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'm going to talk tonight about what I understand equanimity to be from a Soto perspective and I haven't heard anything quite like this so it's an exploration it's definitely an exploration and an expression of my practice and I'm very aware of how different other traditions their relationships to this word equanimity and the practice of equanimity are So as a way of laying the ground a little bit, this will be explored through equanimity as a feeling and a functioning, and not so much the very careful, discrete terms and descriptions that you might find.

[01:29]

in traditions closer to the Pali. However, I do refer to some of these words. And my interest in this comes from an experience that I had many, many years ago. I was attending a sashin. Sashins are something I hold dear. There's something about knowing that you're sharing in a commitment with a group of people, and there's a kind of framework for a very embodied interaction with others. And in this session, it was a little different than the way that we do it. They were very... All the mirrors were covered.

[02:30]

All the windows were shuttered so that you couldn't look outside. You couldn't view yourself. All of the meals for the seven days were the same meals. So you were eating the same thing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And when you were engaged in work practice, you were doing the same task every day. And my job was to scrub the stains out of all the carpets in the temple. So I had a kind of range of movement through the temple and was very close to the ground. One day, kind of maybe the fourth or fifth day, I was in the hallway outside of a bathroom. all of a sudden, the woman who was in the bathroom burst out in tears. And in the context of Sashin, you know, you trust the process, you know.

[03:37]

So I felt concerned, and there I was, you know, scrubbing out the stains from the carpets. I later learned... that she had begun to cry and like really, you know, just break out in tears because she had never known ever before in her life or even imagined that someone could fall in love with the bathroom floor. So imagine... crouched on hands and knees, reaching with an old toothbrush into the cramped space on the floor behind the toilet, scrubbing the grout and tile, a task less than pleasant and a space cramped, suddenly becoming vast and intimate.

[04:38]

My new detail extends itself in the vividness of experience, and from this spaciousness, there's profound appreciation and love for the material expression of everything. In the Buddhist tradition, there's acknowledgement that such opening, awakening experiences exist, and that they are the expression of suchness, and that there's a way not only to speak of them, but also to deepen and cultivate our expression of them for their beneficial effects. Equanimity is one of these effects as well as a practice. It's a refined craft of the Soto way to provide the conditions in which we practice with and experience equanimity. The experience above was a profound understanding of what lies beyond likes and dislikes, and there was a deepening and maturing of moral concern and vow that came from this.

[05:44]

To fall in love with the bathroom floor is to break through limited ways and to see how we must nurture and cultivate our lives beyond the ways that we've learned to be. We are learning to love ourselves and others in a different way. This is the moral concern that is born of equanimity. Silence is a wonderful producer of the feeling of equanimity, a simple effort that considerably removes us from sharing in worldly and selfish concerns that arise so quickly in us. The process that unfolds in the context of a kitchen work practice appears subtly and surely. If the crew begins together, no one seems to escape a cut, a bruise. It's as though we all have to learn, even though we know it quite well, that the stove is hot and the knives are sharp.

[06:50]

The space feels tight, and we do our best not to be in each other's way. And the time is tight as well, down to the second. This needs to happen, and this needs to happen, and wow, is it really lunchtime already? Throughout the day, bodies in the kitchen... are moving with the weight of things, the lightness of the dish towel or a little spoon, the heaviness of a pot of soup or a 50-pound bag of sugar. In the silence that we keep, the body is grounded in touch, each gesture clear in every simple directed action and absorbed in the task. Even though it was a bumpy start, it doesn't take long for the space of the kitchen to open up and for there to be a graceful choreography of movement. Similarly, there's a setting into the task that creates a spaciousness of time.

[07:55]

Silence supports a feeling of completeness in this. And deep appreciation will slow from the intimacy with things. It's often the case for people who've worked in the kitchen for a while. that the simple task of putting away all of the dishes as they're being washed comes to a point of gratitude and appreciation that is very connected to both place and time and has nothing at all to do with the competency of the task. Even though you know that this goes here and that goes there and you've known it for some time, you can be overcome by an insight. Everything has its place. High things go in high places and low things in low places and that long before us, others have returned these same things to these places with such care and that this will continue.

