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. Oh, there we are. Amplified. It's a beautiful morning. It's spring. We love spring. This is what's always so frustrating. Here's this, but if I go and I look over there to talk to you, then hello, goodbye. So I have to go like this. Hi. Hi. Good morning. So this is the last public lecture before the sesheen. And it's the last public lecture of the practice period.

[01:02]

But even before I get into that, I wanted to ask, how many people are here for the first time? Oh, my goodness. A lot of you. Well, welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. We're glad you chose us to spend your Saturday morning. We know you have other choices. So we're always happy to see you. So I'm going to... As I was saying, we've had this 10-week practice period in which the theme has been aligning all activity with the heart of Buddha. Small, easy thing to do, align all activity with the heart of Buddha, even when you're brushing your teeth. when you're taking out the trash? How do we align all activity with the heart of Buddha? So we've been noticing staying awake really helps. So trying to be awake and conscious of what we're doing.

[02:10]

Because I talked, last time I was here, I talked about habit and how we have a tendency when we do things over and over again, we can kind of do them absentmindedly. Absentmind. And so we're trying to do everything mindedly. And so the culmination of this practice period is a seven-day or six-day, multi-day, what we call a seshin, in which we spend the greatest portion of the day sitting in zazen meditation. Get a very early... We sit all day. Maybe we do a work period. But primarily, we're meditating. And we're cooking in our own soup. And when we do this, we have an opportunity, as we do every day, but even more so maybe in Sashin, to touch something vast.

[03:24]

And this is a difficult thing to talk about, but I thought I would try anyway. So I'm going to try and talk about believing in nothing, basically. Having faith in nothing. So I thought I'd start off by reading this poem, which I may read twice because it's sort of dense. It's a roomy poem, and it's called This World Which is Made of Our Love for Emptiness. Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence. This place made from our love for that emptiness. Yet, somehow comes emptiness. This existence goes. Praise to that happening over and over. For years, I pulled my own existence out of emptiness. Then one swoop... One swing of the arm and that work is over. Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope, free of mountainous wanting.

[04:39]

The here and now mountain is a tiny piece of straw blown off into emptiness. I mean, really. The here and now mountain is a tiny piece of straw blown off into emptiness. And this is what we're trying to do all the time. Be this tiny piece of straw that's going to be blown off into emptiness. So these words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning. Existence. Emptiness. Mountain. Straw words, and what they try to say, swept out the window, down the slant roof. So I'm going to try to say something, and it's probably going to go swept out the window and slant down the roof, because it's so ephemeral, this life we lead, this existence we're in, and trying to talk about it.

[05:49]

It's kind of diaphanous feeling. Oh, I realize I should get my watch out because we have short incense today, so I can't use the incense stick to time myself. Otherwise, I'd have to stop in about two minutes. It's going to be short, though. You can get cookies really soon. Okay. So one of the things I've been doing is I lead a sitting group. By the way, my name is Marsha Angus. Hi. I was a little nervous today. I forgot some of the basic things. So I've been reading Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind a lot because I sit with a little group every week. And we've been reading... Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind together.

[06:51]

And it's so dense, and so one of the ways we've been working with it is everybody reads the section that we're on every day for a whole week, out loud. Because there's no way to figure this stuff out. You can't be thinking, because this is a body practice. And there's something And I've always said I'm in the remedial group, and what we know for remedial reading is if you look at it, if you run your finger when you're reading it, and if you say it out loud, you're going to comprehend it better. So the more senses you involve, the better your comprehension is going to be. So when you're in a body practice like this, hearing yourself say these things makes them go in through a different, different process, more through your skin. And that's actually your body can understand this much better than your mind.

[07:55]

So today, just think that you're listening with your body more than you're listening with your mind and see if that will help. So Suzuka Rishi says, if you understand yourself as a temporary embodiment of the truth, meaning the truth being what is so, the way it is. If you understand yourself as a temporary embodiment of the way it is, of the truth, you will have no difficulty. And when I first read that, I went, oh, really? But actually, I think it's true. And so... the question arises then, what helps us to see this? What helps us to realize that understanding yourself in this temporary way eliminates a lot of difficulty?

[09:00]

What helps us cultivate this as the ground from which all activity is arising? That this is, we're in this moment and There, gone. Now we're, oh, here we're in another moment. And it's, we're all arising together in it. And as much as we like to think we're a separate being, we're actually not independent of each other or anything in the universe. We're all inter-independent and relying on everything to exist. So he goes on to say, if you understand yourself as a temporary embodiment of the truth, you will appreciate your surroundings and you will appreciate yourself as a wonderful part of Buddha's great activity, even in the midst of difficulties.

