This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Welcome, living beings. How many people are here for the first time? Please raise your hand. Welcome, first time here, people. I see some quite young people sitting up close here. Welcome, young people. I hope this isn't irrelevant to you, what I will be saying.

[01:03]

For a long time I've been listening. And I've been calling. And for a long time I've been listened to and called to. And now I'm listening. And now I'm calling. I'm listening and I'm observing with eyes of compassion and ears of compassion. And I'm calling for compassion now. I assert that all of us are calling for compassion and have been for a long time.

[02:38]

And we will continue to call for compassion. And all of us are being called for compassion. was called to give a talk here this morning and I heard it and here I am. I was called to give a talk and maybe offer some words, which I'm doing. Just a moment ago we recited a set of four vows and the fourth vow is I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Tathagata is one of the names for Buddha.

[03:42]

It means the one who has come from the way things are, the one who has come from truth. And this one who has come from truth offers us words. but that the truth of the Tathagata's words are beyond the Tathagata's words. The truth of the Buddha's teaching is beyond words. And the Buddhas offer words to help us realize the truth, which is beyond all words, even beyond the Buddha's words. But the Buddha's words are fundamentally, essentially offered to help us realize a truth that words don't reach.

[04:49]

Realize our life, which is beyond anything we could say about it. But living beings, like humans, we have various dimensions of mind. And one of the dimensions of our mind is called consciousness, or I call consciousness, which is the mind where I seem to be here. So I have an awareness that I'm here talking to you. This is my conscious mind. but I also have an unconscious mind, an unconscious cognitive process, and I'm not there. And that unconscious cognitive process is the support of the one where I'm here. And the Buddha teaches that I have another mind in addition to my conscious mind, where I am, and my unconscious mind, where I am not, but...

[06:01]

where my life is there too I have another mind which I have the mind of the Buddha all of us have a conscious mind an unconscious mind and a Buddha wisdom mind we have a Buddha we fully possess the Buddha wisdom mind and this mind is beyond words However, because of our conscious mind where we have words and we use them sometimes in a misconceived way and we are attached to them, we have trouble realizing our Buddha wisdom mind. So the Buddhas offer us words to help us drop off our misconceptions and attachments so we can realize the Buddha mind, the Buddha wisdom we already possess.

[07:08]

Fully. The Buddha mind pervades all aspects of our life and it also deigns to be converted into words for our consciousness because the currency of consciousness. The currency of consciousness is words. And it's possible in consciousness to have a conversation in words which will release us from our attachment to our misconceptions. So, again, in Buddhism in general and in Zen practice in particular, we offer words to realize the truth of the Buddhist teaching, which is beyond words.

[08:19]

And, yeah, and for example, we say, when you're tired, rest. When you're hungry, eat. Those are some words to realize the truth beyond those words. We also sometimes say in the Zen tradition, first, clean the temple. then sit. And then, we usually stop there. We say, first clean the temple, and then sit. But it goes on, right?

[09:21]

First clean the temple, then sit, then clean the temple, then sit, then clean the temple, then sit. it's hard to know which comes first, the sitting or the cleaning. So we get up in the morning and some of us come and sit here, and then afterwards we clean, and then afterwards we sit, and then afterwards we clean. And cleaning the temple could also include... repairing broken plumbing, fixing electrical outs, and so on.

[10:25]

Taking care of whatever you need to take care of so you dare to sit still. Like if you're going to leave your house, maybe just check to make sure you turned off the stove. That's kind of like cleaning the house. So when you go to the meditation hall, you can sit there. You don't have to worry about, did I turn the stove off? Also, you might say to your spouse, I'm going to meditation now. Is that okay? Your spouse might say, mm-hmm. But if you walk out without telling your spouse, you might have trouble sitting because, oh, I didn't tell her where I was going. Communication, conversation... is cleaning the Zen temple. Cleaning the Zen temple involves conversation with humans, with animals, like ants, cockroaches, rats, gophers, cats, and so on.

