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. Last time when I spoke here, I mentioned the craft of Zen, but I didn't ever really... say what I meant to say about it. So tonight I want to try to talk more directly about that, what I think of as the craft of Zen. And by craft I mean like the way, the actual way that you do something, like, you know, how you knit, which I don't really know how to do, but, you know, you have to do, you have to... Put your hands certain ways on the needles and then move them in certain ways. Or the actual way that you make bread.

[01:04]

You know, you knead it in a certain way. Or that you play a sport. The craft of doing that. How you can learn how to do something. And in Soto Zen, in particular, there are some parts of it that really are just like that. It's like... how you put your body to learn how to do it like one of the things is how we put our feet in service in the chanting and bowing service or even just if you don't come to service when we're standing in front of our seat before we sit down or after we stand up after zazen so the way that you put your feet is supposed to be like a fist width apart that they heal and Basically, your feet are straight, but they're not together, and they're not far apart, like that far apart. I think one of the reasons for things like that, for that particular detail of the craft of Zen, is to create a kind of balance and also to create an attitude, a certain attitude.

[02:23]

And that attitude... I was thinking the other day, you know, back when I was much, much younger and I was looking for my one true love. Did you used to do that? Or some of you are still doing that, you know? My one true love. And I used to think, I need someone who takes me seriously, but not too seriously. You know what I mean? Like someone who will... really pay attention to how I feel about things, what I think about things, but they won't take me too seriously. Like when I get in those petty, bad moods and I say, I hate you forever, then they shouldn't take me seriously at that point. They should know. Where's that point? Like totally seriously, right? Like you are the most important thing in the world. but not then, but you didn't mean that. So it's something like, I think one of the attitudes, if we want to call it that, in the craft of Zen is, how do we do that for ourselves?

[03:33]

How do we find that balance, that place, that maybe razor's edge of taking ourselves and all the parts of ourselves and all the things that make us ourselves, all the things that come to us, all the situations, all the people, all the emotions, the internal and external things that make us, how seriously should we take those? How real are they? How much should we feel like they're actually there? Or how much should we hold them very lightly, like they might be gone at any moment? What's that? And so I think working on finding the way to meet things, internal and external things, is kind of the essence of the craft of Zen.

[04:35]

And that's one way of thinking of it. Where's that place between deciding that some... Part of me or some situation is the way it is and is solid and needs to be dealt with in that way. Or so that's kind of falling over onto one side or falling over onto the other side where, you know, it's. I mean, one way to fall over on the other side is to fall into complete denial, like it's not happening, or I can just pretend like it's not happening, or I can repress it and make it at least look like it's not happening. So not going to either of those extremes, then how do we meet things in the appropriate way, with enough seriousness, enough reality, if we want to call it that. another way of describing this, it's kind of simplistic way, but in the first chant that we do in the morning, the Heart Sutra, we talk about form and emptiness, that form is emptiness and emptiness is form.

[06:00]

So this is another, it can get quite complex, but a simple, but accurate way of looking at it is basically all these things are form all my experiences my emotions my thoughts you every situation I find myself in are all form and those forms are all infused with emptiness which one way of describing is it's their their ability to for instance disappear in a minute Emotions are a very good place to study the emptiness of form because when they're there, they're so there. When we feel something, we really feel it, especially if it's a strong emotion or something like depression, where when we are depressed, when we're pretty depressed, it really does feel like life is not worth living, I'm really a terrible person,

[07:06]

nobody likes me, I hate myself. It feels like that. It feels like that's really true. And then it doesn't always happen this way. Sometimes it lasts for a long time. But at a certain point, it can be gone just like that. What makes that emotion, whatever has made it, sort of comes apart. Some crucial element is no longer there, and it can be gone completely. So... Again, how do we meet these things in the accurate way? One of my favorite quotes from Dogen is... Some of you have heard this a number of times. Long ago, a monk asked an old master, when hundreds, thousands, or myriads of objects... come all at once, what should be done? Maybe this sounds familiar.

[08:11]

When hundreds, thousands, myriads of objects come all at once. And I always think of this as things coming at us. Like if you work in the office here. Actually, if you work almost any place here. If you work in the shop, if you work in the cabins. In the dining room, things come, you know, many, many things come at once. But there also are those things that come from the inside. You know, when hundreds and thousands and myriads of feelings and thoughts come all at once, what should be done? The master replied, don't try to control them. What he means is that in whatever way objects come, do not try to change them. Whatever comes is Buddha Dharma, not objects at all. Realize that this is the truth. Even if you try to control what comes, it cannot be controlled. So this is one clue about the attitude of the craft of Zen.

[09:16]

Controlling, trying to control things, I think is a pretty deep human impulse. In fact, I think we feel like we should try to control things. That's sort of our job, is to control certain things, control ourself, control various other things that are put under our auspices, control our emotions, control our words. That's kind of our job. Now, this old Zen master is saying, don't try to control them. In fact, they can't be controlled. So again, what's that line? Don't try to control them does not mean ignore them. Because if we ignore them, strange things happen often. They seem to try to get our attention more. If we say, no, no, no, cannot look at you. They start tugging on our sleeve more. Like, pay attention to me. If you won't pay attention to me when I'm talking to you internally, I'll start doing things externally.