[10:03]

So this is really getting to be a great deal. All I have to do is remember... that I'm a temporary embodiment of the truth. And right then I can begin to see, wow. If you've ever seen that gratitude YouTube by Brother David, one of the things he says is, look in the sky. Do you see a cloud? You'll never see another cloud like that cloud again. And he says, if you wake up and you open your eyes and you're breathing, from his point of view, the only logical, reasonable response is gratitude. So in that sense, I think that's what Suzuki Roshi is talking about when he says, when you realize that yourself is a temporary embodiment of the truth, and you've had the good fortune to have this unlikely experience of becoming a human being in the universe,

[11:09]

which is really rare, then you will begin to appreciate your surroundings and appreciate yourself as a wonderful part of Buddha's great activity. You begin to realize that's really the truth. And you begin to realize we're all manifestations of Buddha's activity. And as Katagiri Roshi used to say always, Everybody here, you're all Buddha. Every single one of you, you're all Buddha. You just have to realize it, that's all. Just have to realize it. And what does that take? It takes learning how to settle yourself on yourself. To develop your capacity to be still. And to be able to be completely, 100%, absolutely, positively in this moment.

[12:19]

So that none of your mind, none of your synapses are either in the past or in the future. You're not rehearsing for the next moment and how you're going to, what am I going to say? What am I going to do? You're actually, because I do that before I come down here, my palms get a little sweaty and go, what am I going to say? These are just some notes, but I never know what I'm actually going to say until I see you all. And then you kind of let me know what I'm going to say somehow. So there's some way that you're creating the lecture, actually. So he goes on to say, as long as we have some definite idea about... or some hope in the future. We cannot really be serious with the moment that exists right now. So I think you can see that. If you've got your head in tomorrow or you're reworking what happened yesterday, then that really undermines how many synapses you have left to be here in this moment.

[13:31]

And... when you actually cultivate your capacity to be fully 100%, not one cell anywhere else, but right here, right now, you and me, something else can begin to happen. And you have an experience of, how can I put it? An experience of kind of being born new on each breath. There's a freshness. Because you're no other place but right here. So then you actually can feel the freshness of this moment arising. Everybody's present and accounted for. Dogen, who's sort of the founder of our Zen schools, wrote in the Genjo Koan,

[14:33]

To study the way is to study the self, which is what we do when we're being conscious. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened or realized by all things. So this is being present. To be enlightened by all things is to cast off the body and mind of the self, as well as those of others. So when we study the self, what starts to happen is, if I'm not this temporary identity called Marsha, or therapist, or Mill Valley resident, or woman, or 67 and three-quarter year old.

[15:37]

If I'm not that, if I'm not this, pretty soon, if we get through all the peels, then what's left? What's left? And actually addressing that takes enormous courage. Because you're liable to disappear. And in order to endure that experience, we sit zazen because we need to develop a lot of stability. You can imagine you would need to develop a lot of stability, a lot of equanimity, and a lot of capacity to be still to tolerate disappearing for a second. It's really courageous.

[16:41]

And it does take realizing that we are just a temporary flash of Buddha's activity, flashing through into the universe. And it's not fixed, and there's nothing permanent, even my name, even nothing. no buildings, not even the earth, not even the sun, not even this galaxy. Everything's moving. The whole universe is turning. It's really stunning when you think about it. I mean, to me it is anyway. The next thing I wanted to say about this thing is when you're peeling away all these identities, what starts to happen is then there's nothing in between you and what's arising. So you have a much more profound and direct experience of being.

[17:48]

And all those selves have gotten out of the way, so now it's just like right here. And that will definitely lighten your load. And it makes this moment very precious. And it makes this moment very precious. So our method is zazen and seshin. That's what we do here. We just sit. And We concentrate on our breath. And we concentrate on our breath completely. Because when we're concentrating on our breath completely, and I mean 100% concentrating on your breath as it goes in, how it feels in your ribcage, how you feel the air touching your nose.

[18:58]

When we do that completely, we forget ourselves. And when we forget ourselves, we can concentrate on our breath completely. So that's what we're cultivating. And this actually, surprisingly in some ways, not only creates a fair amount of stability in your being, but also a kind of confidence and resilience. Because you actually develop the capacity to think your thoughts instead of having your thoughts think you. You know those annoying tapes that you may have heard some people have running through their heads? Judgmental tapes, nagging tapes, shoulda, woulda, coulda tapes. Well, you actually develop some adeptness at not having those tapes run you. And you actually develop the capacity to make your own tape.

[20:02]

with a little more encouraging content in it. And when you do that, what you run in your head affects everybody around you. So not only are you making yourself more comfortable, but everybody is going to really appreciate that if you're running appreciation in your head rather than judgment. It makes a difference. You can feel it. So where am I now? I tend to digress. So I also want to talk about the quality of zazen. Suzuki Roshi talks about that as the quality of zazen is always there. And you don't have to worry about doing it right. If you simply take this posture, which you can learn about every morning here, we have zazen instruction. And I highly recommend taking many, many zazen instructions.

