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. Good morning. Wonderful to see all of you sitting Buddhas here together. We are technically in day two of a... Am I not on? Is it working now? Let's try it again. Is that better? I'm not in the system. I'm going to have to speak very loudly.

[01:01]

It's how it is. I'm going to keep going and you see what you're able to discover about what's happening. So we're midway through a three-day sushin. You could say we're midstream at this point. And I kind of personally sometimes wonder about three-day sushins. I actually think, you know, you kind of get in... You're starting to get in a little bit deeper and settle and get quiet and everything, and then it's over, right? And oftentimes around kind of day two, half end of day two, day three, the difficult stuff starts coming up, right? And then you're out, out the door, out the chute on the other side very briefly. So it can be a unique experience, but all the same, I think it's... any opportunity that we have to be able to settle the self on the self is welcomed, don't you think? Whether or not it's a one day, a one period, a seven day and so on.

[02:06]

So I wanted to start us off by sharing again the parable that I had shared on Wednesday night for the opening talk related to wise efforts. The Buddha was once asked, Tell me, dear sir, how did you cross over the flood? I crossed over the flood, said the Buddha, without pushing forward, without staying in place. But how, dear sir, did you cross over the flood without pushing forward, without staying in place? The Buddha replied, When I pushed forward, I was whirled about. When I stayed in place, I sank. And so I crossed over the flood without pushing forward, and without staying in place. So how are you doing with crossing the floodwaters of Sushin? How are you finding or negotiating your way? How are you negotiating the way?

[03:12]

And what kind of effort or non-effort do you find yourself making? in this moment, right here, right now? Have you found a balance between pushing ahead and not sinking in place or inertia? And are you actually enjoying your passage? Are you enjoying your endeavor? Or are you just experiencing a lot of pain and discomfort? Where is there joy here in the midst of this? Are you finding yourself able to course in sazen, in deep samadhi? What is the experience that you're experiencing now and how is it that you're encountering it? How are you relating to this moment just as it is flowing? So I have a

[04:18]

Confession, I have a bifurcated talk this morning. Okay, so two parts. And I'm going to leave it up to you to figure out how to relate. I have an idea in my mind, but I'll let you guys do the work. So I'm going to start the first part of my talk by reading a passage from Dogen's Bendowa. And Bendowa has been translated in a number of different ways, including Discourse on the Practice of the Way, negotiating the way, on the endeavor of the way, or a talk about pursuing the truth, or simply the wholehearted way. So Dogen's essay primarily serves to introduce zazen, or seated meditation, to the Japanese people of his time. And we have benefited from his efforts. According to Guru Nishijima, one of the many translators of this particular text into English, Dogen often used the word bendo to mean the practice of zazen specifically.

[05:32]

Despite the fact that ben, the first part of bendo, literally means pursuit and do means way or truth. So we should understand our practices ultimately as endeavoring to discover the truth of the way or the truth of who we are. What is it to be fully ourselves and what is it to be fully human? As sometimes is said, what is the great matter of birth and death? And then, how do we discover the way of manifesting this truth? in our lives once we have acknowledged and realized it. So here is the opening passage of Dogen's Bendowa. All Buddha Tathakaras together

[06:38]

have been simply transmitting wondrous dharma and actualizing Anuttara Samyaksambodhi, complete perfect enlightenment, for which there is an unsurpassable, unfabricated, wondrous method. This wondrous dharma, which has been transmitted only from Buddha to Buddha without deviation, has at its criterion Juju Sen Mai. For disporting oneself freely in this samadhi, Practicing zazen in an upright posture is the true gate. Although this dharma is abundantly inherent in each person, it is not manifested without practice. It is not attained without realization. When you let go, the dharma fills your hands. It is not within the boundary of one or many. When you try to speak, It fills your mouth.

[07:38]

It is not limited to vertical or horizontal. Buddhas continuously dwell in and maintain this Dharma, yet no trace of conceptualization remains. Living beings constantly function in and use this Dharma, yet it does not appear in their perception. The wholehearted practice of the way that I am talking about allows all things to exist in enlightenment and enables us to live out oneness in the path of emancipation. When we break through the barrier and drop off all limitations, we are no longer concerned with conceptual distinctions. Notice the phrase at the beginning, close to the beginning of, disporting oneself freely in samadhi. Disporting, you can also say, playing in some way, enjoying oneself in some way.

