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. Welcome to everybody this beautiful Saturday morning. I'd particularly like to welcome the people that have never been in this hall before. and particularly to the woman that I met on the doorstep this morning who came early and I didn't have the wherewithal to say, please just come in and somebody will help you. I'm in a rush. So I apologize for not being more welcoming. My name is Mary. Many of you might have been expecting another person up here named Erin Merck. She's in bed with a very wretched, wet cold. and she didn't think it would be so appropriate for her to be sitting up here snorting in front of you.

[01:03]

I was sort of in her position about three days ago, and so I'm getting over a cold, so let's see how that goes. But if you could all for one moment send her good healing thoughts, that would be lovely, and it'll embarrass her terrifically. So may Aaron be well and all the other people in this temple and in this city and planet who are suffering today. So I'd like to talk today about something that's proven to be one of the fundamental points of my practice. And first I'd like to tell you a story. So about 20 years ago, my then partner and I, after a lot of thinking, planning, research, um, decided to get a dog. And, um, we, both of us had, uh, childhood pets who had little to no training and we were both very resolved to have a situation that was different.

[02:15]

So we settled on a particular dog. She was an Airedale Terrier, um, They're beautiful, very willful, and smart. She came to us in a crate, and puppy training started about 10 seconds later. And we were really diligent dog owners. We took her to puppy school, puppy socialization. We started walking her on a leash really early. You know, the not jumping up, sitting, walking on a leash, staying, the whole deal. We were very invested in this. And it proved to be really successful. She was a lovely dog. And I remember one time I was walking in the neighborhood we lived in. We got, she and I, she on a leash, got to a street corner. I stopped. She put her, you know, butt on the sidewalk.

[03:20]

She kind of looked at me. It was one of those like, oh, this is so perfect. It's so perfect owning a dog. And a woman was coming. She looked at us and she said, wow, were you ever lucky to have a well-trained dog? And I kind of said, well, thanks. And inside I was like, are you got to be kidding? Like, what does this have to do with luck? hours and hours and hours really of like, no, don't do that, no, no, blah, blah, blah. I think that this luck thing, like me having a dog and how lucky I was, that made quite an impression on me. So does this sound familiar to anybody? We kind of think we'd really like to be different. those people are really lucky over there. They've got something that I want.

[04:21]

And I don't, I think there's at some point in our lives, there's a moment, maybe when you come to a place like this, where you think, where somebody else says to you, I don't think that's about luck. I think that's about dedicating yourself to something. dedicating yourself to doing something with your life that involves some diligence, some dedication, some mentoring. And we are born as children with this amazing potential. Both our bodies, we're like, as toddlers, a ball of potential. And... And a lot of people describe young children as kind of sponge-like, that they just try things, they take things in, they do things.

[05:30]

And I had a friend who was a dancer, and she told me of this assignment she had once. She and all the rest of the people in the workshop were taken to a kids' school in Germany, and they were told to... pick one child and follow that child, do everything that child did for one hour. And she said it was one of the most informative experiences of her dancing career because she said it was exhausting. Her body was doing things that she had never imagined it could do. And she had just this appreciation for the non-stop learning that was happening. So I think we all get a small taste when we think about that or we think about somebody we know who's a little person who's running around, you know, sticking their tongue on a metal pole in the winter, doing those things, you know. We get a feeling of how we train our bodies. Young kids, they start, they crawl and then they balance themselves on a ledge and then they take a step with support and then one day they just let go and they start walking.

[06:43]

And there's kind of a miracle in that. And also, there's a lot of dedicated training that's happening in that moment and over those months to get the child so they're walking. And then probably each one of us has had the experience where your parent decided they wanted you to take up the cello. And at first, it's like... Okay. And, you know, and then somebody's yelling down the stairs, do you have to practice right now? You sound like a dying cat. Or these things, or playing basketball, or these body things that we all learn to do when we decided to take up something. And it's practice. It's dedicated daily attention to something. And sure, we've all heard of those child prodigies that sit in front of a piano stool, sit on a piano stool in front of a piano and then start playing Mozart or start playing whatever, you know.

