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. 50% of the talk is getting seated, basically. Once you're there and you can actually see what's in front of you, you're pretty much home free. Well, good morning. Welcome to all of you. And welcome to those who are online. How many here are here for the first time today? Wonderful. And did you go to Zazen instruction? Have you sat Zazen yet? Other than that, you have? Brave people. Excellent. I remember when I was at

[01:01]

I went to Tassara in 1970 for the first time, and I wandered in thinking I was going to take a bath. Before long, I was sitting zazen, and Suzuki Roshi was wandering around. And I remember before I went into the zendo, I was kind of terrified about the idea. And I was talking to one of the senior monks there who was watering the garden. And I told him I was a little uncomfortable about this. And he said, well, what do you think? Do you think you're going to die? Well, probably not, so maybe I'll make my way into the Zendo. Any of you that are worried that you'll die, well, you might die in some way, but you're not going to die in that way. I want to thank Tim and Lucy, the leaders of the Practice Period, for inviting me here today. And Abbott, David, for being Abbott. That's a big job.

[02:02]

Thank you very much. And also you should thank the abbot because any time you're in the temple you're actually being hosted by the abbot. So it's like his personal house. Which means that anything that goes wrong ends up on his desk. I feel really grateful that we have this wonderful space to practice in, with all these beautiful statues that encourage our practice. And I remember when we first moved into this building in 1970, Suzuki Roshi, people were commenting on what a wonderful place it was, and he said, for Zen Buddhists, the real ornaments of the Buddha Hall are the people who practice there. That's all of you. Each one of us should be a beautiful flower, and each one of us should be Buddha leading people in our practice.

[03:07]

So thank you all for being Buddha, leading us in our practice. We forget that it's a marvelous building we're in. This is a beautiful Julia Morgan building, but it's really the practitioners that make practice come alive. We're in a practice period now led by Tim and Lucy, and the theme of the practice period is Nothing Lacking Continuous Practice. What a beautiful title. And there's little bullet points below it. Nothing Lacking Practicing from the Ground of Original Emptiness. Or my addition would be Practice with the Confidence that Fundamentally we are okay and we have everything we need already. It's a nice way to practice from, a nice way to feel about our life. We're fundamentally okay and we have everything we need.

[04:09]

And continuous practice, their subtitle is Cultivating Moment-to-Moment Awareness and Working with Our Habit Energy. Very good. We just have to cultivate our moment-to-moment awareness and work with our habit energy. And I was just going to add a subtext to that. How many of you are familiar with the acronym RAIN, R-A-I-N? A few. Okay, so RAIN is a common acronym that's used in mindfulness. R means we're talking about our habit energy here. You know, some anger comes up. So we recognize, oh, I'm actually anger, angry. Instead of what we sometimes do, oh, I never get angry, so I'm not angry. You know, you recognize your anger. You accept your anger. This is happening to me, or allow it is another way to think of it. And then you investigate. This is before you lash out at anybody. You investigate with a nonjudgmental mind what's going on.

[05:17]

And then the N, that's R-A-I, the N is your anger. not identifying with it. This experience you're having does not define you. So, and the third bullet point of the practice period describing what it's about is ordinary mind is the way integrating realization into everyday life. So that's what I'm going to talk about a little bit today, how we integrate realization into everyday life. And I'm going to use a Koans are teaching stories that present the essential teaching in a very compact form. It was a tradition that developed in China, and instead of having long, lengthy texts, you just summarize the essence of a teaching in a very compact, and it's usually a little dialogue between a student and a teacher.

[06:21]

And this one is called Case 19, Nanshwan's Ordinary Mind is the Way from the Gateless Barrier, a collection of 48 koans. I might just say something about one of the characters in this little drama. Zhao Zhou was... became a very famous Zen teacher, but this was a time in his life when he was very young. He had ordained with his teacher, and when he was, you know, early 20s, he came and joined Nansen in his larger temple to practice with him, and probably he'd been there two or three years, so he was pretty familiar with temple life, and probably because he was a good student, had picked up a lot of responsibilities in the temple. So here's the case. Zhao Zhou asked Nanxuan, his teacher, what is the way? And Nanxuan said, ordinary mind is the way.

