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. I want to tell you a story. It may or may not be true. Once upon a time, there were two brothers. And they were old enough that they had understood suffering. Their lives had not been easy. They had been engaged in the world, but were not able to quell the anxiety of their life. They were not so skillful in needing the impermanence and the change and the loss that at the age of maybe

[01:01]

25 and 27, they had met in their lives. So they heard about this practice and this place where they could go, where they would be able to, they hoped, make their own life better, find a kind of happiness that they hadn't been able to find. This place was pretty new for their country, this place, this practice, compared to the other maybe spiritual pursuits that were available in their culture. This was a new practice. So they were a bit of sort of pioneers in a way, willing to take on this new practice. So they went to this place. And this place offered meditation and a chance to turn inward and a chance to be still.

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And for the first bit of time, they were given the opportunity to sit very still for very long periods of time. And their minds became settled. there was something in them that wasn't being touched. Some memory of their life before they came to this place that actually wasn't being met. Now, it just so happened that this particular offering had come to this new culture, had come to this country, And because it was so new, there wasn't a lot of support for it. There was very few financial donations available for this new practice. So even though this practice had a huge history of sitting still and being somewhat disengaged from the world and being supported by others who thought that this practice was somehow special,

[03:29]

this particular group of people realized that they actually had to work. They had to work. Now, am I talking about China or am I talking about San Francisco? One of the great benefits of our practice as we've received it here is that it has work in it. is that it's actually connected to the world that surrounds the meditation spot. It's connected because every body seemingly works. So these two brothers, let's call them Bob and Ralph, started to make this adjustment, started to investigate what it would be like to take this settled practice that they'd had the great privilege of refining over a long period of time and have it be manifest in the work that was required of them to sustain the practice and to make it available into the future.

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So they checked it out. And one day they were out in the environs. Maybe they were doing soji in the morning. They were doing temple cleaning. And Bob looked over at Ralph. And he wondered, has Ralph been able to take this practice that we have been settling with all this time and integrate it into his work? And he looked at Ralph and he said, By the way, Ralph was sweeping, like out in front, the endless removal of leaves that never ends. And he said, too busy. Ralph was ready for this. And he looked at his brother and he said, well, Bob, you should know that there's one who isn't busy.

[05:58]

So these brothers had been used to this kind of combat and Bob wasn't going to leave it at that. So he said, uh-huh. So does that mean that there are two moons? I think what he was asking in my story was, is there busy and not busy? Is there seated zazen and working zazen? Are there two moons? And so Ralph said, he said very little, actually. First, what he did is he raised his broom in the air, which got Bob's attention. And then he said, brother, which moon is this? Which I think was a very loving response to his brother and brought them back together so that they were not the two moons. Anyway, that's my story about what I want to talk to you about, which is about being busy.

[07:05]

And this wonderful koan, which I interpreted rather wildly, is an ancient Chinese story, but it is so much about my life and maybe your life too. And the question that is very, very present, which is how do we show up in our life, in a way where our practice, the practice that we believe, I believe, is beneficial, how do we offer it in a way that it's actually helpful in people's everyday life? That's the question I've had for many years now, and it's very important to me. So because Zen does manifest, has a history now of manifesting through work, of arising, not just on the cushion, but in our actions, in our active life, in our offerings back to the world, we have something that is incredibly valuable.

[08:23]

Now, the word busy is something that... I'm turning a lot. I'm really working with this word. And I want to offer you a few things that I've been thinking of, because it's one thing to manifest your practice in your work, and it's another thing to be completely lost in your work. And the word that I hear so often, so often is, I'm so busy. I hear that from people at Zen Center. I hear that in the world. It's clear that it doesn't get less. Every moment, every new device, every request for being more available brings us into that possibility of being too busy. So I've been looking at two entry points into that.

[09:26]

And one is the question, well, How do we know the difference between being fully engaged in our life and being busy? So that's one thing I just want to mention, a few things I've thought about. And then, what are the whys of why we get busy? And maybe by studying those two things, we can help understand this better. So... Since I brought this question up for myself in a very kind of alive way, knowing that I was going to be giving this talk, I've been watching my body and mind to see if I could catch the indicators of busy. And one of them is worry. When I'm worried, as far as I'm concerned, that's too busy.