[07:58]

And that does happen. But I don't think it happens that often. And in terms of training our mind, I think most of us hope that one day it'll just happen for us. That some magic switch will be turned on and we'll, like, be able to pay attention. We'll be able to listen to our partner when they're in distress and really listen to what's going on. We'll be able to participate in a conversation when we have seven other things going on in a way that we're happy with. And we kind of hope for the best. And in my life, certainly, I got to a point where hoping for the best just wasn't working out for me. So I...

[09:10]

I got interested in sitting. And specifically, I got interested in what was happening while I was sitting. Many of you were in meditation instruction this morning. Many of you I know have a regular sitting practice here or in other places, or at least probably most of you have a curiosity about what sitting is or does. And I think there's a point where we're told you shouldn't think that about an issue. And the shouldn't, the loaded shouldn't, if you start questioning that, it's like, how do I do that? How shouldn't I? How do I get to that point where... I'm not going to be thinking that way because this is the way I think.

[10:13]

And for me anyway, that moment is an opening. It's like we call here a gate. It's an interest in finding out, okay, so if I shouldn't be going in that direction, how do I get going in the other direction? I... I've gone to teachings by a woman named Kandra Rinpoche, who's a Tibetan woman teacher. And for her entire youth, she was surrounded by many very well-trained Tibetan monks, most of whom were tulklos, so realized teachers. And one of her uncles had a habit, which he carried for his entire life that she knew of.

[11:20]

He would carry around a dish, and in the dish were black and white pebbles. And while he was talking or interviewing people or eating, he would move either a black pebble... or a white pebble in front of, like he'd set a pebble. Then there would be a time, and then he'd set another pebble. Sometimes they were black, sometimes they were white. When he ran out of the pebbles in the dish, he would put them back in the dish. And Kondro explained that for him, the white pebbles were positive thoughts, and the black pebbles were negative thoughts. And he said, I have them all the time. And I am just, this is a tool for me, so I am conscious of which thought, what kind of thought I'm having. And she explained that he didn't say the black pebble came as a result of a lot of heavy judgment or disappointment, or he should be not thinking that way.

[12:32]

It was simply a fact that his mind produced very positive feelings thoughts and very negative thoughts and he wanted to be aware. And I was kind of captivated by that. That I could have the thoughts that my mind produces and I could actually keep track of them. And they weren't maybe so heavy. They were just... part of my makeup, part of my getting to who I am and where I am. So I'm sitting up here as a person who's talking about starting down a certain path. And I started down that path.

[13:34]

And... as somebody sitting here, I can't actually start any of you down a path. You have to decide where your feet are and which direction you're moving. And I think that's mostly what a Dharma talk is about. It's about somebody saying, this is a path I am heading down. It's an option for people. or I'm kind of curious about this way of heading, this direction. So on this path of mine, which involves training my mind, I have two tools that I want to share with you. I do not carry around a little canister with black and white pebbles, although I think it's a brilliant idea, but I don't do that. So the first tool that I have that I rely on, fairly heavily actually, is the statement, do I believe what I'm thinking?

[14:45]

And I think it's safe to say that the job of the mind is to produce thoughts. And those thoughts are mine. They arise because of my training, my background, the things my parents taught me, the schools I went to, the experiences of sickness and health that I enjoyed. I mean, we can go on and on about why I produce the thoughts I produce and what goes into that. I think... For me, I believe that the problem arises when I believe the thought that my mind is producing is the right thought, is the best thought. And then I believe that because I have the best thought, or the right thought, then other people need to share the truth in my thought.

[15:58]

Sometimes it works that way. Sometimes the thoughts that I have, other people say, yeah, I agree with you. And that's usually straightforward. It doesn't always mean that I'll believe that thought in 10 minutes even, but there's some sort of workability there. Mostly it's when this thought comes into contact with the thought that Roger's having and And then what do we do about it? Roger believes what he's thinking. I believe what I'm thinking. What happens there? And it turns into this kind of... I once had somebody describe, like, I get puffed up, Roger gets a little puffed up. Then I get a little more puffed up. And then Roger gets a little more puffed up, right? So we're both, like, really puffy people, right? And then we start kind of bouncing off each other, right?

[17:01]

And nobody knows what to do next. And so this idea, this thought, do I believe what I'm thinking, usually allows me, it really simply allows me to have a little space around my need to get puffed up. And then I usually have a second thought, which is, yeah, I believe it. I believe what I just said. Or my second thought would be, actually, I don't believe that thought anymore. Or it might simply be, the second thought might be, I don't know. So then I take a next step. this sounds pretty easy. The first time it was introduced to me, I thought, well, that sounds pretty easy.

