This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. This time of year is such a turning point in the world of Tassajara, where we change from the practice period to the work period. a kind of... We have these supposedly two worlds, the practice period and then the guest thing, but then there's a number of people who are here for the first time for an April work period, or for the first time just having come out of the practice periods, which is a little different kind of April work period than the first time you come. And maybe it's not so evident how it fits in to the whole, I mean, how could it be, right?

[01:01]

Because you haven't seen it yet. But I'm feeling that flow of Tassajara, how it changes. So tonight I wanted to try to talk about one of the effects that I think Tassajara has on people, whether they're here for a short time or for a long time. And it has to do with views. I think that Tassajara helps in some way that I don't fully understand, helps us, or not really helps us, helps our views become more permeable, become not so solid. So by views, in this case I mean not, views are things that are or our view is something that is less solid and less able to be kind of defined than something like an idea.

[02:07]

You might have an idea of something, of anything. In fact, we have lots of ideas. But the way I'm using views tonight, it's more like an overlay. It's something we don't even notice so much. It's more like an assumption. We have assumptions. And usually we don't even notice our assumptions. They're so deeply ingrained, we're so sure of them, we assume them. And we don't notice them until something happens to question them. Like if someone, like if you think you have on a green shirt and someone says, I really like your blue shirt, then you notice that you thought your shirt was green. but most of the time we don't even think about it. I always like to tell a Tassajara story somewhere in the lecture, and this is the one I came up with tonight.

[03:12]

It's kind of the only one I can think of for some reason. It's about the assumption that I had and many people had that Tassajara does not have bears. Bears do not live in this area. And you can tell that many, many people assume this because nothing at Tassajara is bear-proof. The walk-in is not bear-proof. The kitchen is not bear-proof. The upper shack is not bear-proof. The cabins are not bear-proof. There aren't bears at Tassajara. It's obvious, right? No bears have come into your rooms. Well, one summer, quite a few years ago, Some of you know Anna Thorne. She was down here, and it was in the summer. Maybe she was on a day off or something. She had taken a walk up the road early in the morning, and she came back just after breakfast, before work meeting, and I heard her say, I saw a bear up the road.

[04:17]

I was like, no. There aren't any bears at Tassajara. There are no bears in this area. Maybe at the most she saw a wild pig, which are rare here, but we have had them. Maybe she saw a wild pig on the road. And so I went about my way getting ready for a work meeting, and Lee DeBarros was the tanto here then. And starting to go back up to the work meeting, Lee came toward me. He's like, there's a bear. Anna saw a bear. Anna saw a bear. Maybe he didn't sound quite that excited, but... But I was very like, no, there aren't any bears here at Tassajara. It's not happening. He said, well, I'm going to go call the Forest Service to find out what to do if there are bears. Okay, fine. So I went to work meeting, and a few people were gathered there, and people were starting to come. You know, the bell had happened or something, or the drum. And the next thing was that I think most of you don't know, Jasmine.

[05:22]

Jasmine. somebody. She and her partner were living at the birdhouse and she came down to work with me and she said, a bear just went across the deck of the birdhouse. And then somebody came who was living on the hill. They came down and they said, a bear just went in front of the hill cabins. And then my daughter came, who happened to be at the bathhouse, and she said, a bear just walked past the bathhouse. I'm like... Maybe there are bears at Tassajara. That would be terrible. Nothing at Tassajara is bear-proof. So Lee came back. Oh, and then somebody came who came down from the Ashes site and said a bear had just gone, like, by the ashes, somehow out toward the flats. They can tell that. So Lee came back from calling the Forest Service, and he said that they said, actually, there are bears in the Los Padres Forest farther south.

[06:23]

and that young bears might go looking for a new territory, and one might make it to this area, and, you know, we should not feed it. Definitely don't feed the bears, because then it would probably stay around. And, however, we should tell all of our guests that if they were out with their bag lunch and the bear started to come for them, they should leave the bag lunch. But mostly they weren't dangerous. It's like black bears, and they wouldn't mess with you as long as they weren't really hungry and trying to get your bagged lunch. So after the work meeting, a bunch of people took lids from the kitchen and cameras and walked out toward the end of the flats. And there was this young bear trying, not really trying, because it was pretty young, It's the only reason I can think it wouldn't have been trying, but it was standing up with its paws on the old compost shed, which is definitely not bear-proof.