[11:43]

Cleaning involves conversation. with dirt, with brooms, with gravity, and so on. We need to converse with the world in order to realize support to just sit. We are supported to just sit, to be still. But if we don't practice, us what enacting the support we may not feel it and we may have difficulty settling into where we are now for the last couple years we've had various forms of temple cleaning which we hadn't done for a long time so I think last summer maybe

[12:50]

or anyway, last year I think it was, a person came whose work is to help people understand what it is to be a transgender person. And this person told us that they like to be called they. They request to be called they. So they asked us to call them they. And we... And we were trying to learn that with their help. So they may have looked like a him or a her, but they told us that they don't really feel that they are a him or a her. And they request, would you please call me they? And so we're trying to learn to call them they. This is a housecleaning activity. And this housecleaning happens through using conversation, using words to realize a conversation, right?

[14:05]

And this conversation can help us realize another conversation, which is beyond words. The Buddha Dharma is a conversation beyond words. that can come into words and then we can exercise conversation with those words to realize the conversation from which these words came. So the Buddha, which is a conversation, the Buddha is a conversation which gives us words that we can use to realize the Buddha conversation by having conversation, for example, learning how to say they for people who want to be called they. And now we also have a conversation about racial conditioning. We have a conversation about white privilege.

[15:14]

And we have a conversation about the harmfulness of white privilege, and especially the harmfulness of not having a conversation about it. And having a conversation about it, for white people to talk about white privilege, having a conversation about that has the potential to protect beings from the harm of not talking about white privilege, of not being aware of it. But it's hard to have the conversation sometimes. It's sometimes painful to become aware of white privilege and to talk about it and to take care of the pain around it. Conversations are sometimes painful. And then there's a teaching about how to practice with the pain that happens in conversation.

[16:20]

The potential of the conversation, however, is great beyond great. The potential of conversation is to realize peace and ease and freedom, which is beyond the conversation. We're also having a conversation about how to use power in a beneficial way. That's also potentially uncomfortable conversation. So we have various kinds of conversations going on in the temple which are part of our temple cleaning so that we can sit. And if we can sit because we cleaned the temple enough to be able to sit, The sitting helps us clean.

[17:26]

The sitting gives us the courage and the relaxation and the calm to have more conversation. And the conversation helps the sitting. So we go back and forth in Zen between sitting and conversation. Between just sitting and letting our body and letting ourselves sit where we are and feel what we're feeling and think what we're thinking, completely settling here, and then we go and have a conversation, traditionally with the teacher. We go meet the teacher. And we, the Chinese character is, we listen to the Dharma, and we ask about the Dharma. The Chinese character for this conversation is using a character which means to ask and to listen.

[18:30]

So we go meet the teacher, and we ask the teacher about the Dharma, and the teacher asks us about the Dharma. And we listen to the teacher's Dharma, and the teacher listens to our Dharma. We have a conversation about... about truth. That's also part of temple cleaning, which will allow us to sit. And the sitting will allow us to have a wholehearted conversation. All of this takes us to the conversation which is Buddha, which is going on right now. But unless we're fully engaged in our verbal conversation with each other, we might be attached to some words, and because we're attached to some words, we don't realize that we fully possess the Buddha's wisdom, the Buddha conversation.

[19:42]

And again, the Buddha conversation is you're meeting someone face to face and you're listening to them. If they're quiet, you're listening. If they're talking, you're listening. And they're listening to you. When you're quiet, they're listening to you. They know you're quiet. They know. And if you're talking, they're listening to you. Also, we're asking about the truth. And we're being asked about the truth. And that conversation, which will take us

[21:25]

to the fundamental conversation of our life, which is Buddha, the fundamental conversation of our life, which is with everybody and everybody with us. That conversation allows us to sit and sitting helps us understand the conversation. Without the sitting, we will not be able to fully participate in the conversation. And without the conversation, we will not be able to fully sit. The conversation shows us what the sitting really is. And the sitting shows us that the conversation is really sitting. conversation shows us that we're always calling to each other and always listening to each other.

[22:37]

Or I should say, in the conversation we can realize that. And that conversation will help us realize that when we're sitting, we're also in conversation. Most sin students... recent history anyway when they're sitting still and silent if you would say if I would suggest to them you're in a conversation they would say no I'm not I'm just sitting here by myself I'm not talking to anybody I'm not listening to anybody I'm not calling to anybody so I'm saying that when we're sitting and when we're walking I'm saying all day long we're in conversation but again we can't see it because we have some idea of what a conversation is And we're attached to that idea, and because we're attached to some idea of a conversation, we miss some of the conversations. We need a conversation to tell us, give up your idea of what a conversation is, so that when you're sitting where there's no other people around, and you're still and silent, you understand, you will realize, in some way even...