[18:03]

It's terrifically hard most of the time because we start getting puffy the minute something comes out of our mouth. And so as a tool for training, the thought, do I believe what I'm thinking, is it allows us just to take a breath. re-evaluate, soften. And it might, as I said, not change the next step we take, but it might. And that's one of these pivot points, I think, that becomes really important in my life. Because then I'm not so sure about the next step, and it's not indecision. It's not being wishy-washy. It's actually kind of a moment of clarity.

[19:05]

And I think that's an important difference because in this culture, I think there's a lot of messages about don't be wishy-washy. Be strong. Make a decision. You know? And... So far in my testing of this statement, do I believe what I'm thinking, it has not made me a more indecisive person. It has, however, made many of the discussions I used to have where I'd get puffy and self-righteous less so. So as a working proposition for me, this has been pretty successful. And as I say, it takes work. I read somewhere once that it's really good to believe your second thought, not your first thought.

[20:11]

And as I say, I've been testing this out for a while, and so far I'm glad to be in the middle of the experiment. The second tool that I use... are called the Lojang slogans. Lo, it's a Tibetan word, and lo means intelligence, mind, that which perceives things. And jang means training or processing. So it has been translated simply as mind training. These are a set of 59 slogans that an Indian Buddhist teacher taught in Tibet in the 11th century. There are many translations of these slogans. Chögyam Trungpa did a book with commentary.

[21:16]

Pema Chodron wrote a book called Start Where You Are, which is her translations and commentary. And most recently, Norman Fisher, who is a Zen teacher and used to live at San Francisco Zen Center, was an abbot here for many years. He has a book on the subject called Training in Compassion. And I believe in the coming year, he's going to be doing an online set of classes where he focuses on the Lojan slogans. So... This is how the slogans work for me. Through my day, stuff happens. Probably that happens for everybody out there. So let's say someone says something to me or does something that I don't like. And this is kind of the same thing as the last thing I described, the mechanism here.

[22:18]

So... Something happens, and then my mind responds by turning the events over. So I think about it. I kind of mull over it. Sometimes the story gets more juicy. Maybe I get a little bit more angry. Maybe my thoughts get a little more entrenched. Sound familiar for anybody? Is this familiar? there's like supporting evidence, the reason why this person is really like wrong. It's kind of satisfying, right? It's seductive. It's like, I'm so right and they're so wrong. And this happens a lot to us. So in the midst of that, I'm so right and they're so wrong, slogan number 13 pops into my mind. sort of as a cartoon bubble.

[23:23]

And the slogan is, be grateful to everyone. Right? So you have this, like, this person is really wrong. Holding that thought, I'm holding it. Holding it pretty tightly. And then the other thought, Be grateful to everyone arises. What do you do? They're probably both right. Or at least your brain is telling you they are. It's like, this person's so wrong. They're so wrong. Be grateful to everyone. So again... There's this pause. There's this ability. The power of the slogan is it's floating there in your brain. You've studied it. I've studied it. I've talked to other people about it.

[24:25]

It's in there. I've memorized it. It arises. And then something changes for me usually. There's a softness. There's a thought. Maybe this is a bigger deal than I'm making a bigger deal of it than I need to. Maybe we should talk more about this event. Maybe there are possibilities here. And my mind generally slows down. I take a breath or two, which often for me... is a very healthy thing. And then I think about what needs to happen next, rather than the reaction I'm having drives me to take the next step.

[25:27]

We are undoubtedly impelled by our karma. It sends us in directions... often before we're even aware that we're running down the road. And so for me, these slogans punch holes in my habitual reactions. They're a tool. And I've worked with these slogans for many years now. And they serve more or less two functions. The first function is the arising of one of the slogans changes my reaction in the situation. I don't always know how it's going to change the reaction, but it undoubtedly does for me.

[26:32]

It's like one piece of information that changes the process. And then the subject of the slogan often gives my mind an alternative thing to be thinking about. Both those things have proven over time to be very helpful for me. Slogan number 21 is always maintain only a joyful mind. You've got to be kidding, right? But when you're thinking... What a crappy day this is. And then the slogan arises, always maintain only a joyful mind. Those two act together to produce something that is different than either the first thought or the second thought. And that's really helpful.