[07:29]

Luckily, we had shorted up a little bit because the squirrels and the raccoons were getting in, so we slowed him down a little bit, but he was sniffing and standing there, and they, you know... They took a few pictures, and then people started banging on the lids and things, and the bear ran off. And we have not seen the bear here since then, so again, we can start building our assumptions that Tassajara doesn't have bears. However, my view has been changed a little bit, and now maybe yours has, that actually, at any moment, there could be a bear at Tassajara. Just saying. So... That's my Daza Horror Story for tonight. But the views that cause us a lot more trouble than that, usually, hopefully, that one hasn't caused any trouble yet and hopefully won't. But the views that cause us more trouble than that are the views about ourself. So we have these ingrained assumptions about ourself that we don't even think about.

[08:39]

most of the time, that actually direct our life. We're trying pretty desperately, I think, most of the time to maintain these assumptions. And they come out about us, but they also come out about anything that we identify with. So, like, people who are close to us or... Our practice or Tassajara is a good thing to have some assumptions about that we hold at a kind of subconscious level most of the time. So we have assumptions about what gender we are. We have assumptions about maybe we think we're smart, maybe we think we're stupid. Anyway, we have these kind of assumptions. And they don't even have to have really words that go with them. Some of them are like we have the assumption, I think pretty much, that we are something.

[09:44]

Just something, you know, that there is something here that's me that could be, you know, if we really wanted to figure it out, we could figure out what it is. And it would be there. That's the important thing. It would be there. There's something that's me. That's one. These assumptions can be contradictory because they're fairly vague. It's very useful for them to be vague because then if they get threatened too much, they can just shift a little bit and then they're still fine. So besides that, there's something there that's pretty, if not permanent, close to it, close to permanent. We also have an assumption, most of us, I think, that... that I can change me. In fact, it's kind of my job to change me. It's my job to figure out how to make a better me and then to do that, to envision or educate or something to improve me.

[10:51]

And another one is that this me is protectable. You know, that I can somehow, I may not always succeed at it, but if I tried harder or if people were nicer or, you know, that I can find a way to make myself, you know, acceptable, likable, feedable. You know, things that are important to this me. So those are some. There are probably others, but... Those maybe give you an idea of the kind of basic views that we go around with. And that can be shown to be untrue at various points. One of the ways that we sort of feel our views or recognize them is if they're threatened.

[12:00]

Someone says, you are. Once a good friend of mine, when I was president of Zen Center, I had to tell her something she really didn't like. And she said to me, you're the most masculine woman I've ever met. I was like, what? I won't tell you who. Maybe she was right. I don't know. I mean, she felt like she was, whatever that horrible thing that meant to her. She also said I was an anger type, which I also was like, really? But maybe she was right. I don't know, but I felt it. I felt like that's not me. That's not me. So there are times that we feel that, like wrongly accused, or where that charge, where you feel some energy rising, and often, When we feel that, I think a good thing to look for, if you're wondering why you're feeling this, is has some idea or view of myself been threatened?

[13:11]

Because it's quite likely that's what's happening. There's some threatening of this view of ourself. So I want to read to you what Dogen, one of the things that Dogen has said about... This is from the Yakudoryo Jinshu, Study of the Guidelines of the Way, or something like that. Anyway, everyone has a body-mind. In activity and appearance, its function is either leading or following, courageous or cowardly. To realize Buddha immediately with this body-mind is to hit the mark. Without changing your usual body-mind, just to follow Buddha's realization is called immediate, is called hitting the mark. To follow Buddha completely means you do not have your old views. To hit the mark completely means you have no new nest in which to settle.

[14:21]

Everyone has a body-mind. In activity and appearance, its function is either leading or following, courageous or cowardly. I don't think this means you're either a coward or courageous. I think it means sometimes we're one, sometimes we're another. Sometimes we're leading, sometimes we're following. Sometimes we're courageous, sometimes we're cowardly, sometimes we're tired, sometimes we're energetic. So our body-mind changes according to circumstances. And then to realize Buddha immediately with this body-mind is to hit the mark. Without changing your usual body-mind. So this is kind of counter to one of our assumptions, that it's actually our job to change our body-mind, to make it better, somehow correct all the mistakes that we see and protected by making it better.

