This podcast is offered by San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Good morning. Okay. I'm going to... leap off where Leanne started yesterday on, she started with renunciation. And I'm going to use that as the jumping off point. It's a complete acceptance of our understanding of renunciation, but a little bit different spin. I think it's agreed by most people that Buddhism started out as a religion of renunciation.

[01:00]

However, as it moved, it became more a religion of acceptance. Now having said that, acceptance and renunciation in the way they're used is not that different. And I think for us in our practice, we start before renunciation or acceptance with a vowel. vowing. All my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. Let's do it together. All my ancient twisted karma From beginningless greed, hate and delusion Born through body, speech and mind I now fully allow We start off by acknowledging the truth.

[02:19]

And the truth isn't always pretty. truth of all our mistakes and shortcomings. Of course, it leads to kind of renouncing them, but it starts out with accepting them. Because you can't get rid of them if you don't accept them. I'm not sure you can get rid of them anyhow, but renunciation starts from the point of view of completely acknowledging the truth of what is, things as they are rather than things as we'd like them to be. Whenever I feel angry or depressed or some emotion like that,

[03:24]

Ask myself, what it is that I want that I'm not getting? If I know what it is I want that I'm not getting, then it's usually a relief. I can renounce it. I can say, oh yeah, it would be nice to have that, but I don't have to have it. It doesn't say anyway that I have to have it. If I don't know what I want that I'm not getting, or what's the dissatisfaction, that's more of a problem. Sometimes I think the least prepared I am for lectures, the more books I have. This wood takes the cake, though.

[04:26]

It's not Dogen's Sobogenzo. It's the American Heritage Dictionary. Small print, too. a vow to acknowledge openly, to acknowledge openly, confess, avow guilt. From the French, to call on, to appeal to. Appeal to. Appeal to.

[05:39]

You know, when you feel you've talked to somebody and they fully acknowledge what some problem is or some shortcoming, it's such a relief. Renunciation, the act or practice of renouncing. It's interesting, the practice of renouncing. That's pretty good. Reality, this is a quote from Norman O'Brien. Reality imposes on human beings a necessity of renunciation of pleasures.

[06:45]

A declaration in which something is renounced. from Latin to renounced. Doesn't help too much. Acceptance, the act or process of accepting, the state or condition of being accepted or acceptable, favorable reception, approval, belief in something, agreement, dissent.

[08:05]

The act or process of accepting. Sometimes I think our practice is about accepting the unacceptable. Accepting the fact that we're all flawed. Accepting the fact that this has happened for millions of years and we're trying to save all sentient beings. Accepting what I don't want to accept about myself I want to get rid of it before I see it. Now, I would gladly renunciate Parkinson's disease. But I have to accept it.

[09:12]

And maybe there's some renunciation going on. Renunciation, renouncing my thoughts about it. And says, Sheen, sometimes I want to sit straight and I can't get straight no matter what I do. Do any of you have that experience? You try to sit straight and you know you're not sitting straight and you try to correct it and it's still not straight. In fact, it may be even crooketer. And you sit anyhow. You sit not because you sit straight. You sit just to make the effort to sit straight. In America, I think we have so much negative feelings about ourselves that it's vital that we accept that we have these things and we'll go on.

[10:31]

But maybe in Asia they're not as I don't know. I don't want to idealize Asia, but I can't help but wonder that here in the West we have original sin and in the East there's Buddha nature. But it's not that simple, I suppose. It is said to appreciate your human life is as rare as soil on your fingernail. You know dirt rarely ever sticks on your nail. reading the wrong chapter.

[12:07]

Indian thought and practice encountered by Buddha was based on the idea of human beings as a combination of spiritual and physical elements. They thought that the physical side of man bound the spiritual side. This is the end of my beginner's mind. And so their religious practice was aimed at making the physical element weaker in order to free and strengthen the spirit. Thus the practice Buddha found in India emphasized asceticism. But Buddha found when he practiced asceticism that there was no limit to the attempt to purge ourselves physically and that it made religious practice very idealistic. This kind of war with our body can only end when we die. Hopefully it can end then. But according to Indian thought, we will return to another life and another life to repeat the struggle over and over again without ever attaining perfect enlightenment. And even if you think you can make your physical strength weak, enough to free your spiritual power, it will only work as long as you continue your aesthetic practice.

[13:11]

If you resume your everyday life, you will have to strengthen your body, and then you will have to weaken it again to regain your spiritual power. This may be too great a simplification, but actually some people continue this practice even today, sometimes without realizing it. The kind of practice with stress cannot become too idealistic. If an artist becomes too idealistic, he will commit suicide. I teach painting, and if you want something into your painting, it's horrible. If you just enjoy the painting itself, it's wonderful.

[14:15]

So I'm struggling with this sasheen. My body does not seem to want to cooperate with my intention. So what do I do? I could get better by body and mind, but that doesn't help. I could try to join with it and see if we can together migrate, transmute, transpose, something. Renouncing the end for which I'm seeking may be very useful. Accepting the situation I am is the place to start from. Once I figured out how many years of Sashin I've sat, I can't remember what I came up with, but there was a few.