[27:36]

Number 26 is don't ponder others. Okay, so for me, this has been a very, very significant thing. I worked at Tassajara as the fugitan one summer. This was the summer that I actively decided I was going to memorize all the slogans, read different commentaries, work with them, and talk about them a lot. So the kitchen crew got really sick of me talking about the slogans. But one of the things that I often said to them was, The Fugaten is the person that bosses people around in the kitchen, by the way. So I would say, let's think about slogan 26 today. Maybe like, yeah, don't ponder others, right? And I would say, yeah, like, you can ask people questions. That's totally cool. But if somebody grabs the knife you wanted to use...

[28:41]

Don't then think, well, that person, just like grab another knife. Again, I say just blah, blah, blah, but this is really, really difficult. But the slogan is, it's not like try not to ponder others, or it's best if you don't ponder others, or it's a waste of time to ponder others. It's don't ponder others. It's very clear instructions. Another slogan is number 32, which is don't wait in ambush. Yeah, this is so great, right? So you can imagine a scenario where somebody said something to you at your workplace. And then there's this thought like, I'll show them. And it might be like a small showing, you know, like, well, I'm not going to share my cake with them.

[29:42]

You know, it could be like that. Or it could be a bigger showing. Like, that person's going to lose their job tomorrow because of what they just said to me, and I'm going to make sure that happens. So again, this isn't like a soft thing. It's like, don't wait in ambush. Don't put yourself in this position. Drop things. Don't sharpen the knife. Number 49 is always meditate on whatever provokes resentment. So you're getting the picture of the slogans. They're short. They're pithy. In isolation, they're not hard to imagine. or to think about.

[30:44]

But in conjunction with the many, many, many thousands of thoughts we have every day, they're alive. And so working with them has proven to be extremely engaging for me. And this is not a quick fix, practice. Because our minds are very, very complicated. It's a very complicated business, let's say. A friend of mine said recently, trying to change yourself, I think this was a Gurdjieff saying, trying to change yourself is like picking up the board you're standing on.

[31:44]

So it's hard, I mean, it's impossible. You can't pick up a board you're standing on. But as I said a little earlier, we can identify a path or a direction that we want to walk, and we can have support along the walk. And I think, essentially, the idea of Dharma, Dharma talks, is to provide you with encouragement, maybe a little support, to start off on an endeavor that involves questioning who... you want to be, how you want to react. For me, it certainly helped me identify the priorities of my life.

[32:47]

And I think these tools swim, they kind of move in my mind, this Lojan slogans and this idea that Do I really believe what I'm thinking? They swim in my mind and sometimes they allow me to make an appropriate response. One time many years ago, I was sitting, I was a relatively new meditator and a woman was giving a Dharma talk who'd been a devoted practitioner for 25 years. And somebody said to her, like, why do you practice? What's the point? And she said, an appropriate response. And that has proven to be a worthwhile point in my solar system over the years.

[33:59]

Because it's not the right response. it's the appropriate response. And I think those are quite different. So essentially what I'm proposing today is that each of us has kind of the choice to be the dog that's locked up in the backyard because it can't be trusted in the house. It hasn't been trained. And through no fault of its own, it has reactions that have it act a certain way. Or we can take up the practice of working diligently and be trained like a service dog who helps blind people across roads and busy streets, or finds people who have been trapped in an avalanche.

[35:10]

That's my proposal. It's not fast. It's not easy. But the rewards are amazing. We have amazing minds. I would say, limitless. And almost all the time, we don't have the skill or even the simple wherewithal to change the way we act. because we just don't have enough information. And there's something we can do about that, which I think is really great. So as a final thing, I would like to thank a wonderful, funny teacher that I had.

[36:22]

Her name is Trime, and she's the first person that talked to me about Lord John's slogans. She gave me a book about them. And she's the one that pointed at a path for me. And it is because of her and her wacky ways that I started walking on that path. And I can't imagine my life any other way than it is today. And sometimes I wish that that wouldn't have happened. And here I am. So thank you, David, for allowing me up here today. Thank you all very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[37:26]

Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[37:46]

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