This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. What a thrill it is to be here at Green Dragon Temple. Uh, My name is Tim Wicks, and I currently serve as Kanto, which means Head of Practice, at our San Francisco Temple, Beginner's Mind Temple in San Francisco on Page Street. And it's really, truly a great honor to be here with all of you, some who I know from a long time ago, and new faces. So what I would like is if we can co-create this talk.

[01:05]

So it's not just me giving it to you, but it's you receiving as well. And thank you all for making time in your busy lives to come here. Welcome to the people who are online and the people who in the future maybe will listen to a recording of it. So I'd like to speak today about one of the foundational texts of Buddhism. And it's called the Satipatthana Sutra. And I'm going to talk about the Satipatthana Sutra. And I'm going to talk about awe. Thank you. A-W-E. Awe. Like awe shucks. Except deeper. Deeper. So the Satipatthana Sutra was the first sutra that I read when I first came to Buddhism.

[02:12]

It opened up a whole new world for me, the world that I inhabited, the world of my internal experience, where I didn't really know what it was that was going on inside. I was really just existing in the world, like many of us are, surviving. tossed around by the need for food and shelter and pleasure and getting them in the fastest and easiest way I could. In Buddhist terms, I was subject to the conditioning of existence. My existence conditioned how it is that I acted, how it is that I was in the world. But I didn't know how to identify things what it meant to be me. And the first form of Buddhism I was introduced to was by a Theravadan teacher.

[03:16]

Theravadan Buddhism is different from Zen. Zen came later than Theravadan. Theravadan Buddhism considers itself to be the original Buddhism. Some people debate this, of course, as we are wont to do. And in fact, the word Theravadan means the way of the elders. And the Satipatthana Sutra is one of the most important sutras to Theravadans. Sati means mindfulness. It means memory. It means recollection. There's a sense of knowledge, a sense of knowledge. returning to something familiar. And the second part of the title is uttthana, which means to establish or to verify, to look at closely, to investigate.

[04:22]

It also means presence. So in its compound form, satipatthana means mindfulness, present mindfulness. And it gave birth to the practice and theory of Vipassana, which many of us are familiar with, which means deep insight. Vipassana means deep insight. Or to see things as they are. This is mindfulness. And this concept and experience of mindfulness, this training of mindfulness, was delivered by the Buddha to his disciples in the Satipatthana Sutra. And when I first came to Buddhism, I was, as I mentioned, completely disconnected from my internal experience. I knew very little of what it was that was happening inside of me. I needed some kind of a framework for identifying what my internal experience was.

[05:27]

What were these crazy things that were happening inside of me? The Satipatthana Sutra created an opening up for me by helping me to understand what it meant to be a human being. By identifying my experience and how this great jumble, this interior jumble of activities inside of me could begin to be understood. What was pleasure? What was suffering? Now, I'm not a scholar, but I am thirsty. I'm not a scholar, so I'm not going to go through the Satipatthana Sutra in a scholarly manner. But I am going to just kind of quickly mention what's in the sutra before talking about how it was that it was helpful to me.

[06:33]

This is how it begins. This is the Buddha. Monks, this is the direct path for the purification of beings, for the surmounting of sorrow and lamentation, for the disappearance of dukkha. Dukha, as many of you know, we usually translate as suffering, but actually what it means is when an axle is... placed off-center on a wheel and how it is that that wheel turns in an uncomfortable way. For the disappearance of dukkha and discontent, for acquiring the true method, for the realization of nirvana, namely the four satipitanas. So then the Buddha goes on to mention what the four satipatthanas are. And they are four mindfulnesses.

