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, everyone. Good to have you here. Good to see you. Is anyone here at Beginner's Mind Temple for the first time? One, two, three... Welcome, really good to have you here. This is a community temple and we would like you to come back. It is open for meditation in the morning and in the evening and please come and keep joining us. So if you've ever seen a dog that was happy, like really happy, you know what dogs do.

[01:00]

In fact, they run in circles, a small circle. And when they're so excited and joyful that they don't even know what to do with themselves, they just kind of run in circles. And they have this happy dog look on their face that says, I am bursting with joy. And one of my friends thought it would be great... if I had some way or another to find an emoji that could capture this. And of course they couldn't because it's just so, so they decided to come up with a word and the word for this they thought was zoomies. So they just send people zoomies and they've defined it to them. That's what, that's what it means. It's just like, I am so happy. I am overflowing with joy, just like a dog that is running in circles and doesn't even know what to do with itself. is a lot of joy. And yet, in this world that has so much serious things going on, it almost feels disrespectful or wrong or unfocused or something.

[02:21]

If I am having joy or focused on joy or in some way or another, even paying attention to my joy, that deep-seated feeling of ease, with all the things that are happening with the climate, with political discord, with social issues, with wars, what place is there for joy? So the joy that I'm talking about is that not surface-level happiness. I'm talking about the joy that is deeper, that is deep in your bones, something that is like many folks that you can think of who even had difficult lives, but they had a joyous spirit. What causes that?

[03:25]

I liked this comment from the New York Times writer David Brooks when he was writing about joy in an article, and he said, Now happiness usually involves a victory for the self. Joy tends to involve the transcendence of self. Happiness comes from accomplishments, while joy comes when your heart is in another. Joy comes after years of changing diapers, driving to practice, worrying at night, dancing in the kitchen, playing in the yard, and just sitting quietly together and watching TV. Joy is the present that life gives you as you give away your gifts. And I love that, because joy would be a fruit of practice, much like you do the set-up, fall asleep you know you don't sit down and say to yourself all right i'm gonna fall asleep one two three you know you don't you don't summon sleep you do a whole bunch of setup you know you change your clothes you turn off the blue lights maybe you don't drink any water for an hour before bed you do all these things you've got your place that's dark

[04:43]

And then somewhere along the line, you just fall asleep. It's the fruit of what you have set up. You have set up sleep. And then somewhere along the line, you inherit sleep. Hopefully. And joy being a fruit of practice is something that is a hallmark of Zen and Buddhism, even though many times that is not the rap. Or that is not the reputation or maybe the external packaging that folks think of when they think of Zen or when they think of Buddhism. Buddhism and Zen can seem serious. Like there's something serious going on here. People are wearing dark robes and sometimes they aren't speaking. They're doing things in a very exact way. And there's a lot of forms.

[05:46]

And it can seem like there's something serious going on here. And then we tell you about the Four Noble Truths. They're the cornerstones of Buddhist practice. And we start off with the truth of suffering. And that doesn't sound very fun. And then we talk about how to alleviate suffering. And we have this eightfold path of how to live so that we don't suffer. Where is the joy? Where is the joy in all of this? Where is the exuberance that is deep down in our bones? James Baraz, one of the founders of Spirit Rock, was writing about this one time, and I loved what he wrote. And it was talking about his initial introduction to Buddhism, And the transformation that he went through, coming to this very serious practice, a lot of rigor, a lot of doing, a lot of showing up, a lot of doing things in a specific way.

[06:57]

And he wrote, for several long years, the truth of suffering became my primary guide. Real practice meant committing to getting off the wheel, the wheel of our suffering. freeing myself of lifetimes of suffering as I wandered through endless cycles of death and rebirth. The end of suffering got entangled in my mind with the end of living. Which meant tempering aliveness and enthusiasm and fun. Tempering the now because we need to be really serious and buttoned up so that we can maybe sometime in the future inherit something else. Perhaps it was a necessary stage in the awakening process, but the smiling Buddha, who had so lovingly inspired me during my first years of practice, had turned into a stern taskmaster. Practice became a serious endeavor.

[07:58]

Have you ever felt that way about practice, or about Zen, or about the spiritual path? That this is something that needs to be taken seriously because it's so important. Now, I love the statement from, and I forget who said this, someone knows, you can tell me later, but the spiritual path is way too important to be taken seriously. There is something about the word serious that almost implies a single-minded way of doing things, like either I'm serious or I'm not serious. And yet, we can think of many things that we do that are very specific, very focused, and yet they are also joyful. They are also somewhat loose. There's the term both and in Buddhism.