[23:59]

equally or almost like more profoundly, you realize what conversation is when you realize it when nobody's around. Because the real conversation is not, is beyond the words. But we need these words to help us be open to the conversation beyond the words which is going on when you're sitting and nobody's talking. There's still a conversation. So back and forth we go between sitting and cleaning or between sitting and conversation about the Dharma. Between sitting and listening and calling and sitting and being listened to and being called to. Again, I started by saying, I'm calling to you and maybe, I don't know, maybe nobody disagreed with me.

[25:03]

Yeah, he's calling to us. Is that okay? I said I'm calling to you. Can you believe that? I'm calling to you. Can you believe I'm listening to you when you're not talking? The hard part is for me when I tell you that you called me. But I'm saying that to you. You called me. You called me here. And you're calling me now. And somebody's knitting her brow right now like, and I don't know if that means I don't understand you or like, that's so true. That's so true, man. I am totally calling you. How did you know I was calling you? I know because Buddha told me. Buddha told me everybody's calling me. Even the people who think, I'm not calling you, get away from me. So you're listening to me, you're calling to me, I'm listening to you, I'm calling you.

[26:05]

This is the conversation which is beyond these words that I'm throwing out here now. This conversation is, I would say, non-stop, uninterrupted, inconceivable, The nonstop conversation is inconceivable. And, yeah, it's our actual life. No, it's, yeah, maybe that's enough and maybe not. I said that really quietly. Do people on back hear that? In the back, I said, maybe that's enough and maybe not. I'm sensitive to the people who are under 10 that are here.

[27:22]

They're being very patient with the help of their mothers. And I... Maybe that's enough for them. How are you guys doing? Kind of boring? So I really shouldn't bring up another big topic. But I really shouldn't. But maybe I will. But not talk about it. I'll just tell you about it.

[28:26]

Some of the words of the Buddha are like this. There's kind of like two kinds of children. One of the ones who are like under 18 years old. That's one kind of children. I know this young man who calls me granddaddy, and he's bigger than me in a way, quite a bit taller than me. He calls me granddaddy, and now he's 18. But when he was 17, he was still officially, legally a child. And I still call him my little boy, my boy. But he's a big boy now. So one definition of child is under 18 years old. But another definition of child is everybody who's not yet a Buddha. Which is us. We're Buddha's children. We're learning how to realize Buddhahood. So, children, it's funny, you know, children, especially Buddha's children, they're kind of like looking for Buddha all the time.

[29:53]

Where's my Buddha? Where's my Buddha mommy? Where's my Buddha daddy? They're looking for Buddha all the time. Yeah. Which is good. They're looking for Buddha, and Buddha is a conversation, right? It's a conversation between you and everybody in the universe. And everybody in the universe and you. That conversation is Buddha. And that conversation is true purity. It is true bliss. It is true permanence. And it is true self. The true self of our life is that we are a conversation and we are in conversation with all other beings who are in conversation.

[30:54]

That's Buddha. That's our true self. And so, children, we're looking for our true self. We're looking for our true permanence of our life. We're looking for this conversation. We're looking for the joy of this conversation, which is beyond words. We're looking for the purity of this conversation. But because we're children, sometimes we're a little impatient. We so much want to meet the reality of our life, dash Buddha, that we sometimes, in our impatience and our immaturity, look for permanence where it's not. We look for self where it's not. We look for purity where it's not. We look for joy where it's not. And there's a, you know, and there's a, what do you call it?

[32:07]

And there's a traditional name for this particular setup of these four kinds of searchings. They're also called four views, four upside-down views, four vipayasas. They're called upside-down views or upside... They're four inversions of looking for something where it's not to be found, asking something where it's not to be given. And of course, looking for things, whether or not to be found. So one meaning of inversion or upside down is that we're turning things around. Another meaning of it is that this way of looking in the wrong place over and over is it overturns our inner peace. It disturbs us. It agitates us. It's stressful to be looking, for example, for permanence.

[33:10]

in a human being. Or to look for a self in a human being. This is the wrong place to look. But, again, we're kind of in a hurry to find this, so we don't want to go through the long process of, what is it, giving up our misconceptions and attachments and then having this thing we've been looking for revealed to us. So there's an antidote for this tendency to look in the wrong place for the Buddha.

