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. I assume it's sunny somewhere else. Generally, yes. So my name is Chiryu. I live here. And... take care of various things, including the water system and the septic system. So thank you all for your contributions. And also little Frankie, who's something of a celebrity here, 15-month-old fireball, who is basically the center of whatever situation he's in. So I'm used to being... the afterthought.

[01:02]

People have whole conversations with him in my arms. And Lee, walk away. So one of the other things I do when I have occasional free time is a little bit of blogging, a bit of Buddhist blogging. You know, Buddhist bloggers, like any other kind of blogger, are sort of prone to confrontation and argument. It seems like the law of the blogosphere that there should be some kind of argument somewhere in the material. Buddhist blogging is no different. People argue with each other. And then as Buddhists, they argue too about whether they should be arguing. So we have sincere... and rather violent arguments about whether it's Buddhist to be arguing on our blogs.

[02:11]

So, you know, whether or not the Internet is a complete waste of time and whether or not there's any value at all in arguing about Buddha Dharma. Interesting things do happen when people raise their voices together, when people speak together. And I wanted to share an interesting thing that happened to me recently around some blogging. I was accused of having a self. You know, the first impulse is, I do not. You're the one with the self. Stupid. So this kind of, who has less of a self? Whose opinion is more evidence of a self? And whose opinion is less evidence of a self? So, you know, I did get mad about being accused of a self, but I do have a self.

[03:17]

I'm messy and opinionated and angry and complaining and earnest and everything else I am kind of self. And everyone else does too. Say we all have approximately 100% of a self. And nobody comes in kind of slightly less self or more self flavors. We're all equally who we are with the conditions that we carry, the habits and the attitudes of mind. But still, there is this Buddhist teaching of no self. So there seems to be this proposition from the Buddhist... teaching from the Buddhist sages that fundamentally there's not a self. So this little, say, hopefully friendly exchange of argument has gotten me thinking about what it means to have a self and also to not have a self. Or having a self, what is the use of the teaching of no self?

[04:25]

How do I practice with the teaching of no self? So I wanted to first raise a koan, an ancient Zen teaching story, which for me expresses very beautifully, and I hope comprehensively, the teaching of no self. So this is in the collection of koans called the Gateless Gate, or the Mumonkan, it's case 20. It's one of the short ones, which is good. The priest Song Yun asked, why can't the person of great strength lift up a leg? Again, he said, it is not with the tongue that you speak. Why can't the person of great strength lift up a leg? It is not with the tongue that you speak.

[05:27]

So our usual attitude, of course, is that a person, even a fairly weak person, can generally lift their leg with relative ease. And a person of great strength, all the more so, can lift my leg anytime I want, no problem. By one's own power, they can lift their legs and move their arms and flap their tongue. But from the Buddhist insight of no-self, it's clear that no thing, no one, can ever act on its own. Strong or not, no one by their own power somehow, by the power that they themselves generated as an independent person, that no one can in that way lift a leg. Nothing can act on its own. Everything is connected so thoroughly, so completely enmeshed in this kind of matrix, in this web of being, that to see that anything could somehow on its own generate some action completely misses the point of how fundamentally, how desperately we need everything that exists.

[06:53]

Anything we do is completely suffused with and owes itself to, everything else. No, we can't act alone. And furthermore, we can't even say that there is some separate me over here, whether I can act or not. Again, from the point of view of this totality, of this complete interfusion of being, the oneness, you could say, of being, it stops making sense to speak of individuals and individual actors. It's more an unfolding. Everything unfolds together or arises together. Sometimes think of this little person. I think it's in more than one movie has this image of a giant robot with a little person in the forehead driving.

[08:01]

So maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe we're not quite that much in control of who we think we are. There's no little man or woman in our forehead driving this thing. We're actually part of, we're flowing from something much bigger and much deeper. So in this zendo, we often repeat the words of... Zen ancestor Dogen, who says, to carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening. So everything coming forth and experiencing itself manifests as this present activity. So what is this present moment, this present movement of my leg is the coming forth of all things, the expression of all things.

[09:07]

So to think, I'm doing this, I'm moving my leg, I'm kicking you with it, I'm walking down the path myself, is, in Dogen's words, to carry ourself forward as separate, into this separate world. Here I am, separate, by my own power, breaking into this world, moving through in a kind of oppositional way. So in Zen, we like to talk about grasses and tiles and pebbles. So you can see in this koan, it's the grasses and the tiles and the pebbles that move the leg of the person of great strength. So this, for a little background on this teaching of no self, many of you have probably heard of it, anatan or anatman. It's really, say, the core teaching of Buddhism.