[09:05]

Both and. This and that, and maybe even this too. A lot of things happening simultaneously. Our minds prefer to see things as, okay, it's this or it's that. Very similar to the guiding principle if you've ever studied improv. The guiding principle of improv is yes and. And you know that if you're thinking in your discriminative mind that everything falls apart on stage. because you can't be analyzing. You need to be watching what's happening in the moment. And if you're watching what's happening in the moment, then you're doing something very specific. But if you get too tight around that, then you're going to actually lose the energy and the spirit of what the other person is conveying to you. So here you're doing something very specific that has to do with the spirit of human beings coming forward on a stage.

[10:08]

And you're trying to connect to that. But if you think too much in your mind, and if you get too tight around, I want to do this right, or if you pay too much attention to just the words and not the entire thing that's coming at you in regard to the emotions and what's being conveyed, then it comes across as incredibly flat, and it doesn't work. And the energy, the spark never happens on stage, and you don't see those folks actually really take off. The very first thing that Eihei Dogen wrote when he came back from his trip from China was the Fukan Zazengi. Now, Eihei Dogen, in case you don't know, was kind of the founder or I should say re-founder of this school of Zen in Japan. He had taken a trip to China to go back and find some of the original teachings that maybe they had deviated from or had become different things. So he had been in China for a little while, about three and a half years. and he comes back to Japan, and he's quarantined on his ship, and he writes this document called the Fukanzazengi.

[11:15]

Now, this document got edited many times throughout his life, but it's essentially the universal call to sitting, to Zazen. And Dogen, Ehei Dogen, was one of the people who helped establish the meditative practice as one of the cornerstones of the Soto Zen school. and how we actually engage and touch the practice of transcending this world and this life. And he called it the Dharma Gate of Repose and Bliss. He said, the Zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It is simply the Dharma Gate of Repose and Bliss, the practice realization of totally culminated enlightenment. totally culminated enlightenment. The Dharma gate of repose and bliss, bliss being a synonym for joy in many cases, or the far end of joy, a state that being joyful elicits.

[12:32]

And repose, tranquility, holding, It doesn't sound like fierceness. It doesn't sound like something that is tight. Repose does not sound like something that is tight. And bliss does not sound like something that is overly serious and thinking about things a lot. Dr. Carl Bielfeldt is a scholar and one of the preeminent Dogen scholars. He's written many books about Dogen and Shikantaza, which is the form of sitting that's written about in that document that Dogen first wrote when he was sitting on that ship in port when he came back from China. And Dr. Bielfeld writes about Dogen. He said, Zazen is not mere meditation concentration, but the teaching of ease and joy.

[13:37]

Zazen was not merely a device for producing a perfected state of enlightenment, but the expression of a more fundamental perfection inherent in all things. The expression of a more fundamental perfection inherent in all things. In this way, the practice of zazen becomes the actualization of the ultimate truth, and the practitioner, you and me, just as he or she is, becomes the embodiment of perfect enlightenment. Now, if you've ever sat zazen or meditation, maybe every period of zazen and every minute did not feel like the embodiment of perfect enlightenment. because oftentimes we have an idea about what perfect enlightenment would be. And this ease and joy is the setup for this practice and the verification of ultimate enlightenment.

[14:51]

It is the setup for being with your own mystery, for what is actually unfolding in this moment. mentioned James Barraze earlier with his the founder of Spirit Rock one of the founders of Spirit Rock and what he was saying about when he first came to practice about how it seemed like it was all about suffering and it became a serious endeavor later he wrote joy is not something we have to manufacture it is already in us when we come into the world and as we can see in the natural delight and exuberance of a healthy baby, we need only release the layers of contraction and fear that keep us from it. We need only release the layers of contraction and fear that keep us from it. It's already in us.

[15:54]

You can see it in the exuberance of a baby. So when we come over here and we start talking about zazen, and this is a device for producing a perfected state of enlightenment, but the expression is not a device for producing a perfected state of enlightenment, but the expression of a more fundamental perfection inherent in all things, like a joyful baby, like yourself, To have one moment of consciousness, that is the miracle that you're tapping into in Zazen, is that to have one moment of consciousness is a miracle. Think of all the millions and billions of things that have to come and coalesce and be in alignment with the universe for you to have one moment of consciousness. Infinite number of things had to happen before a human being,

[16:58]

could have consciousness and could be with this moment. There is something inherently beautiful and in alignment with the universe in you and in me. And the process of the spiritual path is taking away the veil, the things that have kept us from seeing that, from being in touch with that. We all know what it's like to... not be in touch with stuff that's going on. At all times of the day, you have a beating heart. But have you ever been in a rush and not felt the people around you? We all have. And have you ever felt just like a machine that's functioning? And yet there's so many emotions going on inside that could be tapped or touched. And the same thing with any human being that I come across. There is an infinite number of things that can be accessed that are going on.