[34:14]

There's an antidote for looking for permanence in things that aren't permanent and looking for self in things that aren't self. There's antidotes for that. And those antidotes are what some people think of as Buddha's teachings. And the antidotes are, for looking in the wrong place for permanence, the antidote is the teaching of impermanence. For looking for purity in the wrong place, the teaching is impurity. For looking for self in the wrong place, the teaching is not-self. And for looking for bliss in the wrong place, the teaching is suffering. So those teachings are given to antidote these inverted views. However, when you really get into these teachings, so much so that they become an antidote, I'm sorry to say, you get attached to them.

[35:36]

So they aren't the true meaning of our life. They're antidotes to the inversion of our life. And they were given by the Buddha. So we've got, as children, we naturally have these, we slip into these inverted views and then we have these teachings which come to antidote them. But if you just apply them a little, they don't work. When you're applying them a lot, you start attaching to them because they work really well to free you from this upside-down way of living. So then another teaching comes, which is a remedy for the antidotes, which is, you know, the actual Buddha. So that's maybe enough for this morning, right? And I will talk more about the inverted views, the antidotes, and the remedies for attachment to the antidotes.

[36:48]

The antidotes are fine if you don't attach to them, but in fact, when you really get into them, usually you do attach to them because they work so nicely. Again, you know, the Buddha definitely taught impermanence, and impermanence is really a good practice But it's more something to protect yourself from being intoxicated. It's a protection against intoxication. It's not the final teaching. It's just a protection against intoxication so that you don't act unskillfully when you're intoxicated. So the Buddha recommends realize that your life is subject to being lost. Realize that your health is subject to being lost. Realize that your youth or youth is subject to, not just yours, but other people's youth is subject to be lost. Like we have these youths in here and their moms should probably, and their dad should realize they're not always going to be young.

[37:53]

My daughter one time, when her baby was about two, she was saying, where's that little baby? Where's that one-year-old? And then... Where's that two-year-old? Where's that three-year-old? All these little babies, they go away. If you don't remember that, then you get intoxicated by youth. You get intoxicated by health. You get intoxicated by life. Life's not the problem. It's like getting intoxicated by it. And then when you're intoxicated, you think you can do anything, right? You know, I'm indestructible. My health is indestructible, how great, I can like, you know, I can go really fast in this car, and it'll be just fine. Because I'm intoxicated, I think that. Rather than, this is like a very fragile situation.

[38:55]

I'm on the road now, but this is, you know, this is fragile, I have to be careful. So the teaching of impermanence is very helpful. It's so helpful that people sometimes get attached to it. Most of us have not got that far yet. But some people are really good at remembering impermanence and they're really sober and really careful. They're sometimes attached to the teaching. And they're even attached to sometimes their sobriety. So we need to bring other teachings so you can be sober and not attached to it. You can be careful and not attached to it. You can be mindful and not attached to it. So then we bring in the teaching about the thing we're actually yearning for, the actual complete perfect enlightenment that we're all wanting and we're just struggling with how to realize it.

[40:00]

And these three fours, looking for good stuff where it isn't, antidotes to that and the good stuff, which is the remedy for attaching to the antidotes for looking in the wrong place. Okay? And thank you, it's really great, young people, for making it through this. You know, sometimes when we have all these difficulties with power abuse and sexual harassment and injustice and environmental harm, all these difficulties we're having, all these house-cleaning problems we're having with this world, we sometimes might forget that we still have to rest. For example, we still have to soothe children so they can sleep at night.

[41:04]

We're not going to be able to do the house-cleaning and do the practice that if we don't also soothe each other and rest so we can do the hard work of facing all these housecleaning problems throughout the world. But we do need that. And there's a song which is good to sing in summer. And the original text is, So hush, little baby. Don't you cry. But I've changed that word. May I, Mr. Gershwin? I changed it from hush, little baby, don't you cry to rest, little baby, even while you cry. Okay? Rest, little baby, even while you cry. Ready?

[42:06]

Ready? Are you ready? It's summer, right? And pretty soon it won't be. So now's the time. Summertime and the living is easy. Fish are jumping and the cotton is high. Your daddy's rich and your mama's good looking. So rest, little baby, even while you cry. One of these mornings you're going to rise up singing.

[43:12]

You're gonna spread your wings. And you'll take to the sky. Until that morning. There ain't nothing can harm you. With daddy and mammy. standing by. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[44:17]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[44:20]

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