[10:12]

And this teaching of no-self basically has two parts, being impermanence on the one and dependent arising or interconnection on the other. I want to just talk briefly about these aspects of no-self and then address how I feel this impacts our practice as... who are maybe actually no-selves and are completely ourselves. So the impermanent aspect of no-self is that who we are, what this is, can never be fixed in time. So our life is in constant motion. And... As motion, as being in motion, it can never be caught. It can never be grasped.

[11:15]

Here I am, and already it's gone. We say the mind, past, present, and future, can't be caught. We think maybe if I meditate, then I'll be able to catch it. But like little Frank, you know, sort of like pops away. It's gone as soon as you arrive. This aspect of everything completely changing, constantly changing, in that reality, from the point of view of that reality, how could we speak of a solidity of a self if the self that we're referring to, that we think we know so well, is already gone and already re-arising and gone again? Can't be grasped in time anymore. So the other aspect or justification or explanation of no self is a dependent arising or interconnection, interfusion, mutual causation, this web of being, this net.

[12:17]

So everything that we think of as the self is completely dependent on everything else. On the one hand, it's composed of elements. So where is the self? Oh, when I break down... my own experience or my own body, I don't actually find a self there. I find a bunch of parts, none of which I can point out and say that's actually my self. So sort of looking inward, looking in more detail, we see that what we think of as the self is actually made up of a bunch of parts that aren't actually self in their own right. And then looking more broadly, on the other hand, we can see that what we are is completely absorbed in and depends on this whole to which we give life and from which we receive life. So a lot of Buddhism is dedicated to demonstrating that what we think of as this self, generally referred to as me, but also as you, is...

[13:32]

Not actually permanent. I know, I know, it's not permanent. But I seem to be living as so it were. That this self really is not permanent. Which means it's never even abiding for a moment. It's not even permanent. Like, yeah, I know someday I'll die, but I'm really permanently here until I do. Even now, there's not a kind of permanence in this moment. It's already gone. It's flowing ungraspably. And it's also not separate. It's not a self because it's not separate and it's not independent. So we say it's empty. It's empty of self nature or independence or a unique substance. So all of this emphasis that's in the Buddhist doctrine which some people find kind of negative, no-self, and some people find quite liberating or inspiring.

[14:41]

In any case, the point of the teaching of no-self isn't so much to arrive at some kind of ultimate philosophy of existence. That really was not the Buddha's project and hopefully isn't the project of his successors. The ancient teachers throughout the ages had been more interested in in practice. So to take this teaching of no-self as a way or a guideline or a pointer in our meditation practice, actually, in our practice of living. There's a Theravada monk and scholar, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, who actually argues that the Buddha didn't really teach no-self. His teachings were just about freedom from suffering. freedom from suffering, that comes from studying how we are clinging to an idea of self. So he says, it's not a doctrine of no self, but a not-self strategy for shedding suffering by letting go.

[15:51]

So what seems to be important in the Buddha's teaching is that we... Manage somehow that we mitigate or even cut off our attachment and identification with these changing circumstances that we call our self. Letting go. Letting go of our self. Going beyond our small, limited self. And this is what we do when we sit down to meditate. We put aside our self-centeredness put aside our small views, letting go of our selfish concerns. We pay attention instead to the immediate feeling of being alive. Our alive sense fields, all of our senses, this feeling of being alive, apart from the small, limited ways, limited views,

[17:00]

the ways that we constrict this kind of vastness that we actually are. So when we think of no self in meditation, we're able to drop, or we can work to drop what I want and what I don't want. Usually we're obsessed with dividing the world into the things I want and the things I don't want. So no self can encourage us to put that aside, sit, not believe what I think so much. We're open to receive the world from a frame of reference that's larger than what serves me and what doesn't. So we sit there and we open to everything. We don't just open to the parts that are flattering, parts that we want to receive, the parts that serve our agenda. And this, of course, is how we open compassion, by having some ability, some sense of not self, a little bit of flexibility around the self character, then we can actually, if we can put that aside, some small way that opens up space where we can allow someone else in, we can listen, we can act compassionately.

