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. Oh, it's happening. Okay. My name is Lori Sanaki. I don't know many of you, so I'll say a few words of introduction. I lived at Tassajara, lo, these many years ago, in the mid-80s. I started out in San Francisco, worked at Greens, and then I came to Tassajara, and then I went, after three years here, I went back to San Francisco and did a few other Zen Center jobs.

[01:02]

And then I met my husband, Alan, and he lived at Berkeley Zen Center, and I moved there in 89 and lived there ever since. And we raised two children there, who are now 21 and 24. And I went through my kind of Zen gates there at Berkeley Zen Center, I wish you so, and got... lay recognition about 10 years ago. I wanted to talk tonight about how we talk to ourselves. When we do a lot of sitting is one time that we can get a sense of how kind of our inner dialogue, how we're talking to ourself. And it's a good thing to get to know. I've been co-leading this writing workshop and we've been doing an exercise where you just you just write, you keep your pen on the paper and you just write before you can even think of it.

[02:14]

It's actually proved to be another way that you can kind of hear, you get a sense of some of the ways you're talking to yourself. The sixth then ancestor Huenang had a special way he said the bodhisattva vow. He said, sentient beings of my mind are numberless. I vow to save them. Sentient beings of my mind are numberless. I vow to save them. Save them all. And there's a very famous koan about this. And I had remembered the koan a particular way And then when I looked it up, it was actually a little different in a key feature. So then I looked it up in the Suzuki Roshi Lecture Archive, and I found that Suzuki Roshi had given a series of talks in 1967, and he actually said it the way I remembered it.

[03:16]

So maybe it's in Zen Mind Beginner of Mind or something. So I'm going to tell you his way first, the Suzuki Roshi way, and the way I was hoping it went. And then I'll also share with you the other way. So it's about Zuigan. Many of the students here have probably heard it already. So Zuigan talked to himself, and he called himself Zuigan. And then he'd answer himself, yes. And so here's how Suzuki Roshi tells it. The founder of my temple was always studying Zuigan's koan. Zuigan always addressed himself. Zuigan? Am I doing that? I'm hearing. Should I try not to? Okay. Yes. Zuigan? Hi! The neighbors wondered what he was doing. Zuigan!

[04:16]

At first they thought Zuigan isn't well. But he was always addressing himself, Zuigan, and answering, Hi, do you understand? Our practice should be like this, you know. So Zuigan would talk to himself and he talked out loud and used his name. And so in the version in the Mumon Khan, it goes like this. Every day Zuigan would call to himself, Master! And he answered himself, yes. Then he would say, be aware. Yes. Don't let people fool you all day. No, I won't. So my first thought when I read this version was, should we lose the word master? Really? I mean, you know what I mean?

[05:19]

It's like, I don't know what the word that's being translated is from Chinese. Maybe it's something like Roshi in Japanese, but I'm pretty sure it's not a word for people who own slaves. So I really was thinking, let's just lose it. And it's sort of dodging to think about that project, but the sooner we start, the sooner we'll be done. But back to the koan. I'm going to... So I'm not going to use that word when I tell it. But so he talked to himself. And, you know, when he said, so let's say he said Roshi or teacher, that's kind of like you could say maybe small mind talking to big mind. But then when he says, be aware or wake up, that's kind of like big mind talking to small mind, right? So, you know, maybe it's both, maybe it's neither, maybe it goes back and forth. But the poem kind of addresses that, the poem that goes with the koan.

[06:24]

And it says, he buys himself and sells himself. He brings forth lots of angel faces and devil masks and plays with them. Why? Look, one kind calls, one kind answers. One kind is aware, one kind will not be deceived by others. So he's kind of like working with how to relate to himself and talk to himself, how to meet himself. So then, Zuigan or Laurie. Yes. Wake up. I will. Don't let people fool you all day. Or I don't like that either. I don't like projecting. the idea that people are out there trying to fool me. So I like to think of it as don't fall for it or don't be caught by appearances.

[07:28]

So what are the appearances that we are not to be caught by? Well, the appearance of permanence, the way things look solider than they are, and the appearance of self or Sometimes I think of it as control, the way it looks like ourselves and others have more control over what we're doing or what's happening than we do. And satisfaction, like the way it seems like we could avoid pain and have some kind of ultimate personal fulfillment. So those are like the three marks in Buddhism, right? Impermanence, no self, and suffering. And then there's also, in a way, a simpler and deeper level maybe. There's just the way things appear, the way what we experience appears to be happening out there when actually it's more happening in here or in here, right?

[08:32]

So, you know, findings in neuroscience, there's some findings in neuroscience that I feel like really dovetail with with Buddhist understanding. So I wanted to mention a couple of those. Still on the topic of appearances, don't be caught by appearances. So one finding is that our minds track to the negative, right? You may have heard this. So instead of, so, you know, Our ancestors, the ones who were very tuned to threats, were the ones who survived to pass their genes down. So it was, at some point in our history, highly adaptive to be tuned to threats. So our minds work that way. We filter what's happening, giving a lot of weight to threats, and also, secondarily, to rewards.

