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. Fundamental Dharma. Okay. Now you are enlightened. All right. Is that better? Okay. Very good. Well, good morning and welcome, everybody. How many people are here for the first time? A few people? Yeah. Well, great. Well, welcome. So some odd years ago, I walked through those doors. I won't say how long, but I did have color in my hair at that time. So it was a few days ago. And I had no idea what this whole enterprise was going to be about, you know. I was a little afraid what's going to be asked of me.

[01:01]

Who are all these crazy people dressed up in robes? Now I get to be a crazy person dressed up in robes. It's wonderful. But my life has not been the same. And that's really, really good news. Really good news. I want to talk a little bit about that this morning. I want to... Also, thank Zen Center for inviting me to come and to speak. I have a deep heart connection with this practice center, and it's so generous in all of its many offerings. And it's wonderful, although I practice in a different setting now, out of my home temple and with a smaller sangha, it's really lovely to be here, to be with everybody. So... I'd like everyone just to take a moment, take a breath, maybe close your eyes, and just reflect on why is it that you are here?

[02:04]

Why are you here this morning? What has brought you here? Bless you. And just hold that. Hold on to that information, emotional response, an idea, a flash, whatever has arisen for you. Just hold on to that. And I'll return to that in a little bit. So, God bless Netflix, right? I was on a, taking a series of planes on a fairly long journey for vacation a couple weeks ago. And I downloaded a series, maybe some of you know of it, called This Woman Who's British, Bettany Somebody. Apologies, Bettany Somebody, since I'm about to rip you off. It has a couple of series and one of them that I was listening to was called Geniuses of the Ancient World.

[03:12]

And in it she talks about kind of the interesting and probably not coincidental arising within like 150 or so years of each other of Socrates and Confucius and Buddha. And kind of interesting in terms of backgrounds that were going on and kind of similarities of messages. But as she talked about Buddha, and contextualized what the Buddha did during that particular time in history and how he was offering something so radically different from what was the main offering of the time with Brahmanism, I started to think about how incredibly radical this practice is from its inception all the way to this moment. So if you think about Brahmanism, and I know a little bit more now, having listened to this particular Netflix, but the whole idea at that time was it was the Brahman priests who were the intermediaries for us humans in between us and the gods.

[04:27]

This is not something that we could do ourselves or could have any responsibility for ourselves. And what the Buddha did is he came along and he said, no, you actually can do this yourself. Not only can you do this yourself, the only way that you're going to enjoy the benefits and the fruit of what I'm offering is if you do it yourself. In my mind, there's kind of this equivalency between Buddha in that sense and Luther during Catholicism, right? Coming in and also saying by translating, having the Bibles translated into the languages of the time, here, you can have this message yourself. You can access this practice yourself. you don't need these priests. Not that there's anything wrong with priests, mind you. I have a vested interest in saying that. But there is more accessibility in this practice. We don't have to rely on others. We can do this and must do this ourselves.

[05:29]

Let me take my watch off, make sure I keep track of time here. So I appreciated thinking about how radical this must have seemed to the people. in Buddha's time. And as I said, it got me thinking about how radical so many aspects of this particular practice are. I just wanted to kind of go through some of those and share what thoughts came up for me with you. So if you think about the first metaphor of Buddha or the first historical incident is here's this guy and he's got the life. He's living in a palace. He's got this father who's trying to protect him from any potential harm whatsoever. He's got any food that he wants. He's got any sensual desires or pleasures fulfilled that he wants. He goes from this palace to that palace to whatever palace, all carried by other people in these little seated caravans with the shades pulled down so that all he ever sees are these beautiful things that have...

[06:39]

that are just the result of the great effort of his father. And that's not enough for him, right? So he jumps the palace walls, and he goes out into the streets of life, and what does he discover? Well, first he discovers sickness, which is just shocking and appalling to him, and then he discovers old age, and then he discovers death. And these things get him really thinking about suffering in a way he had never thought about or ever been exposed to before. And it really got in under his skin. And it started him on a journey of continuing to, in a more definitive way, jump those palace walls and go off in search of what is suffering? What are the causes of suffering and how do we transform suffering? Now, juxtapose that to how most of us are inclined.

