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. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple on this incredibly beautiful Saturday morning, but it's still a lovely Saturday morning. My name is Shundo, for those who don't know me. And if you come here on a Saturday morning, you may be more used to seeing me outside at the front door where I try to be welcoming presents. And that's been one of my practices as director here in the building to welcome people on a Saturday. So I'm usually a little less dressed up than this and a little less conspicuous. I want to thank Rosalie for offering me the opportunity to speak today. And we're kind of celebrating a little bit today because it's Bike to Worship Week. And this is something that was created by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition last year and kind of ties in with Bike to Work Day that has been going on for about 20 years.

[01:10]

And they wanted to create something extra, so they contacted some congregations around the city to see if they would want to do something for Bike to Worship. And so I was happy to sign us up here at Zen Center last year. And then I was actually at Tassahara on the day that it happened. So I didn't see how it went. But there were many energetic people who were helping, including Miles, Hendy, and Hilda out there. And they're helping today. And it felt very festive out there. And I apologize to anyone who was attending Zaza instruction who may have been put off by some of the whooping and shouting that may have been happening outside. We do have lots of resident cyclists here who are very keen to participate. How many people have come here to Beginners of Mind Temple for the first time today? Wonderful. Welcome. And how many people have come by bicycle today? Wonderful. Welcome. And how many people have already put their hands up twice? Who came for the first time by bicycle?

[02:14]

Anybody? Oh, rats. Hoping for at least one or two. Well, everyone is very welcome today. I think the website might have promised that I was going to say something about Zen and cycling, and I might try to do that. And I was wondering if I should think about speculating whether Buddha would have ridden a bicycle, or perhaps Dogen Zenji, the Japanese founder of our Zen lineage. I'm not aware of any stories about Suzuki Roshi or any pictures of Suzuki Roshi involving bicycles, but something may come to light. I live in hope about that. And I also want to say something about the theme of the current practice period, which Rosalie is leading, Rosalie R., head of practice, and the theme of the current practice period is practicing with intention, making a difference in the world. And as I thought about that theme, as sometimes happens, just a word popped up into my head completely out of nowhere, and the word was wholehearted. And...

[03:17]

This is a word I don't think about so much these days, but when I started practicing, it was a very big word for me, a very key concept in my practice. And so, reflecting on the idea of wholeheartedness brought me, naturally, for those of you who know me in practice, to this book, The Wholehearted Way, or the Bendowa, by A.H. Dogen, which I think I first studied with Paul, my long-time teacher, and that's his cushion right there. LAUGHTER back at Tassajara in 2004 when he was the first abbot. And we'll talk about the Bendawa presently. And I also wanted to share something about my own path. And it's especially kind of poignant time for me as I've been at Zen Center for 15 years and arrived in May of 2000. And that may happen to be a prolonged heat wave, which I enjoyed very much. And everyone said, don't get used to this.

[04:18]

San Francisco is not always like this, and I'm learning that that is sometimes true. But having really been practicing mostly at City Center and also at Tassajara for about 15 years, I am handing on the directorship to Mary. I don't know if Mary's in the room. It's a very capable hand, someone to keep running the building. And I'm going to go to Tassajara. for a few months of summer work practice, just to get back into the realm of physical work, hopefully playing with rocks, other things that I like to do. Probably I'll end up doing some plumbing and electrical work and driving stages and doing town trips. Just very simple, practical work. And after that, I'm just going to see what the wide world holds for me. So it's a time where I'm thinking into the future and I have no idea actually what's going to happen, and that's just fine. And it's true for me, and I think some of you know this story more or less, that without bicycles I would never have come to Zen Center. And that might take a bit of explaining.

