Good afternoon, everyone. Can you hear me okay? Is the volume good? Great. So welcome again to our Tuesday and Thursday online practice session. I'm really finding it a joy to be together with you in this way and appreciate this opportunity, even though the circumstances are not ideal, but it's not It's, I think, quite amazing to appreciate the way that difficulty actually brings us together and how we can celebrate through the reality of suffering that we are all this connected life together and how that we come forward to support each other and help each other to bear with this current reality or whatever myriad ways that we may be finding ourselves some kind of distress or pain unhappiness, confusion, whatever it might be, to, again, realize our profound interconnectedness and the way that we're able to come forward and encourage and support each other during this time, particularly during and through practice itself.

[01:45]

So thank you again for being here. For anyone who is new, you may know my name is David Zimmerman, and I serve as the Avadi Abed at Beginners of Mind Temple, temple in San Francisco City Center. And what we're going to be doing is beginning with Zazen, creating meditation. And I will offer a little bit of guidance in the process and start us off and then slowly enter into this silence altogether. And then after our meditation, what I'll do is offer a little Dharmet, A brief Dharma encouragement, a few thoughts that I have on my mind about what it might be to practice at this time, and then open it up to Q&A in some way. So I'm seeing on the chat that the volume is a little low and level. Is that true?

[02:46]

Yeah? Okay. Well, I don't want to mess around too much. with the system, because who knows what's going to happen if I start trying to do this live. But I will try to see. Let me do one thing. Is that better? Yeah. OK. It means I have to speak more loudly and get a little bit closer to the screen. So I'm going to try one other thing. How does that sound now? No. How does that sound now? Is this better? Okay. We'll go with this. This is the reality that we'd have to work with right now. So thank you for bearing with technology. With these gifts, we also have sometimes challenges we have to work through. So I will do my best to speak loudly and clearly

[03:51]

And I hope something is conveyed to you. So why don't we begin with our meditation? And I thought today I would offer a few words from Suzuki Roshi. The following statement I'm going to read is actually posted outside of Beginners of Mind Temple on the kiosk, which is where we usually post our announcements of what's coming up and so on. Since we don't have much that's available to the public in terms of just walking in the door, we do announce our online programs, but we also have a picture of Zazuki Roshi and this beautiful encouraging quote that I thought I'd share with you to start off our meditation. So this is from Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. Suppose you are facing a difficult situation. You do not know what to do. You may walk up and down, in and out, but this does not help.

[04:54]

Actually, the best way to relieve your mental suffering is to sit zazen, meditation, even in such a confused state of mind and bad posture. In other restless positions, you have no power to accept your difficulties, but in the zazen posture, your mind and body have great power to accept things as they are, whether they are agreeable or disagreeable. The awareness that you are here right now is the ultimate fact. This is the point you will realize by Zazen practice. In continuous practice, under a succession of agreeable and disagreeable situations, you will realize the marrow of Zen and acquire its true strength. So that is Suzuki Roshi to offer us some encouragement as we begin our Zazen. So please find an upright posture.

[05:57]

Stable, grounded. Whatever posture helps you to be still for an extended period of time as much as is possible for you and your body. Allow yourself to simply become aware. Become aware of your present moment experience. Connecting to the here and now in whatever way it's showing up. Inviting yourself, inviting your body, inviting your whole being Let's settle a little bit more deeply into the presence, into the physical experience, for example, being in your seat, being in your body.

[07:22]

I'm going to ring the bell. And as I do so, I invite you to just observe the sound of the bell that first makes itself known for its duration. And then once it passes away, what is it that remains? if you can allow your awareness to be with that open, curious, spaciousness that you've had in the moment when the sound ended.

[08:51]

Just resting in awareness of this present moment experience whatever way it's showing up. I often use the metaphor of awareness as a wide open vast sky. We are that sky. And our practice is to simply allow anything that arises in the sky to pass through unobstructed until it too fades away like all experience. However, sometimes we might notice that the mind is just too fidgety.