[07:25]

Zhao Zhou said, should I try to direct myself toward it? And Nanxuan said, if you try to direct yourself, you betray your own practice. Zhao Zhou said, how can I know the way if I don't direct myself? And Jan Schwan said, the way is not subject to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is delusion, not knowing is blankness. If you truly reach the genuine way, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. How can this be discussed at the level of affirmation and negation? How many of you are familiar with this koan? Maybe 20 percent. It's one of the more often used koans. But apparently there's enough of you here that I will go into it with some detail. At the end of that conversation, that's the whole koan.

[08:32]

With these words, Jiaojou had sudden realization. Isn't that wonderful? You just go up to your teacher and you ask him a question and he answers and you follow up with a couple follow-up questions and bang, you're done. Enlightenment. I can go out and live my life now. Get that artificial intelligent agent that's supposedly doing my work now in line. Unfortunately, it's not that easy. If you could get the answer to your life that easy, there'd be no need to practice. Of course, sometimes if you have a question that you've worked on for a long time, really thought about deeply, and you meet someone and you ask the question and they have a turning phrase that somehow opens your mind, that was ready to be opened, that can happen. That doesn't happen very often.

[09:34]

So there's a little commentary by Mumon. In these cases, the person that assembled the collection has commentaries, and there's a little commentary after this. Though Zhao Zhou had realization, he could not confirm it only after another 30 years of practice. Having insight is one thing, but developing your practice to live in intimacy with what actually happens moment by moment That's another thing. It takes time. Jaoja went on to practice with Nanchuan for 40 years. It's one of those kind of idealized relationships. You meet your teacher and you practice with him for 40 years. It doesn't happen that often. Suzuki Roshi was only here 12 years, for instance, and he made a huge impact in that time, but we all wish we'd had him for more years. So, let's get into it. The way is a translation of the word Tao.

[10:38]

By now, probably Tao has become a part of the English language. Is everybody familiar with the word Tao? It comes from Taoism, the way, the path. David Hinton wrote a book called China Roots, which he described in great detail how Indian Buddhism merged with Taoism when it moved to China. And actually his intention is Taoism was the stronger part of it. It's commonly said Taoism is the mother of Zen. Zen is the product of that meeting of Taoism in China and Buddhism from India. And Buddhism from India is the father. So Tao means the way, the path, the path of practice. It also means the nature of things. the essence of things, the true reality of things, so it has many meanings. So, Zhao Zhou, although he lives in the monastery and he's been living there for three years, he's in the middle of the way.

[11:51]

He's swimming in the water of the way, just like you all are swimming in the water of your life. But maybe you forget, oh, what's this life about? And he's going, what's really going on here with practice? I mean, I can ring the bells well. I can, you know, figure out how to get the trucks in and out for the town trips. I'm pretty good at what's going on around here, but what's really going on with Zen? What's the real story here? And that's a kind of fundamental question. It's a question that I wonder, well... We ask ourselves, when we're not too busy doing our work and taking care of our relationships and doing the shopping, every once in a while does it occur in our mind, what is really going on here? What is the meaning of my life? Why am I suffering? Why do I mistreat people so much all the time?

[12:55]

Where did this all come from? You know, like a fundamental question. So that's his question. It's a real question and it's a question that I think we've all asked ourselves and I kind of wonder maybe we'll just pause for a second and let you reflect on maybe if you have that kind of question in your life. I have a kind of guess because you're here, you do. It was a question that made me leave graduate school and go to Tashara and I think I was taking a bath and ending up spending four years there. It's that kind of question. Anybody want to offer up a question that's in their mind to the public viewing? It's okay. Sometimes the deepest questions are best held in here for a while.

