To spend this reading and clarifying that I'm wrong, it is really meant to be in a pint of glass in million cupboards. I began to see and listen to you, but to remember and excels. I have gone on to taste the truth of the start of those words. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to those of you in the room, and welcome to everyone out in Zoom land. I can't see you, but I can feel you. My name is Gangioko Rinsho Tim Wicks, and how's the sound?

[01:19]

Okay, yeah. I currently serve City Center, which is the building that you're in, as Tanto, and Tanto means head of practice. I've just finished my first month in the job. Before I begin, I would like to thank Abiding Abbot Mako Vocal, who is now down at Tassajara, which is our mountain monastery, looking after the monks there and to the place. I'd like to thank Central Abbot David Zimmerman and Ryushinpo Haloroshi, who's leading the practice period that we're sort of on the final stretch of. We're going to start our final seshin. which is a period of intense meditation for a week, next weekend.

[02:30]

So the title of this talk is Virya, or Energy. And in our practice period that Paul is leading, Paul is teaching the Genjo Koan, which is a seminal work of Ehei Dogen, who was our 13th century founder in Japan, the Genjo Cohen, along with the paramitas in our type of Buddhism that we practice here, Mahayana Buddhism, there are six paramitas or perfections. Paramita translates usually as perfection. They're trainings. I prefer the word trainings. There's six trainings, and they are... Generosity is the first one, and morality, patience, energy, which is the one that I'm going to talk about today, concentration, and wisdom.

[03:31]

And I want to focus on energy, the training of energy, because it's my favorite, and... We're not supposed to have favorites, preferences. It just causes more suffering, and I can verify that. I have lots of suffering because of my preferences, but I do have a preference when it comes to the paramitas. And I really like energy, partly because it's been very mysterious to me. But also, it's one of the favorites of my teacher, who I've neglected to thank, Rinso Ed Satterson, for his patience and kindness. and tolerance of being my teacher. So virya, or energy, is the middle one. It comes in the middle. You've got generosity and morality and patience are the first three. And then energy is the third one. And it's sometimes taught that generosity, morality, and patience...

[04:40]

are easier for people who are kind of newer to practice. And the last three are for really more advanced practitioners. I don't know if that's true, but it's sometimes taught that way. And certainly energy, virya, is a subtle practice because you're dealing with something that is not seen and is a very internal experience. Actually, I guess really all of them are. Paul was pointing out that recently, in recent years, virya has been translated as enthusiasm or enthusiastic practice or joyful efforts. And this, of course, you know, is to encourage those of us who come to practice with deep suffering. But there's a shadow side to the perfection of energy, which for me has been very fruitful. in investigating and which I think is very important to take part in.

[05:42]

And I'll speak more about that in a minute. So traditionally Buddhism focuses on the hindrances or the obstacles to awakening. And in dealing with the hindrances, the paramitas... and specifically Virya, when it's taught, talks about the opposites and cultivating the opposites of the hindrances. And Shantideva, who's the 8th century Indian monk, most known for his work called The Way of the Bodhisattva, writes in the book that we think he wrote afterwards, after The Way of the Bodhisattva, the Bodhikarya Vaitara, He writes when, so this is his book on the parameters, and he, I've written it down right here, he translates viria as vigor.

[06:45]

And I quote, what is vigor? He asks. The endeavor to do what is skillful. What is its antithesis called? Sloth, clinging to what is vile, despondency, and self-contempt. Sloth comes from idleness, sleep, the longing to rely on others, and apathy for the suffering of the world. So here, Shantideva ties the perfection of energy into skillful means, which is what we as Buddhists are always doing, because that's the way that the Bodhisattva lives in the world. meeting the conditions of life in a skillful way, hopefully. And this is the reason for the paramitas in the first place. These are trainings in how to end suffering for the self and for others. And Shantideva provides dramatic direction for how to counter these hindrances in developing skillful means of vigor when he says, the capacity for desire...

[07:58]

perseverance, delight, and letting go leads to the fulfillment of the needs of living beings. Out of the fear of suffering and while meditating on the praises, one should create desire. Uprooting the opposite in this way, one should endeavor to increase one's exertion through the capacities of desire, pride, delight, giving up, Dedication and control. And if that's not dramatic enough for you, he talks about addiction here, encouraging it. One should be addicted solely to the task that one is undertaking. One should become intoxicated by that task, insatiable, like someone hankering for the pleasure and the fruit of love play. So these are dramatic illustrations of... what it is that needs to be undertaken in the perfection of vigor, and dramatic mechanisms for perfecting the discipline of energy.