[21:07]

I took zazen instruction every week for a year, and I learned something every time. So lots of zazen instruction will not hurt you. So when you take the zazen posture, already the quality of zazen is there. So you don't have to worry about if you're doing it right. Just sit down and try to focus on your breath is plenty. We don't want to try too hard. Makes us cranky. So we just try a little bit. And I wrote something. I have these notes. See, I type them, and then I look at them again, and then the real lecture comes out in the corners on the side. So that's the other thing he said. This I thought was just genius. I found it in the Zen Mind Beginners book. He says, when we sit, we are nothing. We don't even know what we are. We just sit.

[22:08]

But when we stand up, we're here. And that's exactly what happens. So I thought that was, I just liked that very much. So we have to find our own way. And the best way is to understand yourself. And When you understand yourself, or actually when you understand anything completely, you tend to understand everything. You start to see a kind of a through line in how things are in this world. And you start to see what works. You start to see how it works. When you understand how you work, what makes you tick, what activates you, what deactivates you, then you start to know what activates and deactivates everybody. And it really gives you a sense of stability and confidence. So this also helps everybody else as well as you.

[23:17]

Are you still awake here? How are we doing? I just heard from... Vicki came up to me just before lecture, and she told me that Pat Phelan told her that giving a lecture at Zen Center is like sitting in a graveyard giving a lecture to tombstones. You guys are all sitting so still. I started to wonder. Good. Well, somebody's breathing in here. That's good. So... This is living profoundly in this moment, completely, completely absorbed, no separation. This is experiencing everything arising freshly together in this moment. That's what we're cultivating here. So when no part of your consciousness is in the past or the future and all of your awareness is just in this moment, when you're slowed down enough,

[24:26]

and you're thinking to interrupt that habitual way you have of putting a filter on what's in front of you, and you take the filter off, and you see that there is no fixity, then, what happens then? I have to see what's on the next page. Then you really start to embody that. that realization that everything is moving and changing. And it really is harder to take things so seriously when you realize it's going to be over in a minute. That's what helped me get through walking down the stairs. Well, you know, however it goes, then it'll be lunchtime. You know? So... So it does lighten our load, and we take things, we hold things a little more lightly, and then you kind of enter into this flow.

[25:31]

And when you realize everything's in motion, you can kind of enter the flow and flow with how things are moving. and you don't have to make them do anything. And when you realize, not only do you have to not be anything, but you don't have to make anything happen, then the choices that you begin to see are entirely different and much simpler. Much, much simpler. Because you're not arguing with how it is or trying to get how it is to be different. Now you're just joining how it's going. This is so much simpler. All you have to give up are your preferences. No problem, right? I wanted the red one. I talked about, how are you doing on the time? I got a minute. Okay, so I was talking about this the other day, about the two kinds of suffering. The first kind of suffering is the way it is. We're all going to die.

[26:32]

We're all going to get sick. We're all going to get disappointed. We're all going to hurt ourselves. This is just the way it is. You're going to be a human being. Lucky enough to be a human being, you're going to die. That's it. So then there's a number two suffering, which I call do-it-yourself suffering. And the do-it-yourself suffering is I wanted the red one. It's not fair. And why me? Why me? When we think these thoughts, then we know we forgot already, number one, suffering. This is the way it is. And the more we realize the way it is, the more we can move in the flow with how things really are, which is much simpler than arguing with how it is. So when he talks about enlightenment, Suzuki Roshi, he talks about saying, I mean believing in nothing.

[27:35]

is believing in something which has no form or no color, which is ready to take form or color. So when you drop all those identities, and you study the self, and you drop body and mind, then what happens is when you get off the cushion, there's the manifestation of Buddha in form, right there. ready to take form. Hi, I'm here. So this enlightenment is the immutable truth, he says, and it is on this original truth that our activity, our thinking, and our practice should be based. So let me read this poem one more time, and then I'm going to sing you a song. So this world, which is made of our love for emptiness, prays to the emptiness that blanks out existence.

[28:38]

Existence. This place made from our love for that emptiness. Yet somehow comes emptiness. This existence goes. How does that happen? Praise to that happening over and over. Praise to that happening over and over. This existence goes. For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness. Then one swoop, one swing of the arm, That work is over. He stopped pulling himself out of emptiness. Free of who I was. Free of presence. Free of dangerous fear, hope. Free of mountainous wanting. He gave up his preferences. The here and now mountain is a tiny piece of straw blown off into emptiness. I just love that. This here and now mountain is a tiny piece of straw blown off into emptiness.

[29:44]

These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning. Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw. Words and what they try to say swept out the window down the slant of the roof. So I have to do this even though it's corny. I just can't control myself. When I was... Thinking about this lecture, what kept running through my head was, I got plenty of nothing, and nothing's plenty for me. I got no I, I got no me, and now just ain't that free. Ha ha. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you very, very much for your kind attention. 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.

[30:50]

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.

[31:04]

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