[07:41]

The mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of feelings, mindfulness of mind. What's going on inside of my mind? How am I naming things? How am I identifying things to act on? And finally, the mindfulness of dharmas, which basically covers... all conditional phenomena, all conditioned reality. And these four satipatthanas are studied in an objective way, focusing on the body, focusing on the feelings that we have, what's happening in the mind, and what exactly we call reality. What is this cushion that I'm sitting on? What is this room right here? What does it mean to hear sound? and when i first was introduced to this sutra i still had a scatological 14 year old in me that loved the detail

[08:51]

So this is the mindfulness of the body right here from the Buddha. In this body, there are head hairs, body hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, bowels, mesentery, contents of the stomach, feces, bile, phlegm, pus, blood. sweat, fat, tears, grease, spittle, snot, which I wonder what snot is in Pali, the ancient language, oil of the joints and urine. And I just loved all that detail right there. But I had actually never really considered my body in that way, nor had I considered my feelings in that way. So he does the same with feelings and with mind. He He identifies the different parts of our feelings and gives us the opportunity to look in a very objective, analytical way at all phenomena in the dharmas, the Satipatthana of dharmas.

[10:10]

He lists in the sutra the five hindrances to awakening, sensual desire, Aversion, sloth or tiredness, anxiety, and finally doubt. He identifies what it is that we're made up of. He calls them aggregates, or we translate them as aggregates, which is sometimes called heaps. What it is that we cling to, which is form, sensations, perception, volitional activities, and finally consciousness. These are what it is that we cling to. He breaks all of these down to their individual parts to show how it is that we do not have a permanent self. We are empty of permanence. And by breaking down reality into these parts, I was able to begin to understand what it meant to be this human being named Tim Wicks.

[11:16]

I was able to begin to identify fear, anger, joy, depression, anxiety, and inspiration in their subtlest forms as they began to arise in me. By identifying them, I was able to begin the process of understanding them. And by understanding them, I started to see the root of where it is that many of them came from. By identifying suffering, by simply acknowledging it, it begins to diminish, to simply acknowledge suffering. It means to take some of the heat away, some of the energy away from it. And this to me was a profound experience and insight. For the first time in my life, I began to understand the workings of the self. Suffering and what it was made of. and how not to try and push it away or feed to it in any way.

[12:21]

The Buddha ends the Satipatthana Sutra. It's not that long. You can read it pretty quickly and then read it again several times. Monks, if anyone should develop these four Satipatthanas in such a way for seven years, one of two fruits, could be expected for them. Either final knowledge, here and now, so sudden enlightenment, or if there's a trace of clinging left, non-returning. And non-returning is basically nearly enlightenment. Let alone seven years, he says, six years, five years, four years, three years, two years, one year, seven months, six months, five months, four months, three months, two months, one month, half a month. If anyone could develop these four satipatthanas in such a way for seven days, one or two fruits could be expected for them.

[13:32]

Either final knowledge here and now, or if there's a trace of clinging, non-returning. So it was with reference to this that it was said, monks, This is the direct path for the purification of beings, for the surmounting of sorrow and lamentation, for the disappearance of dukkha and discontent, for acquiring the true method for the realization of nirvana, namely these four satipatthanas. That is what the Blessed One said, and the monks were satisfied and delighted in the Blessed One's words. So this is objective meditation. It's meditation that focuses on something specific, the breath, the body, feelings, sensations. In Zen, we talk about way-seeking mind.

[14:48]

It's our stories of how it is that we came to the Dharma. And way, the word way, the beginning of way-seeking minds, is usually capitalized. And this sort of comes from our, not sort of, actually does come from our Chinese ancestors. As most of you know, Buddhism started in northern India and then it traversed through really diverse cultures through the rest of India and then came to China. And the capitalizing of W on way is from Taoism, which is the spiritual precursor. to what in China was called Chan and later in Japan was called Zen. So Taoism sort of began to merge a little bit and influence the way it is that Buddhism entered into Chinese spiritual culture. The way in Taoism, with that capital W, literally means path or road, but it also means the source of the foundational purpose

[15:59]

principle of the universe. We refer to it perhaps a little bit lazily as emptiness. So we use our stories to tell the way that we came to this path. And the Buddha used the story of his early life to explain his understanding of the way. He said, I teach one thing and one thing only, suffering and the end of suffering, which always kind of sounded like... Two things to me, but welcome to Buddhism and non-separation, non-dualism. Everything is connected, especially suffering and non-suffering. The Buddha, as many of you know, was protected as a prince by his father, the king, who was a black belt codependent, in my opinion. His father gave him everything he thought his son needed in order to be happy. He protected him from harm, sheltered him from suffering, but the future Buddha still saw suffering in the form of old age, sickness, and death.