[05:19]

So I think when I started to live my life, you know, having graduated, I moved to London and I was trying to figure out what an authentic life looked like for me. And one very strong intention I had at the time was to live lightly. So I kind of had a little environmental awareness of the impact that we all have in this developed world on the world. And living in London, it was a city with a lot of public transportation, I didn't feel like I had need for a car. And my own karmic tendencies, things that I've enjoyed doing since I was very young, include things like long distance running, and I developed a passion for road cycling. And part of Why I enjoyed those things was the kind of freedom that they offered me and the kind of mental space that you can develop on long athletic endeavors. And as well as a kind of like a physical settling of just being active and then no longer being active. So I spent a lot of time riding bikes around London.

[06:22]

I commuted by bike for about 12 years in all kinds of weather and used to ride out from London down to Brighton and the seaside and into the countryside around London. So bicycling was very... big part of my life as I was living there. And then, pass forward a few years, I took a trip. I was on my way to Australia, and my stepsister was living in Sydney. And I was going to spend a week in San Francisco as a kind of stopover on the way. Everyone said, oh, you'll love San Francisco. It'll be great. And I'd been in DC and New York before that, where I'd known some people to stay with and visit. But I didn't know anybody in San Francisco. And I was staying at a hotel in North Beach. And this was 1999 before Yelp and smartphones and everything like that. So I had no idea what to do or where to go. So I asked the very sweet young man on the hotel desk, how do you find out what's going on in the city? And he said, oh, you have to read The Bay Guardian.

[07:23]

I said, OK, I'll read The Bay Guardian. And I did find out what was going on in the city. And just to kind of give further evidence of the kind of person I am, During that week, I also rented one of those rental bikes, which were slightly fewer of those in those days, but you could still rent a bike. And I rode up Mount Tam, just for the sake of it, because I'd heard about it as the birthplace of mountain biking. And I thought, well, I have this amazing opportunity to go and ride up it. So I did. But one thing I read about in the Bay Guardian was the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition was holding its annual membership party. And they still do that every year. It's now called the Winterfest. And it was being held down on Treat Street where the Timbuktu factory used to be. Timbuktu would make the messenger bags. And so this was like, wow, that would be a cool thing to go to and a cool place to go and visit. Now, I'm usually a very shy person and I'm not so good at social interactions usually, but I was somewhat emboldened by being on vacation and being in a strange country.

[08:25]

So I just started talking to people and ended up talking to someone who happened to be living at city center. And her experience was that she'd just spent a summer at Tassajara, so I got to hear all about Tassajara. And this was 1999, so she had been evacuated from the fire that was threatening Tassajara at the end of that summer, so I got to hear all these dramatic stories. And of course, you know, it was a very intriguing person that I was quite drawn to. And I did actually pay a visit by Bicycle to Zen Center later in the week. and had a look around on a Wednesday, as I remember, and sat in the courtyard and talked for a long time. And then she gave me Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, and I went back to London and started thinking about practicing. And something about Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind made a lot of sense to me, but in a way that I couldn't really articulate. It wasn't something I felt I understood necessarily, but it spoke to me about how life could be lived in a way that hadn't even occurred to me before.

[09:26]

I was somewhat frustrated with Western philosophical ideas, but this way of completely turning everything around was incredibly intriguing to me. And having had a lot of experience of spending time by myself, and especially on long-distance bike rides and things like that, the idea of sitting down and meditating was in some ways counterintuitive, because I'm not very good at sitting still. But on the other hand, I was very comfortable being alone in my own thoughts. So before you knew it, I was living here. And I was married to this person. And then we moved to Tassajara after a couple of years. And at Tassajara, I have to say, I missed my bike very much. One of the few things I missed about living in Tassajara was my road bike. And I spent many hours in this end of thinking about roads that I'd ridden on. In a nice way, of course. So really, I fell into practice by accident. But it did speak to me in a very deep way.

[10:28]

And finding myself here and doing practice periods and learning all the forms, my attitude is like, well, if you're going to be here, you're going to throw yourself into it completely and see what happens. And when I started practicing at Tassajara, I completely loved it. And again, there was that physical challenge, a different kind of physical challenge. Can you sit still for the whole day? Can you sit in silent retreat for days on end? Can you get up very early, eat not as much food as you would like to, and feel cold quite a lot of the time? I remember in my first practice period, it's like, oh, I'm always cold, tired, and hungry. Okay. I have to practice with being always cold, tired, and hungry. But something about the schedule, the monastic schedule, and the mental stillness and kind of settling that it offered was really deeply nourishing for me. And, you know, I thought, what a wonderful way to live life. At the time, there was nothing else that I really wanted to do. And there's still nothing else I'd really like to do.