[09:37]

And then in a very small corner, anything else that might be happening that doesn't appear to be important in that way. So we are not seeing the world as it is. We're seeing the threats first, seeing the rewards second, and maybe if we turn our attention to other things, maybe we see a few other things. And this is related to the other finding I wanted to mention, which is called neuroplasticity. You may have heard this phrase, what fires together, wires together. What fires together, wires together. So that is the way that our trains of thought kind of make these grooves, you could say, or like ruts in a road. So your thought, if you have a thought, and then you think it again and think it again, and you make this rut. And so your thoughts are going to run in that rut. And any other new information that might come in that doesn't fit that rut, it could be disregarded unless you make a real point.

[10:38]

And there's ways to work with that. And there's ways to actually get your neuroplasticity working for you instead of against you because it also means it's easy to change. It's always changing. So if this, you know, just like a path in the woods, if this one will get overgrown if you don't use it and you develop another one over here, which is a big part of what we're doing in our practice. is developing other pathways and helping our minds run into other pathways. And then another thing that they've found is they do these functional fMRIs, or I guess it's functional MRIs, and they can see that when our brain lights up almost the same way when we're imagining an experience as when we're actually having the experience. I'm not going to take the time to go into all the ramifications of these, but this is just something for you to chew on in regard to how you experience your life and the world.

[11:41]

And the last one I was going to mention is that our memories are incredibly malleable. So when you have a memory, when you remember it, so like I lived at Tassajara, and maybe while I'm here now, I'll have a memory of something that happened. Maybe I'll have a memory of something that happened during practice period. But now I'm here in the summer. And so the next time I remember that, I could very easily remember that as happening in the summer. Because what's happening when you have the memory gets layered in to the memory. So our memories are more like sand dunes than mountains, and the wind blowing over them changes the shape. So you might not feel that way when you're having a memory. You probably don't. So don't be caught. Okay, so back to how we talk to ourselves. So the whole reason why this talk came about was because I read an article about

[12:43]

about a psychologist who, Dr. Ethan Cross, and he was driving, he was out driving, and he ran through a red light. And then he heard himself say to himself, Ethan, you're such an idiot. And then some weeks or days later, he was watching television. He saw, this was several years ago when the basketball player LeBron James was deciding whether he was going to move from Cleveland to Miami, somewhere in Florida. And Mr. James said to the reporter, I'm going to be thinking about what's good for LeBron James, which, you know, at first glance maybe doesn't sound too Buddhist, but actually there's circumstances when you kind of have to reverse the instruction, and I think this was one of those. And then Dr. Cross heard another thing on TV. He heard this Pakistani woman activist, Malala Yushafzai, she was on The Daily Show, and she recounted how she talked to herself about the Taliban.

[13:54]

And she would say, Malala, when the Taliban comes, what will you do? And she would answer herself, Malala, take a shoe and hit him. And so Dr. Cross, being a social scientist, got the idea of doing a study of... His basically thing was, if you use your name, that was his kind of focus. It doesn't make a difference which tense or if you use your name. So let me just read to you part of the study. In a series of groundbreaking experiments, Cross has found that how people conduct their inner monologues has an enormous effect on their success in life. Talk to yourself with the pronoun I, for instance. Like, I'm an idiot, I'm a failure, you know, that kind of thing. You're likely to fluster and perform poorly in stressful circumstances. Address yourself by your name at your chances of acing a host of tasks from speech-making to self-advocacy suddenly soar.

[15:02]

By toppling the way we address the self, first person or third... I think it's actually second person. But anyway, we'll bypass that. We flip a switch in the cerebral cortex, the center of thought, and another in the amygdala, the seat of fear, moving closer to or further away from our sense of self with all its emotional intensity. Isn't that a great phrase? Our sense of self with all its emotional intensity. I love that. Gaining psychological distance enables self-control, allowing us to think clearly, perform competently. The language switch also minimizes rumination, the handmaiden of anxiety and depression. After we complete a task, released from negative thoughts, we gain perspective, focus deeply, and plan for the future. So basically, the study showed that if you talk to yourself using your name,

[16:06]

it makes a huge difference. So, and Suzuki Roshi seems like he kind of is pointing to this too. So he says, but if someone calls your name, where is Kanzan? All of a sudden, your practice will come back to you. You see, emptiness is here, right here. Do you understand? So Zuigan had to call to himself because he would be lost if he didn't. Incessantly, you should call your name. When you come back to yourself, there you include everything as a soul being in the time bound and the space bound. And you will feel very good, you know. This kind of practice, addressing someone in this way, is the kindest instruction to give. No one can be more kind to someone than this. Don't you think so? I do not write letters. That is a very bad habit of mine. And I think that sometimes I really must write.