[17:10]

So even if you have everything that you think you need in order to be happy, just the fact that we're alive means that we'll suffer from the aging process, and fear of dying. So in this way, I use my own story to help me to understand the Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha. I try to stick mostly to what it is that I can verify as my own experience. And the Satipatthana Sutra helped me to identify the suffering in my life and how to begin the process of ending that suffering. We talk about karma, as many of you know, which means intentional action. Our actions have consequences. We speak of karmic consequences, things that we did and how it is that they affected what happened after.

[18:14]

There are consequences to what you do and there's consequences to what you don't do. Because of life, this is the way that I am. the way that life had affected me by the time I came to Buddhism. And in fact, the reason that I came to Zen Center 25 years ago was because the way that life had affected me was that I had become an addict. I was a drug addict and an alcoholic. And after getting into recovery and immersing myself in several years of Vipassana practice, I started coming to Zen Center in the city, which is where I live now. And I was coming there because there was a meeting on Monday nights where people in recovery were interested in meditation. And it still happens, 7.30 on Mondays. And I didn't like Zen Center very much at all. I didn't like the statues, the bowing, the bells.

[19:14]

The robes, the downward glancing, the incense, I didn't like anything about it. But you have to be careful, so watch out, because slowly it started to creep up on me, because I kept coming to that one meeting a week, and after about six months, I thought I'd check out a Dharma talk and look at me now. So in Zen we sit. We just sit. And other schools of Buddhism feel in some ways that we kind of throw people in at the deep end. We just sit. Shikintaza it's called. Just sitting, facing the wall. Zen claims to be non-objective sitting.

[20:15]

There's no object. We're simply... We sit and face the wall. We try to let go of everything. Noticing everything arises but not activating it or feeding it in any way. Noticing but not pushing away. We're witnessing life as it arises and as it fades away. In our Zen practice, we're observing impermanence. That's what it is that we're studying. Study this, study this, said Dogen Zenji, our 13th century founder in Japan. Investigate, investigate. He was always admonishing us. So I had this objective basis from my meditation experience. I'd already been trained in mindfulness awareness. And now I was being told to sit with non-objective sitting. Don't add to or push away what arises in your meditative experience. I did this for a couple of years.

[21:17]

I found a teacher, which you're encouraged to do in Zen. I found a teacher to ask questions, to learn about the path. And I had, after I'd been working with him for a while, I started to have some anxiety coming up again, which was familiar to me. And I asked my teacher, my Zen teacher, if I could go back and do a little bit of a Vipassana around the anxiety. do some objective sitting. And he, focusing, you know, I wanted to focus on the anxiety objectively as the Satipatthana Sutra had taught me. And he said something very interesting. He said all of Buddhism before Zen, which Zen happened or got developed really in China several hundred years after the Buddha, All the teachings of Buddhism before Zen are included in Buddhism, and this includes Theravadan Buddhism.

[22:20]

Theravadan Buddhism and Vipassana and mindfulness are included in Zen, he said. And on a closer look, I began to see how it is that we start out in Zen with objective sitting. The first thing that you're taught in Zen is how to hold your body, your posture. And then we talk about focusing on the breath, counting the breath. And this is just like in the Satipatthana Sutra. In Zen, we're opening up our awareness from the particular, the body and the breath, to the general, out to the rest of the universe. We're opening, opening. At uc berkeley uh there is a professor named dacre keltner and he's written a book about his research as a psychologist he's been studying awe awe and he has a fabulous book which is called awe he defines all as

[23:32]

in quotes, the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world. This is Zen training. Contemplation of vastness, as we are asked to do in our Zen mind, can be challenging and even destabilizing in its vastness, even threatening sometimes. Awe is the verb of action in the face of mystery. It's the motivation to enter into an understanding, an inspiration to open up. Awe is the invitation to intimacy. And intimacy is sometimes described as the truth being delivered or shared with someone else without any judgment. If I tell you I was an alcoholic and you don't judge me, I'm being intimate with you.