[11:31]

And even if I leave Zen Center and it manifests in different forms in the future, I'm weighing up whether I should return to England, perhaps, or try to stay in the Bay Area to teach to all the people that I know, many of whom are here today. But still, there's something about this practice that really speaks to me very deeply and really nourishes me. And the Bendoa, the wholehearted way, was you know, a key part of that learning and developing and understanding about practice. Well, I shouldn't say understand it, because then that puts it in the mental realm, and as people who know me know, I don't like to think about things in the mental realm so much as the lived experience, the body experience. Now, a couple of weeks ago, on this seat, Wendy was talking about the Genjo Koan, which is another Dogen work I love, and The Whole Hearted Way, the Bendo Wa, was written at about the same time, as the Genjo Koan. And it shares some of the same language, some of the same phrases.

[12:31]

So Dogen wrote it in his early 30s, I would say, in Japan after he had studied in China. And in his words, he had clarified the great matter of lifelong practice. And we often talk about clarifying the great matter of birth and death, and there's something about this idea of clarifying the great matter that speaks to me very deeply. And it's probably... the reason why some of you are here as well. I wish to clarify that. But when he wrote this, Dogen was not actually sure if anyone was going to follow him in Japan. He felt that he was new and alone. And he writes very specifically that he is, you know, not knowing if anyone is going to be following him, he's writing it for devoted practitioners of the way of serenity in order to let them know about the true Dharma of the Buddhas. And you could say that the Bendoa, like the Genjo Koan, and a lot of what he wrote afterwards is really just a commentary on the first thing that he wrote, the Fukan Zazengi, which is the universal recommendation of Zazen, which he wrote in his late 20s and revised a few times during his life.

[13:43]

And the Bendoa especially kind of explains the ramifications of Zazen, the seated meditation that is at the core of our practice. And I'm going to read the opening section because when the thought of wholeheartedness popped into my mind, I picked up the book and read the first page. And just reading it again, and I haven't read it for maybe a couple of years, just was very stirring for me. So I'd like to share that with you. And it has some technical terms in it, which we'll come back to. But I'm going to read it. And if you have trouble following some of the ideas of the phrase, it just... As I always like to say with Dogen, think of it as poetry. Just let it sink in and see what remains with you. So the title is Talk on the Wholehearted Practice of the Way. All Buddha Tathagatas together have been simply transmitting wondrous Dharma and actualizing Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi for which there is an unsurpassable

[14:52]

unfabricated, wondrous method. This wondrous dharma, which has been transmitted only from Buddha to Buddha without deviation, has as its criterion GGU Zanmai. For disporting oneself freely in this samadhi, practicing zazen in an upright posture is the true gate. Although this dharma is abundantly inherent in each person, It is not manifested without practice. It is not attained without realization. When you let go, the Dharma fills your hands. It is not within the boundary of one or many. When you try to speak, it fills your mouth. It is not limited to vertical or horizontal. Buddhas continuously dwell in and maintain this Dharma, yet no trace of conceptualization remains. Living beings constantly function in and use this dharma, yet it does not appear in their perception.

[15:58]

The wholehearted practice of the way that I am talking about allows all things to exist in enlightenment and enables us to live out oneness in the path of emancipation. When we break through the barrier and drop off all limitations, we are no longer concerned with conceptual distinctions. So the Buddha Tathagatas, these are the awakened beings, those who dwell in suchness. All Buddha Tathagatas have been simply transmitting wondrous Dharma. This is something we adhere to very strongly in Zen, that this is just transmitted from Buddha to Buddha, from person to person, beyond words, hopefully, just through our practice, through our lifelong vow to live this way. And he talks about Anyutara Samyak Sambodhi, which can be translated as unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment, which is a phrase that some of you will recognize from the Heart Sutra.