[17:07]

Just to receive a letter from someone is enough to bring a person back to himself, directly to his home. So Cynthia, is it okay if I mention what you told us? So in this writing workshop, Cynthia is the writing teacher, and she's recounted that she... Oh, there she is. It's okay, right? She... When she's made... I hope I got this right. When she's taking notes away from home, instead of writing notes in the usual way, she writes herself an email. And she always addresses it, dearest Cynthia. And then she signs it, was it XOXOXO Cynthia or something? Anyway, you could ask her later if you want the detail. And also, Ed Brown often tells a story. I've heard him tell it several times that he was in the kitchen at Tassajara. And you know how it is in the kitchen.

[18:12]

Even a person who is not hardly relaxed. I can tell you from personal experience that even a non-reactive person can get pretty hot under the collar during kitchen work. So, you know, he was in the kitchen with the chaos and the frustration and irritation and noise and heat and all of that. And then he heard or imagined a voice saying, Ed, Ed, Ed. And he didn't know who it was or where it was coming from, but it was like the voice opened up this space of peace and calm. And then he looked around and it was Suzuki Roshi who'd come and was looking for him. So when I was thinking, you know, Maybe when we talk to ourselves, it's like big mind talking to small mind, right? And when you have big mind talking to small mind, you feel good.

[19:16]

You feel good. And you're also in your big mind, right? If I address myself as Lori, I'm taking the position of big mind. And I might say to myself, don't be caught by appearances. But not like, wake up like that, right? Not like this kind of thing. Many of us have, one of our voices we have inside is like a kind of inner critic or a harsh voice. And it often seems like it's coming from outside, you know what I mean? And maybe like a little bit above, perhaps. And you kind of feel like... and you're kind of feeling like you need to appease it, maybe. That's one form it can take. So here's what I suggest. Here's what I try to do. Give your inner critic a place at the table and make it a nice round table, like the knights of the, you know, whatever it was, where everyone's an equal.

[20:30]

If you listen to your inner critic and you find out what's going on there, oftentimes, I've seen this happen several times, people, you'll find that it's a very anxious part of yourself, actually. It's almost like kind of an anxious parent or something. And you can sort of bring it in and say, sit down here and tell me what's bothering you. You can be the grown-up there. you can say, it's okay, I've got this. So give that part of yourself a place and listen to it, but as an equal with the other parts. So there is another place in the literature where this comes up, and it's in case 43 in the Book of Serenity, which is called... Luoshan's arising and vanishing.

[21:34]

And the part that I want to talk about actually is in the commentary, but I'm just going to read you the case and say a little bit about it. So in this case, Luoshan is the student and Yato is the teacher. And coincidentally, Yato is also the teacher of Zuigan. So Luoshan asks Yato, when arising and vanishing go on unceasingly, what then? And Yato shouted and said, who's arising and vanishing is it? So I kind of picture it like, who's arising and vanishing is it? So do you see what I mean? Do you see how that works? It's like, if you experience things arising and vanishing, the only way you can experience arising and vanishing, okay, this is where I go with this. I'm not promising that this is the correct interpretation. You only experience arising and vanishing from a fixed point, right? And a fixed point is exactly what we don't have. So when we have this experience of things arising and vanishing, it's like this kind of like imaginative acrobatics, where you imagine a fixed point, a.k.a.

[22:48]

a self, and you imagine what it would feel like if you were that fixed point. But it's all imagination, nothing but imagination. So who's arising and vanishing is it? And then in the commentary, so in the commentary, there is a great little statement from Laman Pong, who was another Chinese Zen master. And so he addresses himself. He actually doesn't use his name, but I think this is interesting. This is how he addresses himself. One gang of six thieves, you fool people completely, life after life. Now I know you and will not be your neighbors. If you don't submit to me everywhere I go, I'll inform people all about you, causing your road to be cut off. If you agree to submit to me, then I won't discriminate. I'll stay together with you and together witness birthlessness and deathlessness.

[23:52]

So though he didn't address himself by name, I feel like it's a little bit this thing about the big mind talking to the small mind, right? And he calls his small mind one gang of six thieves. So we're back to the kind of fooling. I don't actually mind that so much for some reason. I kind of like that. I love this little thing. But the part I don't like is the submit. So in this process of rewriting history, I would say... Lose the submit. You know, I think we're maybe at a place in human history where we see the problems with the domination-submission paradigm, right? So it's not the same. And we don't even know what word he was using. So it's really not the same for us. So what I like to say is, stick with me. I like big mind to say to small mind. Stick with me. Stay close to me.