[24:38]

We're being intimate together. I'm opening up. If you judge me, there is a separation you're cultivating and we are together closing down. In his book, Keltner analyzes awe scientifically. He's a scientist. He's a scientist. He talks about hair follicles and how they're affected by certain chemicals that are created in the body during experiences of awe, how it is that hair follicles become erect and you have your hair standing on end. He talks about self-transcendent states, the beginning of the breaking down of the individual self, mind states that grow out of the experience of awe, where there's a healthy loss of self-boundary between the individual and the world in which they live in.

[25:44]

With awe, there's a deep connection, a feeling of oneness and belonging to a greater whole. There's this diminishing of the self-centeredness of the separate individual. In all, there can be a state of flow, being so fully immersed in an activity that the sense of time and self-consciousness begins to disappear. Peak experiences of intense joy, discovery, and transcendence are oftentimes called the highest points of human experience. Witnessing profound human kindness can shift awareness away from one's own needs and while experiencing awe. For the Buddha, there were three poisons, three obstacles to our awakening, greed, hatred, and delusion or ignorance.

[26:49]

And in my experience, we're not supposed to rank things, but I do. In my experience, delusion is the worst of these poisons because delusion is not seeing the truth. And I was trained in order to survive in my childhood, like so many of us, with a life that was unbearable, I was trained to not see the truth. That's why I ended up drinking and using drugs. My consciousness was unbearable. The Satipatthana Sutra, which was at the very beginning of the Buddha's teaching and is included in Zen, taught me to see the truth in a way that was gentle and safe a little bit at a time. It opened me up to beginner's mind, which is really the mind of awe. It taught me that I can not only survive the truth, but I can enter into it with fascination, the fascination of awe.

[28:00]

I can see what it's made of and how it is that I share it with the rest of the universe. And I'd like to have a sip of water and finish with a poem that I found called Awe. And it's by James Cruz. It's a shiver that climbs the trellis of the spine, each single a bright white morning glory breaking into blossom beneath the skin. It can happen anywhere, anytime. Even finding this sleeve of ice worn by a branch all morning now fallen, on a bed of snow you can choose to pause pick it up hold the cold thing in your hand or not few tell us that wonder and awe are decisions we make daily hourly minute by minute in the tiny offices of the heart tilting the head to look up at every tree turned into a chandelier

[29:22]

by light striking ice in just the right way. Thank you very much for your attention. And now we have Q&A or arguments against what it is that I have said. You're so completely welcomed. And I'd love it if you could say your name as well, please. Okay, Jennifer. Hi, Jennifer. Hi. I... used to keep a diary of gratitude, but now I've been keeping a diary of awe. I do a lot of hiking by myself on the mountain, and I find doing it alone, and if I sit someplace that there's something going on, like redheaded woodpeckers pulling the bark off a diseased tree, doing what's not science, nature does, it helps break it down. Everything has something to do. And I just, I was in so much awe of that.

[30:25]

So I went and visited the area like once a month to see how they were progressing. It was really quite beautiful. And I also, I'm out in the ocean a lot, sailing, and I run into so much awe. Thousands of jellyfish hatching and witnessing that. And they have sails on their back and they hatch and they float to the top and then they sail on top of the water. So that was just beautiful. So I like the word awe. I look forward to it. What you have just described, the psychologist asks us to basically do awe practice. And that's what you're doing. And he's got studies that he talks about where he shows how it is that everything that comes with awe in the human organism begins to actually alter neuroplasticity.

[31:32]

It does. Yeah. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you. Good morning, I'm Charlene. Hi Charlene. So awe in the way that was just described is something very joyous and I'm quite familiar with. However, you ended your talk speaking about delusion and how many of us don't confront the truth because perhaps it's quite painful and so there's some connection there. And then you shared to enter it with awe, with a sense of wonder and curiosity. And maybe I'm adding my own, but it seems like what you were saying is to enter into difficult things and painful things and things that are hard to actually be with, with awe.