[18:01]

The Dharma gate of repose and bliss. Because if you think about the word liberation, the end of the Four Noble Truths, being liberated from suffering, everyone in here suffers. Everyone in here has suffered. And when you think about anything that you're suffering with and the suffering stops, you feel liberated. And there is a deep sense of joy that is intertwined with liberation. And sometimes there are many liberations and sometimes there are big liberations. So I think about in my life, people that emulate this, emulate having joy in the midst of maybe a life that I don't think you would normally have joy.

[19:12]

Or why would this person be joyful? When I was younger, I used to go around with my minister, Phil Rice, and we would visit different folks. I was preparing to go to a college to be a Christian minister. We would always stop in and visit different people, especially folks that were older. I'll always think about Mrs. Baker. I knew Mrs. Baker around 1986, 1987. She was born in 1900 in what was then the Oklahoma Territory. She was married at age, I think, 13 or 14. And she had Claudia when she was 16. So, Claudia was born with Down syndrome. And Mrs. Baker's husband died when they were in their 30s.

[20:17]

And here we were, me and Phil Rice, visiting her in her house. And she came to church too, and she would bring Claudia. Claudia still called her mommy. Claudia was 70. And they had been together for 70 years. And Mrs. Baker didn't have the opportunity to graduate from high school. And here she was having kids in her early teens. And she had had many menial jobs in her life. And you know what always struck me about Mrs. Baker? And we always called the adults Mr. and Mrs. I don't even know her first name. But Mrs. Baker was always joyful. She was a smiling person. And I always looked forward to going over to her house. Because the way that she interacted and held space and was in this universe...

[21:31]

was as a deeply joyful person, a very patient person who could hold space for me and for Claudia and for anyone else who came in the room. And she was not a person of feeble mind who was just skipping through the world and not noticing its hardships. She was a very sharp woman. She understood what was going on. She was in touch with the suffering of life. but what she touched and focused on was the beating heart of now. What is going on now that is alive? What's alive in me? What is alive in the people around me? And not the pettinesses that are going on, not the small-minded complaints, not the why is my life this way, not how come things are so unfair. To hang around Mrs. Baker was to feel like she had had a glorious life where everything had gone pretty well.

[22:43]

With the spiritual path and with the Zen practice, we're doing the work while not abandoning the beating heart. There are many things in the Fukan Zazengi about how to rigorously set up the body and things to do in Zazen that could sound fairly serious. And yet, it is the Dharma gate of repose and bliss. Because it is getting us in touch with what is actually going on, what is actually breathing and living. What is it that is alive? And that we can have that simultaneously while doing the work. Having compassion for folks that oppose you does not mean that you can't go to a civil protest. But I can go to a civil protest and do it in a way that is all wound up about me and you, me and other. I'm good, you're bad. There is a way that you can do that.

[23:53]

And it will only be a cancer inside for me if I do. Both and. Many of you probably know about the Dr. Viktor Frankl who wrote Man's Search for Meaning. He was a psychiatrist who was imprisoned in a concentration camp in World War II and came up with the theory of logotherapy while imprisoned. And the very kernel of logotherapy, the very fundamental piece of that is was that they can take anything away from me except for my choice of how to respond to the situation at hand. What I put my mind on, what I put my mind on, I energize. And he noticed while he was in this horrific situation that many of the folks who had...

[24:56]

An easier time or even had a better chance of survival were individuals who learned to actually respond in a way to what was going on that was not going to war with themselves. But were actually looking for things to have to do with the beauty in life to celebrate something today before I go to sleep. And so in a few days, it's going to be June 19th. And June 19th is also called Juneteenth and originally Jubilee Day. But in the summer of 1865, the folks in the state of Texas who were enslaved peoples finally got the news that the war was over and And that the Emancipation Proclamation, which was signed two and a half years earlier in the beginning of 1863, was now in effect in the state of Texas, which was essentially 250,000 enslaved individuals.