[09:00]

It's far beyond any notion of knowing what I'm doing. As Dogen writes, Take care of the pots as if they were your own head. In this context, the materiality of the world and the beauty of practical conventions that support and are the expression of this human life can feel glorious in the specificities of eternal care. Imagine an entire history of human life silently told in the simple gesture of wiping surfaces. I've seen this exact epiphany so deeply meaningful. that it needs to be spoken on several occasions. It's a feeling of an expanded equanimity that has deep appreciation for the interconnected functioning of things big and small, and nurturing mind flows from feeling in your own body the deep care that extends through time. Another occurrence in kitchen practice is

[10:02]

is that when you've done this for a long time, you can develop the same strength of a quantum's feeling for what goes on in the pot as well as what lands on the floor. There can be a sweetened tenderness for both what is in the dustpan and what is in the pot. They aren't the same. It's the functioning of our life that what is in the dustpan is waste and that what is in the pot is food. Yet in the midst of the difference, equanimity flourishes. In our conventional thinking, equanimity evokes a wide, horizontal leveling out of things as though they're brought down to size and homogenized from the view of impartial distance. This is an impoverished view of equanimity that cultivates indifference. It's an equanimity that was acknowledged in the early Pali literature, and they wanted to be clear that there was a difference between this impoverished equanimity and

[11:02]

and an equanimity that is born of care. Buddhist equanimity supports the boundlessness of caring and the effectiveness of a mature and balanced emotional life as a support for an expression of that caring. This can reach a point where the understanding in that caring, in that your mind, does not belong to you. In this great sense, it has a functioning that is free and unhindered. Freedom from craving and aversion is not the final goal. Intention is being honed, reshaped, clarified of unwholesome self-concern. It doesn't occur at the center of a panoramic view where we stretch ourselves to become wider in our moral concern. I think that this is our conventional way of thinking of it. And I don't want to... have that view be confused with practices of radiant mind, such as that, that Bhikaran Elaya describes in his book on emptiness and compassion.

[12:17]

Those radiation practices are quite subtle, and I can't explore them here. What I mean to say here is that it's more about... becoming pliable and open-minded, responding with the spacious opening that falling in love with the bathroom floor demonstrates. The profoundly boundless equanimity of non-separation leaping from life. Equanimity is one of the four Brahma-Viharas, also known as the four immeasurables, the other three of which are metta, loving-kindness, karuna, compassion, and mudita, sympathetic joy. For equanimity, there are two different Pali words that are translated as equanimity. Upeka, which means to look over, and refers to the power of observation. And tatra majatita is to stand in the midst of things. I'm very interested in the difference between these two words, and they have an orientation to space that the other three don't.

[13:26]

as the describing words, I don't even know how to say it, that are translated as equanimity in the English language. And that interests me a lot. You'll see that. In these words, the difference between them, there's a kind of tension between what is inside and what is outside, looking over and being in the midst of I find it curious that of the four immeasurables also, that equanimity is so explicitly involved with space. And it has a coolness, too, that loving kindness, compassion, and sympathetic joy don't have in the same way. Buddhist scholar Emily McRae reminds us that equanimity, like the other three, is a feeling. It is not an abstraction. How is this so? In case 39 of the Blue Cliff Record, a monk asks the question, what is the pure body of reality?

[14:32]

And the teacher's response is, a flowering hedge. Harada Roshi explains that flowering hedges are planted in order to keep public toilets from view, and so the hedge has a practical function within a conventionally understood sense of well-being, one that must... take into consideration the well-being of others and protect them from discomfort. And yet, crouched on hands and knees, reaching with an old toothbrush into the cramped space on the floor behind the toilet, scrubbing the grout and tile, a task that was less than pleasant and a space that was cramped, suddenly became intimate and vast. Minute detail leapt into vivid spaciousness, and there was a profound appreciation and love for the material expression and energy of everything. This also is a flowering hedge, the flourishing of life in equanimous functioning and expression of interbeing.