[32:34]

Maybe I'm adding, but I'm curious if that's what you were saying. I'd like to understand and hear more about that. Because I think of awe as, yeah, being, watching the, I love that imagery in the poem of the sunlight streaming through the trees with the icicles and just so magical. Yeah. But what about awe bringing it to the things that are not so apparently magical? Well, there was a famous recently memorialized event on September 11th in 2001, which created a mass worldwide almost experience of awe and something that was terrible. So awe is, and that's an extremely dramatic example, but awe is not just about good things. It incorporates fantastic things that seem unbelievable, seem unbelievable.

[33:44]

When I was trying to stop drinking for years, I tried everything. that I was told about to stop drinking. And it wasn't until I started hanging out with other people who'd successfully given up drinking that slowly, over the space of about a year, I was able to actually give up drinking. And to me, that was a completely unfathomable miracle. And still kind of is 26 years later. So awe, like our awakening, our Zen awakening, covers everything. And as I said in my talk, it's an invitation. The experience of awe is pulling me towards understanding something. And the most beneficial understandings that I've had have been around things that are difficult and painful.

[34:46]

And I feel that Zen and lots of psychotherapy, if you have good insurance, have helped me to meet what seemed like an unbearable childhood and meet many of the internal sensations that led me to drugs and to alcohol. And those are very fruitful insights and have their own beauty. In fact, I'm going to tell you a story. On September 11, 2001, I was sitting in Howard Cohen's meditation group in San Francisco. And because of what happened that day, he'd asked Eugene Cash to come and teach with him. And these are two teachers from Spirit Rock Vipassana teachers. And that's when it is that I met Eugene Cash, who became my first teacher.

[35:52]

And they asked the question that night during our discussion, is it possible to understand why the hijackers did this? And being an old lefty, it was possible for me to understand, even at that dramatic time. What was the big question for me was, is it possible to understand and have compassion for the American military industrial complex, which I knew was going to embark on killing thousands and thousands of innocent people? And so that started a process that came out of awe, looking very deeply at a special kind of suffering in our world and... It's a really weird thing to have compassion for the American military industrial complex. But it's amazing.

[36:54]

It's amazing. Did you say 1115 for the hard stop? Well, you got a lot of time. I thought my talk was longer. Yes, please. What's your name? Good morning. My name is Kate. Hi, Kate. Hi. I would like to understand more the connection between awe and karma, since you touched on karma, and I'm wondering if you believe experiences of awe can shift your karma if you take steps to make decisions that have better or more beneficial consequences. Yes, I think that awe is the invitation to actually change our relationship with what it is that's happened in the past. And once, Reb Anderson, in this very seat, said that it's possible to change his relationship with his father.

[38:09]

And You know, that was amazing to me. Was that really possible? My father was an alcoholic and he didn't abuse me in any way, but he neglected me and my three sisters because he was insane with addiction. And I had a lot of work to do around that. And I was a certain way because of Childhood neglect, which we know well now because it happens to so many of us, has very specific effects on how it is that we live our lives and what kind of relationships we pursue. And looking at that, looking at these karmic conditionings that I had made it so that I began doing it just in little bits at a time, and talking about it with my teacher, talking about it with therapists, talking about it with other people, my spiritual friends, many of whom are going through the same things or have gone through the same things, I begin to have a sense of the magnitude of karma.

[39:29]

And that, for me, creates a feeling of awe in my heart, which draws me closer to these karmic consequences. And hopefully, I am an ordained priest, so hopefully looking at karmic conditioning will inspire me to practice the precepts, the moral guidelines for living, which then changes how it is that I live my life right now. So I not only can change the past, but change the present and the future. It doesn't always change in the way I want it to, but it sure changes. Great questions. Uh-oh, we've got one.

[40:33]

Oh, yes, okay. I saw you, Shoko. My name is Ji Young. Do you have any advice on smartphone addiction disease? You know, I was talking with someone yesterday, the person who did the Dharma talk at City Center, Erin Merck is a teacher of, I went to school in England, so I don't know what your American, I think it was, I think it's middle school. And she talked about how smart people How old are people in middle school? 12, 14. So she talked about how these 12 and 14-year-olds, they've almost completely grown up for 12 and 14 years with some kind of a hostility towards technology. So... Maybe some of their parents are saying, you know, put the phone down when we're eating.