[08:40]

So Dogen says, all we have to do to truly enjoy ourselves in zazen is to sit zazen. This is the one-use method transmitted by the Buddhas and the ancestors. Everything we need is And everything we are is right here in Zazen. Juju Senmai is a state of natural balance that we experience when making effort in Zazen, or you could say effort in the rest of our lives with a state of mind of Zazen, without an intentional aim. Again, this is a form of play, you know? When children play, they have no particular aim other than to enjoy themselves, enjoy their effort. They're sporting freely in their endeavor. So there's nowhere else we need to go. There's nothing else that we need to do.

[09:42]

And there's nothing else we need to acquire, including any special mind states, in order to be filled with the Dharma and taste of true liberation. We just need to show up. That's all. Just show up, let go of our conceptual discriminations, and participate wholeheartedly, as possible, in the endeavor of this moment. And the endeavor of this moment is the endeavor of the entire universe manifesting itself, which includes us. Do you agree it's that simple? A few people are shaking their head yes. So here is a commentary on what Jujiu Zen Mai means according to Uchiyama Roshi. I'm going to try to speak more loudly given the construction happening outside.

[10:48]

Jujiu Zen Mai is literally the samadhi of self-fulfillment or self-enjoyment, or the samadhi of self-receiving or accepting its function. Ji is self. Juyu as a compound means fulfillment or enjoyment. Juyu alone is receive or accept. And you alone is function or use. Zanmai is samadhi or concentration. So we can understand this samadhi of self-fulfillment and enjoyment as the samadhi or concentration on the self when it simply receives and accepts its function or its spiritual position in the world. The important point is that this is not the self that has an object. There is nothing other than or outside of this self. The enjoyment, fulfillment,

[11:49]

or satisfaction, is the samadhi of the self, of which there is no other. This is not an experience that is somewhere other than here and now. It is not something to be acquired, or gained. Jijuyu is often contrasted with tatjuyu, others receiving the enjoyment of dharma. Historically, tatjuyu refers to other beings who are seeing the benefits of bodhisattva practice. In the case of Dogen's Zenji's Jiju, there is no Ta. Ta is included in Ji, so there is no other. Other is included in self. Everything becomes everything. All becomes all. Jiju Sanmai is Buddhist practice. In Shobha Genzo Koan, Dogen Zenji says, the study the Buddha way is to study the self.

[12:53]

To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by myriad dharmas. To be enlightened by myriad dharmas is to drop off the body and mind of self and others. This is Juju Zenmai. This actually occurs in Zazen. So our particular way in Soto Zen of negotiating the way of living as a fully liberated human being is to study the self. And we're talking about both the small self and big self or big mind. And they're actually not two different things. So keep that in mind. Small self is still big self. Although small self is not big self.

[13:56]

That makes sense. So Juju Sanmai, in the wholehearted way, encompasses fully acknowledging and accepting all of our diverse, multifaceted, and complex experiences being human, including all the painful experiences and all the joyful experiences. So negotiating the floodwaters of life with some degree or amount of composure entails fully receiving and accepting who we are and sincerely and wholeheartedly doing our best to be ourselves beyond our limited notions of self. So each step we take in the river of life we can only take as ourselves. No one else can make this journey for us.

[14:58]

A couple of weeks ago, I gave, as part of a talk on wise effort about work, I unpacked a poem by Billy Collins called Shoveling Snow with the Buddha. And as part of part two of my Dharma talk this morning, I would continue to play with the metaphors of water and snow as a way to offer you another analogy of practicing. So... Ta-da! If I undo the box. One of the ways I sometimes speak about meditation... as a process for studying the self and for how it is that we can engage our various experiences, particularly our emotions, our thoughts, our mood states, and also letting go of all the conditional, habitual stories that we have about ourselves, is with a particular analogy.

[16:11]

Can you see this? It's a snow globe with a crystal Buddha inside. So imagine that this snow globe with a crystal Buddha now inside is, and the Buddha itself is a metaphor or analogy for our unconditioned natural state. So we're just, as Buddha, sitting here awake, at ease, restful and spacious, economist awareness. Not moving. Simply being quiet beneath the chattering of our usual habitual mind. Being peaceful, attentive and awake.