[15:39]

What's important about this experience is that it's not uncommon. What is important about it is that it is common. It can arise unexpectedly and from the ordinary. We know this from hearing so many people's stories of what brought them to Zen. One day, there they were, just fishing as they usually do, and a giant golden carp leapt into their boat without them trying to do a thing. Daily zazen, seshin, practice periods, and monastic life are an acknowledgement and caring for suchness as the taste of our own lives and as a precious expression with far-reaching benefits for peace. And so the conditions are provided and the subtle teachings explored to guide and to verify.

[16:42]

I've been deliberately focusing on how I see the cultivation of equanimity within the Sotus and tradition of just sitting. There's a strong emphasis on awakening experiences in the literature of our tradition and the description of their qualities and effects that in poetic language enacts the fresh vitality of mind and its awakening. This is its poetry and it can leap out from the most basic and literal instruction. And I'm a bit of a Dogen fanatic. It's not Dogen's way any more than it's our own. Zen is Zen. But he had a way of expressing it that I'm drawn to, precisely because he does express it, making it intelligible and showing its value. Here I am drawn to Dogen's fascicle, One Bright Pearl, one of the very early fascicles that he wrote upon arriving from Japan to China. To underscore its importance, it was written just after Ganjo Koan and Tenzo Kyokun, while he was quite busy establishing his monastery.

[17:50]

It's one of the few things that he wrote at that time. You might say it's foundational. Dogen introduces the metaphor of the pearl on the heels of describing sudden awakenings. There's a story of a monk who... went fishing as he did every day and had been doing for years, and the golden fish leapt into his boat. Another awakening is that he stubbed his dough. Dogen relates this story to us because he also appreciates not just these moments, but the deepening of vow and diligence that arises from them. There is in the telling of it a rolling together of both sudden awakening and a deepening maturity of cultivation. There's no gaining effort toward the pearl and no waiting for the pearl.

[18:55]

With no beginning, the whole universe leaps out from being as the eternal present and it exists whether it is visible to us or not. Equanimity is in what we refer to as practice realization. Here I want to remind you about that expression of equanimity translated into the English language, but actually originating from two different words in Pali. I hear an echo in the Genjo Koan, to carry the self forward and illuminate myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and illuminate the self is awakening. Dogen expands on this in the bright pearl. They both are. And both, I mean, what is expressed here as delusion and awakening.

[20:01]

They both are the entire world in ten directions. And the entire world in ten directions is one bright pearl. And here's an explanation of what he means by that. The entire world of the Ten Directions means that you ceaselessly chase things and make them into the self. And you chase the self and make it into things. When emotions arise, wisdom is pushed aside. By seeing this as separation, teacher and student turn their heads and exchange their faces, unroll the great matter, and harmonize their understanding. Because you chase the self and make it into things, the entire world of the ten directions is ceaseless. Because you take initiative, you do more than distantly see the essential matter. This is the equanimity of practice realization. both chasing the self and taking initiative, are the entire world of the ten directions.

[21:05]

It's not a panoramic view so much as rolling off the pearl in equanimous feeling for all the weights and textures of life, rolling inside and outside of the entire universe. Um... emotions shift, the embodiment of our emotions is moving. They're not irrevocably residing within us, already determined facts of our lives. They exist outside of us as many scholars of the emotions are discovering in relationship, malleable and emergent. In the way that we move things from one place to another, the lightness of a dish towel or a 50-pound bag of sugar, our bodies move together in space with our feelings, heavy and light, in the midst of it all.