[41:34]

But she said that she's really surprised how this year and last year there have been many young children who want to go, what did she call it? They want to go, I'm sorry, analog. Yes, thank you. They want to go analog. Analog. They don't want technology. They put it away. They're not on Facebook. They're not on Instagram. They only use their computer for certain things, and then they put it down. They play with balls. They really love vinyl records, and they're really into vinyl records. And this was amazing to me. This was really amazing to me because... The cell phone, smartphone addiction is rampant throughout the world. And it causes so many problems for people that it's going to outlive its addiction-ness.

[42:39]

And I think that that's happening. AI is only going to make it worse. But we can't go on the way it is that There's too many people who are asking questions about it, and the deleterious effects of cell phone addiction or smartphone addiction are becoming so clear to people. That doesn't mean the addiction stops right away, doesn't it? It takes lots of different things for addictions to end, but I'm confident that it will end. I don't know what will happen before then, but... We're going to see. We're going to see. And with awe, because I'm not afraid of addiction anymore now that I understand my own drug addiction and alcoholism. I'm not afraid of it. I was afraid of it before because it was killing me, and it killed many people who I knew. And addiction is a really serious thing, but I'm not scared of it anymore because I have awe in it.

[43:43]

It's amazing to me. It's called an infinite scroll. where you can scroll on your phone and never come to the end of the page. Just keep scrolling. It's sickening. Do it. Do it. And be present while you're doing it. It will end, but it takes time. I'm not completely immune to it. We have rules at Zen Center about phones when you take your phone out, but people now carry the schedule for a one-day sitting on their phone. And so, you know, you see the abbot looking at his phone to see when the next period of Zazen is going to end. We're going to have a technology-free seshing at... at San Francisco Zen Center, at City Center, where you're going to have to check your phone at the door and any computer that you have.

[44:51]

That scares me. Sashin is a retreat. Sorry, thank you for asking. I try not to use jargon, but... I do. Sashin means concentrated gathering of the mind. So it's where we sit all day for periods of half an hour, 40 minutes, sometimes an hour, and then we walk for 10 minutes and then sit for another hour, walk for 10 minutes. You eat in the zendo. So we eat in here in this room. We eat a ceremonial oryoki. It's beautiful. It's a way of mindful eating. And... It's a wonderful thing to do. It's suggested, however, that you first do a half-day beginner sit before you do that, because it's a pretty intense way to live a day, and it's wonderful, wonderful. Yes, please. Shoko has a question, too. Good morning. Good morning. Yeah, my name is Oli Sa, Oli for short.

[45:59]

Oli, hi, Oli. It's my first time in a temple. Welcome, welcome. My sister brought me out this morning. And I'm in awe. So I have several questions, forgive me. Does being in awe make you awesome? And the second question is, is anybody else here feeling awesome? Bunch of hands went up, shy hands. So I'm originally from Toronto. I'm originally Nigerian. And I moved to Toronto about eight years ago. And in my backyard, there's no houses. It's farmland. So when it snows, boy, it's beautiful. And I'm always in awe. I'm always looking at this. And I'm wondering, do my neighbors who have been living there for the past few years,

[47:00]

longer than I have that same feeling of awe. And if they do, my last question will be, how can I create this awe consistently for, not just for me, but maybe for my family back home in Nigeria? Thank you. Well, do the people experience awe like you do, the people who've lived there even longer than you have, And they might if they're not looking at their phones. So how do we create this kind of awe for people around the world? We talk about our own experiences of awe, which is what you just did. So we gather together with others, and that's how it is that we train each other in awe. That's what we do in our Zen Buddhist practice, where Sangha, which means a community of practitioners, is very important.

[48:04]

And so we come together, and someone who hopefully has a small amount of wisdom speaks like this, and then we have this discussion. And very importantly, we have... much more casual discussion, afterwards outside with some baked goods. I hope there's baked goods today. Because there isn't always, but they're fantastic here. So awe is spread through interaction. Awe is spread through interaction. And he actually, the professor at Berkeley, he goes into great detail about how social awe is. how it is reliant on human interaction and the breaking down of this separate individual self that sends us to the survival that we're seeking in our smartphones. All breaks that down. And that's the central teaching of Zen Buddhism, is that there's no such thing as a separate individual self.