[10:25]

So where's that line between ignoring and controlling? And is it really safe not to control? Well, what the old Zen master says is, even if we try to control them, they can't be controlled. So this is part of this learning how to interact with internal and external objects is experiencing, allowing ourselves to experience how they actually are, their uncontrollableness. We often go around in a story that we've made up that we can control things or that we know what things are and can control them. But if we actually stop and look at them, one of the scary things that we often find out is they actually can't be controlled. Again, the internal, the external things.

[11:27]

I was talking with some old friends tonight whose children are just turning into teenagers. And it made me remember when my daughters turned into teenagers and how they taught me this. How I thought they should be controlled. Of course they should. Obviously they were considering doing dangerous things. Not to mention irritating things and tiring things. So controlling them, that's what I'd been trying to do all along. But as they got too big for me to pick up and carry and put where I wanted them to be, and as I realized this, like, oh, now we're standing nose to nose, and I've said do this, and she's saying no. or not even bothering to say no, and I have no way to make her do it. So what I told them was, okay, my rule for myself became, over time, when my daughters became teenagers, if I think that the answer to something should be no, I should say no.

[12:43]

I should say it firmly. And I should continue to say it firmly as long as I feel that's the right thing, you know, that that's the right answer until it becomes apparent that it's not going to work. And then I should retreat gracefully. So it took me a while to learn this. And, you know, I don't know if that was right in every situation, but it seemed right to me rather than coming to blows or drawing some line in the sand, which I was actually not willing to stand behind. You know, like, if you do that, you can't come back to this house. No, not really. And then I realized that they'd actually been teaching me this all the time. Since they were born, they were teaching me how out of control they were. That you get this little baby, and you try to figure out how to take care of it. And you figure out some little part of it, and then they change. But when they're little, it's cute. So you don't notice as much. You adapt.

[13:45]

You think, oh, look, they learned how to walk. Now I have to, like, chase them down the street. Okay, I can do that. But that same, that impulse to control, we're pretending, you know, like, oh, I'm still in control because if I stay close enough behind her and she starts to do something difficult, I'll pick her up. But really we're not, you know, we do our best to protect them, but still. We don't really, we don't know who they are. We don't know what the situation is. We don't know what's coming at us. So being in this stance of not knowing, not, well, what this old Zen master says about, they're not really objects at all, they're Buddha Dharma. I think that they are Buddha Dharma has several meanings. One goes back to they are infused with this ability to change.

[14:48]

They're not static. We're not static. Our emotions, our thoughts, our habits are not static. They're held together by various forces that might change at any point. And... They're something that we can learn from. Something that we can learn about the nature of reality, the nature of ourselves from. So the craft of Zen, as I see it, is very simple. It's take a stable posture. Sitting, standing, walking, or lying down. And try to be open to what's happening. It's as simple as that.

[15:50]

Sounds simple, right? Take a stable posture. So most of the time we don't think about this at all. We're just going about our lives. And if we do something like meditation, at least this kind of meditation, I think this kind of attitude... just kind of naturally becomes part of our habit of meeting things. So we tend to stand up straight and be there for what's happening. It's only when something starts to happen that we don't like or that we feel like should be controlled that we might notice this question, well, what am I supposed to do? What do I do with this? Then I would say take a stable posture, sitting, standing, walking, or lying down. And, you know, you might have some choice about which one of these postures that you take. Often you don't. Often you're just like in the middle of the kitchen and something happens and it's, you know, there's enough time to think, oh my gosh, how do I meet this?

[16:59]

And there's really not enough time or maybe you don't dare lie down. to be in a more stable posture, although sometimes that might be actually what's called for. Like, I need more stability for this. I'm just going to lie over here. Can somebody bring me a floor towel to lie on? Sometimes you might need to go back to your room and lie down to get stable enough. Or sometimes you might need to walk to actually spend more energy. In order to be stable and balanced, Sitting or standing might not be enough. You might need to use some of, there might be enough energy running through you that you need to walk at the same time that you're taking a stable posture. And then try to be open to what's happening externally and internally. And that's all. Just that. And then, I mean, of course, that's not all. Life is going on. You're doing things.

[18:02]

But with that attitude, life goes on in a Zen craft kind of way where we can come closer to meeting what's... actually there to be met instead of our idea of what it should be or our idea of what it is, whether it should be or maybe what it shouldn't be, but what we think it is. So there's more flexibility for it to change and us to change with it. So that's my feeling about the kind of condensation of this practice. When we When we either have the space to think, what should I do? Or when we're forced to think, what should I do? Take a stable posture and try to be open to what's happening. This sometimes is construed as passive.