[14:01]

Now the answer. Ordinary mind is the way. What do you think? Is that a good answer? Is that a surprising answer? Seems like what I'd call a kind of unusual answer. I mean, the Chinese characters for ordinary also mean usual, normal, everyday, can also be constant or eternal. So this way sounds a pretty big deal. Probably I should sit zazen for three or four years and enter all kinds of states of samadhi and maybe then I'd know something about the way. Or maybe I should go climb a mountain all by myself and look at the world from there. Or maybe I should hike in the desert for two weeks by myself and probably get lost, all of which I did. before I got to Pasara. But no, the answer is not some spectacular feat.

[15:15]

The answer is your everyday ordinary mind, the consciousness that's going on in your mind at all times. That is the way of practice. That sounds good. It's available all the time, which is good. Not so good because, well, geez, I've been living my everyday mind for, I don't know, some of you for 25 years and some of you for longer, and I'm still suffering, so what's the catch? You must be meaning something other than that. And just, I'm going to make a reference to the study of this practice period. They're studying the Platform Sutra by the Sixth Ancestor and One of the things when I was looking through the Platform Sutra that the sixth ancestor was saying about the mind or your practice, you always thought practice meant something outside yourself.

[16:20]

It actually means something right where you are, something right inside yourself. It is not elsewhere. It is always now. It is always right where you are. Every moment. is where your practice is. And Nanshan was saying the same thing. He is suggesting that ordinary things, speaking to someone, cooking, doing the dishes, taking an Uber, bringing us up to speed here. Or maybe you are all taking Waymo's here in the city. I live in Marin, so I don't know. worrying about work, getting angry. These are all the way. These are all the route to the way. All these things that we have limited and reduced by our preconceptions, self-centered thoughts, and habits of mind are, in fact, something wonderful, vast, unknown, and mysterious.

[17:34]

If only we could let go and shed ourselves of our limited ways of looking at things, we could find joy and satisfaction with everything. We could appreciate the depth and poignancy of ordinary human life. That is the point of practice. I love this about Zen. It's so kind of practical and available. Right here. I don't know why I threw this in, but I'm going to give you a quote. T.S. Eliot from Four Quartets, Bernd Norton. At the still point of the turning world, neither from nor towards, at the still point, there the dance begins. At the still point of this moment, there the dance begins.

[18:40]

well, this all sounds wonderful, but how do you do it? It seems like a good idea. So Zhao Zhou said, should I try to direct myself toward it, this ordinary mind? It's right here. How do I find it? How do I get at it? What's the method? What's the technique? And Nanshwan said, if you try to direct yourself, you betray your own practice. Kind of throws a twist in there, right? I mean, this is our usual way. We have a goal, and we have many goals. We need goals in our life. And we turn our mind and our attention to it, and we achieve our goal. Uh... we build a wonderful building, we're hungry, we figure out how to feed ourselves, so that's our usual way, but we're talking about something where we're turning our mind, we're taking the backward step into our mind and trying to see what's going on with our mind at all times, which is one of the advantages of sitting zaza, and you actually can do that without any distractions.

[20:13]

So, what's the problem? If you're trying to direct your mind, you're setting up a division between your ordinary mind and the part of you that's directing it. So you're out there looking for something here. And that very striving and trying sets up a separation from it. It's looking for something in the future or something out there. If where you already are is where you need to be, anywhere you try to go takes you away from there. So if the mind, the ordinary mind, is the mind you have right now without any modifications at all, as soon as you try to do something with it, you've lost it. So just to add a kind of little texture to this, I remember Mel Weitzman's a wonderful teacher over in Berkeley, and he used to have a beautiful essay on Shikantaza, our way of practicing Zaza, in which we practice both sitting and when we're out around in the world.

[21:46]

And he was talking about, well, you've got to go to the store to buy something. And of course, there's purpose in going to the store. And at the same time, there is just the step-by-step, totally living in the life of walking within the walking. Step-by-step, totally living within the walking as you're walking to the store. step by step as you're totally living in the doing of a project that you're doing. That being completely with the project, that, Sakurashi used to say, one way to practice without having a sense of a goal is to completely concentrate on what you're doing in each moment. Whatever it is you're doing, you can be completely concentrated in it. I was in tech for 20 years after I left my 10-year stint at, my early 10-year stint at Zen Center.