[09:10]

We read, of course, especially in early Buddhist canon, about a desire being at the root of clinging and that which causes our suffering in the first place. But I love Buddhism because you can find contradictions all over the place. and even on the same page, or in this case, the same sentence, once again. The capacity for desire, perseverance, delight, and letting go leads to the fulfillment of the needs of living beings. So he's asking us to cultivate something which we know causes us problems, desire, delight, which is a little bit questionable in some of the early Buddhist writings. and very importantly, letting go. So we have to both cultivate desire and let go, all in the same sentence right there. I just love it. So this leads to a passionate engagement with the training of energy required by a bodhisattva and the liberation of suffering.

[10:18]

This may be helpful in building a conventional strength of energy, something akin to the sort of physical or athletic energy energy, which we do want to do, but energy is much broader than just this conventional countering of sloth. And Shantideva gets close to this when he mentions despondency and self-contempt, which in our psychological age we know more about as depression and low self-esteem, something that I find so many people come to to Zen practice as a main source of their suffering. And these, of course, are internal energies themselves, which have a massive effect on our external actions.

[11:28]

In the 1990s, scientists began to articulate something that they were beginning to call dark energy. And more is unknown than is known about dark energy. In Zen, we practice don't-know-mind. we at least try anyway to become comfortable around not knowing. In fact, that's a place for us to train our energy in the area of not knowing. Normally, not knowing can feel unsteady. We want to know. We think that knowing provides stability because everything changes. because we understand that everything changes, there really is no real stability. And so we try to develop a curiosity around not knowing to meet the world as it arrives at us.

[12:36]

Even though we don't know much about dark energy, we know that it is an activation of what was once just referred to as space. I used to think of outer space, where spaceships were, as this sort of dead place that was probably kind of cold. But what the theory of dark energy, and what little we know about it anyway, gets across to me, is that it's an activation of that previously sort of dormant, vast space, and that it's actually energy. And so space was once very mysterious, now has got this very interesting energy about it. So in our Zen practice, our central activity, or you might say non-activity, is Zazen, where we face the wall.

[13:39]

And we face the wall in part because Bodhidharma, our founder in China, faced the wall for nine famous years. But also, that's not the only reason we do it. There's fewer distractions if you turn and face the wall when you're sitting. But we're not ignoring what's behind us. Over time, we begin to sharpen our awareness of the rest of the room. We're fine-tuning our consciousness of the other people we're sitting with. Someone may be slightly agitated. Crying is happening for someone. There's an energy that we pick up on that is mostly unseen, an energy Zazen trains us to sharpen our awareness of. There's an energy between us that comes from inside us, but it doesn't stop at our bodies. It penetrates us and reverberates back out, intermingling with the energy of others.

[14:52]

This is reflected to some extent in the metaphor from the Avatamsaka Sutra that Reverend Greg Fane, who spoke a week ago, referred to when he was giving a really glowing review to Reverend Lian Schutt's book on the Dharma of Anti-Racism. And this is a very important book that I hope to work with with Leanne Schutt and will encourage others to in the coming months. But in the book, Reverend Leanne refers to Indra's net. And Indra's net is a net that instead of knots attaching all the little strings and ropes, it has jewels. And these jewels are us as individuals. And we reflect all the other jewels throughout space and time.

[15:56]

And Reverend Leanne speaks about how in our self-centered individualistic culture, we focus on the jewels. But it's actually the space in between the jewels that needs to be cared for. Our energy doesn't begin and end inside our bodies. It is passed through space and it has an effect on the energy outside of us and on the energy of others. And here, in this practice of anti-racism, we take responsibility for our conditioning. We become conscious of the causes and conditions and the effects of our internal energy and begin the process of transforming that energy and therefore transforming how it is. that it affects others. It's this transformation of energy by becoming conscious of the many states that energy has, having fine-tuned our perception that is the project of Virya Paramita.

[17:06]

And a very important tool in this fine-tuning is called bodhicitta. Bodhicitta simply means the thought of enlightenment. And with the thought of enlightenment, just cultivating the possibility of enlightenment, comes faith and trust. In our lives today, we're conscious of many of the mistakes that have been made in the past. We're aware of slavery and our connection to it, the atrocities of war, just to name two. We observe violence of all kinds on a daily basis. We're only too aware of what Buddhism tells us, that everything changes. And... This can, like I've mentioned already, lend us a sense of instability.