[18:13]

So this, very briefly and somewhat awkwardly, is the Buddhist idea, teaching, encouragement of no self. Renouncing self-centeredness. letting go of clinging to ourself. So this no-self is a great teaching and is a great cause for celebration. Yay, no-self. And also study and practice. Sincerely, practice this wonderful teaching of no-self. But before we get carried away with this notion that Buddhism is no self, Buddhist meditation is the meditation of no self, before we get too excited about that, too convinced of that, or much worse, take that as a kind of article of faith, I believe in no self. We should consider, maybe if you will with me, the case of the ancient Zen ancestor, Dongshan.

[19:22]

So as a young boy, supposedly, I believe, the story goes that as a young boy, he heard a priest reciting the Heart Sutra. So we often recite the Heart Sutra. No eyes, no ears, no nose, no, no, no. Negation negates all of the constituent parts, all of the components of what we think our reality is, our world. No. No, no, no, no. So a young Jungshan, a precocious young teacher ancestor, heard this and found it ridiculous. He said, I have eyes and ears and nose. This teaching just isn't true. So at this kind of insubordination, he was sent off to the monastery to be formed, as we say.

[20:34]

But he was also recognized as a vessel of great capacity, that he could actually reflect on the doctrine, that he could hear the doctrine and say, no, that's actually not my experience. So, you know, most of us, lesser practitioners of the way, think, oh, okay, well, so there's really no eyes, no ears, and no nose. That's really what's true. So, because the Buddha said, so that's what's true. So now I have to work on getting rid of my eyes and my ears and my nose. That must not be true, according to this teaching. I've been wrong. I guess I don't have eyes and ears. But for Dongshan, you know, he understood that if the Buddhist truth is true, if there's something true about this, it has to take into account the world that he's actually experiencing. What's the point of some truth that's not actually true about the world he lived in?

[21:38]

So, oh, that's true about Buddhaland, whatever. I'm over here stuck with eyes and ears and nose, so what are you saying to me? What's the teaching to me? So if it means anything, it must mean something within this world of incontrovertible eyes and ears, this world of our actual experience. So following this kind of way-seeking mind of Dongshan, this inquiry of Dongshan, I move to reflect on what it is to talk about no self without turning away from the world that's actually in front of us. So in that light, when we look again, look again at these teachings of no self, it seems clear that they're actually teachings about the self. They're not teachings about some no self being, some no self state that floats up above us in nirvana or in emptiness.

[22:45]

In a land called emptiness, there is no self. That's who, that's what you really are. So the teachings of no self are not describing some other reality. The teachings of no self are teachings on this very self. So this very self is impermanent. This one right now that I'm experiencing with ears and eyes and nose is impermanent. It's not that, oh, impermanence is a characteristic of no self. This self, this self I have is impermanent. This self I have now is completely surrendered to, completely dependent on everything else. So no self is the truth of the self. If it wasn't, then I don't think we would have any cause to care about it.

[23:57]

But it is actually about ourself. So this may make no sense. I apologize if it doesn't. An analogy or an image that has been helpful to me that I've been studying lately that helps me make sense of this dynamic between no-self and self. is the Hawaiian Buddhist image of the golden lion. So the great sage, Buddhist teacher, Fa Tsang, in explaining some points of dharma to the great Chinese empress Wu, pointed to a golden statue of a lion that was in the palace and expressed to her that that lion... expresses the interrelation, the intimacy between self and no-self, between form and emptiness, you could say, between spiritual nature and the manifested nature.

[25:06]

So I didn't bring a golden lion, but if you can imagine a golden lion... ask the question, is this gold or is it a lion? We take the shape of the lion as an image of the self and the gold substance of the lion as representing no self. We can see that they're completely tied up in each other. We can't somehow... block out the lionness, the lion shape, to look for the gold. I'm here for gold. That's just a lion. As though gold could come in some non-shape. I'm looking for gold. I heard there was some gold here. Well, gold has to have a shape. Just as this no-self takes shape as a self. So this total intimacy between what we think of as the absolute world where no self is true and the relative world of these eyes and ears and nose, these are totally intimate.

[26:17]

This gold, this true reality, this no self doesn't exist in any way unless it's in the presence of, unless it's with a self form. So we wouldn't push away the lion shape because we're looking for gold. But it is kind of what we do with our self when we're looking for non-self. Get out of here. Get out of here. I'm looking for non-self. I'm looking for no self. So this is what we do. We sit down, meditation, we close our eyes, and we try to get rid of our self so that we can find no self. Maybe we succeed, you know? Maybe we knock the lion off the pedestal and then we're still not finding any gold. We missed our date. We missed our chance. So the self and the non-self reveal each other, carry each other.