[19:05]

I think it's not passive at all. In fact, I think there's no way for it to be passive. Not doing something, if we don't yell at the person, That's doing something. That's not yelling. And it also is out of control. It's like to just do that, to take a stable posture, be open to what's happening, means we don't have an idea of what that should look like. We don't know exactly what will happen. It's somewhat frightening, actually. But I recommend it. I think it's worth trying. So let me ask you if you have any questions. Thoughts. So. There's so many forms that we do. I wasn't you guys started out by mentioning.

[20:12]

Some of them. One of them. And I wasn't quite sure the connection between our forms, what we wear, how we chant, how we do gassho, how we walk, and this, I don't know, maybe availability for what's happening. Yeah. So I was wondering whether you... whether I see a connection, maybe, first of all. Yeah. You know, I do see it, like I said, with the feet on the floor, not together and not far apart. To me, that feels like a kind of stable posture. Or, you know, we put our hands in shashu and we put them about here. There's a kind of strength and stability to that.

[21:13]

So I feel that as... you know, doing it these years, I feel like it's developing this kind of availability or attitude or stability, capacity maybe. I don't really know if that's true. I mean, that's my sense of it. And we do a lot, as you said, a lot of forums. And do all of them do that? I don't know. You know, I've... In my experience of our Zen, I mean our Japanese teachers, the Japanese teachers who I've known, none of them talk like this. They wouldn't say something like this, as far as I know. Like if I said to them, is that what's happening? I haven't tried that, but my sense is they would say, just do it. Stop thinking about it this way. Or they wouldn't even bother to say that. They'd just say, just do it.

[22:15]

Just do it. And, you know, I really, I respect that. I think that's wonderful. And I can't help it. I think like this. And I think sometimes a lot of us think like this, not all of us. And I think sometimes it's helpful for us to talk like this because, I don't know why, maybe because we don't just do it enough to really make use of it as just a straight doing it, you know, like, in Japanese temples, so I've heard in, not temples, but monasteries, I think most of the young monks, not the people who've been there for a long time, but most of the young monks don't have any private space. Like they live in the zendo. So we don't do that. We could, and it might be really, really helpful for us. And then again, we might not be able to stand it. So we take this slightly more psychological, verbal route, which doesn't feel to me like the talking about it, like describing this attitude, does not feel to me like the main way that I've learned it.

[23:31]

It feels more like sometimes... Like there was one practice period where Reb was into saying, relax, relax. And that was very useful. It was like, oh, relax. That's one way to talk about this, is relax with things. And it was useful to hear that, but it felt like it was just describing something that was already sort of happening from doing this practice. Yeah, I realize now as you're talking, I think back at all of the years that I've had with teachers in training in forms, and I think of the closeness that that has afforded me with them. So it's almost like the forms and talking about the forms...

[24:34]

and being corrected on the forms. You know, it's like there's an intimacy with the person that you're relating to about it. Yeah. That, you know, looking back on it, it's just, it is such a sweet, sweet memory. And might be the point. You know, it might just be a, sometimes I think of Tassajara as like it's a big stage with lots of props. And it's just a way for us to be together. Okay, there's a bell when somebody runs around and rings it in the morning, and then everybody gets up and walks across the stage to their places and sits down and breathes with each other for a while, and then they go to their various places. Anyway, and then they can fight over this. But we just have all these props here, and it's just a way to be together. provide these mostly harmless things that we can do all day long so we can spend all day together and not get in too much trouble and it might be you know just somehow that having the thing to do with this person so that they can probably without even thinking about it be with you in the way that they they just want to show you this is a nice way to be with people

[25:56]

No? No. Anything else? Yes, me. Do you have a question? Yeah. You know, mostly I think what I mean is feel it. That most external things or internal things that come to this body-mind, there is almost a tactile, even if it's internal,

[26:59]

part to it that is not as complicated as the stories that I put on it, but includes, for instance, it includes tightening around it, which is a kind of either grasping or averting. So to notice that, to notice am I averting or am I holding on to it, and to just kind of like relax around it. Even if you can't relax, even if the tightening is there, to be willing to feel dread or pain. Again, it doesn't mean don't do anything. It may mean, you know, back up. If something, if we're standing too close to something painful and we can back up, back up, it's fine.

[28:07]

But to not turn away from it. And also not try to turn it into something else because we have some idea that it would be better as something else. Not that it doesn't turn into something else. It's in motion, actually. Does that make better sense? In some ways, I think in order to feel it, we have to trust it. By trust... I don't mean think it's right. Like if somebody says something to you and you feel their anger, you feel in you a response to their anger. So if you trust that what you felt was anger and you say to them, I felt your anger, and they say I wasn't angry, I would not say trust your anger.

[29:19]

You can say, oh, okay, this is my experience of this, and there's a more complicated picture going on here. This person thinks something else was happening. So we don't have to change our feeling, but we need to leave room for it to change. So, yes, it's kind of like trust, but it's not trust like holding on to it as trust. It's being... willing for it to be there. Okay. Thank you very much. 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, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[30:20]

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