[18:23]

Bodhicitta provides courage within that instability. And the trust and faith that come from bodhicitta are grounded in courage. And courage, practiced by one, can provide trust and stability in another. Finally, with bodhicitta, we understand this thought of enlightenment, that we are connected to all things throughout space and time. So my first practice was with a Vipassana teacher who was trained in Theravadan Buddhism. And Theravadan means the way of the elders. And it's thought, especially by Theravadanists, to be the original Buddhism. Some historians have argued and tried to prove that actually Mahayana Buddhism was the first Buddhism, but I'm not going to get into all of this right now.

[19:31]

That'll be something for another day. And when I was studying with this teacher, Theravadans, I heard, said that enlightenment was for sentient beings. And we asked... My teacher, well, how small do you go? Because there's some microorganisms that you could sort of argue maybe are sentient, if you watch them being sentient in the world. How small do you go? And he asked one of his teachers, who said that sentient beings, for Theravadans, are determined by an organism that has a mother and a face. So there's self-dividing organisms that don't have mothers, so they're not included. There's organisms that I don't remember seeing. I'm sure I would have remembered them because they sound fascinating, who are so small they don't have faces.

[20:34]

Anyway, this seemed very arbitrary to me, but at least was an attempt to define who is sentient and who is not sentient. But it was about the time I was coming here to city center and didn't really like all the bowing and stuff and all the robes and bells. But I became committed to Mahayana Buddhism because it includes everything in awakening. You don't have to have a mother. You don't even have to have a face. You're included in awakening. And it's not just other beings. It's all phenomena throughout space and time. which includes rocks and air and space. In Zen, we try to care for everything that is in front of us, or at least that's what the training is. Watching me, I was raised by barbarians, and so I'm learning, but I'm still a ways to wait to care for everything that's in front of me, but I'm trying to.

[21:40]

I'm moving in that direction. We bow to our cushions. and we try to handle everything carefully because we're reminding ourselves that we're connected to all things. My energy does not end inside my body. When I've picked up something and it's moving through space, the energy passes between us. We know now that everything is moving through space and time. Scientifically, we know this. Even rocks are made of atoms, and atoms are made of neutrons, protons, electrons, energy in physics. Energy is the essential element of all things, including, it appears, dark energy itself. Form and matter are energy. Energy as movement

[22:45]

is what constitutes all things. Modern physics has recognized nuclear energy, gravitational energy, chemical energy, static energy, elastic energy, just to name a few. The universe itself started from a sudden expansion of energy in the Big Bang. Buddhism posits that all things inter-are. Nothing is fully independent from anything else. That energy surges through all phenomena, giving rise to things, bringing them into existence. They come into being and are transformed into something else. So, I want to end with... very simple practice.

[23:48]

I have heard that Suzuki Roshi once said, just to be alive is enough. As bodhisattvas in training, we never lose contact with suffering. It's too ubiquitous. But the human heart, which beats while we're alive, is vast. can hold a lot of suffering. And practicing bodhicitta, which is profound gratitude, we fear how vast existence is. Just to be alive is an astonishing and inspiring experience in the vastness of the heart-mind, because Eastern physiognomy doesn't separate the two like we do in the West. It's possible, with practice and the support of a community, it's best not to do this on your own, to hold both profound suffering and profound gratitude at the same time.

[25:00]

Thank you all very much. See if there are any questions in the ample time that we have left. Thanks, Tim. Would you say zazen is an energy generator? I don't know. I don't know if it's an energy generator. The energy is already there. We're certainly becoming, hopefully, aware of the energy that is already there. But it could be. I'm going to have to think about that one a little bit more, Lisa. Excellent question that I don't have an answer for. Next.

[26:04]

Thank you for your talk, Tim. The idea of energy, we bring to things like compassion and patience. And I find myself with some people, and we all have a limited amount of energy. And so in my life recently, maybe the last six months, some of my, maybe call them former friends, that take a lot of my energy. And although I have compassion for them and patience for them, my energy just gets taken away so much that I've kind of really limited my time seeing them. And I feel very guilty about it because they express that they want to maintain these friendships. But there's this idea of this energy for compassion and... that I just don't have for these people. Do you have any thoughts on where the balance is between doing those things?

[27:22]

Well, I do, actually. Funny you should ask. San Francisco Zen Center, in my opinion, I'm not speaking for San Francisco Zen Center here, but in my opinion, is a training college for bodhisattvas. And... where bodhisattvas in training here. And the bodhisattva looks after other beings, agrees to stay in the world of suffering until all beings can be enlightened together, and that includes the bodhisattva themself. So we forget that in our contemporary understanding of compassion and caring for others. And it causes a lot of problems. So what I hear you approaching is burnout. You can get burned out. And I've certainly been burned out.