[07:43]

It's like, how can I jump those palace walls to get on the inside, right? How can I find a way in which all of my sensory desires are taken care of? How can I possibly find a way in which I'm only looking at and exposed to and seeing beautiful things and am completely protected from all that stuff in the street, that sickness, that old age, that death and dying? This is radical, right? This is very, very radical behavior. This first invitation of Buddha to say, hey, let's jump those palace walls. Let's get into the streets with all of this. So he then also took us on another radical journey, which is to really look at the suffering, to look deeply into the suffering, to look at the dharma of suffering of why it is and how it is that we have ordinary suffering of sickness, old age, and death, how we have the suffering of the fact that life changes, how we have the suffering of all things being conditioned.

[08:52]

And he points the way and he says, look there. When, again, all we want to do is look away. Show me the pretty pictures. Show me the path so that I can get out of all of this suffering. I can lop it off. And he's saying, pay attention. Look at it. And then the next radical thing that he does is he offers us a solution, if you will, the medicine for how it is that we expose ourselves to the suffering, the suffering of the world, the suffering of ourselves. And yet we do so in a way that we can transform that suffering. We can coexist with that suffering in a bigger way. And this, of course, is the the four noble truths, right? The fact that there is suffering, the fact that there are these causes of suffering. But hey, the very, very good news, the third noble truth, there's cessation of suffering. And then he articulates the Eightfold Noble Path as that vehicle, that path we want to travel if we want to transform our suffering.

[10:04]

So this is this whole approach, you know, just the beginnings of the story about Buddha and his actions, so radically opposed to how it is that most of us are raised, how we live our lives, and how the larger world just manifests its energy to try and direct us in different directions. Just think about the context of your own lives. You know, whether it is most of you probably work. Very few bosses say, hey, let's take a moment to look at the causes of your suffering. But more likely they'll say, hey, I don't care if it's the weekend. I need that report by Monday. Right? And there is the whole overlay of the suffering to feel okay in this very dynamic, very, very dynamic world where it is, everything around us is so highly habituated in a certain energetic way to propel us to actually get things

[11:33]

become things in order to ameliorate the feelings of alienation, in order to expand the feelings that we're okay in this particular world where there's sickness, old age, and death. So what Buddha is asking us to do is really radical. And it starts by first turning toward our suffering. as opposed to turning away. You know, when I have suffering of big sorts, my first response is often, oh no. No, it's not like, oh yes, more suffering. More truth, more dharma. Oh no. And I think we then embark on a series of strategies, whatever the of suffering or whatever the intensity, the volume of that suffering, to kind of cut it off, right?

[12:36]

To suppress it, to push it down, to whack it off wholesale. But that becomes an exercise in Dharma whack-a-mole, right? You pound it down there and lo and behold, it'll pop up right back here. So Zen, and particularly Zen, now offers us another radical Invitation. Amid all of this suffering, this genuine suffering that we are trying to transform, the suffering of ours, the suffering of other people, the suffering of the broader communal world, the shared spiritual ecology that's not always skillful. I hope I'm not the first person to tell you that. You know, what do we do? And Zen says, sit down. Just sit. Sit still. Bless you, Craig.

[13:39]

Just sit still and let the waters, our internal waters of our ideas, our emotions, our habit energies, settle down. As best we can, let the external waters of the world, of the people around us, just settle down. And in that settling, there is the offering of, potentially, of clarity. To just sit still when we are faced with challenging circumstances is an unbelievably radical response. And yet it is perhaps the most wholesome, wholehearted response I know to life. our habit energy wants us to immediately get into some sort of action, right? And usually that action without reflection can often be unskillful and therefore harmful to us and to others.