[22:10]

I also want to say that there's something compelling about this phrase, the entire world in ten directions is one bright pearl. a koan dialogue, and on either side of the phrase is a question. One question is, how should I understand this? You could put this to the left of the phrase, the entire world in ten directions is one bright pearl. The next question is, what do you do with your understanding? And this can be placed to the right of the phrase, the entire world in ten directions is one bright pearl, as though they are before and after. In the course of this dialogue, the teacher and the student swap places so that the teacher asks the question, but then the student turns around with the same question, and it revolves like that.

[23:24]

The first question has been and is seen as a question that is kind of separating. It's almost like the question, what is Buddha? It may be a real question, and it is a real question, and Dogen embraces it as a question, but it's also standing outside of Buddha to ask it. And so when Dogen is saying, by seeing this as separation, teacher and student turn their heads and exchange their faces, unroll the great matter and harmonize their understanding, the one bright pearl is rolling between understandings. This just keeps rolling and moving as practice realization, including everything. So I just wanted to share that that's very, very close to what Dogen is saying.

[24:31]

Dogen extends the metaphor of the pearl further with the statement that it is binding the self without a rope. He writes, mind is walls, tiles, and pebbles put together before the Zhiantong era and taken apart after the Zhiantong era. splattered with mud and soaking wet. Binding the self with no rope, mind has the power to attract a pearl and the ability to be a pearl in water. Some days the pearl is melted, sometimes it is crushed. There are times when the pearl is reduced to a very fine powder. The crushing of the pearl is a way, it's not a violence. It's a way of expressing the completeness of mind and unity with feeling as realized equanimity, a profound fulfillment and satisfaction with all that is.

[25:35]

It is the pearl all the way through. When I say that realized equanimity is a profound fulfillment and satisfaction with all that is, I don't mean for that statement to be taken such that anything goes. For example, as Dogen states it, the one bright pearl cannot be owned. True mind is not personal. It can't be taken out and shown like jewelry. It can and should be given to a friend. As explained earlier from the Theravadan tradition, Emily McRae explains that Buddhist equanimity is not a view but a feeling. It's no different in this sense than the other three Brahma Faharas of love, compassion, and sympathetic joy. She further says that the equanimity of the panoramic view is simply taken up, whereas the equanimity of spacious disposition is cultivated and transformative.

[26:43]

This has to do with moral concern. In the former manifestation of impartiality, that of the panoramic view, the effort is in widening moral concern from the center, and in the latter, moral concern grows in relationship. It's this more dynamic functioning that's how I understand Dogen's rolling of the pearl. It even includes the panoramic view, and it is still binding the self without a rope, because in Buddhism, it is practice. Fundamentally, equanimity is the genjo koan of our desires and versions. For those of us who feel we are groping our way through this, and at various times, this is every single one of us, there are instructions that are as simple as following the breath. Who here has received a simple instruction? to place their awareness on what is pleasurable, neutral, or painful.

[27:46]

Imagine a process not unlike the kitchen practice described earlier, as though in the first few days of burns and cuts there is a pain in the knee and an ache in the wrist. Soon enough, however, the discernment becomes more subtle, And there is so much space, even an enjoyment in all that is happening at once. Equanimous awareness and feeling can become one sheer energy. I hope that you can see that this is not simply an aesthetic or a sport. There is teaching and purpose. When teacher and student are swapping faces, It is not necessarily two people, but our own experience as the rolling pearl. A question that is posed in One Bright Pearl is this. What do you do with your understanding?

[28:51]

Are you willing to let go of standing in the midst of your own panoramic view, populating the scenery with plenty of context and sound explanations? Can you live without shutting off feeling or being pulled by emotions and learn to cultivate a generative wholesomeness in your emotional life in the balance of equanimity? Can you take the initiative and explore with others your own biases and have the courage to face the harm you have caused? Do you express moral concern as an effort of your own making? Or does this moral concern come from understanding that while it is your agency, mind is not even yours? Remember that the pearl cannot be taken out and shown. It can only be given to a friend. This is peace.

[29:52]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[30:32]

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