[10:07]

He keeps jumping around, It doesn't stay where we want it to stay in the present moment. It goes to the past, down to the future, concerns and worries, chewing on all kinds of different things. When we notice it, in order to help the mind to stabilize, become still and quiet, we might use for a period of time an object, such as the breath. allow the mind to settle on, to be a touchstone. So in these cases, when the mind is particularly restless, just invite it to follow along with the sensation of breathing, the sound of breathing, or maybe even another experience that seems somewhat consistent and mutual.

[11:11]

is to see if you can allow awareness itself, allow the mind itself, simply to remain in a constant, settled state, whatever conditions are arising in this moment. with either focusing the mind like a spotlight on just the breath, being aware of the inhale and the exhale, the constant flow of breathing, or the experience of being breathed.

[12:19]

Now there's the invitation to relax into the experience of the present moment. Doing our best to allow ourselves to simply relax. if we find that awareness of the breath has stabilized and is somewhat continuous, we can experiment with further widening the spotlight to improve the experience throughout the whole body. embodied experience becomes our focus of awareness, the focus of the mind.

[13:58]

In whatever way, experience the showing up in this moment, can be open to it. What is it that open to it? To allow it to be exactly as it is, to accept what makes itself known to us for this period of time. And also to accept it's fading away and passing. that the spotlight of awareness must stabilize somewhat, fully aware of the entire embodied experience, you might experiment with allowing it to widen even more.

[15:13]

This being an open, a fused light that illuminates all experience. being with any sensations of the body, any feelings that might arise, any thoughts, all of it is welcome to be known by for whatever period of time it's here with us and in time also fade away. is not the object in which awareness illuminates, but the quality of awareness itself, the quality of the light.

[16:29]

Medication supports us to allow that quality to be consistent, to note the way that it's already shining. It isn't affected. or staying by any experience that may pass in front of it. All experiences included in awareness. All experiences made up of awareness. There's nothing separate or other than awareness. Just, yeah.

[17:48]

thank you everybody can you hear me okay okay i'm trying a different uh headset hopefully this will work okay for you but let me know if you can hear i see some okays yay thank you so i thought for the dermets uh today what I'd like to share with you is a few thoughts on cultivating presence. And particularly during this time of pandemic, the way that we can be a presence for not only ourselves, but for others around us is very vital. And it's a great Dharma offering. It's a great kindness to be able to offer ourself presence as well as other people. And... The practice of Zodran is itself a fundamental way to help us to tap into that quality of being, which is always present itself, and then be able to cultivate the capacity to return to that quality of being whenever we need to, and particularly during times of distress.

[31:58]

And, you know, obviously it's only natural right now, given everything that's happening, that we're going to feel a lot of various degrees of distress, whether or not it's for you, fear or anxiety, panic, confusion, whatever might be coming up for you. It's all a sense of dis-ease and how it is that we could bear with and be with our experience in a way that actually becomes healing and a way of being... fundamentally whole and inclusive is very important. And I think the more that we're able to be present, the more we're able to be grounded and centered and economists and in that being less reactive. So what happens is we're able to more clearly discern what is it that's happening and what is it that's needed in the moment in order to address what it is that's happening. And so we don't fall into old reactive patterns, but instead can come from a place of choicefulness in how it is that we gauge with our present moment experience, whatever it might be.

[33:12]

I think that presence ultimately comes from knowing who we are. And knowing who we are means that we recognize, we say in Zen, our fundamental Buddha nature. that which is always shining like the sun, ever-present. That's why at the beginning of the meditation, I was using the analogy of lights, always-present lights. The same quality of that light of awareness never goes out. It's always here, regardless of what's happening in the weather of our bodies and minds or the external reality. It's always a luminous presence, quality, that we can actually... and rested in some way, and from which it actually offers us kind of a clarity for how we might step forward into the next moment.