[14:44]

And then we're just adding gas to the fire. But our practice says, just sit, just try and settle into what's going on. Sit still, let the waters settle down, let there be some clarity. and let there be some space. And in the stillness of sitting, this acquired habit of zazen, incredible things start to happen. Again, more radical things start to happen. For me, the first thing that I learned was that I just could stay. Again, a radical solution. Your life is in turmoil. Things are not looking so well. You don't have enough money to pay the rent. Your job's on the line. Your girlfriend, boyfriend's about to break up with you or you're about to break up with him or her. And what we do is we just sit and we try and stay.

[15:50]

Before I came to practice, my reaction would have been to just try and get away from that suffering, right? And how much time do we all spend creating these incredibly elaborate, so interesting strategies, right, to get away from our suffering, whatever the nature of it. Okay, too many people are sneezing for me to keep saying God bless you. Just say, don't take it personally. What do we do? We go, we get a job. Right? We get a job and we try and get a title. And we try to get all the acclaim that we possibly can. Or we go after material objects. We get that great, super new Tesla. Not only is it cool, but it's an environmentally safe product to have and to own and be affiliated with. Or we gather that money, right, for our 401ks or our savings or whatever. These are all the endless sorts of strategies that we engage in to try and mitigate against our suffering.

[16:58]

And Zen and Buddhism just says, sit down, just try and stay with it first and foremost. And after we do, and do this for a period of time, we start to cultivate another radical purpose. which is the capacity to actually be with things. Things as they really are. Life on life's terms. Right? Not how I want life to be, not how I want you to be, not how I want me to be, but just to be with how life really is. This is the beginning of cultivating what we call samadhi, the ability to have concentrated absorptiveness, to start to be connected with the moments of our lives. My teacher defined it as having continuous contact with your life under all circumstances at all times.

[18:02]

And then just by continuing to sit, continuing to practice zazen, and I should say, you know, zazen is not just seated meditation. and is also hopefully comes with us when we stand up, when we walk, when we lay down. But we start to cultivate meditative equipose. Joko Beck, who those of you who don't know, was one of the early doyons of the Dharma in this Soto Zen lineage, has a wonderful book to this day. I think it's greatly beneficial every day. And in defining Zazen, she says, what Zazen is, is it's space. Simply space. The ability, the experience of just being able to take a breath, to settle in and to stay with what's going on as opposed to immediately click into and flip the switch of strategies to make it other than.

[19:12]

And in this meditative equipose, several things accrue to us. First, there is this sense of what we call samatha, part of meditation, a certain facet of it, which is really all about cultivating calm abiding or restfulness. You know, this life of ours, this culture of ours is completely hijacked by busyness and acquisition. To varying degrees, we all participate in it, and that's okay, right? But the fact of the matter is that it's exhausting. It's not always in our best interest. We have to participate in it, but at the same time, we have to cultivate the ability to demonstrate self-care, to really take care of this life of ours. And this engaging in samatha, meditation as restfulness,

[20:14]

Repose is an excellent, excellent start. And then the other thing that zazen allows us to do is it starts to give us a feeling of what we call upeka or equanimity. So while all the waters of life in the world are churned up, we have perhaps the opportunity to experience something else, which is this incredible sense of equanimity under all circumstances and the accompanying stability that comes with it. So, you know, the world is veering off and going this way and our Zen practice and Buddhist practice is saying, fear this way. Stay with it. Settle into it. Be with it as it is. Got a big problem facing you? Major situation? Can't figure out? Do nothing. Just sit down and do nothing.

[21:16]

Not forever, but for an initial period of time. So then, the other thing that we have the opportunity to be exposed to while we are engaging in this radical practice of zazen is that we put ourselves in the way of the opportunity to perhaps get a glimpse of that which is beneath all of this and which is also the glue which binds all of this. And I'm referring to what could be called, in a way, the absolute or could be called getting in touch with our Buddha nature. So when I asked you to reflect on why you were here, That's what I was kind of hoping might happen, is that something would arise in the space of stillness and sangha, being here with our combined intentions of wanting to understand a different way of being in this world.