[17:14]

Dwelling, if you will, in kind of a clear, luminous, liquid sky. Being able to see clearly in all directions. Nothing is obscuring our view and our vision. And so Buddha sitting here as stillness, observing quietly the environment in which she finds herself. So we can think of the environment inside of the snow globe as the environment inside of the mind. However, I want to point out that Buddhism actually teaches there is no inside and outside. There is no inside environment and no outside environment. So it's really all just one environment, just one vast, open, spacious, boundless snow globe in which we're all sitting.

[18:16]

And I want to point this out because sometimes we have this idea of things in our mind, in our head, you know, this little round bulb we have on our shoulders as our head, and then things that exist outside. So if you want to imagine yourself in this snow globe right now, looking outward, you know, the boundaries of the snow globe do not exist. Everything you experience is within this particular environment of boundless, spacious mind. Also notice that this particular Buddha, I have a couple of these actually. I have one a friend got me from Nepal that is a little bit more colorful and character. But this one I particularly wanted because the Buddha is transparent. And so it's seemingly made of the same substance, translucent substance, as that which it abides in. And all you can kind of notice, and I know it's kind of hard if you're at a distance,

[19:18]

but all you can kind of notice is a bit of an outline, it seems, kind of a play of light and shadows within this liquid to make you imagine that there's something actually there. It's almost a hologram, if you will. And so there's often certain teachings in Buddhism that say that all phenomenon is of the same nature, the same Buddha nature, and that this nature is consciousness or awareness, and it's originally pure and unstained. Pure, unstained mind. So Buddha, dwelling in mind as mind, which is what you're doing in every moment. Right now, you're dwelling in mind as mind. So if you remember the fundamental instruction for Buddha, Shikantaza is to, or just sitting, is to do nothing.

[20:23]

Do absolutely nothing. To simply sit still and quietly and come to rest as the awareness that you already are. You can do that while I'm taking a drink of water. once years ago in Dokusan with Abbot Steve Stuckey, I asked him a question, what is Zazen? And he responded after a moment, a pause, clear seeing and not moving. Clear seeing and not moving. And his response was pointing to the fundamental meditation instructions of

[21:24]

practices of vipassana and shamatha, which is calm abiding, which is shamatha, calm abiding, just sitting as stillness, not moving, and vipassana, which is cultivating deep insight through this practice of not moving, simply sitting deeply and seeing who it is and what we are, abiding as awareness and not turning away from our experience. not moving in any way in another direction. And Buddhism tells us we can experience this truth of who we are directly when the mind is in its natural state, is still and silent and peaceful. And yet, as you probably experience all the time, the mind moves. And Leanne made a reference yesterday, she read from Suzuki Roshi's Zenmai McGinnis Mind on mind waves, how basically, to use the metaphor, everything is water, everything is ocean, and yet on that ocean, waves arise where moments appear and manifest at a multitude of myriad phenomenon and experiences, and then pass away or dissolve back into the ocean of non-discrimination.

[22:46]

And so the mind moves, and as it moves, because the ocean moves, water moves, that's not a problem, that's just the nature of mind. What manifests is all a phenomenon. You could say in a certain level that all phenomenon or all experience is just a modulation of awareness. There's nothing else but this movement of awareness as awareness itself. So what happens when you shake a snow globe? It's hard to see the Buddha inside, right? All this movement, if you will, obstructs or obscures the Buddha within. Now imagine that all these snowflakes in here are our thoughts, right?

[23:49]

And so we're tossing around and moving our mind, chasing after thoughts, in some way stirring up the environment in which we are in, in some way. And even though thoughts can be useful and delightful and helpful, they can be problematic when we start grabbing onto them and shaking them up too much, in some way. And what happens when we do that is we end up basically in a snowstorm or a blizzard in our mind, a blizzard of thoughts and thinking. And so we find ourselves getting lost in our thoughts, going in circles, and not being able to find our way back to who we truly are, to see who we truly are in some way. So we believe the obscurations rather than believing who it is that we truly are. And we have this tendency to grasp on and gather these thoughts in some way.

[24:54]

And we might even begin to kind of roll them up in some fashion, creating, if you will, follow me on this metaphor, snowballs. And we pile these snowballs up and freeze them into some particular shape in which we manifest or create a self out of in some way. In fact, we go so far as to build a snowman or a snowperson out of these collected, frozen, contracted faults in some way. So this is a very human pattern that we have. It's something we do all the time. And not only do we kind of pile up and create this snowperson, but then we begin to adorn it. You know, we might put a carrot on it. We might put some coal for eyes.