[15:26]

But Dogen says, without changing your usual body-mind, just to follow Buddha's realization is called immediate, is called hitting the mark. So it's immediate because it's without changing anything. It's like right now, just hit the mark. And I think one way of describing that is it's just this, like right now, just this. Just be wherever we are right now. Just be this body-mind right now. Hit the mark. Be right as close to your current self as you can be. This is Buddha's realization. Just immediately hit the mark. Just be this. Just be this. Just be this. And Tassajara helps us do that. Whatever we're doing here, whether we're a student here, whether we're a worker here, I think most of us feel somehow it's easier to do that here.

[16:38]

It's not like we do that perfectly. It's not like we do it all the time. It isn't like we don't have lots of obsessive thoughts and plans and all kinds of things going on. And still, more often than some other places, we just hit the mark. We just are doing just this, just this. And that kind of activity, I think, loosens our views. It lets us feel the times, maybe, I think often not so consciously, but deeply inside us where our views are somehow lodged. It lets us feel that those views are not so accurate. That actually, we can't just change ourselves because we decide to. That we can't, or that we don't have a self that can be gotten a hold of, and if we just paid enough attention, we could describe it.

[17:43]

Or we could show somebody. We're there, but it's this flowing, constantly flowing event that's happening. And that it isn't protectable, or at least that the ways that we go about protecting it, each of us with our unique karmic ways of trying to protect ourselves, don't really work that well. You know, if we try to be whatever we think would make us safe, we can't necessarily do it. And sometimes even that doesn't make us safe. Sometimes bears still show up at Tassajara. Follow Buddha completely means you do not have your old views. So those, again, those views just can't be solid in us. They still appear. They still, and a lot of them are maybe yet to be discovered or yet to be questioned.

[18:48]

But if we are hitting the mark, if we're just this, just this, just one moment after the next. Those views, they don't function in the same way. We're able to meet the world as it appears, not as our views are kind of putting this overlay on it, like it's good or it's bad, it's what I like, it's good or bad for me. Those views, they don't hold up. To hit the mark completely means you have no new nest in which to settle. The nest is our views. It's some comfortable place where our views match our desires. Sometimes our view is that things are terrible. So it feels like it doesn't match our desire, but there's some way that actually that works for our psyche.

[19:56]

If things are terrible, it fits in somehow with our identity. So to not have that nest, to not have that knowledge of what is happening, to be willing to live in not knowing, which is where we really live. We live there to such an extent that it's mostly too scary for us to acknowledge how much we don't know. I sometimes think of life as kind of just like a little dot of light in a completely dark universe. The future is not here yet. We do not know what the future is going to be because There's no way to know it. We have an imagination about it, but really what we know is right now. We have some more or less accurate or accurate to us memory of the past, and then for some of us that's getting way foggier.

[21:06]

So we've got this little spot of light where we live, and to... To actually experience how much we don't know, or how little we do know, is very unsettling. It's very unsettling to the part of us that has these views, that has the view that, oh, there's something here that's me that I'm supposed to be protecting and that I could protect, and I need to be vigilant in doing that all the time. That part gets quite disoriented. if it gets a whiff of how unknown things are, how unprotected in some way, but also how conditionally created we are. So the thing that saves us in this is that we are part of what is right now.

[22:09]

And we always have been. We've always been that way, no matter how hard we were peddling along, trying to make everything work. We've been created by everything that's happening now, and we will continue to be that way, not under our control. Let's see if there was anything else that I wanted to say here. Let me read this quote one more time. Everyone has a body-mind. In activity and appearance, its function is either leading or following, courageous or cowardly. To realize Buddha immediately with this body-mind is to hit the mark. Without changing your usual body-mind, just to follow Buddha's realization is called immediate, is called hitting the mark. To follow Buddha completely means you do not have your old views.

[23:15]

To hit the mark completely means you have no new nest in which to settle. Do you have any thoughts, questions? Yes, John. Yeah, I actually think it's very primitive. I think even maybe mammals at least think they have an identification with themselves. So even animals do that. So I think it's that primitive. But then as humans, we get some perspective on it and we're actually thinking about it. Like, oh, there's a me and how would I protect myself? So I think I think it's pre-cultural, but then it definitely suits our culture to, that way we'll try to fit in, things like that.