[49:14]

Shoko had a question right here. I think two more questions and then we're going to be done. Hi, my name's Shoko. Hi, Shoko. It's good to see you here, Tim. Thank you so much. Oh my gosh, it's great to see you. I want to go back to your talking about the story of asking your teacher about Satyapathana. practice and and and uh um so you know in zen and just generally i think we're advised a lot to avoid over intellectualizing um and and then we're presented with a numberless amount of numbered lists uh to memorize and and think about and so um i guess my question is does it does it help to know these four Satipatanas and concentrate on them?

[50:21]

Or is it something that by objectless meditation, we will just inevitably, you know, get to these points? But do you think it helps to have the names in the numbered list? Well, thank you for a wonderful question, as usual, Shoko. I used to be a Marxist and you could read all of Marx's writings and go and argue about them because he died and there wasn't anything else. With Buddhism, you can't do that. There's so much to understand. I don't know what all the lists are. I'm an ordained priest and I don't know what all the lists are. I don't remember all of them. I wasn't trained in a memorizing culture. I go to my phone if I want to look something up.

[51:23]

But because Buddhism is so vast, I think you take what you need and you leave the rest. Don't cherry pick whatever it is that's going to continue unhealthy or unwholesome living. Go towards what is warm. And to me, the Satipatthana Sutra was warm at a time in my life when I was asking what is going on inside of me, where I actually had some interest in what it was that was going on inside of me that wasn't destroyed by fear. And so it acted as a guide. The Satipatthana Sutra acted as a very basic guide to the interior of my existence. And that was useful to me. So we take the lists that are useful and make sure Rep doesn't hear me say this because I'm not a purist when it comes to everything.

[52:35]

I love the fact that you can't read everything that there is to read about Buddhism. I'm constantly finding new things. That's it? We have one from... Oh, we have a question online. Yes, thank you. Of course, I forgot about that. This will be our final question. Thank you, Tim. This is Mark from our online saga. He asks, can you talk slightly more about awfulness, difficult awe, and healthy diminishing of the boundary between self and others? I hate to keep using 9-11, but... It's such an amazing example because here was something absolutely awful that happened. We watched it on television. I know New York. I knew the streets. I knew the Twin Towers. This was beyond belief, terrible thing that happened.

[53:37]

And what immediately resulted from that was people breaking down their separate individual self and moving towards each other. And that was a beautiful thing. It was a horrifying thing because many of the people who moved towards other people in that time of need were killed, died. Many people died afterwards, but there was this sense of togetherness that was breaking down much of the separateness that led to the kind of horrors that inspired people to hijack those planes. So this is, once again, in Zen, things are not separate.

[54:39]

Suffering and the solution to suffering are not separate. When we sew our robes, I tell people this all the time. Sorry, Eric, you've heard this before. When we sew our robes, I'm a sewing teacher at City Center. We make our robes, and we make the little bib-like rakasus, and we have to do it in a very special way. You have to go to class and get taught, and Steph Blanc is the teacher here. And you're taught to make the robe, and you take refuge with each stitch. You take refuge with the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. And when we sew them, they're made of rows. My big one right here has seven rows. The small ones have five rows. And each row is made up of a short piece and a long piece. And the long pieces are the wisdom pieces, which... No offense to any Theravadans in the room. It felt, when I was practicing with my Theravadan teacher, like he was going off to the wisdom.

[55:45]

He was trying to shut out the ignorance and the delusion. But in Zen, when we make our robes, we sew the big panels to little panels, and the little panels are the ignorance panels. So wisdom and ignorance come together in our whole view of of what it is to be awakened. We're not discarding that. We know that it's a part of our salvation in the awfulness of human existence, the wars, the suffering, the destruction, the terrible things that we do to each other. All of that is included in the process of awakening, and we must look at all of it We must look at all of it, and Zen asks us to do that. So I hope that answered the question. And if it didn't, get in touch with me at San Francisco Zen Center. Okay.

[56:50]

Let's chant. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[57:24]

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