[17:18]

And he talks about Giju Zanmai. So Zanmai is the Japanese translation of Samadhi, which is the Sanskrit word, and it just means concentration. Giju Zanmai... was originally, when I came here, seemed to be more translated as self-fulfilling samadhi. Now it seems to be more, we call it self-receiving and employing samadhi. And I don't know if you're going to get your head around that at all. The way I like to think of it is it's a virtuous circle of awakening. So things awaken you and you awaken things. And later on... in a section that we chant quite often. He gives an example of this, which might make a little bit clearer. And he says, grass, trees, and lands, which are embraced by this teaching, together radiate a great light and endlessly expound the inconceivable profound Dharma. Grass, trees, and walls bring forth this teaching for all beings, common people, as well as sages.

[18:27]

And they, in accord, extend this Dharma for the sake of grass, trees, and walls. So you have this great circle of life force and awareness. And this is what he's talking about. So even though it sounds complicated, he's really just saying, this is a great circle. Things illuminate us, we illuminate things. And how do we get there? Well, it has zazen. It says, for disporting oneself freely in this samadhi, practicing zazen in an upright posture, is the true gate. So this is how we get there, just sitting upright. And that reminds me that in the first chapter of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Suzuki Roshi talks about adopting the upright posture of Zazen. And that's not in order to do something else. It's not in order to concentrate or in order to reach enlightenment. It says that in itself is the practice. So this is where I find Suzuki Roshi channeling Dogen very much.

[19:30]

After this, he says, when you let go, the Dharma fills your hands. It is not within the boundary of one or many. When you try to speak, it fills your mouth. It is not limited to vertical or horizontal. And this reminds me of another chant from a few hundred years before that we sometimes use here, the song of the grassroots hermitage, the So Anka, written by Sekito Kisen. an important Chinese ancestor, about the time that Zen was really flourishing in China. In that he writes, let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. Open your hands and walk innocent. So both of these phrases really remind me about how much we carry and hold on to at any particular moment in our lives, how much we're just dragging around with us. Hundreds of years we're dragging around with us. We can just let go of that at any moment.

[20:42]

When we let go of that, we can relax completely. Well, as Dogen says, when you let go, the Dharma fills your hands. When you stop worrying about all the things that you drag around with you, the Dharma fills your hands. So this is how we can live unhindered in the present. And I find that deeply moving. But this is not only beneficial for us, it allows all things to live in enlightenment. So again, this is the virtuous circle of the G.G.U. Zamai. It's not just benefiting us, everybody benefits from this experience. And so even though this is somebody who doesn't know if anybody is following him, he's not expressing this, like, well, I'd like to propose this. He's just saying, this is how it is. And that's what I love about Dogen. He doesn't mess about with this stuff. Deep faith that you can believe in the same way. And then the last section I read was, when we break through the barrier and drop off all limitations, we are no longer concerned with conceptual distinctions.

[21:49]

I seem to remember that back in 2004 at the Tassajara practice period, we spent many weeks talking about this phrase. And again, It harks back to some earlier Chinese texts and chants that we refer to, and Dogen himself was undoubtedly familiar with. So about five generations before, Sekito Kisen was Kanxi Sosan, the third Chinese ancestor, who wrote one full piece called the Xinching Ming, affirming faith in mind, which begins, as some of you may know, The great way is not difficult for those who do not pick and choose. When preferences are cast aside, the way stands clear and undisguised. And then further down, he says, the great way is without limit beyond the easy and the hard. But those who hold to narrow views are fearful and irresolute. Their frantic haste just slows them down.