[24:55]

And together... will go through birthlessness and deathlessness, a.k.a. birth and death. Many of us have noticed that a big part of what we're doing together in our sanghas is going through birth and death together, right? It's a big part of what we're doing. Of course, that's a big part of what everybody's doing, whether you think you're in a sonda or not. But what I say is, don't go it alone. Stick with me. Tell yourself, tell your small mind, stay close to me. And don't let your small mind out of your sight, basically. That's the key thing right there. But in a kind way, right? Kind way. So, and I just wanted to say a couple more things. When I think that when I'm talking about big mind, I think we tend to say we have an idea of big mind as this kind of highfalutin thing that you might reach during a long sashi in a tassahara in the middle of a practice.

[26:06]

So maybe there is such a thing, but that's not the one I'm talking about. I'm talking about regular, ordinary, everyday big mind. When you're sort of feeling reasonably okay about your life and reasonably friendly towards yourself and others. That's the big mind I'm talking about. you know, Thich Nhat Hanh has this expression, do you enjoy your non-toothate? You know, like, feel how your teeth feel right now. If tomorrow you have a toothache, you're going to look back on this and you're going to think, that felt really good, right? So does it feel really good, you know? Notice that. Okay, and then just, I think it, probably bears repeating or saying clarifying that this is none of this is to get any control over what's happening here because we can't get any control over what's happening here so this is just i'm just proposing a few things that you could layer in you know like in your compost pile of your brain and yourself or whatever layer in a few other layers

[27:18]

That's all we can do is add other layers. That's what we're doing here at Tansahara. Adding other layers, adding brass clippings and adding worm droppings or whatever it is that makes it cook, you know? And I just wanted to close with another little bit more that Suzuki Rishi has to say about this. In fact, he addresses the fact that he got the story wrong here a little bit. We don't say wrong. In the last Sashin, do you remember, I talked about Zuigan's calling the name of his own teacher, or I interpreted that Zuigan is calling his own name because it's the same. This shift of understanding is possible because our everyday life, there is no difference between our everyday life and our true practice. When we are satisfied with our practice, with our everyday life, That is true practice. To enjoy our life does not mean to have some special feeling or special enjoyment or special gratitude.

[28:23]

By gratitude or enjoyment, we mean something deeper than that. Gratitude before we have gratitude. Enjoyment before we enjoy it. So I'll stop there. Do you have any good stories of how you talk to yourself? Tragic stories or anything else to say tonight? Don't all talk at once. Yes? Well, it reminded me, like 15 years ago, when I went to a Red Anderson retreat at Mountain Dumbo, and my daughter was around Kent, and she was... driving me crazy because sometimes she wanted to be my little girl and sometimes she wanted to be a preteen and didn't want me to say anything to her. And so I was talking to Reb about it. And he said to me, well, you know, the problem is you want her to be one person and she's two people. She's a little girl and she's also a preteen and you have to let her be two people.

[29:27]

And I got home and I said, do you know what the Zen master said? And she was so relieved and just started crying and hugging that she had permission to be these two different people. And I think we're all afraid we're schizophrenic if we're not one person and one person. I was thinking about that, right? We started telling this story of us talking to ourselves. Right. Just acknowledging that that's the situation brought a lot of peace for her. Yes, Cynthia? I wish to clarify that that was really close and they're really the same thing. But when I email myself, I usually say, my darlings. I had slightly more temper. Thank you. Yes.

[30:36]

Okay, I'm going to question things. Sorry about that. So when you were talking, you made me think of something that a teacher of mine said to me one time. She said when she was younger in her life, she lived in this bamboo hut, and one day she realized, you know, I don't really like talking to other people that much, so why do I talk to myself so much? And she took some paint and she painted on all of the walls of her hut her name, comma, stop talking to yourself. Which I suppose is a way of talking to yourself. That's a funny... Angel faces devil masks right there, right? And I guess the conclusion of it all was that she found a lot of freedom in... Not having to be talking to herself, not having to be this person all the time.

[31:42]

If it helped, yeah. Yeah. If it works. It's the important thing. A time that kids talk to themselves a lot is when they're learning something. So if you taught them how to do something, then a little while later you might see them telling themselves what you told them as they're learning how to do it. So it's kind of like that. Maybe you don't need to keep doing that or something. I don't know. Yes, hi. I have a question about the story, who are the six thieves? Oh, right, good point. My goodness, I should have said that. The six thieves are eye, ear, nose, tongue, skin or body, nerve endings, and brain. Yeah.

[32:47]

It's the same thing as the appearances, though, right? Like, don't blame your eyes, right? I mean, you know what I mean? You understand that your cognitive apparatus is adding a spin to things. That's really more what's going on. So don't blame your... I still kind of like the thing about the thieves. I don't know why. It's a very potent metaphor. Okay, well, I think we're close. Close? Close enough? Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please Visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[33:36]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_93.09