[22:29]

And what arose for you, possibly, it might have been a response like, oh God, get me out of here, but perhaps not. And perhaps it was a sense of there's just a feeling that there's something here that offers an option to how I normally comport myself in this world of ours, how I normally feel and experience my life in this larger shared life, right? And that experience, that little glimmer, that flash, is what we call bodhicitta, And we all have it. We all have it in vast quantities. What we don't have in vast quantities is access to it on a 24-7 sort of basis. But that's why we practice. And this bodhicitta is the heart and mind that wants to be awake. The heart and mind that when you go out and you travel muni and there are all kinds of objectionable things

[23:36]

smelly people or loud people, when you go to your office settings and you have to deal with that blah, blah, blah, damn boss, when you look at your checkbook and you don't, well, that's a dated example, when you look at your Apple wallet and you don't have the money to transfer for the rent or your credit card, and the feeling of just being imprisoned in the causes and conditions of your life and you just feel buried in Bodhicitta is the opposite of that. Bodhicitta is this mind that wants to wake up and experience our lives in a very, very different fashion. And I know that all of you have the potential, have that bodhicitta, and I hope that maybe that's some of what you experienced today in that moment, this wanting to be awake. So... We're trying to wake up in this very dynamic, complex, fast-paced world, and it's not an easy enterprise.

[24:48]

All of these strategies and ideas we have about how we have to live to avoid suffering, to ameliorate the suffering of our lives, are so finely woven in to our consciousness that we don't even realize that we have a choice. Well, of course I have to work this weekend and get that report done, right? Of course I have to work really hard to get that next job promotion. Whatever the strategy is, we don't even realize that that's just a thread that we can pull out and start to rework the fabric of our lives. So... The Buddha talked in a very particular way about this type of suffering, this type of strategizing that we have. And in the Pali, it's called bhavatana. And of course, tana is often referred to in general as suffering.

[25:52]

It's this thirst, right? This thirst that can't be quenched, the thirst of suffering, the fire of our desires. But this particular type of suffering is the suffering that comes from just wanting to become, to become other than what we are. And there's a wonderful article that I was reading that actually got me thinking about this whole series of reflections that I'm sharing with you this morning that comes from the Fall 2016 Tricycle Magazine, and the author is Christina Feldman. And what she says about this type of suffering is this craving to become, this strategy that somehow by becoming other than what we are, we can ameliorate our suffering. This craving to become, that's not the one that I wanted. Ah, here we are.

[26:55]

Yet there are also desires that aren't so noble. There are insatiable appetites that create stress. One of the subtlest of these desires is called bhavatana, which may be translated as the craving to become. This is the endless desire to become the kind of person who only has pleasant experiences, who is admired and applauded and loved, It is a desire to become the kind of person who is secure and safe, a person without blemish or imperfection, a person who never fails, who's never criticized, never judged, way deep inside those palace walls that daddy put up. Not my dad, but anyway. Often we are barely aware of how powerful and compulsive this craving to become is the desire to which it organizes our world, our relationships, our choices.

[27:59]

It makes us really busy. In order to become this person, we have to engage in many activities and rearrange the conditions of our lives. The pursuit of this desire is equated with success. It is about finding an identity, which in turn is about worthiness. If I become a person who only has good meditations, who only gets positive feedback, who is successful and who manages to defend against the unpleasant, then I've reached a state of worthiness. I believe my life will be meaningful. I should say in all fairness that one can also have experienced the same desire, this desire, for becoming in a wholesome way. You know, I want to become a more wholehearted person. I want to be more skillful with my language. But usually we spend more time in kind of the unwholesome aspects of this.

[29:01]

And it is truly an imprisonment, right? I mean, think about the torture of your own ideas of wanting to or feeling like you need to become other than who you are, other than what you are. It's such a weight, it's such a burden, and we spend so much energy in pursuit of this activity. So not only do we spend energy in pursuit of this activity, but by virtue of being engaged in this very activity, we tend to lean forward. We lean away from what's happening right here, right now, this moment, this breath. if I'm in the process of becoming other than who I am, I'm just automatically stepping away. Make some sense to you? That relate to your own experiences, perhaps? And in so doing, we're separating ourselves. We're not only depriving ourselves of what is here, what is the true treasure of our lives, our direct experience, but we're separating ourselves.