[22:54]

That was way back in the ancient times, you know, before all the stuff you're doing now. But even still, there was that tendency to be on the phone, on the computer, doing email, and meeting with somebody at the same time. Not a very effective way to solve problems. So this is kind of a, anti-multitasking emphasis. I'm looking at my watch because I woke up this morning, and I have a whole other six pages here in my talk, but I woke up this morning and I said, I don't want to talk about that. What do you want to talk about, Ed? Well, I think I'm going to talk about this. It reminded me of one of the old teachers here.

[23:58]

As he was walking down into the Zendo, he would walk into the Zen and say, I've thrown my lecture away. I'm just going to say what's on my mind. So, I've thrown my lecture away. I'm just going to say what's on my mind. So, here we go. It's kind of connected to this, you know, how do you get to it? And this is my sense of it. Maybe the heart of the problem is impermanence. Everything changes. Nothing can be held on to. As far as classical Buddhism is concerned, impermanence is the number one inescapable fact of life. We all know this, right? And we all understand impermanence, you know, in a kind of general, what I'd call superficial way. But to understand it at its deepest level and to merge with it, that is our practice.

[25:02]

You know, I'm pretty aware of impermanence. I go out on, I have a little deck on my house and I've got some roses there and all of a sudden the flowers fall off. Oh yeah, I'm sad that flower fell off. I'm looking at my little maple tree and at first the bud was just coming out and then I turned my head and I came back and now it's fully leafed out. It's the change happening so fast. But still, still mostly impermanence happens later, right? You know, I know I'm going to die. We all know we're going to die, but later. So I'm not too concerned about impermanence. Of course, later seems a lot later when you're 25 than it is when you're in your 80s. I'll just comment on that. Later comes a lot faster than you think it does.

[26:10]

But in truth, impermanence isn't later. It's now. The Buddha said, all conditioned things have the nature of vanishing. Right now, as they appear before us, they have that nature. It is not that something vanishes later. Right now, everything is in the same way vanishing. Though we don't understand that way, it's vanishing before our very eyes. Do you get some feeling for that? Do you feel the moment-by-moment impermanence of life? I'm just throwing it out there. That could be something you study, because it undergirds everything. It's that impermanence that causes suffering. As Suzuki Roshi would say, that things change for the usual person is very discouraging.

[27:16]

You cannot rely on anything. You cannot have anything. And you will see things you don't want to see. You will meet someone you don't like. If you want to do something, you may find that it is impossible. So you will be discouraged by the way things are going. As a Buddhist, you are changing the fundamental foundation of your life. that things change is the reason why you suffer in this world and become discouraged. It's our clinging to something that we want to have that disappears. That clinging, the clinging to that past moment, that past experience, the idea of the future, the various things that cause us suffering. But then security, and this is kind of interesting, goes on and says... When you change your understanding and your way of living, then you can completely enjoy your new life in each moment.

[28:18]

The evanescence or impermanence of things is the reason why you enjoy your life. When you practice in this way, your life becomes stable and meaningful. Isn't that beautiful? If you quit clinging to past ideas and actually enjoy the fresh ideas that's arriving. I mean, what would life be like if it didn't change? Sometimes, I mean, we're living in a world in which there's a lot of things changing very fast, right? So, I'm sure it's unsettling in many ways. It's unsettling for me, that's for sure. It might be unsettling for you. And how do you How do you have a way of living with that impermanence that you find that ordinary mind, the eternal mind, the mind that's calm and stable no matter what's happening?