[34:14]

For me, it has this kind of grounded, timeless, unconditioned quality to it, this awareness. And this is kind of the same foundation that we bring to whatever it is that we're endeavoring to meet in the moment. So what are some of the aspects of presence that we might be able to consider and cultivate? And I thought I would share with you today six aspects of cultivating presence. Now, there might be more that you can name, that you identify for yourself that would be helpful. Some of the people who have done Zen and yoga retreats with me may be familiar with these because I've shared them before in certain forums. But I thought I'd start offering these six. And I sometimes labeled them the six Cs for cultivating presence because each of them I've been able to fashion in a way that starts with the letter C. And you might consider them as an antidote to the big C of COVID-19 that we're engaging with right now.

[35:27]

So if you find that helpful as a way to remember some of these, please use that. So the first C is to connect. And presence is basically initiated when we connect with or contact our present moment experience. So this basically means relying on our six sense gates, and those are site, touch, smell, taste, hearing, and also consciousness. Consciousness in Buddhism is considered one of the six sense gates. And so using those to come into awareness of a whole body experience, what is happening now in mind and body all together. So making contact. So when I began the meditation, I said, you know, suggested making contact with the sound of the bell, bringing awareness to that sound, and see if you can maintain a consistency of contact with that sound for a period of time as a way to cultivate stabilization of awareness itself.

[36:31]

Constant presencing of the experience, regardless of whether or not the experience has only just appeared out of the blue for how long it's... continuing, and then when it fades away, noticing that awareness itself still remains regardless of what it is that has risen and disappeared. So being in our embodied experience, noticing, making contact with, connecting with what's happening now, your body sensations, your thoughts and feelings. What is it that's appearing in the sky of our total field or realm of experience? And being able to witness it, staying with it, not turning away from it, becoming this wide open field that's able to touch, if you will, and connect with everything that arises for us. And one of the things, I've mentioned this before, I find it particularly helpful to actually center first when I do this in my Hara.

[37:35]

And the Hara is kind of an energy source. self-identified is just a few inches below the belly button, kind of the center of our being. So actually bringing awareness to the center of your physical being and allow it to rest there and feel into that space as if you were feeling within the sky that's within you and starting there. And then once you have centered in that, beginning to kind of widen the aperture of your field of awareness to expand throughout your whole body. And then beyond your body, into the room, into the wider awareness. But always using the Hara as your initial kind of grounding, centering touchstone for making contact with your experience. And then going from there. The second C, the next C is curiosity. Another name for it is inquiry. and bringing curiosity inquiry to what it is that we're experiencing in the moment once we made contact with it.

[38:40]

And this, as you probably know, entails cultivating or having a beginner's mind, which means an open, receptive, flexible mind. So having no fixed idea or agenda about the way things should be. Again, the open sky doesn't have an agenda about what it is that's supposed to show up. It's just able to receive everything with this open inquiry. And what is this? And what is this? So willing to see life, to see the truth of this present moment that's right in front of us, to see reality without any adorned views or assumptions or preferences or anything else that kind of in some way redefines a sense of self, a sense of a separate self. I sometimes say that Zen is the practice of what is. So people might ask, well, what is Zen? Zen is being completely with what is.

[39:41]

So how is it that we can be completely with what is? By asking yourself first the question, what is happening now? What is happening now? And then bringing this open-mindedness to the experience, allowing it to be exactly what it is. And then that invokes the third seed. So courage means, in French, large-heartedness, and entails having a sense of fearlessness to be able to extend our limits or extend our sense of receptivity to be in line with what is actually present, to be in line with, I would say, reality or with truth or the way things are. So how is it that we might keep our hearts and minds open enough to receive whatever it is that shows up in our field of experience. Whether or not we like it, whether or not it's pleasant or unpleasant, it's something expected or didn't expect it. Whatever it is, if we have the courage, if we have the wide hearts to allow it to and to receive it just as it is.

[40:50]

And the faith that underlies courage is one, it's a faith in something larger than ourselves, larger than our limited self, a sense of who we are. So it's courage that is rooted in a realization of the way things are that includes a recognition of our profound interconnectedness. So courage, you could think of as fundamentally inclusive. It's an extreme expression of an inclusive heart and mind. Nothing is turned away. Courage embraces. The sense of inclusiveness embraces everything. And basically, in order to experience the wholeness of our being, the wholeness of reality, the totality of reality. So whatever happens, we're held by this greater, deeper, wider experience of openness.