[30:09]

from ourselves, from others, from the moment. And Buddhism says to us, the ointment for this particular type of suffering lies in just being, not leaning forward, not leaning back or to the side, but to the best of our abilities, just being here on top of the moment, in the moment. that settling into what really is, things just as they are. There's a psychological corollary to all of this, which I've found very interesting and kind of chewed on over the years. Are people familiar with a book that's getting to be somewhat old now, about 15 or so years, Going on Being by Mark Epstein, who's a psychologist and also a Zen practitioner? And this might be the first place that I was exposed to the child psychologist Winnicott.

[31:14]

And his teachings are actually, his findings, are very much in alignment with a lot of the Dharma. And what he says is that where Buddhism would say that we have this Buddha nature and this bodhicitta that wants us to wake up to our natures, our true natures, and to cultivate greater capacity to be that and to be with that. Winnicott describes it as, as a child, our initial pure inclination is just to be this uninterrupted flow of authentic self. Can you imagine such a life for yourself? to be an uninterrupted flow of authentic self. I just love the way it sounds, the invitation of it. One, to flow, to be so unconstricted, to not have the sharp right angles of my ideas and my feelings, but just to flow, breath to breath, moment to moment, with this authentic sense of self.

[32:28]

So it sounds wonderful and it sounds easy, but the reality of it all is that by the time you and I and others all arrive on the shores of adulthood and walk through doors like those or other doors that you've entered in search of some sort of a spiritual solution to your suffering, we're anything but an uninterrupted flow of authentic self. We have been redirected And in many ways, sometimes that flow has dried up or frozen. We've been born into the karmic crucible of other people's experience. How many people here had skillful parents? Very good. That's encouraging. Thank you. And in that early primal crucible, that's where we start. initially experiencing how we respond and how we stop our own uninterrupted flow of authentic self, our Buddha nature, right?

[33:36]

So when we get to the point where, for however many years we've been doing this, we are in pursuit of something that is more in the realm of liberation, of flow, of peace and ease, of really being able to be in the moments of our lives with that sense of space and equanimity. We've had a lot of other things to navigate. And so this process, this invitation of Buddhism, is really about not becoming other than what we are, not becoming less than what we are, but returning to our true home, to our true self, to be all that we fully can under all circumstances. And it sounds maybe unimaginable. And sometimes it is.

[34:40]

But over time, if we stay with whatever it is that you felt, and we continue to cultivate that, and grow the space for it to be watered and to be nourished and to be strengthened, then that is a reality that we can all experience and we can all share. And the interesting thing is that while all of this is going on, our lives don't really change. And our lives don't have to change. for us to experience more liberation, more relaxation, more peace and ease. Because we start to realize that it's not really about the content of our lives, it's not about the events of our lives, it's not about how good we look in our lives, but rather it's about how we are in our lives.

[35:48]

And this, again, is a really, really radical paradigm shift from how we live. You know, just constantly driven, trying to implement one successful strategy after another to make our lives better, to make ourselves better, to make ourselves more comfortable with life as it is. The change is in that pivot. Not that anything has to change externally, but internally. We change in terms of how we are in relation to life. So this is kind of the arc of our journey through practice. quite counterintuitive to the arc of our lives as we used to know it or still do know it.

[36:53]

And we try to become free of these unexamined tendencies that, again, keep us inclined towards something other than who we are, towards some place other than where we are, to some time other than right now. So Buddha described this tendency, as I mentioned, and Feldman goes on to talk a little bit more about it, and I want to share that with you. She says, this craving to become is an impulse that makes us lean forward, away from here, into a better moment, a better self. When we do so, we separate that idealized moment from the actuality, of what is just here. It's only when we learn to end the separation of the possible and the actual that we also learn to end this dichotomy between doing and being.