[25:54]

We might put a scarf or a coat or all, you know, buy it a car, a house, you know, give it a certificate degree of some sort and get it a snow person, you know, a snow girlfriend, a boyfriend, you know, to be with it, right? And a snow dog. And soon we have this whole snow life, you know, of compacted... experiences with which we identify in some way. And stories and names that we put on each and every one of these particular beings. We keep embellishing and polishing and reifying and cherishing these contracted, frozen sense of self in some way. And kind of attempting to bring it to life in some way. I don't know if you guys remember Frosty the Snowman? Remember the story? He was brought to life somehow. And that's oftentimes what we try to do with this kind of contracted self. And yet, the truth is we live in a state of fear because we know how fragile this frozen state is, this frozen contracted person, how vulnerable it is to any sense of sunlight,

[27:14]

warmth, and hence release. And the more contracted we are, the more brittle and ultimately vulnerable that we become as a snow person. And sometimes we are even afraid of love because like sunlight and warmth, love melts us. Love makes us less contracted. Love makes us more porous, if you will, more fluid, allows us to flow once again as who we truly are. So Buddhism offers us a skillful approach to how we can navigate the snowstorms of our minds, if you will, and particularly working with these contracted snow people that we create for ourselves. And so we can just come back, get out of the mine, out of the snowstorm, and settle once more into the body, into our still, quiet state.

[28:31]

We can stop agitating in our environment, stop chasing the thoughts, become still and quiet for one period of zazen, for two, for several days, for a week, whatever. And in time, simply observe how the snowflakes of thoughts and conceptualizations begin to settle very quietly. And if you notice very carefully, there's space between each of these snowflakes and One of the things that we can look for in our practice, as I mentioned the other night, is the space between our thoughts, the gaps between our conceptualizations and our ideas. And sometimes when we do that, what we recognize is we actually have a choice. We have a choice in those spaces for how it is that we want to meet or engage with our particular experience in the moment.

[29:38]

And I often think of this kind of, the way in which the space of breath, you know, is combining or joining in some way. It's this kind of intermediate place between the body and the mind. You know, the spaciousness of the breath. We feel the breath, we experience the breath in the body. It's an embodied experience. At the same time, there's this openness and spaciousness. There's something we can't grasp onto that's continually flowing that is also connected to the mind. So if we connect with the breath and encourage ourselves to abide in the breath and rest there, we have this natural bridge between our embodied experience and our mental experience. The priest group at Zen Center has been recently studying mindfulness-based approach to working with trauma.

[31:04]

And some of you might be familiar with the theory of trauma by Peter Levine. And basically what he says is, if you ever see an animal that's been attacked, right? a gentleman gets really ramped up inside their body in order to deal with the circumstance that they're under, the particular assault in that moment. And so the energy in the body gets charged up in order to either fight what it is that's challenging them, or to flee it, or in some ways to actually freeze. And that freezing state is, in a certain sense, going numb. so they actually don't feel the attack in some way. And if the animal escapes and gets away or free from his attacker, you'll notice afterwards, and you see this often with dogs or cats, that they'll shake the energy off. They'll release that extra genitalin that was kind of ramped up in their body and let it go.

[32:07]

And then in a few moments, they kind of settle down again into kind of just their natural pre-attack state in some way. Humans, on the other hand, rather than shaking off any particular energy whenever we experience some form of trauma or an intense situation or stress, rather than shaking off that energy that's generalized in our body, we actually go to our minds. We go to our minds and we start trying to relive the story to rewrite the ending. to create a different way out of the circumstance, right? And so we might continue to rewrite the story again and again, what I should have said, what I should have done, what I'll do next time, you know, and so on, just spinning around in these circles or eddies or whirlpools of conceptual thought, trapping the energy actually in our body.

[33:09]

We don't release the energy in the body when we do this, right? And so... What we can do instead, whenever we notice that we have these rhumative thoughts that kind of get contracted over time and begin to actually in many ways get hardwired in our body in some way, we can actually turn towards the experience of contraction that is in our body, feeling that contracted state in some way. one of the things I often encourage people to do is study contraction. Study contraction in the mind and body. Any experience of contraction is basically an experience of selfing that's happening in the moment. So whether or not the contraction is in the body, a hardening, a freezing, a tightening, a pulling in, a pulling away from, or even a pushing out, that's another form of contraction.