[26:03]

It is a day called Jubilee Day originally. It's called Juneteenth. It is a day of a message of liberation. a message that was given to these individuals that you have been freed. Now you can come into a Buddhist center and you can hear about the Four Noble Truths and you can hear a message of liberation, but that does not mean the work is done. That just means things are starting. And as we have seen since 1865, a lot of work has been done and there is still a lot of work yet to be done. done. But the message is a very Buddhist message, which is a message of liberation, a message of freedom, a message of joy and jubilee. And I don't know of anyone that comes to mind so much in that entire movement of the 1960s as John Lewis that really embodies the term joy.

[27:17]

When I think of joy, the representative to Congress from 1987 until I think 2020 when he died in the 5th District outside of Atlanta, John Lewis, was the representative. And he was someone that was known as a joyous person. But just like Mrs. Baker, when I look at his life... it doesn't seem like there was any real good cause for him to be a joyous person. If you want to go on YouTube and find something interesting, you can type in John Lewis dancing. He had this little dance he liked to do. He would get so happy with stuff that would happen, sometimes even on the floor of Congress, that he would do this dance. He was known for dancing. And he was born outside of Troy, Alabama. And Troy is not a megacenter of anything, and he was born outside of that in 1940, at a time when, if you were a young black boy in Alabama in 1940, your options were quite limited.

[28:29]

And if your parents were sharecroppers and you were dirt poor, life was probably going to be pretty hard. And that was the humble beginnings for John Lewis. But he had a certain joy in him and he learned that there were things that he loved and he could celebrate the small things in life, which is a lot of what we do with Zen when we take the practice off the cushion and we take it into the mundane. They say it's often like taking our normal mundane black and white, doing the dishes and making the bed and splashing Technicolor across it. Learning to celebrate and revere the fact that I have dishes, the fact that I have a roof over my head, and some people in San Francisco do not. And if I didn't have a roof over my head for the last two years, and I just got a roof over my head, how happy would I feel about that? But how many days have I taken for granted the fact that I have a roof over my head?

[29:33]

So John Lewis, when he was a kid, he had chickens. Now, chickens might not seem like something to celebrate, I mean, they're wonderful animals, but oh, he loved his chickens. He really loved his chickens. And he always wanted to be a pastor. From a very young age, he wanted to be a Christian minister. And so, here's a young man at age 8, 9, 10 years old, and he got his public speaking start in their barn. And he would get the chickens together, and he would preach a sermon to the chickens. And he would name all the chickens. And he would be with them. And he got to the point that he was so attached to them, he couldn't bear it if the chickens were killed for food. And if they were killed, he would do a Christian funeral. And he would do the entire funeral. And he would bring all the other chickens there too, because he would assume that the other chickens were upset because this chicken had died.

[30:40]

And he would baptize the chickens. Apparently they survived. He had his whole congregation there and he celebrated and he revered the chickens. It is that type of joy in the midst of what looks like suffering where he found his joy and he touched the beating heart of something that he loved. And he loved being a pastor and he loved those chickens. And so he could just be there with his chickens in the middle of of a sharecropping farm in rural Alabama. Through all of the individuals in the 1960s and early 70s that took part in a lot of the civil rights protests, he was the person that many people wrote about, including Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King wrote in many cases and commented that if one of us is going to die it's going to be john lewis he was always up to good trouble when they had the very first interstate busing protest that was 1961 so the freedom riders 13 individuals and some white activists from the north and some black people from the south got together and they rode buses on purpose in between states

[32:04]

Because you see, Rosa Parks had had this thing where she refused to go to the back of the bus back in 1955. And what happened then was it went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court said, you know, you can't make people do that. Now, of course, the southern states weren't abiding by this rule at all, but it was the law of the land. So in 1961, they decided, what are we going to do? Well, why don't we just get on some buses and go between states? The Supreme Court has to back us up. And this kicked off a movement that created a lot of change in the world. Many times John Lewis was beaten unconscious. He still had dents in his head from the 1960s. In the midst of doing the work, he did not abandon the joy. A life that you think somebody might have some reason to do some complaining. And that was not how John Lewis lived.

[33:07]

He danced. He loved his chickens. And when the moment called for it, he stood up and put himself in harm's way. Juneteenth is a message of liberation, and it does not mean that the work is done. What is it that I am doing and what is it that you are doing to help create a more equitable society? What stories do I have and what lens do I have that keeps me from seeing the people around me? I have skipped through life many a day ignoring the people around me because I have so much to do. So many important things that I need to do. Am I really connected to what's happening? We get to practice in Zazen, laying down our stories, seeing our stories, and doing it with a spacious mind, like we're holding a baby.