[10:28]

I can't, I can't, there'd be way too much, there's way too much to worry about. So if that falls away, if the worry content of my activity falls away, if I don't feed that, I find that I'm smiling a lot more. We made a big mistake recently in the development office, and it's caused a lot of very interesting activity. And I could have been extremely worried about this, but because I'm studying this, I'm aware that how unhelpful worry is. And we had a meeting the other day and we were checking in and I was actually very happy. I'm very happy. I could be extremely worried. That's an option. But that's too busy. So I offer that to you as something to look at in your life. that worry quotient. When it falls away, I think you might find that you're more settled and not so busy.

[11:38]

The other thing that I've noticed about busy is actually making mistakes. So I went to Austin a few weeks ago, and I had arranged my own plane ticket, And then about a week before I was going to go, we decided that someone was going to come with me. And it was Linda Ruth Cutts, who's a senior teacher at Green Gulch. So I went online and I got her her ticket and I remembered it because I was able to put her in the seat next to mine. And then the day before, she asked for the boarding pass. And I went online and I couldn't find it. I couldn't find the confirmation. email. I couldn't find it. And the thought occurred to me that it was quite possible that I had made the reservation, put in all the credit card information, and before I pushed the button, someone could have come in the office and asked me to do something.

[12:47]

That was extremely possible. Now, so not being able to find it, And knowing that it was possible that I actually never pushed the button, I went online, I got her another ticket. We went to the airport, and of course, we had two tickets. So then I had to undo all of that. So the fact that it was possible that I was so busy that I'd forgotten to push the button caused even more busyness. And so it made me be more aware of the, I was going to say necessity, That might be too strong. But anyway, the opportunity of following something all the way through to the end, all the way through to the end, a complete commitment in every gesture, in every reservation commitment, in every single thing that we do. We follow it through to the end. And then the mistake, if there is a mistake, is... something in a larger circumstantial situation.

[13:51]

It's not that you didn't follow it all the way through the end. Mistakes will arise. But it's one way to notice if you're making a lot of them, maybe you're too busy. So the last thing that I just thought about actually yesterday was you're too busy if you notice that you're not breathing. So it's possible to actually hold our breath in the midst of some activity. And I was talking to someone I worked with today, and she said the first teaching she ever learned from Zen or from Buddhism was from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which says something like, when you exhale and don't inhale, you're dead. That was a very powerful teaching for her. And so when we exhale and don't inhale, whatever we're doing in that time period, we're dead. So doing that, not having the kind of breathing body that is participating in the activity, I think means that we're too busy.

[15:03]

So anyway, those are three indicators that I offer to you that I have noticed, and I'm going to keep looking because I think this is what the world needs. So stepping back from the kind of physical signs or intellectual signs of busyness are some studies of what's the energy behind this busyness? Where does it come from? What are some of the causes? I think I'm a good candidate for this study. And even before I came to Zen Center, my life was very, very full.

[16:05]

Whether it was busy or not, I think it was. I think it was because my first deep lesson in Buddhist teaching came to me when I moved into this building. I'd heard many things before that, but it I don't think it hit my body until this occurred to me. And it was that I had a life before I came here that was very dramatic. So there were highs, very high highs. And then when it would start to go low, we'd want to boost that up somehow. Because it would try to go as low as it was high. So to try to boost the lows, that was the energy, that was the effort, and to make everything exciting. So I realized I was living here maybe less than two months, and the thought just occurred to me one day that all my life I had equated happiness and excitement.

[17:12]

I thought they were the same thing. But I realized somehow it occurred to me that happiness and peace are the same thing. I just wanted to taste that for a minute. So what is this excitement that we that we feed, that we keep doing. And I think it makes us, first of all, it makes us feel alive because there's energy around it. But alive in what kind of a way? Not in a peaceful way, but in that excited way that maybe is close to happiness, but not quite. That very familiar, not quite, but close feeling.