[37:59]

We learn to calmly abide in the body, in the mind, in the midst of reactivity. Calm abiding is a present tense phrase, a way of being, and nothing has to go away It's the shift from the object orientation to the seeing orientation. All of our likes and all of our dislikes, our wanting and not wanting, are born of this object orientation which limit us and which will always give us a sense of unease. In his book, Katagiri Roshi, In his book, Returning to Silence, Katagiri Roshi talks about this in another way. And he talks about how we all tend to live and approach our lives in kind of a before and after manner.

[39:03]

Before I was here, I was having breakfast. It was great. I didn't have to sit up straight. It was a better temperature. I liked my food. After I leave here, I'm going to get some great lunch, I'm going to be free of all this Zen stuff, I'm going to go down on five barrels and have a wonderful cup of coffee and enjoy the sun, whatever, right? And what's missing, before and after, what's missing is right here, right now, when you don't have to become or do anything, but just truly be, settle into life, life as it is. So... I do want to issue a cautionary note here in all of this, that as we think about all the ways in which we are engaged in this suffering of becoming, that we try to separate out and to be very mindful of the fact that this is not a process about becoming perfect.

[40:13]

Perfect, I think, is the enemy of almost everything I know. And yet I know so many people, myself included, that are continually flogged by it, right? Driven by it. I want to be perfect. I can do this better. I can do this more perfectly. The quest of perfection, it is its own suffering. I'm going to start a new group called Perfectionists Anonymous. You are all welcome. What I find so encouraging is our founder of Soto Zen, Dogen, says that in our practices and in our lives, it's not about perfection. He says the purpose is not about, it's not to look at things as though some things are inferior and others, some things are inferior and others are superior, but rather what's really important is that things are authentic. And if you reflect on your own life, as I do on mine, so often my suffering comes from the fact that I get caught up in something and I'm taken away from an experience of authenticity to really settle into all the moments of the life, settle into all the potential mind and emotional states of being, to be with life as it is.

[41:37]

I think that that's really what we're all thirsting for. It's not really trying to get rid of suffering or make ourselves perfect, but it's really just wanting to have an authentic connection with who we are, how we live, with life, with the world. And this is what practice offers, usually in a very gradual way. I think it was Suzuki Roshi who used to talk about, we hold hands and just... Keep walking further into the midst of enlightenment, waking up a little bit more, a little bit more. We don't have to do this perfectly. Most people don't do it perfectly. I find great relief in that, actually. And whatever, and even when it is imperfect, there's the opportunity to authentically be with that imperfection, right? To authentically be with things as they are. And I have never met anyone who has truly found any kind of solace in perfection.

[42:45]

I mean, think about your own perfectionistic tendencies or those of others that you might have the good fortune to experience. It's usually a pretty pernicious state. So the arc of our lives, the arc of this particular journey of practice is toward authenticity. about trying to allow, to access and allow that uninterrupted flow of self to go, just go on being. Well, as usual, I have more to say, and yet not the time. So I will stop there, but just a final kind of a segment to round this all off. This all is, like zazen, is simple and yet not easy. To be one's true self sounds simple but is not easy.

[43:49]

And we very much need to apply some effort to put ourselves in the way of opportunity to expand this capacity within ourselves to be who we truly are, who we truly want to be at the deepest level. And one of the ways in which we do this, a time-honored tradition in Buddhism, is to have practice periods. The Sangai practice with is actually starting a practice period tomorrow. But I do believe that there's one starting here at Zen Center in, what, about a week or so? Two weeks? Two weeks. You can get more information on it on the web. And it's a wonderful topic. It's the Harmony of Difference and Equality. beautiful to apply to oneself and to others. But it's just a terrific opportunity to come together, to be with wonderful teachers, to study the Dharma, to be with spiritual friends, to put yourself in that container where more and more you have an opportunity to feel and expand that feeling of that bodhicitta.

[44:55]

And so please, seriously consider doing this. None of this happens without our effort. We don't have those Brahmin priests to intercede on our behalf. We have to do this work ourselves. That's both the challenge as well as the joy of this. So thank you very kindly for your attention this morning. 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. 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.

[45:43]

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