This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. So my name is Mark Lancaster. I've been practicing here about 20, 22 years now. And I was ordained in 2002. And my teacher is here, all my friends are here, and my wife is over there. And it's good to be here with you. And for the folks who are coming the first time, this is called Beginner's Mind Temple. a place where we can start over, entering this ground of being, this ground of lessness, this thing that seems to call out to us in sometimes language or voices that we really don't understand.

[01:13]

But there's something important here. So we call it beginner's mind. Not quite sure what it is, but something's happening here. Something's going on, and I want to be close to it. Sometimes our energy to get close to it actually pushes us away for a while, and we get frustrated. This is the fourth week of our practice period, our study period, ongo, which translates to dwelling in peace. Sometimes it doesn't feel so peaceful in the fourth week when you don't have enough sleep, and things are difficult. You might even say, well... I've forgotten what this was about. Why am I doing it? So, you know, that's when it's important to go back to what brought you through the door, your heart's question. Not just all the difficulties you're running into, you know, the impossible people that you might meet or the difficulty with sleep.

[02:15]

But what do you care about? What's happening? What's the vibrancy in this question? Go back to that. Don't worry about the external stuff so much now. So, there's energy in there for you. There's energy, some nutrient in there, if you go back to your heart's question. Then it's okay to get confused. This isn't, and I'll talk about that, this isn't about succeeding, maybe in the normal way that we think of success. In the end, there's nowhere to go. You know, I gave a talk on, you know, the end of life, death. Somebody said, oh, how sad that is. But actually, it's an invitation to explore the ground of being when we can't get out, when there is no other place to be. I'll talk about that a little bit. And for Shundo, where is Shundo?

[03:20]

Oh, dancing with Mara. I have to come up with a title. So I call this Dancing with Mara is the title. You know, Mara is the, you know, seen as a nemesis. You know, often the hindrances come in the guise of Mara. Doubt, fear, anxiety, anger, attachment to things, confusion. So how do we dance with this? You know, how do we undertake this direct connection with what seems to be our biggest challenge, our impediment? And what does Zen offer? You know, how do we work with it? How is this done? Well, one hint is the theme, continuous practice, you know. How do you see that? It's like a Rorschach test. Over here, you could see it is the same way we go about things, a linear process of A leads to B, A leads to C, defining ourselves in a pattern that maybe we know...

[04:21]

projecting a place we have to get to and avoiding chaos and catastrophe along the way, kind of creating patches before our feet, endlessly shoring things up. Continuous, then, is incredibly heavy. It's like hauling coals to Newcastle, our continuous practice. We're endlessly seeing ourself as falling down with something new that has to be arranged or constructed or built over. things have a solidity and heaviness to them so one eye sees it this way you know the world of having where we're quite separate that we have to do something we're quite defended and we need something so it's an endless struggle maybe this eye sees this grounded being where instead of this linear process everything is like a series of nested baskets

[05:22]

Stories within stories. Buddhism is a story in another story. Endlessly growing, getting bigger, more curious and interesting. Right here, completely here. So on this ground, one could be a little adventurous. One could be a little freer to meet that experience. It's not quite so heavy. It's not quite so foreign anymore. It's quite intimate to us. our connection. So in our practice period, we talk about this continuous practice. Dogen Thorne, Jordan Thorne, you have to tell him I said that Dogen Thorne in his talk on Saturday said, you know, He was recounting a dialogue between Mel, I think, and Suzuki Roshi. When asked, what is nirvana? He said, seeing one thing through completely to the end, not breaking away.

[06:28]

And of course, in this linear progression, how can this be? How can you see one thing? This doesn't make sense. So what's being implicated here in our normal experience? What is this continuous that we're talking about? We say... right effort appropriate energetic effort to stay right here this is continuous and then we do it again this is continuous and we don't we don't hang on to the out our having mind actually projects lots of outcomes you know Some of the hardest points for me were my first years when I projected a kind of saintly guise that I would have to undertake for myself, you know, and that I had to shore up, that I was strong and sort of kind. And it's a great impediment to do that. To hold all that up is a great impediment.