[41:55]

that gives us a sense of security and the strength to turn to and be available to whatever it is that shows up in our life. And the fourth C for cultivating presence is compassion. And compassion can be understood as what happens when our hearts meet suffering and whether or not it's our own suffering or the suffering of something else. What is it that we can do to be able to turn to that suffering and be with that suffering? So the word compassion itself comes from the Latin word to be with or to suffer with. And this idea of mutually having a shared experience of what it is to experience what it is that's being experienced in this moment. So when we see someone else who's suffering, can we be with their suffering and acknowledge it? be this kind of open space to witness it and recognize and allow ourselves to be touched by something.

[43:03]

And the same thing that we can do the same thing with ourselves in some way. And the fifth C is composure. And with composure, we're able to maintain an upright, balanced, equanimous state of body and mind. And traditionally, the word that's used for composure in Buddhism, you could say is equanimity. And the Pali word for equanimity is upekka. And Bhikkhu Bodhi, who's a Theravadan monk, says of upekka, it is evenness of mind, unshakable freedom of mind, a state of inner equipos that's not based on external conditions. that cannot be upset by gain and loss, honor and dishonor, praise and blame, pleasure and pain. Upaka is freedom from all points of self-reference. It is an indifference only to the demand of the ego self with its craving for pleasure and position, not to the well-being of one's fellow human beings.

[44:14]

So you can find in composure and equanimity this kind of sense of having a wider lens, a wider feel. In some ways it's translated as seeing over. So it's like being on top of a mountain and having a far wide view over all landscape, whatever's happening in this moment. And because you have this wide view, you could take everything into kind of an equal account in some way. So nothing, no particular experience is preferred or preferred in some particular way. So everything has an evenness to it. And this is something, again, that we kind of cultivate by sitting Zaza. And equanimity also means inclusivity. So it's interesting to note that rather than this being called COVID-19 being called an epidemic, it's actually being named a pandemic.

[45:17]

And I was curious to find out that The Greek roots for the word pandemic mean pertaining to all people, public, common. So this is a common shared experience that we're all going through. So through this, how do we actually connect to our commonality of experience and notice that and not allow this experience to fracture us, but actually to bring us together in some way, being reminded of our, that we're all one together in this. So this inclusivity of equity means embracing our pain and our joy as one life together. And then the final C is constancy. And constancy, I think, is found in resolve. And you could say resolve, another way to frame resolve is in intention or vow. to whatever that vow might be.

[46:18]

It might be a particular commitment that you have in your life to something that you feel is the most important thing to attend to and to embrace and uplift. So whatever that deepest intention that you have, that deep vow, the resolve to keep coming back to it again and again. And this is something we do in Zazen. If we make the commitment or the vow to follow the breath, during the period of Zaza and, you know, and have our mind stay with the breath. And whenever the mind wanders, then we notice that the mind is wondering, noticing that we veered off away from our commitment, our vow to stay with the breath. Then we simply redirect the attention back once more to the breath. So whenever this happens within any of our vows, any of our commitment that we make, we have the resolve to simply return again and again and again. regardless how often our mind wonders or how often we may kind of trip up in some way and forget what our original intention is.

[47:24]

So it's this persistence of effort that creates a sense of steadfastness and resilience. And constantly builds the capacity for continual presence, capacity to turn toward what is and remain in awareness at all times, regardless of what's happening internally, or externally. So it builds trust in something deeper and larger than the sense of a separate self. So those are briefly the six C's that I might offer for cultivating presence. Again, they are connection, or you could say contact, curiosity, courage, compassion, composure, equanimity, and constancy. So I hope they offer some encouragement, guidance, support for your practice over the coming weeks. So I'll stop there and open up to see if there's anything that you'd like to share, any questions you might have or something that you find particularly helpful as you pick up your own practice of being present right now with whatever's arising.