[15:54]

I found that the more I sat, the softer I had to try, the harder. Harder is kind of some punishment involved. Softer, there's kind of breath and love involved. Leanne talked about the thing of being extra, of being involved in extra things. And I think that's really important, Sachin. You can see how many extra things you want to do. And you don't want to do the extra things. You just want to get out of doing what you're doing.

[17:19]

You're like me. So to see what the minimum you can live with is without any payoff. I think the first few years that we practice, we make progress and the easy things to change. The things that are easy to change will change. But then, there's the harder stuff that doesn't change so easily. And you can't, your motivation for practicing may change.

[18:26]

motivation maybe to help others. And then eventually, the hard things may change. And that's about renunciation. renouncing your payback, renouncing your transaction, which you've made meditation into. You put in the meditation and you want to get something back. But what you get back is meditation, which is pretty good. So when I'm talking about acceptance and renunciation, they're not so different.

[19:50]

It's about renouncing your personal gain and accepting whatever motivation you have. Accepting wherever you're at. Accepting if you're sick, accepting if you're whatever, crazed. with a vowing, with recognizing all your ancient twisted karma, there's hope for change. Or maybe that's not the right way to put it. So some of you may be not hearing this lecture, just dealing with the pain and doing your best, and this lecture is not helping you.

[21:22]

That may be true. Since I've heard hundreds of lectures, I no longer expect that I'm going to learn something new. but I expect that I can do zazen during it. And something new will happen. When the Dalai Lama and other Asian teachers heard that Americans and Western people in general had low self-esteem, he said, no, that can't, that's not possible. And they heard it again, they said, well, that's terrible. If you have low self-esteem, the kind of urging to do better or to become Buddha

[22:35]

It seems hollow. But it's not hollow. Some people from the Lotus Sutra School, Namiyohei Marenge-kyo, came to visit and Blanche asked me to show them around. And one of them asked for a Suzuki Roshi story. So I told them one which folks had taken me to see a Nichiren priest who was a friend of Suzuki Roshi's in Japan to get some story from him.

[23:42]

So I told him this story, which I told him, which was that he went to Tassahara and he said, is Azen the best way? And Suzuki Roshi said, it's the only way, it's what his teacher taught him, it's the only way he knew. It wasn't necessarily the best, but that's what he could teach. He said, do Western students understand you? He said that by their free knowing, they will get it. By their free knowing, they will get it. What faith? What great faith? We've been studying the Genjo Koan, and it says the three propositions.

[25:40]

When all dharmas are the Buddha Dharma, there's such and such. When the dharmas are without such self, there's such and such. And the Buddha way is leaping clear of both those. But even though that was the truth, still we are discouraged when the leaves get, when the flowers don't blossom and the tree withers. No, it's like, I think you understand what I mean. It's when things don't go the way we want, either negative or positive.

[26:44]

There's another koan which is very related to this, which is, someone asked, how is it when the tree withers and the tree withers and the highly exposed to the golden wind. So when you're inexperienced things as they are, everything can be a moment of

[27:48]

of renunciation, of wow, it's just this. I'm not making it up. Who could make it up? with nothing extra. Everything is its own celebration. Even when things don't go the way you want them to, it's, oh, this is the way they're going. The four Brahmaviharas, the four social emotions,

[28:51]

Love and kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. Each one has an enemy, and each one has a near enemy, which looks like a good thing, but it isn't. The most important is equanimity. And... Equanimity is even when you don't get what you want or things don't go the way you want them to, you're okay with it. You're not blown away. You don't need a result. Many people I know who go into politics, they do it for a little while and then they get burnt out because it doesn't go the way they want to. And it probably won't.

[29:54]

That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but it means you shouldn't do it to expect the result. And it's artists I know who are disappointed that they don't make money in their art. If you want to make money with your art, tough road. And if it's the bottom line, maybe you shouldn't do art. If you do art for the joy of doing it, you can't lose. If you do zazan for the joy it brings you, the combination of body and mind being brought together in ecstasy as well as pain, You should do it.

[31:01]

There are people who come to me and they say that they don't get anything from zazen and it's no fun. So I tell them to do something else. Do something else you can learn from. And that's not just one day you don't feel like it's fun. We all have things like that. I wrote a poem a while ago which goes, Departure. No. The sound of lost reeds, breath broken before speech. Departure, to your sorrow you've weaned me well. Now I seek your stomach, the pit of the universe. Seek the truth with no attachment to it, no end that you want from it, is the greatest thing.

[32:39]

just as it is. Well, I won't bore you with reading more definitions, but that's what the Brahmavahara is. It's not the word that It's so important. It's the way you understand it. To understand acceptance and renunciation and avowing. We start from the truth of our shortcomings. Then we start with a clean slate. If we keep a scorecard about how we're doing, you always wind up in the third inning.

[34:05]

What is that? What I'd like you to do is accept yourself as you are and move on. Accept yourself as you are and renounce that which you don't like from your past or renounce wanting to get something or renounce the mind which is always scheming It says, Sheen, you notice your scheming mind.

[35:19]

You've got all kinds of plans during the first period. I know when I first came to the Senate Senate, we would do two 40-minute periods beginning at 5 o'clock. And I would sit, and Jindal would happen, and I would think, when can I go back to bed? It's funny, get up and think about when can I go back to bed. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[36:15]

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