[27:20]

There's no way to find non-self without looking at the self you have right now. One of our teachers here, Sonia, recently reminded us of the saying, the Zen ancestor Shurto, who said that if you want to discover the undying person, not to discover your true self and no self, then don't separate from this skin bag here and now. So this is quintessential Zen. We don't turn away. from this skin bag, from this mess of pus and opinions and perspectives and attitudes, eyes and ears. We don't turn away from that in order to find our spiritual nature. And I think that this actually, this kind of wisdom, this kind of teaching is what brought me and so inspired me initially and continues to about Zen.

[28:27]

I really wanted to be a spiritual person. And I really imagined, quite sincerely, that my spirit or soul was... I had to go somewhere to find it. I had to kind of leave myself to go find my spirit. So to hear that access, to hear this profound and in a sense obvious teaching, that the only access to our spiritual nature is through who we are right now, is through this present experience, this present self, this present moment. It's cheating to try to go. It's not even cheating. It's just futile to try to find your true self by looking somewhere else.

[29:30]

I've been thinking of... for some reason, marine biology. If somebody said, I want to learn marine biology, it suggests that they go to the ocean and that that's where they should study. But when we want to find ourself, I'd like to find myself, I'd like to find my true self, we think we're supposed to go somewhere other than ourself. What do I want? I want to know myself. So how about study myself? This one that I actually have. I want to know myself, so I have to change my situation so I can know myself. And over and over, you know. So then we hear these teachings, don't separate from your present experience right now.

[30:33]

If you want to know your true self, Don't separate from this very experience. Okay, then we go back to meditating. Say, okay, now I've got to become the kind of person who's not separating from his experience. We're constantly manipulating, thinking that the thing we're looking for, many of us would say what we're looking for is ourself. But then we think we need to manipulate ourself, manipulate our experience to somehow find that. And I at least am dense, you know. We hear it again and again, and then we just go back to the cushion. and try to get rid of him. So, the Zen attitude is actually not to separate, but to be completely willing to be our self, completely willing to be the self that we have right now. So there's a few ways that we continue to misunderstand this teaching of no self.

[32:03]

One, as I mentioned, is when we accuse each other of having a self. Well, if you think that that's just your ego. So the idea behind that kind of statement is that... actually, if you were practicing no-self, you would negate, you would not have your views and your perspective, your opinion. And I think we take that in and we think, again, that since no-self is in opposition to this self, then I have to become kind of small, more like no-self. If no-self is not even there, then I have to just be as small as possible to kind of approach the nothingness that is no self. It's kind of like in the spirit of this koan, it's like clamping down my leg, not moving my leg, just so that I don't accidentally lift it, you know? It says, oh, you, you know, you don't lift your leg.

[33:06]

It's like... I'm saying that it's the lifting itself that we're speaking of as... you not lifting. So, we sometimes think the Buddhist teaching of no self means I shouldn't feel how I'm feeling. I shouldn't be how I am. If I really understood no self, then I wouldn't be feeling how I'm feeling. I wouldn't be how I am. Buddhism says that I'm not really me, so what I think and what I feel doesn't matter. plus it's just ego. I need to get over it. So maybe I'll just act like I don't have that feeling or that position or that opinion. Just be a good Buddhist and pretend like I don't have eyes or ears or nose or opinions. Despite their obvious protrusion, they're kind of, you know, they're flying off of me constantly.

[34:11]

But it's not Buddhist, so I won't have them. So we could say this is a near enemy of Buddhist wisdom. kind of in the ballpark enough to really get its claws in but it's completely misleading so you know we do talk about letting go of things we do talk about getting over things and But actually letting go of something, getting over something, doesn't actually bring us closer to this non-self. It doesn't bring us closer to who we really are. What brings us closer to who we really are is wholeheartedly being who we are. Letting go, getting over can be part of that. But when letting go, getting over is a kind of pushing away

[35:17]

or resisting who we actually are, then there's no way that that can be the gate into our true self, into who we really are. So willing to be the self that we have right now. So not only do we take Shurto's advice and not separate from this skin bag, we actually celebrate. This skin bag. Hey, here's some opinions. Here's my nose. Wholeheartedly embody the present arising self that we have. So much more in Zen, much more than austerity or renunciation, letting go. Zen means letting go. Much more than that, the spirit of Zen is this kind of wholeheartedness and authenticity. Flexible, wholehearted authenticity.