[34:10]

in the body or in the mind, or in motion states as well. Study them. As you study them, you'll be studying the sense of self that's arising in the moment, turning the light of awareness to those contracted states so they can begin to actually come to the light and be made aware of and met with. And so we're not trying to make... our experience different. We're not trying to push it away in any way. Any kind of resistance to what it is that we're experiencing simply perpetuates resistance. We keep in that contracted state. So instead, we're allowing the feeling that we're feeling, whatever that might be in the moment, to be seen, to be felt, to be experienced. In fact, we're doing the opposite of trying to get through it or trying to move through it. We're actually inviting it in.

[35:14]

We're inviting it to come forward, to once and for all show itself, come, if you will, into the sunlight, to be seen, to be illuminated, to embraced, and softened. So that contracted sense of self is no longer relegated to the shadows. to the darkness, to the underworld, hidden away, compacted down deep within us somewhere in a way that's not to be mentioned or spoken of. I think sometimes this compacted state, the extent of our frozenness, if you will, can be pretty significant. And it might actually feel like, rather than just a snow person, that we're actually an iceberg. There's this whole part of us kind of existing above the water, and there's a larger part of us that's existing beneath the surface that we and that many others actually don't get to see and experience in some way.

[36:23]

And there's many, if you will, submerged parts of ourselves, layers of experience and thoughts, and emotions that have built up over time, making the sense of a solidity of our constructed self even more dense and heavy in some way. And so as we shine the light of awareness, as we just sit here as awareness, not moving, and allowing ourselves to be illuminated by our Buddha nature, the sunlight of our Buddha nature, What happens in time is those contracted frozen layers begin to melt and turn again once the liquid and begin to flow. That trapped energy is released in some way on its own accord. It's not that we're making it happen in some way. It's just naturally beginning to fall and release. And what we notice often when we do this over a period of time, things that were long buried in the ice,

[37:30]

buried long ago, perhaps at a very young age, begin to surface. You see this sometimes, you read stories now, as the glaciers and the ice caps are melting, things that were buried for thousands and hundreds of thousands of years are beginning to come to the surface to be exposed. Skeletons, in some cases, and other things. And so... They become forward again to be exposed. And this process of thawing, actually, can be actually not so comfortable. It can be painful. It's a little bit like when your leg has fallen asleep in zazen, right? And you go to get up. And just as the kitchen is getting up to go and continue making us lunch. Thank you very much, kitchen. Thank you. you begin to acknowledge the pain that you're feeling in the body in some way.

[38:34]

And when this happens, we have to be very gentle with ourselves. We have to move very carefully, very slowly, not trying to push our way through, through the experience, not trying to walk on our kind of slightly numb foot. Otherwise, we're going to fall and hurt ourselves more. So this is the same thing we do whenever we experience these kind of old, ancient, buried parts of ourselves that have been frozen begin to fall. We treat them with much gentleness and care and love. Not trying to make them be a certain way or change them in any way, but simply welcoming them, acknowledging them, taking our time to be with them. sitting with them as a good friend and acknowledging their experience in whatever way that that's coming forward. And a lot of these dark layers have stories attached to them in some way.

[39:44]

And rather than trying to deal with the stories, turn towards the sensations. turn towards the sensation aspects of the experience rather than the story aspect. In other words, be completely in the body. Be with the sensate experience in this moment of what it is that you're experiencing in whatever way you're experiencing. Because the story always revolves around the sense of a separate self. And it's the sensation aspect of the body that's really the root of the feeling that we're experiencing. So become intimate with the sensate experience, not the story. You can let go of the story. And it's not that the sensation is necessarily going to feel good.

[40:46]

It's often very painful to be with it. And oftentimes when we start feeling this pain, we might want to kind of turn away from it, numb out some way, distract ourselves in some way. And there's many ways that we do that, as you're probably well acquainted with. In the world, we might turn towards social media, television, food, shopping, alcohol, sex. In Zazen, we might turn to fantasizing or food. Or watching, looking around, seeing what everyone else is doing. Looking at everyone else but myself. So notice how it is when you get distracted. Bring the mind back and be again with the feeling in the body. Get to know it. Get to be deeply intimate with knowing it. Allow it to come forward and allow it to get to know you.