[29:28]

That mind is with you. And Sukeroshi's kind of saying it's in the nature of reality. It's in the nature of impermanence if you embrace it, if you can become one with that impermanence. If we can let go of our attachment, there is a release, a liberation at the heart of every moment. and we can enjoy the impermanence of our life. And Siguroshi is saying that this same impermanence, when understood and applied to your life, will make your life stable and meaningful. I, uh,

[30:37]

Of course, I had the privilege of meeting Suzuki Roshi when I was young, when I was really looking for something. And the way he lived his life, the way he could be in the midst of so much activity, there was a sense, there was this... He would move fast many times, but there was a kind of stillness at the center of him, a kind of presentness that was hard to describe. which made him capable of adapting to many different situations and certainly many different people. The group of people that practiced with Suzuki Roshi when he was here were very varied in their personalities, and yet he was able to meet all of them and meet them in ways they had never been met before. And so they loved him.

[31:37]

because they had found somebody that was so present with them as they were didn't require them to be something other than they are and woke up to them the fact that even as I am when I may be angry or may be depressed maybe something else still there's something in me something real in me that's okay it's not okay it's more than okay something fantastic in being a human being that's going on. Something in this marvelous world that usually when we get caught up in our thoughts, our depression, our moods, we kind of clench our mind. The teacher says, release the hand of thought, release the grip of your mind and allow yourself to step out of the prison that captures you.

[32:40]

Suzuki Roshi would call, you know, the big mind that's with you at all times. So I have enough time to just give a quick instruction from Suzuki Roshi about how to practice with this. And he says it begins with Zazen. First practice smoothly exhaling and inhaling. Calmness of mind is beyond the end of your exhalation. Calmness of mind is beyond the end of your exhalation. To take care of exhalation is very important. To die is more important than trying to be alive. When we are always trying to be alive, this striving, we have trouble. Rather than trying to be alive or active, if we can be calm and die or fade away into emptiness, then naturally we will be all right, moment after moment. Do not lose this practice.

[33:43]

At the end of your exhale and zazen, fade into emptiness, the vast unknown, the mystery. And then he said, if you are still alive, naturally you will inhale again. Fantastic. Oh, I'm still alive. Fortunately or unfortunately. That's a quote. The true purpose of things is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and let everything go as it goes. That's the kind of... Sigur Rosh used to say, you're perfect just as you are. Everything goes. And you could use a little improvement. So that's our practice, to feel that sense of being okay and practice.

[34:49]

Now we're going to skip over the six pages that I was going to give about the way it's not subject to knowing and not knowing. We know that, right? We know. Whatever knowing we have is arbitrary and pretty much gonna, a lot of problems with it. And not knowing is an abrogation of our responsibility to live a life. So I'll read the verse that, well, no, I'll say one thing here. So when, after, when Nansen said, it's not a matter of knowing or not knowing, when you get there, it's as vast and boundless as outer space.

[36:01]

In that moment, when you're present fully, it can be as vast and boundless as outer space. It can have the entire potential of your whole life in that moment. Because it is that vast. That's how vast you are. That's how vast it is to be a human being. And how we get that feeling, how we approach that, I'm going to read... This last thing from Suzuki Roshi that I think is another kind of practice. If you are aware of your exhaling and inhaling, if you feel your heartbeat one after another, then you will understand what is going on in this world. Then you will feel your being. Step by step you will feel yourself.

[37:10]

Even walking on the floor is the actual feeling of your reality, your being. Here we have real gratefulness and the feeling of being. That feeling is the feeling which is called essence of mind. The feeling of being is called the essence of mind. Or maybe ordinary mind is what was put forward in this. Go on. We do not know what to say. In this sense, this is something beyond our knowledge. We do not know what to say. It is not because the essence of mind is so great that we cannot even say how it is great. It is that it is not a matter of great. We do not know what to say because actual reality is quite simple. In this simplicity, we must find our goal moment after moment.

[38:12]

It is simple in some sense. Here you all are. Here we all are living an incredibly complicated human life in an incredibly complicated world. It's got to be relatively simple or we couldn't be able to do it. So I want to thank you very much for your attention today. And I think there's going to be an opportunity for question and answer. I would love to get to meet some of you and hear what your life and what your practice is about. That would be a nice treat for me. So I think after tea and cookies, we meet in the dining room. 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.

[39:19]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:35]

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