[18:13]

And I also think, and this has been true in my life too, that that kind of excitement helps us skim the stone over the top of suffering. For moving fast and moving high, we don't have to settle in to the suffering in our life when it arises. This is very familiar to me. I don't know how that is for you, but it's really... So let me just ask you, are you happy right now? Are you happy? A whole range of faces. The entire spectrum of happy to really depressed.

[19:16]

I'm not saying you have to be. I'm saying, asking yourself the question might be helpful. There's a quote that I found in this research from Suzuki Roshi about that excitement quotient. He says, for us, it's necessary to keep a constant way, not some kind of excitement. If one becomes too busy and too much excitement, our mind will become rough and rugged. This is not so good for us. So, if possible, try to be always calm and joyful and keep yourself from excitement. So he separates those words, happiness and excitement. Be joyful and keep yourself from excitement. If we become interested in some excitement, this change will accelerate, and we will be lost, and we will be completely involved in a busy life.

[20:24]

But if our mind is always calm and constant, we can keep ourselves away from the noisy world, even though we're in the midst of it. And again, being in the midst of this busy life, this life, The opportunity to come to a practice place and not be separate. That's what this practice encourages us to do. He also says, further on the quote, he says, don't work on this too hard. Okay, because that could be exciting too. Take some smaller steps. Don't go cold turkey on the excitement thing, if that's your way. He also says, well, I say this.

[21:30]

If we can find the one who's not busy, that one is not suffering. We can't go around it. We can't skim over the top of it. But we can find that one. And that's where the peace is. So another area of investigation might be how being busy nourishes the ego's need to feel important. And it's a cultural mandate, pretty much. Be busy, be productive, work hard, do something, produce something. So, I wrote this here, I'm going to read this to remind myself, but

[22:43]

While it's normal to derive a healthy kind of self-esteem from being engaged with the world, the ego's addiction to busyness has as its core a terror of its own emptiness. So there's the idea of being important, which we can deconstruct. We can check that out. We could slow down a little bit and see what happens. see if we become less important or not. We might become more important. Who knows? We might become more efficient and more helpful. But anyway, we could try to see what happens if we investigated that belief that being busy or looking busy makes us more important. But underneath that and the opportunity we have with the teachings that were given, is to actually study the terror that's beneath that kind of ego importance of just the terror of the ego not existing at all.

[23:55]

So there's a lot of layers here. There's the layer of kind of importance, the layer of busyness, but the basic terror of non-existence is... is a driving force. It takes its form in this busyness, but it's something that we have a really great inside track. We've got some great teachings about this. We can study this. We can actually go down to that layer of the ego as it potentially seems to dissolve, or our idea of what it is. threatens to dissolve the deconstruction of self. And I think this is a lifetime's work, and it's done often in fairly small steps. Sometimes it happens suddenly, but mostly it's rubbing along the edges of this.

[25:00]

What is this? What is this? What is this? What do I think I am? Who do I think I am? checking it out again and again and again. And I am pretty sure that that investigation offers us the ultimate relief from busyness. This is something that I read in a book that... Darlene Cohn wrote, she has a wonderful book called The One Who Is Not Busy. It's out of print now, so I had to borrow a copy from Michael Wenger, but she talks about that fear of self-annihilation. And she likens it to, she says, well, look, if we're going to look at this, realize that that fear of kind of looking deep and questioning the basis of our belief in a separate, solid self...

[26:04]

It's like being in an airplane about ready to jump out of it with a parachute. So right before we jump out, we're standing on the edge, and we are terrified. So right before, when we think about the annihilation of self, we're terrified. But when you jump, it's nothing like what you thought it was going to be. So she reassures us by saying, this... Fear of self-annihilation, which is part of the process of looking deep into the reality of separate self, is quite different than the experience of actually having it drop away. So that's just a little reassurance from Darlene. I believe her. I want to say a couple more things and then I'd like to give a little bit of time to have some back and forth to see what you'd like to bring up I have a final quote from Suzuki Roshi that I'm going to end with but I just want to say again that I believe I believe that

[27:38]

one very, very important thing that we have a responsibility to do for the world is to study our own busyness and to then share that understanding with others, with the wider world, with the wider world. We're not separate from it. We have the great opportunity of Sangha to work with, to check things out, to ask people, to get some feedback. to get the encouragement, to be able to stop when we hear a mindfulness bell in the kitchen, to be able to do a bow to each other in the hallway. If we can study this and know it in our bodies, what it means to be fully engaged in life, fully engaged, but not busy, and if we can share that with the suffering beings who are right in front of us.