[24:28]

And I think it's mainly just because at least our whole culture believes that. It's very individualistic, so it's just embedded in the things that we've been taught. Does that make sense to you? Anything else? Yes, Ben? You were talking earlier about living in this place of non-knowing. Yeah. And I just want to maybe ask you about, you know, staying on the path and following the Buddha way even as we're in the midst of this non-knowing. It just seems like a good stuff. Not quite. So can you say it again? What would make, are you saying what would, what would make you or encourage you to do some

[25:44]

practice like this where you, like, do the same thing over and over again. How can we, you know, how can we, I guess, be certain that we're on track, you know, because it's true, we don't know. Yeah, how can we be certain we're on track? You know, like, being on track doesn't mean... that you know where you're going in this case. It's like you know you're here, and you've made some agreements to be here. So while you're here, you follow those agreements. Or if you don't follow those agreements, then there are certain kinds of interactions that happen with that. And as you're doing that, if you experience that that's helpful, then... Maybe you keep doing that. But as your life changes, at some point, it might be that this is not the right path.

[26:51]

Or it might be the right path. It's like you just keep doing it. You go the next step. You just go the next step. Now, what we tend to do is spend a lot of time thinking about are we on the right path? And that can be really confusing. Because there's not really, you know, it's kind of a made-up question. It's like you are where you are, so be where you are. And is it the right path? I mean, I think, you know, sometimes we have this feeling like, oh, this is right. What I'm doing right now is right. And I think that's good. That can be very accurate. And it certainly feels good, you know, to feel like I'm... I'm doing something useful or I'm doing something beneficial or I'm doing something that's really healing me. I think that can be as accurate as any of our thoughts are, but it doesn't really say what you should do next.

[27:54]

That doesn't mean that we can't make a commitment. We can still say, my intention is to follow this practice, stay with this person. you know various commitments we can make and still we have to do it like moment by moment we can say it we can say that's my intention and then you know we head in that direction and and we can't well there's a whole other thing to be said there but does that anything else yes Yes? Well, if you see there's nothing to stand on, you're way into the practice of it. Because mostly we convince ourselves if I just had this or I just had that, I would feel secure.

[29:01]

So then we get totally distracted from the fact that... I mean, it's not exactly like there's nothing to stand on. There's, you know, there's a ground to stand on. There's wherever you are at the time. But we don't know what's going to happen with that next, right? But still, we can keep standing wherever we're standing. But we're usually like, no, I need to be secure, like, next week. You know? I need to know that whatever. So... think to just to see oh this is where I am you know just here stand here that's that's actually pretty secure but it's not secure into the future and doesn't mean that you can't you know like save up money or something that's fine but that won't really make you secure does that I think if you actually get here, if you actually hit the mark and get here, this is as secure as we're ever going to get.

[30:13]

And that includes even if we're on our dying bed or whatever is happening. That's where security is, is to be right here. And it can include asking for help. It can include many things. everything, but it's not something you can store up. So I think you brought up that sense of insecurity. I think when we're experiencing that sense of insecurity, the main way to be secure with it is to actually turn toward it instead of trying to get away from it by gathering something that we think will make us secure. So to actually, like you've heard me say this before, put yourself in a stable position, posture, sitting, standing, walking, or lying down, and turn back towards yourself.

[31:21]

Be willing to be the body-mind that you are at that moment. And to the extent that we can do that, we're secure. And it doesn't have to feel good. but it can be stable and actually there, because mostly we get a sense of that yucky feeling, and then we are just trying to get away from it. We're using all of the old tricks we have, trying to get away from that feeling, and that makes us really insecure. Yes? I think that you've been in Pasahara for so long, and there's many people You know, I go out every weekend, at least to Jamesburg, so maybe I'm in a special situation because I get a little dose of it.

[32:30]

when back like when I was first here when I just lived here the first time I went out the first few times I went out it was kind of shocking I wouldn't say it was hard exactly but it was it was there was so much stuff you know and and you're so open you could kind of be impacted a lot but And you do things like forget your luggage somewhere because you just wander off thinking it was fine, right? But I think actually it gets easier to be out there. I don't know. These other people may have totally other answers, but it's not like Tassar is a special place. It's a wonderfully effective place, I think, but it's not like Reality is different here than there. If it was, this practice wouldn't be of any use whatsoever.

[33:34]

The way things are is the same here at Tassajara as it is out there. And it's different than we sometimes think. It's very interconnected. How we approach it makes a difference. It doesn't make all the difference. We're not the only thing. But it does make a difference. So some... experience of that and then going out there and one finds the same thing. Anyway, that's my answer right now. Thank you. Anything else before we stop? Okay, good. Thank you very much. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[34:42]

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