[07:30]

This is dancing with Mara. This is working with the negativity that we're so afraid of, the things falling apart that we're so afraid of. And how to do that is to do this with some courage and a lot of friends. A lot of friends. I've been sort of not wanting to give talks for a while. Can I say this, Nadine? What you told me. It was so appropriate. This is why you have friends. So I kept saying, I don't have anything to say. And I told Nadine, she said, are you going to do this talk? And he said, no. I said, no. Maybe next year. She said, well, then why are we living here if you're not going to give talks? It's kind of a friendly boot in the keister there, you know? I'm not sure I completely agree. I still have my, but it's important to listen. It's important to listen, you know, to trust broadly in things, not just, you know, my projection from having.

[08:38]

but to be willing to be open. We use this word, not always so, maybe mujo. Somebody translated it for me. This not always so is actually the ground of wonder or continuous practice, where we're so certain that our concepts are correct. We know who everybody is and how I should be. So we know a lot, but mujo, maybe not so. This is the ground of unconditioned wonder that we are invited to come back to. This is really why we're here. This is really why we're in a place like this getting up at unusual hours. Paul and I are helping with the practice period. So we met after the practice committee and he said, you know, we really have to encourage people and keep them on track. you know, if they're not being silent in the Zendo, and I say, ooh, I better start with myself.

[09:43]

I have trouble getting up. I have trouble getting up. It's very difficult for me, you know. So, okay. So I'll start with myself and keep going, you know, and encourage you too. But encouragement... You know, we have to have some firmness, but we have to have kindness and some humor in this encouragement, too. It gets too grim. It gets too grim. So this is very good. Be a little humorous about your effort, too. But get up. Get up. Give a talk. Do your best. So, doing one thing thoroughly, staying right here in a way that's not a way we... normally experience our life, you know, on the ground of having. And I'm using these terms. I've borrowed them from Stephen Batchelor. Alone with others is the book he used them in. I don't find any better terms. So contrasting being with, you could say, an incomparable experience or connection to things.

[10:53]

Nothing leading anywhere, but rather the end result right here. Actually, some of the best, I found this in goodwill. A.H. Maslow wrote this 40 years ago. I think it's $1.50, this book, and I found it laying in goodwill, and he says, completion, finality, ending, consummation, finishing. He listed pages of this state of being, you know, concepts of perfection, exemplars, pure creativeness. pure here and now activity. So he tried to list all these psychological or experiential states he noticed in people and worked in his realm. So this is not just Soto Zen. Many cultures practice this. Transformational, transpersonal psychologists, shamans.

[11:55]

I've been reading a lot of this guy, A.H., I've forgotten his name. Almost, yeah, the Pearl Wisdom, who's a sort of Sufi psychologist, also talks about this ground of being. What is it? How do we stay in this? So our tradition has certain hallmarks, things that we advocate. We work with koans. to bypass this state of having. And they're perplexing to us, you know. One koan I was thinking about is Joshu, you know, a young monastic comes to the temple and says, well, what will I do now? This is like our practice period. Well, what now? It's been four weeks and I'm not quite enlightened and sleep isn't working so well.

[12:58]

What's the next step? And it's a very sincere question, but it's also a question from the ground of having or this linear series of acquisitions and being defended. And Joshu says, say, young fella, or young woman, probably was a guy, did you eat your breakfast yet? Hmong says, yes, probably with enthusiasm. Yes, I've done that. Now? And Joshu says, well, you know, wash your dishes, wash your bowl. So, what? What did he hear there? You know, was this an invitation to another chore, another series of events, another success and failure projection? Joshua was being quite frank with him. There was nowhere else to go. Everything was very plain here. So can you wash your bowl? Can you be washed by your bowl? Can you be free and subject and object?

[13:58]

Can you see... the dance that's going on in this situation so Joshua says say do you see this we don't know what the young monastic did you know whether he left that day or stayed and prospered and became a great teacher these are questions from the ground of being that we ask ourselves sometimes in Zen you know we don't know what to do with these little koans almost says when we get stuck A great tenderness. When we get stuck in our life, when we get stuck in this negative place, when we're frightened, a great tenderness springs up. We call it hara here, he says. Your stomach actually becomes soft. This is a gate. This is where you explore the great matter. It's not about figuring it out or getting to the other side or being a good Zen student. It's to stay right in that tender place and experience it. And experience it on the ground of don't know. We say, not knowing is most intimate.