[28:41]

I just think that's what I want to do. And I think we have a unique opportunity to do that. So Suzuki Roshi said, this is a quote, and I'm sorry, I don't know what lecture it's from. I didn't write it on this piece of paper, but he says, real freedom is to feel freedom wearing the robe, this kind of troublesome robe, Instead of being bothered by this busy life, we should wear this civilization without being bothered by it, without ignoring it, without being caught by it. So without going somewhere, without escaping it, we should have composure, you know, in this busy life. So that's a little bit of Suzuki Roshi and a lot of me.

[29:54]

I'm sorry. But I'm interested in what you'd like to bring up right now. Yes, Kim. Something wrong with being important? No, I'm talking about the middle way, where if you happen to be important, that's fine. It's not wrong or right. Wrong and right is actually too busy. I mean, going even deeper into too busy, it's separating busy and not busy, or wrong and right. That's too busy. So our way is the middle way, which is if you're important, be important. But if you're not important, that's important too. Okay.

[30:56]

Oh, over there. David. As someone who's in the life where those same highs and lows and sense of being busy, do you think it's possible to be present and busy? I think it's possible to be present and active. Being that busy does not mean not being active. So, I don't know what you mean by the word busy. For me, it has a bit of a negative sense to it. It has a sense of not breathing properly. You know, making mistakes. Being... more concerned about yourself. Those kind of things are kind of qualities for me of being busy. So can you be present with that? I think it's a lack of presence that encourages that kind of busyness.

[32:03]

Whereas being active and fully engaged is presence. Right. Right. Stephen? You don't have the mind of the way. All this hard work is useless and not beneficial. Can you say, what is the mind of the way? The mind of the way is the middle way. And it is full of kindness and presence and understanding. How about for you?

[33:05]

So you say. Lisa? Triage. There are a lot of skills that we can develop and many books and systems to read about how to deal with incoming. I think you can take the time to prioritize, right? You can say that it's okay to not do everything. So if it isn't, what's that? You know, is that about being important? Is that about whatever? If it isn't okay to not do it, there's way too much to do. I think having a sense of humor about it is really helpful.

[34:12]

I actually almost, I borrowed this watch from Shundo because I brought my... The only clock I have is my phone. And I was going to bring it in, but it was pinging with my emails coming in. So I thought that might be kind of humorous, but I decided it also might be distracting. So it's kind of funny that, you know, we're expected to respond to all the incoming. But lightness, humor, allowing yourself to not do everything, and studying why you can't. Perhaps. I'm going to call in Jason and then you're next. I mean, Justin. Drop all your expectations.

[35:45]

That's very peaceful. Okay? Yes? Uh-huh. I'm also fortunate to have a couple of very close friends who are not busy.

[36:51]

In my case, I'd probably be very busy. My life changed when I when it arose in me that it was more important to be with the people I was with than to get anything done, to like totally be with them.

[38:01]

So that shifted for me because I was very much, let's get this done and move out of the way, you know, so we can get it done. But the quality of being with people is so nurturing. If you just give your attention, And don't try to be somewhere else or do something or finish something or start something. Just be with them. I find that very nurturing. And it helps my day feel more alive. And the manifestation of connectedness is very helpful to me. Welcome. Okay, this is the last one, maybe. Go ahead. The thought of being a pattern of annihilation is the exciting part.

[39:10]

But I hope that when you're saying that you're busy, you get a tear of annihilation, it's not. It's just that you're not having anything to do. So I find that a tear of annihilation when I'm not being busy is not on myself, but for others. Like you can get trouble if you want to take your part and talk about it. So I think if you just took that a little further and said, okay, people, I'm afraid that others are going to think something of me for not being busy. What do you think is going to happen to you if they think that? Punishment. I still say that the terror of self-annihilation is actually underneath all of that.

[40:18]

I still say that. Well, it's just time, so thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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