[36:18]

I was, for a time, had the privilege of training on Mount Baldy near L.A. for a little while with Joshua Sasaki Roshi, very old, and at once lighthearted and severe Zen master. And it was a very intensive practice, and I was practicing very intensively letting go. Let go! [...] you know, all day and all night, squeezing to let go. And trying then to prove to him that I had let go, which involves, you know, going into his room and before your head even touches the mat in salutation, you know, he's ringing the bell to send you away. Already, I reject your letting go. Already, you're letting go. Looks like squeezing. I can see you're manipulating of yourself. You're walking in the door, and I already see that you're trying to be somebody else.

[37:23]

You think I want to see your no-self, so you've squeezed out yourself and are trying to come in here in some other way to convince me that you're not really a self. Oh, sorry. Why don't you come back with your actual self that you have and totally be that self, and then we'll talk. Then we can meet, and we'll see that in that is no-self. So anyway, completely failing to understand that point, I... was squeezing. And then it's a very strange practice there. So one night, you know, you go to bed at 9 or 10 and you get up at 3 or 4 or something. And then one night at 9 or 10 when things were over, they said, oh, now we're having a party because it's some holiday in Japan, so we're having a party. So we all went to the dining room and played music and there was music and we were dancing and Everybody just kind of forgot that we were working so hard on letting go. And so then the next morning, you know, did meditation.

[38:28]

And then the next morning, 3 a.m. again, there's a party and then you don't get even to sleep in an hour. And it's like a temple-sponsored party and they don't let you sleep in. So then it was azen, you know, squeezing again. And I went in and he said, you know, give me the courtesy of not just ringing me out right away. And I said, well, you know, forget what you're trying to do now. But last night, when you were dancing like a crazy spaz, you know, when you had completely stopped being, stopped this trying to let go, stopped this trying to be zen, When you weren't so self-conscious and you just expressed yourself, that's kind of what I'm looking for. That is what we call meditation. That's actually Zen. So then I went back to Zen.

[39:33]

Squoze again. But this lesson that letting go, letting go doesn't mean holding back. Something's happening. So letting go means we join what's happening. It doesn't mean, oh, I let go of what's happening. That's actually kind of holding on, if that makes any sense. Letting go is, oh, I let go into the activity of the whole universe that's happening right now, in whatever way it's happening. It's not, oh, I let go of the activity of the universe to do the right Buddhist thing of nothing. So letting go is not holding back. So Adog and Zenji, a much more somber fellow, judging from the pictures, and... any of the writings than Sasaki Roshi, also is clear that the point of Zen is this wholehearted being yourself, wholeheartedly being yourself. So he talks about total exertion in your dharma position.

[40:34]

This dharma position is a very important point for this great Zen founder. You have a position where you are in the kind of web that You have a position right now. Don't try to not have a position. Please don't say you don't have a position. I don't have a position. You do have a position. Wholeheartedly exerting, mustering your whole body and mind, he says, completely being that position, completely being that limited self, manifests the whole universe, manifests emptiness, expresses non-duality, expresses no-self. So it says, the whole being of emptiness leaps out of itself when you're just completely, wholeheartedly doing what's yours to do in any moment. So Suzuki Roshi says, when you are you, then Zen is Zen.

[41:37]

It's the same feeling about just being ourselves. Sometimes we say of somebody, they're so themselves. This is a great Zen compliment. But it's kind of hard to put your finger on, even to the point of meaningless, as though there was someone who was not completely themselves. And yet there's a feeling. We can have a feeling for someone sometimes that that person is just themselves, and that's somehow inspiring. And in thinking about it, I think that the feeling we get when we say, that person is just themselves, and that's so refreshing, that there's some kind of, I think, there's a kind of flexibility in that. A flexibility and a kind of non-defensiveness.

[42:40]

It's not somebody who's locked into a position, but like locked into a self that was authentic a few days ago, but still... this kind of responsive, this authenticity, now, now, who's arising, what's arising, I want to be that. And there's something for me, that flexibility, non-defensiveness, for me is a kind of, when somebody is expressing that, it's sort of evidence that they understand that there's a little more to this picture than just their self. So knowing that there's kind of more to this picture than just me, then we can be a little flexible. Just imagine the feeling that I'm all there is or that I really exist, like that there's so much at stake in how I am or who I am. It's just paralyzing. If we have to be right all the time, if we're the whole story, then wouldn't we have to be desperately protecting ourselves from being incorrect somehow?

