study this, I was studying practices, I was studying practices, and I was studying practices. This willingness to learn, to take in what's helpful, what's instructive, what can And then to watch him as he starts to talk about some aspect of practice and watch the delight and the passion and the fervor with which he engages it.

[59:00]

This is both a generous act but also a joyous act. A little bit like I came across a jewel and I'd like to give it to you. And that's marvelous to watch. So part of me thinks. Jewels are not anywhere near as important as the spirit of guilt, the enthusiasm, the communication that what we do vitalizes human existence. It's not an imposition, it's something marvelously enlightening. When my self-esteem is low, I'm going to play this part.

[60:05]

Me too. And the other thing I marvel at is, of all these traditions, the extent of his knowledge base. And I'm like, I think, where did you find the time? You just started when you were three. How have you managed to, not just like dabble, but go into the depth of something and really explore it and take it in and work with it. Not only, again the tradition, but then to listen to them, you know, say, okay, well, this is what I was taught, and this is how my beginner's mind is still working with it. Because I thought, hmm, is that okay? And then experimenting.

[61:11]

And then I taught myself these kind of movements. So that kind of spirit, you know, It's not simply become a robot and repeat this way. It's explore it with investigation, with curiosity and passion. And keep discovering. And then the whole process is a continual opening and unfolding. And I would say that's what I wish for as well. You see, to the degree to which we can do that with the Dharma, in whatever tradition, that's what will help with flirting. That's what will make it a great gift in this world.

[62:12]

Want to add any closing words? Yeah. Please. May I? Please. Could I ask the people who are residents here to stand? So that the people who are not can just see you? There's so many. You're all so beautiful. So I guess I just wanted to say one thing, which is it's been noted many times that all of us who are here just visiting can really feel your practice. And it's making a big impression. And also, you're so lucky that you can be here. So thank you so much. When I was young and I started practicing, I was the youngest person by so far.

[63:29]

And I had no peers. So to come here and see residents that are like, you know, the age groups are a little bit equal in some respects, it's amazing to see. Because I kind of envy it a little bit. I wish I could, you know... No, I don't. Just thank you all for coming. We are in the Zen Center and following the schedule is an important part of Zen for us. On that note, we're going to draw this discussion to a close. Thank you very much. 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.

[64:32]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit SSCC.org and click Giving.

[64:42]

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