[22:54]

If you're attached to anything, you surely will go far astray. Just let go now of clinging mind, and all things are just as they are. Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? Dogen also in the Fukanzazengi writes, and I do love this phrase, do not administer pros and cons. Cease all the movements of the conscious mind, the gauging, of all thoughts and views. And so whenever we start talking about letting go of ideas, letting go of concepts, you know, obviously the thing is, but we need distinctions. You know, how can we not be concerned with conceptual distinctions? We need distinctions in our life. And of course we do. They keep us alive. You know, we need to be able to distinguish one thing from another. But they're also incredibly limiting. And that depends on our attitude towards them. And when I started thinking about this talk, giving this talk today about bicycling and zen, I'd started this line of thinking that's like, well, I acknowledge that I have a very partial view.

[24:09]

I'm somebody who's owned half a dozen bicycles, but I've never owned a car. But I want you to make a few points about what it's like to be a bike rider in a car-centric culture. And... A couple of months ago, I went to a breakfast hosted by the San Francisco Interfaith Council, which is supporting Bike to Worship Week. And the new executive director of the San Francisco Bike Coalition, Noah Budnick, gave this lovely presentation about lots of wide-ranging and inclusive ideas about livable cities and how everyone can enjoy being a citizen, moving through the city and being in a city. And when the floor was opened up to questions, A lot of the energy was like, why can't you educate bike riders to stop at stop signs? As a pedestrian, I get intimidated by bicycles. And so I realized that I did not want this talk to be about, well, here's what I think. Here's what I think about bikes. Here's what I think about cars.

[25:09]

Because that's just administering pros and cons. And then we kind of descended on the level of an internet comment forum, where a lot of people spend a lot of time, it seems to me, really espousing opinions. And I could... very passionately make a lot of points about the things I believe in, and any of you could come back with an equally impassioned counter-argument. But that doesn't feel like a Zen talk to me. So when we say we're not concerned with conceptual distinctions, does that mean I'm just going to let all those opinions go? Well, according to Kanchi Sosa, probably I should be doing that. But it's not so easy. And for me, it's not that we turn our back on the reality of these things. Will we allow all of it to teach you something? And that really does mean, like, that's a letting go. Allowing all of it to inform you. Allowing both sides to be present and valid. You may not agree with both sides, but you can allow them. And yesterday, I was reflecting, I just received, you know, a couple of pieces of fairly strong feedback from people here in the community.

[26:16]

And it's like, wow, it's so easy to just stick to that one side of things, just to hear the critical voice. and not to hear somebody else who's saying some kind things. And how damaging that can be. That just gets to be something else that we carry around. Just adds to that burden from 100 years, things we carry around. Oh, this person said a mean thing about me. And it weighs me down. So how do we avoid falling into those sides? I once had this image of... this line down the middle of the sky, and on one side was yes, and the other side was no. Everything was divided into one of those two halves. It was a very powerful image, because you can't have a yes without a no, in a lot of ways. But each of them is limited. And are you only going to look at half the sky? Or are you going to try and find a yes that covers the whole sky? So for me, the wholehearted way

[27:16]

does not mean that we're immune from feedback or that we ignore both sides of an argument. Because there's always things that we need to learn and things that we need to pay attention to. And no matter what our intention is, we might find that our impact is not as pristine as we would like it to be. And other people can suffer because of what we do. But if we can embrace both sides of the distinction and allow both of them to teach us something, hear both sides of the argument, And later on in the Bendewa, Dogen says, earth, grass, trees, walls, tiles, and pebbles all engage in Buddha activity. And I've seen the translation that's in this book, Shohaka Okamura says, these things all carry out Buddha work. Which phrase always reminds me of Greg Fane, Tassahara, always talking about Buddha work.

[28:18]

So that just means that all things can teach us if we let them. And letting them teach us and letting them remind us is the wholehearted, unhindered way. So there is the Buddha way and the Buddha activity of the Zendo or the Dharma talk. There's also the Buddha activity and the Buddha work of the 101 and the Van Ness and the Buddha way of the wiggle and the panhandle. So can we pay attention to those situations? and allow those lessons into our lives. And again, the lessons we get from these situations aren't always enjoyable. You know, a lot of our life we find ourselves in situations we'd rather not find ourselves in. And, you know, right outside the window here on Page Street now we're used to people sitting in traffic all day long as they wait to get on the freeway trying to get where they're going to. You can just sit and hear, especially during the morning commute, you can hear people getting really frustrated and shouting and honking horns.