[43:51]

If we have a sense that we're receiving the self within a totality that's unfolding in a much larger way, it seems like there's just less at stake in myself and what it's doing. So since there's not so much at stake in it, I can just be it. Hey, this is myself this morning. And then change. So not defensive, not locked in. there's a feeling from someone who I would say is totally themselves, a feeling that even if they say something very directly, very strongly, behind that is a kind of sensibility that, yeah, from where I stand right now, maybe they'll say that, maybe they won't, but this feeling we get of, I'm just speaking, I'm just speaking the position, the conditions that are arising now, I'm just expressing them, but I know they're going to change. So I'm happy that we're having this conversation because everything's going to change by the time the next word is spoken.

[44:59]

But I still really think what I think. See my ears? Here I am. So there's a consistency of practice. This is a point we often confuse. Consistency of practice. Practice is continuous. Practice is consistent. But there's not a consistency... or continuity of perspective or of ideology. It's not like I practice and so I always come from the same place. Constant practice means I always come from the place I'm coming from. That was yesterday's place. Today is a different place. So... You know, this is a subtle thing. Is Zen really that simple? You know, just be yourself.

[46:02]

Strikes me as kind of first date advice. You know, just be yourself. Be fine. Or a job interview. Just be yourself. So is this really the distillation of 2,500 years of Buddhist wisdom? Just be yourself. Because it's actually kind of tricky. It's actually kind of subtle. How do we know when? we're authentically expressing ourselves, and when we're just stuck somewhere, when we're holding on to some view that we could be letting go of. Even Sasaki Roshi, you know, who so affirmed this kind of total authentic expression of unselfconscious dancing, has done behavior from his dharma position, from his that to him was complete, authentic manifestation of reality that hurt other people. So when are we being authentic and when are we just being rude?

[47:08]

The great Zen scholar R.H. Blythe said, Zen can be an excuse to be rude. I'm not being rude, I'm just being authentic. And I don't like you. Yeah. So this authenticity isn't a kind of free pass. It's not this, it doesn't lack responsibility. It's not that we don't take responsibility. Oh, I don't know, I'm not a self. That just happened. That was just a universe manifesting dude. Plus the insurance will cover your car. We take responsibility for this arising self. Not because it's ours, not because we own it, but because it's the appropriate thing to do. It's how we take care of our life. So there are things that I want to work on. There are things I want to get over and let go of.

[48:08]

And Zen encourages that. Zen is about purifying yourself in a way. It's not that we don't lift our legs. It's not that we don't walk the path. We do deliberately and earnestly walk the path and strive to purify ourselves, let go of our bad habits, our old habits. freshly meet the moment. But in the process, throughout that, we don't have a sense that these things we're trying to work on are somehow our ultimately existing self enemies. So what is it to not manipulate ourselves? What is it to let go and be completely authentic? And what is it to be stuck? You know, it might be nice if Zen had some formula, if Zen could answer the question for us of when we should speak and when we should be silent, of how we should express ourselves so that no one gets hurt and everything is authentic and Buddhist and everything.

[49:25]

But there's not actually a formula. Zen is more like a framework, a way of the kind of raising of these questions. What's authenticity? What's letting go? What's being stuck? What's really me? And what's holding on? What's a past me? So it's not so much a formula, but it is a kind of direction. And that's all I want to emphasize is that the direction of Zen, the direction of Buddhism, is towards Zen. opening to our experience, completely expressing ourselves, rather than trying to negate our experience or censor or withhold or Buddhist-ify our expression. It's towards what's actually happening. It's towards the self we're receiving. So the priest Song Yon asked, why can't the person of great strength lift up a leg?

[50:31]

Again, he said, it is not with the tongue that you speak. Who we are, what we are is just the unfolding of conditions, the unfolding of the whole cosmos manifesting in our walking, in our speaking. It's the grasses and the tiles and each other that are moving each other. So let's join that unfolding. Let's open to that unfolding. Celebrate that unfolding rather than clamp down on ourselves or on each other. The self we have right now, with all of its karma and opinions and stresses and suffering, is not what we have to get away from to realize the spacious piece of no self.

[51:33]

It's exactly the spot where if it has any meaning at all, we can realize no self. So the self and the no self don't obstruct each other. They carry each other. This self you have right now, please... please understand that it's not an obstacle. May we understand that it's not an obstacle but a gate. This current problem, this current bad attitude is not an obstacle to the truth of ourself. It is the expression. It's carrying the truth of ourself if we can open to it, if we can fully express it authentically, flexibly. So may we together wholeheartedly walk through this gate of our present problem, of our present habit, of our present self, and authentically express and realize the Buddha's way.

[52:38]

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.

[53:11]

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