[15:01]

So, this is a big clue. If you've got it all figured out, look again. Look again. If you feel a little scared and confused, it's okay. It's okay, you're with friends. We're all gonna, in a sense, get out of here. Really nothing bad is gonna happen, in a true sense. And yet we'll all die. This is our paradox. This is our life. Another theme is, what's happening now? How do we experience it? How do we relate to these experiences of our life in ways that invite us more deeply into this ground of being or this ground of expressiveness? And how do we sometimes... bypass or get stuck. One way that we've been practicing with our exercises are to physically be connected.

[16:12]

And this is so inconceivable to our having mind or our rational mind that being attentive actually in a physical way or nama rupa, this psychophysical form, experiencing a situation completely with awareness, can actually begin this process of transformation or loosening or change. I think it's very hard because we're so used to patching and fixing up, of acquiring something. So this falling back or meeting our life on that ground is a core part of the training, both in India and also in China and Japan. This is just wash your bowl. But just wash your bowl. If you can see it on the ground of something new and creative, that's a big step. If you see it as just another repetitive event in getting enlightened and having a better job, just wash your bowl. Tenderly wash your bowl.

[17:16]

Paul used the example I still remember in his life. Then everything, even the hand soap, even your hand soap becomes a friend. It's soft and delicate. You know, everything in your life then becomes a friend. These are the myriad things coming forward. They're not to be put in place or reorganized or straightened up or have their teeth straightened. They just come forward to meet you now, quite tenderly. So this is the ground of I don't know, this expressive ground of just staying open. And it's frightening because we're defended. We're defended against loss. We're defended against Mara. We're defended against our negative impulses. So we're quite separate. And in that fear, we become or seem to become solid with so much to lose. The more frightened, the greater the loss. So one aspect here is this simplicity, this charming simplicity of Zen.

[18:22]

Just wash your ball. Just sit upright and listen when your wife says something to you or your partner or your friend. Just listen. Maybe you know everything. Really now. I had a big, we're going to have a mountain seat ceremony again, and one of my bigger experiences, and I realized, oh, a little knot got loosened after 18 years. I was given, for whatever inexplicable reason, the... coordination of the last mountain seat ceremony for Steve Stuckert. And they had this idea that I would be in charge of where people would sit, you know. So people were coming up to me. We had the head of the Rinzai in Japan here and Akiba Roshi here. So everyone would come and say, well, should we put these guys on chairs or should we give them cushions so they're with everybody? And I thought, you know, and I keep saying this,

[19:24]

I was born in Cleveland, Ohio. Really, no. Really, no. So, and 15 years ago, I know I would have, not that I'm so advanced, I still dither and I get very nervous, but I would have just run around. I know what I would have done. I would have gone and I would have Googled and I would have looked at books like Chair, Rinzai, you know, and instead I just relaxed. You know, I came down here, and I went to the door, and I looked in the room. There were 165 chairs in here. It was impossibly crowded, you know. We'd taken Tatamiya. People were just... But it was really nice, and I was just looking at the room thinking, oh, this is kind of wonderful. Here we are all together in this improbable ceremony of walking up a mountain, you know. And Witsu came up. He comes from Japan when we do this because he tries to... He's so delightful. He helps us, and then he's so sweet because he goes, he tells us things, and then he says, no, that's not wrong.

[20:27]

I'm so, I forgot. Let's do it. But we were just standing in the door, and I, because I was so relaxed, not going anywhere. I was just standing there. And I know I would have, 10 years ago, I would have said, well, Wietzel's English. I don't have time for this. So I was just standing, and he says, it's nice. I said, yeah, it's really nice, huh? Sunny. He said, Akiba, chair? And I said, chair. And he goes, oh, that's good, good. Then he asked about the Rinzai fellow. He said, chair. And he goes, yeah, yeah, very good. And he says, bye. And he left. So help comes when you're available, you know. So this is being available, you know. This is being available. Our fear prevents us. I have to know.

[21:27]

Why I have to know? I don't know. I have to know. I can't fail. Maybe so, but can you just hang out at that really difficult place? And maybe you fail. It happens. Rinzai priests who were three priests pulled up in a Trailways bus, and there were 20 priests and friends. It's like, well, here we go. It was fine. A lot of room here. We got them all in. It was untoward. So then how do you respond? On the ground of fear and habit, or do you say, well, this is something new. And A lot of people respond, too. You don't have to do it all. Don't take on too much. Hold up your end. It's much more peaceful. Susan helped me with that today. We need friends sometimes to say, enough.