[28:23]

And that is just not practicing wisdom. Not practicing some of the other paramitas. And that's what we need to do when we're deciding where it is that we put our energy. I do have to take issue with one thing that you said, that we have a limited amount of energy. I don't know that we do have a limited amount of energy. I feel like we have, with bodhicitta, an unlimited amount of energy. But where we put it is where it is that it reconstitutes itself. So I don't know exactly how to do that, but I'm definitely learning a lot about it. And I'm not saying you should become burned out, but should you find yourself burned out along the way, it's actually been extremely valuable for me to learn how it is that I expend the energy that I do doing the things that

[29:37]

that I choose to do. So that's a very important question. And once again, that is something to work out with in community, not to do on your own. I found it to become easier to be burned out on your own than within a community. And that means having a teacher, practice leader, someone you can talk about your practice with. That's been extremely helpful to me. Hi, Tim. Thanks for the Dharma talk and thank you for being my teacher. Oh, can you hear me? My question is, I came to Buddhism, as you said, around suffering and depression, which has been alleviated in a lot of ways. What is not always alleviated is my strong emotional energy, namely anger.

[30:40]

And, you know, I wonder how to work with... I used to look at anger as how do I control it, but now I look at it as how do I work with it so I don't spew it out into the world in a way that causes suffering rather than alleviates my suffering. Do you have any thoughts around that? I do. And we've spoken about this, and there's a lot of anger phobia in... Buddhism, because anger has done a lot of damage and harm in this world. But it has been a very important practice for me. My mother died when I was eight, and my father was an alcoholic, and I was neglected. And so I have a lot of conventional things that cause anger in many people. And the main thing is to not do anything. Don't act on the anger.

[31:44]

It's possible to sit on a cushion and cultivate the most profound anger. Just really let it rip. Let it roar. Let it fill up your whole consciousness. It's very powerful. It's astonishing to be and be able to feel that strength and power of emotion. And what happens is, because everything changes, it arises, it comes into being, and it fades away. It's not something that you're going to get stuck in, although oftentimes when you begin working with anger, it feels like that. It's something that on the cushion you can take a break from. So you have control over it. You don't need to be overtaken by it. And once again, don't do this at home.

[32:45]

Or do it at home in community. Work with others. You're not the first person who's had some problems with anger, who's also a Buddhist practitioner. There's lots of us. and it's an extremely fruitful and powerful practice to have, and an area in my own internal world where I feel like I've had the most success, even though we're not supposed to be trying to get anything to make us feel successful. Once again, the contradictions. Thank you, Hunter. We have a question from Griffin.

[33:50]

Okay, you can go ahead. This is so very timely. I am home alone trying to do this. And like many others, this is a time of enormous transition. For me, I am selling my home and moving to a new home with a new sangha. My imagination about what it will be like to live at ENSO is, you know, has taken off. And what I'm finding is that my response to the unknown is mostly irritability. I'm so irritable. And it hits me as something new, what you're saying about Bodhachita having a possibility of bringing courage because it reveals connection.

[35:03]

And I don't get that. But I sort of, but I do get that it's important if you could say something more about courage and the connection with others who are, you know, unknown, more unknown to you. Sure. Irritation is anger's little brother. Well, bodhicitta is a for me in what little I know about it is a vast opening of possibility and when I cultivate a vast opening of possibility with the backdrop of not knowing and potential

[36:07]

because not knowing is just potential instability. Not knowing doesn't have to be instability. We're trained in our culture to, if you don't know, you're unstable somehow, or you don't have a firm grounding to stand on, especially in our scientific world. We think we have to know, and if we don't know, you don't have firm ground to stand on. And bodhicitta, for me, is... a vast opening of inclusion of all phenomena. And for me, what that provides is a firm footing in nothingness, which doesn't sound very stable, but that's what my experience is. And that, on a very basic and simple level... cultivates courage inside of me. I'm not trying to stand on a little tiny, itsy-bitsy piece of stable ground.

[37:12]

I am stabilized by being connected to everything in the universe. Does that make any sense to you at all, Griffin? It makes me feel hopeful, even though... You know, it certainly doesn't make sense in my head. If it makes you feel hopeful, that's all I care about. Thank you. Because I don't know if I can talk about it anymore. Because, you know, I'm not 100% clear on it in a verbal way. I'm very clear on it internally. And this is the problem with talking about these things. But this is also a part of the many contradictions that we're asked to embrace in Buddhism, that somehow not knowing and a feeling of instability can partner somehow with a sense of profound stability and courage and trust and faith.