[48:39]

So you may already know what the process is for how to raise your hand. And if you don't, down below it says participants list and you can click on that and you'll see a little sign at the bottom of the list of participants, raise hand or lower hand. And it seems that Amit has raised their hand. So Tim is with us today and he will help us to mute and unmute if anyone has a question. So, Agnit. Yes, hi. Thank you for posting this. My question is, which of the C's do you find most relevant during these times, during these days today that help you personally? Which that help me personally? You know, I would... I'm finding recently that the first seat, connection, and then composure, I think are most helpful.

[49:48]

Connecting for me, I mentioned this yesterday to some of the residents at City Center, because I'm on Zoom sometimes for six to 10 hours a day doing this kind of connection, that I find myself kind of losing connection with my body and with the kind of other aspects around me, I'm so focused on the screen. So if I'm able to come back and connect with my own embodied experience, that it really helps me to first be present. So again, this is a question of what's happening now, for me to connect with and have a sense of what's happening now and recognize that. And then the other aspect of composure, kind of this, composure often entails a sense of having patience for enduring. Vicki Alston in her Dorma talk last night mentioned, you know, she talked a lot about patience, what it is to be able to stay with the experience, however difficult it might be.

[50:50]

And one of the ways that I find it's helpful to that is sometimes titrate the experience that you're having just a little bit at a time. Can you stay with it just a little bit longer than you think you can stay with it? And for example, if you're sitting in Zanavati and you have a pain in your knee or your body somewhere, rather than wanting to quickly move or adjust to get away from the pain, what is it? Just for 10 breaths more to stay with that particular experience, not even labeling it pain, just calling it sensation. Stay with it for 10 breaths more. And then at the end of that 10 breaths, ask yourself, can I stay with it? How am I now? And is it possible to stay with this just a little bit longer and maybe do it again for 10 more breaths? So really being in the body and staying with the embodied experience for as long as it seems feasible for us, using the breath as a touchstone, as a grounding way to be with our experience.

[51:56]

In this moment, that's what I find helpful. And I also have to say from day to day, Different things show up. Thank you. Anyone else? Are there any of these that you particularly resonate with? That you find yourself kind of like, that one sticks out for me. Or maybe there's another one or ones that you have particular challenge with. You actually say, I really have difficulty meeting that. So I see two hands. There's a Maria and then a Terry. So I'm going to let Sim unmute Maria and we'll see. Hi. Hello again. Hi. Hello. Good evening. Yes. I just have a question. When you say...

[53:00]

be grounded in the jara. How do we do that? How do you focus on the jara and our jara? I find the easiest way first. If it's hard to, bring your hand down to right below your belly button and rest your hand there for a bit. And then take a few moments to breathe into your hand. As if you're breathing from the center of your being into your hand. You might even feel the breath, you know, the abdomen right there as a kind of, you know, that gentle in and out of the breath. And feel the connection of your hands to that space. So maybe just spend a little time with just allowing your hand to rest there. So you become aware of what it is to bring your awareness to the center of your being in that particular location. And then see later if you can just bring awareness into that and actually allow your awareness to go inside, either further in, like as if it was in kind of this open cavity or this open sky that's whipping you down there and rest there.

[54:19]

So that's a beginning that I might recommend trying with that. And particularly if you're finding yourself struggling with a more difficult experience. putting your hand down, resting at your hara, grounding there first. And then sometimes I find I put my hand also on my chest, on my heart. So I ground both in the hara and also in the heart space and see if I can allow both of those touch points to offer some sense of stability and presence with the experience. So that deeper groundedness in the heart, but also the open spaciousness of the heart simultaneously. So experiment with that. See how that works for you. Thank you very much. You're welcome, Marina. And then Terry, Terry Baum. Yes. You know, I was just thinking also your idea of...

[55:23]

Putting your hands on your heart and your hara maybe is a good thing to do when you have an almost overwhelming desire to touch your face. Yeah, that's a great idea. It's a better place to rest your hands than your face. Just intentionally do something else with your hands. That's great. Great suggestion, Terry. Thank you for that. I mean, maybe my questions are too kind of specific and personal, but I'm finding my life chaotic at this time. And then after Vicki's wonderful Dharma talk, I just had this concept of, okay, tomorrow I'm going to organize this way. And then I wake up at 3 in the morning and can't go back to sleep. And so then I get up. and I do all these things and then I finally go back to sleep.