[22:31]

You have to learn to listen. And it's the listening that's the trick to get in there because our conditioning is very powerful. Buddha's image of ego or self, but not just self, but attachment to self, is, he says, form, sensation, perceptions, formations, and consciousness. And we conceptualize and begin to become very confused about this process. We get quite estranged from the activity at some point. Buddha says, in the earth, don't see the self. We buy cars, and if somebody scratches it, we feel denigrated. They've attacked me. You know, Buddhists don't do that. It's a pile of minerals assembled together. There's no own being in that. Pay attention. So this process of confusion, it happens very fast.

[23:33]

Very fast, you know. We go in these habitual streams, these karmic formations. They just move right along. drawing incredible conclusions. You know, conception is very interesting. Perception is quite discreet based on sensation, but when we form things, we conceive of them, they become laws that can be useful, but unchecked, they begin to actually distort our process of perception and sensation, unbeknownst to us, and they're very powerful. You know, we actually think we're separate from this confusion or this, but it's very powerful. It's not as though we're separate from the story. We are the story completely when we're in that situation. So contact, softness, slowing down, very important aspects in Zen training over and over again.

[24:35]

over a little bit. It's Wednesday night, so we don't talk so long on Wednesday night. So be willing to slow down and examine. There is, I could say, a true knowledge. It's not the concepts are bad, it's we're excessive with them. Buddha used a wonderful phrase from Lama Jamaka. What one feels, one perceives. What one perceives, one reasons about. What one reasons about, one is obsessed with. What one is obsessed with due to the concepts characterized by such obsessed perceptions assail him or her in regard to objects cognizable by the visual organ. And he's talking only about sight, each of the sense gates belonging to the past, future, and present. So we're quite sucked away often in this conceptualizing process called mental proliferation or obsessiveness.

[25:49]

It's a trait we have. It's a trait we have that Buddha says is somewhat excessive, somewhat excessive. We need to guard against it when we're swept to these places. And this is the grounding in having friends that check us, bring us back a little bit. Huitzu is saying, Chair? and hanging out for an answer like that. I think I'm going to just end with Buddha's dance with Mara. There's no defeating here. There's no defeating death. Gautama started out in his inquiry of sickness, old age, and death, and how to defeat this situation. And I think in his sixth year, he changed something up. His acceptance was profound of death, of disillusion, of decay, and of Mara.

[26:55]

Something changed in this person. He did something unique. He's a unique character. He turned the tables on his own fear. He saw there was nothing outside to be afraid of. He accepted the negativity here. He accepted the negativity. And the negativity, actually, by the way, is our energy, too. It's our life process. We get lost in it, but we have to pay attention. It's quite accurate, too. Now, conceptions about negativity are a problem, but the negativity often has a power to it. Buddhists saw the power in that also. Buddha doesn't defeat Mara. Buddha realizes there's nothing to defend. Mara's attack continues, but there's nothing to strike anymore. You could say they're old friends.

[27:56]

Mara and Buddha dance together, and then this enlightenment, this improbable activity occurs, and Buddha lets go. He lets go of being defended, of going anywhere, of opposing death. And he dwells on that ground completely. And he stops. And there's nothing to strike. This is the process that we undertake here in our training. And you can't just stop there. Even if you have this big experience, nothing to defend. You get up. So you get up, and now that you have had your experience of this being, of this undefended place, you have to express it out here. You know, these guys like Gautama and Jesus Christ, they're living in personal being now.

[29:01]

They're this intersection, horizontal and vertical, between a wide-ranging insight and the ability to be very human and personal with it. They're incarnate. They can express it. And that's what strikes wonder. Right here. They say something and it's unconditioned. It's free. It's free speech. You can say true free speech. They stand up right here. In his final statement during his enlightenment, Buddha says, Mara challenges Buddha with the hindrances. Who are you, you pipsqueak? to think you can understand and defeat death, yama, and know the cosmos. And Buddha touches the earth and says, the earth here is my witness. So this is his pact with not going anywhere, his pact with not being defended, his pact with being vulnerable, completely open.

[30:02]

He becomes a rare flower. We say the Udambara flourishes in a thousand years. out of this rootstock it just flourishes something unique it's the promise for all of us how to go back to this ground and touch the earth and flourish this is your true heritage this is why you're here so keep on going and encourage me to please For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[31:01]

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