[34:11]

And letting those things come forward and having the courage to be with them and to not buy into our stories and the things that we put on top of each moment. And I think of the writer, Doug Kenny. He was the founder of National Lampoon and a comic magazine. Many movies came from National Lampoon. He was all about comedy and yet had a very sad and tragic life. And he wrote this one sentence in his diary the day that he took his life back in 1981 that always sticks with me. And that is, These are some of the happiest days I could ever ignore. He had a deep sense that he was not touching something.

[35:17]

Something that was actually going on. And that statement resonates with me in so many days that I have lived. These are some of the happiest days I could ever ignore. These are some of the most beautiful people I could ever ignore. These are some of the most amazing miracles to have one moment of consciousness. This person that's around me, on the bus, on the street, in my life, at work, these are miracles, and I'm completely glossing over them. If you can touch the heart and revere the life of a chicken, you probably can find a way to do that for a human. But sometimes we get so wound up with what we're doing, that we skip through life and we skip through people. It's how I hold, it's not what happens.

[36:17]

And we learn to hold and we learn a stance through the warm hand to warm hand in the traditions of Zen and Buddhism. And it's usually how come we work with a teacher. How do they work with this life, this mystery? What is their way? What is the wind of this family house? Is it one that is doing the work while still thriving? Or are we caught up and caught by the work? Is that making me too tight? I realized this shift one time about holding. And I was talking to a mentor of mine years ago about a shift, about being caught. And I realized that there is no clearer time that I am in my own delusion than when I am upset at an inanimate object.

[37:30]

A door, a hangar, something a faucet you know have you ever been upset with an inanimate object been frustrated with an inanimate object I don't know why but I always hated tangles of hangers you know like one falls off the rack and then five other follow and you try to pick them up you can't get you know just like hangers and so I was thinking about this and it was the same day some hangers fell on the floor in my closet And I started to have that same feeling, like, meh. And I thought about a shift. What if these hangers were just children and I need to help them? What if these hangers were just some friends that didn't know how to do something, but I did? What if I just said, let me help you with that. Looks like you're tangled. And you know what? It was really easy just to untangle the hangers.

[38:30]

It was just how I was holding the moment and noticing how it is that I hold moments that are not so skillful. Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor wrote this book, A Bolt of Insight, which many of you might have heard of. She was a psychiatrist who went through a stroke and was able to document the entire process. And she wrote this thing that I find incredibly helpful and hopeful about the 90-second rule. Have you ever heard of it? The 90-second rule has to do with the chemicals in our bloodstream that come from things that spark us, whether it be adrenaline or cortisol or something that's in our bloodstream. Something happens and then we have this blood infusion, some chemical. She says, when a person has a reaction to something in their environment, there's a 90-second chemical process that happens in the body.

[39:34]

After that, any remaining emotional response is just the person choosing to stay in that emotional loop. And so sometimes when I'm feeling a certain way, or I'm not feeling so joyful or what have you, or I'm not feeling so connected, Sometimes I'll just think, okay, it's just 90 seconds. When that thing comes up in zazen, maybe I don't need to attach to it. Maybe I don't need to tell a story about it. Can I just be with without adding to? What we focus on, we energize. You all might have seen the movie Life is Beautiful. Roberto Benigni and it takes place in a time of war and he's got a small son and he wants to keep his son's spirits up so every day while different things are happening that are horrific and terrible they have to put their minds on something and pretend like it's a game or that something is funny or to find something unique or quirky or a flower or something that's beautiful and to put our minds on that

[40:54]

It is essentially, in my opinion, a movie of looking at logotherapy from what we saw with Viktor Frankl and doing that very thing. What can I put my mind on that is beautiful? What can I put my mind on that is alive? This does not mean we don't do the work. This does not mean that we do not protest. This does not mean that we do not try to make things a better world. But we don't want to lose our joy in the process. We don't want to lose touch with the things that are alive in the process. And the message of the Buddha and of Dogen, the founder or refounder of Soto Zen, this school of Buddhism, was one of liberation and joy, much like the message of Juneteenth. However, it is only a message until the work is undertaken and there is much work to be done.

[41:55]

And in the midst of that work, how I hold what is happening will have much to do with whether I pack joy into the future. I want to end with a statement from the Buddha. This comes from the Dhammapada, chapter 15. Live in joy. in love, even among those who hate. Live in joy and health, even among the afflicted. Live in joy and peace, even among the troubled. Look within. Be still. Free from fear and attachment. Know the sweet joy of the way. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge. And this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[43:02]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[43:05]

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