[56:25]

Then I waste sleep until nine. I mean, everything is chaos. But maybe I need to just accept waking up at three in the morning. I don't know. I mean, I'm confused about what to do. When I wake up, I have this intention of a schedule and consistency and then it's just blown at night. So that's an idea. So, for example, I was talking about beginner's mind. So drop that idea that you have to do things in a certain way, that something should be happening in a certain way. Drop the idea that you have to do anything in those moments. So that idea that I have to do something is part of what creates anxiety for us and part of what creates the chaos. If you don't have that idea that things need to be a certain way, then what chaos is there? Everything is just the way that it is. It's just showing up. It's just unfolding and blooming in this moment.

[57:28]

And all you need to bring to it is curiosity. But if you have an idea of blocks, it needs to fit like this. And I need to relate to this box in a certain way. It's going to create stress and disease. And then the mind's going to be churning, particularly at three o'clock in the morning. How do I fix this? How do I fix this? How do I fix this? What would it be to step back and say, there's not a problem here. This is not a problem. This is just the experience of the present moment. And when I say this is the experience of a present moment, I'm not even talking about the pandemic. I am talking about being with your breath, being directly with your embodied experience. When you wake up at three in the morning, just breathe. Just note your direct, experience of laying there in bed, eyes closed and open, being with whatever the experience is. There's no pandemic.

[58:28]

That's just an idea in that moment. The only thing that's present in that moment is just you being there, just being. And that being doesn't ask you to do anything at that moment. So give yourself over to being. It's a gift. Allow yourself, give your permission to do that. Just being. What's so interesting about this pandemic is that it really is encouraging us to turn back to, rather than doing, because we've been so busy doing, doing, doing, to actually come back and rest into being when it's possible. Many of us are very busy. Because we have a lot of things that are being asked of us to attend to. That's fine. But at the same time, can we do that activity from a place of rooted being, grounded being, rather than an idea of, I've got to do this.

[59:34]

I've got to fix this. It has a different way of relating to the experience. So when I wake up at three in the morning, I'm like, okay, this is the experience now. Hello. Welcome. I'm enjoying breathing. I appreciate laying in bed. It's warm. It's quiet. What a gift. So if I can just appreciate the present moment, then the rest of it kind of falls away. Is that helpful at all? It's very, very helpful. Thank you so much. You're welcome. You're welcome. So, I don't know if there was any other, oh, okay, I see one response. Any last, maybe have time for one more question when we're anchoring, one more sharing. I see a few hands, but I'm not sure.

[60:41]

So in this moment, what I'd like you to do is just take a moment, place your hand on your hara and place your other hand on your chest. Bring your awareness into your hand on your hara. And just breathe into that. And at the same time, bring awareness to the hand on your chest, on your heart. And breathe into that. And then ask yourself, in this moment, is there a problem? In this moment, am I fundamentally okay? And I allow myself to rest in this moment.

[61:48]

I just continue allowing mind's attention to be with the heart and the heart. Feeling yourself being breathed by the body. noticing you don't have to do anything. You can just rest with the breath, rest in this moment, knowing that you are fundamentally okay right here and right now. So take maybe throughout the day an opportunity to stop and pause and do this exercise. So in the midst of your busyness, of, you know, the kind of to-do list of whatever else is going on for you. Walking down the streets, you know, if you're out to get some exercise, if you've been on Zoom or the internet all day, stop for a moment, step away, you know, take the opportunity to just connect in this way.

[63:03]

And see if that helps you to be more present. And not just be more present, to be present itself, to allow your fundamental nature of presence to hold this moment in its entirety. So thank you. I really appreciated our practice together today. And I look forward to joining you again next week. Please take good care of yourselves. and also take care of each other. And I hope you have a wonderful time experimenting with the practice of cultivating presence. Okay, take care again, everybody. lots of friends.

[64:55]

And Nats and Grant and Susan and Drew and Toshin and Sandra. Good to see you all. Thank you again. Good night, everyone.

[65:24]

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