[38:23]

We were reading Suzuki Roshi the other day in the class that I teach here for... for residence. And we were reading one of the last sections in Zen Mind Beginners. And Teddy, who was there, who's not here today, he said after we read a paragraph, he said, it sounds like Suzuki Roshi is just saying a bunch of sentences that each sentence doesn't have anything to do with the next sentence that he says. And sometimes Buddhism can sound that way. But you just keep trying, and if one teacher doesn't do it for you, please try many others. But great question, Griffin. And we keep working on this together, so thank you for asking. I think maybe we'll take one or two more questions, depending on... Okay, we'll take two more questions.

[39:27]

Thank you for your talk. two quick well one quick question why is um energy your favorite and also what does this kind of energy have to do with life force or will it's my favorite as i said because it's mysterious but also because um you know as a little kid in the situation that i was in like many little kids who are in situations like that my whole life was about energy. It was about mostly anxiety. And anxiety is really powerful. It's also another thing that so many people come here with to try and become calm, which can happen, but it doesn't always happen in the way it is that you think it's going to happen. But also, it's this thing that connects us.

[40:34]

I mean, all of the paramitas connect us. Wisdom, generosity, morality, patience. They all connect us. But energy is this thing that I can really feel. And it's real. And it's unseen. And I'm fascinated with it. And what was the other part of your question? What does this kind of energy have to do with life force or will, that kind of energy? Well, life force is what I just explained. And will is different to me. So will has lots of different meanings for lots of different traditions and different cultures. My first cultural training, I'll tell you, was in 12-step recovery. I was completely and utterly culturally untrained before I got into 12-step recovery a few decades ago.

[41:38]

And there, will, particularly self-will, is the source of addiction. Self-will run riot, it's called. And so it is discouraged at every turn. And then there's other traditions that see... Self-will is the only possible salvation. So in Buddhism, there's will. There's definitely will, but it's not connected to divine interaction or divine. It's something that can be trained, will. Something that can be trained and can be placed at the service of kindness and generosity and compassion. It's something that is joined together. Individual will is not focused on, but the joining of wills together as a source of power and goodness.

[42:58]

No, we've got lots of time, but we're only going to have one more. We've got too much time. It's a beautiful day today, so we need to go out and enjoy it. Thanks for your talk. I'm wondering about holding Virya and this lucid, strong energy. If your container is... how to expand your container to hold more virya. Just to explain a little bit more what I mean, if I'm experiencing a huge amount of anger and I'm right at the edge of my container, then in addition to sitting, I can exercise until I fall over. Or if I'm sitting with a huge amount of grief and I'm just sobbing on my cushion, I can also go camping. I can sob and wail in the woods somewhere. But if I'm at the edge of what I can hold in terms of just sheer... lucid, awake, virya energy, sometimes I just crawl back into bed under my covers because I can't hold it.

[44:07]

In addition to sitting, is there some way to make the container able to hold more virya? Well, virya doesn't have volume, so it's not holding virya, but holding grief or anger, specific forms of energy, That is where wisdom comes in. And if crawling into bed is the best way to spend time, either ending your momentary relationship with grief or anger, then that's the right thing to do. Exercising, of course, is a very good thing to do as well. You do whatever it is that is the most appropriate way to continue your path. And if your path includes looking at grief, entering into anger then you do that according to the most appropriate way to do it at the time sometimes it's important to sit on a cushion and experience anger profound anger and sometimes it's important to get up off the cushion and go for a run and that is once again something that is best determined in community

[45:23]

Sorry, I think I didn't explain my question very well. I was just using grief and anger as examples. But if you have a lot of joyful, lucid energy, actually, then what can you do to expand your capacity to hold that the way you might go for a run or have a cry in the woods? Well, being aware of it will expand, I've found, naturally, your capacity to experience energies of all kinds. So fine-tuning. of what it is that's going on inside of you will just naturally expand your capacity for it. That has been my experience. There's not an equation that I can give you or a specific way of practicing other than just keep practicing and keep studying the Dharma and keep studying the Paramitas. I doubt This is the first time that Ryushin has studied the paramitas.

[46:25]

It's probably the hundredth time that he's done it. And each time we discover new capacities that we have. So practice, practice, practice. I'm sorry that that's the answer to so many questions that we have, but it is. Okay, thank you all very much for your attention and your time. Let's go out and enjoy this beautiful fall day. ... [...]

[47:38]

It's all I'm going to do is I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this.

[47:56]

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