[41:48]

Who are you in this moment? And we're not doing this practice in our minds. We're doing it in our hearts. So it's something we do very gently and lovingly. Inviting the feelings out of the hidden places that are in the body. Inviting the feelings and encouraging them and gently contemplating them with an assurance that it's okay to reveal themselves. It's okay. We'll stay close. And it's not a disciplined approach, it's a loving approach. It's an approach of contemplation, lovingly being with our experience. So you could say that this being with this experience in a loving way is a way of holding it in this environment, sitting with stillness and with compassion, just allowing ourselves to be this open, transparent, luminous Buddha, seeing the environment in the mind, seeing the environment in the body, being with it,

[43:17]

allowing it to release and flow in its own time, holding it in silence and stillness, being okay with being with our aloneness, with the embedded, or if you will, unbearable embeddedness of our life. And doing so, just simply encouraging and regaining our basic sense of trust in ourselves, in reality, and in our wholeness, and in the perfection of who we already are, not needing to be different in any way. Here's something from a book called The Trauma of Everyday Life by Buddhist psychologist Mark Epstein. The most important thing we can do about suffering is acknowledge it. Simply acknowledging it while seeming like a mirror adjustment is actually huge. Suffering, you could say trauma in this case, is a part of our definition of being human.

[44:20]

It is inextricably woven into the fabric of our lives. No one can escape it. Acknowledging it, having a realistic view, one that sees things as they are, as things as it is, brings us closer to the incomprehensible reality of our own impermanence. And the only way out of life is through death. In a certain sense, sazen is a dialogue with our suffering. It's a dialogue with our suffering and it's also a dialogue with our joy. It's our conversation with our whole tender being and with what it means to be human and alive in this moment. But it's a dialogue that occurs mostly by simply listening with complete attentiveness. to our moment-by-moment experience, whatever it might be, as well as to our relationship to that experience.

[45:27]

So we kind of listen to it, if you will, as a parent might listen to a child in distress, acknowledging, yes, dear, I know it hurts. I know you're scared. I know this is difficult. I know it's painful. I see that. I acknowledge it. And I'm with you as you experience this, and I love you as you experience this. And I will hold you as awareness, and together we'll find a way to be with this experience as long as we need, until it too passes, because all things, as we know when we study impermanence, pass. So the Buddhist approach was not one of of transforming ourselves in some radical way in order to be feelingless or emotionless or soldiers or reporters or somehow just kind of, you know, removed from our experience, but rather simply to learn how to be kind to ourselves.

[46:35]

And this is particularly important on day two and three as these submerged layers begin to come forward. How is it that we can be kind to ourselves as we sit here? learning to hold ourselves in some loving way, responsive way, a caring way. And this holding lovingly is enough. Holding lovingly as awareness is enough. For it tells us that this small, wounded, contracted, ordinary human self in all its primitive agony is precious too. So in Zazen, we sit unmoving, but not unmoved. I would suggest that empathetic or loving attention is our Zen practice. A kind, non-judgmental awareness is the holding environment or container that's originally enacted in the loving relationship, if you will, between a parent and a child.

[47:47]

or with any being that you have felt deeply loved by, and which establishes a deeper trust in our capacity to be with what is in some way. And we can offer it to ourselves as well as to everyone around us. And indeed is the only true healing path to which we become fully human. So observe the environment in your mind. Are there a bunch of snowflakes falling? Is it a blizzard? Is it a snowstorm of thoughts and ideas that you grab onto and harden in some way, identify with, reify, make a self out of them? Or what is it just to simply

[48:49]

Observe these snowflakes or thoughts falling in front of you, like a Buddha sitting still, looking for the space between them, abiding in the space between them, and noticing that that space is full of light. It's illuminated. All space is nothing but light. So to sit in this space, in this particular environment of sushin, allowing yourselves to melt, allowing yourselves to once again become water, to once again flow, to allow your being to flow as it truly is. Then you can enjoy then you can course in the way with ease, the sense of delight in play, with a sense of wholeness, because you are not separate from the ocean of being, from the ocean of life.

[50:07]

So here we are sitting together in and as this ocean of life, fully melting in love and awareness. Thank you all. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[50:51]

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