[29:20]

And something I try to practice when I'm driving, and I do drive sometimes, and when people ask me, I know some people have heard this, but when people say, how has practice changed you over these years, I like to say, well, I'm a better driver than I used to be. I find myself much more able to be a little bit calmer in a situation, less aggressive. less in a hurry, less trying to me first. And so if you're stuck in traffic, can you take that as a moment just to be calm, even if it's making you late for something? Rosalie, in her talk on Wednesday, was talking about identity action, where you recognize that the other person is exactly the same as you. So everyone who is stuck in traffic is equally frustrated. It's not that you're some special snowflake who is really, really, really important and needs to be where they are. Everyone feels that. So can you allow that to soften how you're feeling? And then also hear people who say, I'm too afraid to ride a bike in the city.

[30:23]

I think I'm going to get hurt. And of course, that's a reality, and we know that happens. But are you going to get stuck on that side of things? Are you going to get stuck on that no side of the sky? So while... I can be more patient as a car driver, I still find I get pretty angry when I'm riding a bicycle. And when I reflect on that, because I don't get angry so often, but when I reflect on that, it's usually a very present and instinctive fear that comes up. It gets expressed in anger. And it's usually that a driver has done something that feels unsafe to me. So on Thursday, I went to Green Gulch, and I was riding up Highway 1. And a bus went past me. It was like, whoa, big bus going past, wow. And then somebody else tried to squeeze past behind me just as somebody was coming in the opposite direction. Now, I went a little bit narrow at that point, and I didn't feel like I was being given very much room. And it wasn't super dangerous, but I was angry enough to shout at the person. Because especially since having passed me, they were just going to be sitting behind this bus all the way up the hill and all the way down the other side.

[31:24]

It didn't seem to be that much of a need to hurry. But I made it a practice some time ago, and I still do this as often as I can. to acknowledge all the times that drivers do good things. Any time I know that a driver is paying attention, being courteous, allowing things to happen, being considerate, allowing themselves to be patient rather than impatient. And I wave at people, I nod at them, I make eye contact. Because the flip side of the vulnerability of being on a bicycle is that you're very open and you can kind of really meet people. So I make eye contact with drivers and I see how many of them are texting while they're at the stop signs. But I also smile at pedestrians. Nowadays, when I first moved to San Francisco, I commuted downtown, and there were a few people on bikes. It's unusual to spend the whole time down Marco Street without a bicycle. But now, if you go down, there's a whole flow of bicycles going down together. So you get to be in that flow of people all around you.

[32:27]

Unless people are being extremely dangerous, which sometimes happens, then it's really nice to just interact with the other cyclists. Or if you're out on a ride in Marin, You know, the road riders, you know, we'd be nodding and waving at each other, or if you're stopping at a stop sign or at a light, chat about, you know, how your day is going, where you've been. There's a lovely sense of community about that. The interconnectedness of being on a bicycle is very sweet. And talking with my Dharma brother Zach last week about what to talk about, he was reminding me of intimate connection with the surroundings and the landscape. So anytime you ride a bike, In San Francisco, you're aware of hills, even if you're avoiding them. You're always exposed to the gradient. You get so intimate with the roads and the pieces of land that you're traveling through. You're exposed to the wind and the rain. And for every moment of difficulty or danger or feeling scared or frustrated, there are wonderful joys.

[33:28]

If I go out early on a Sunday morning, I go down to Chrissy Field and then ride along to the bridge and over the bridge, And if you ever get a morning when the sun is shining again, going across the bridge on a bicycle when the sun is coming up, it's very easy to feel the life force of the universe kind of at work. Last week I was out with Alex riding down the Bolinas Lagoon. Beautiful smooth pavement right by the water, tailwind, no traffic. Everything was really beautiful. Everything was really flowing. A couple of weeks ago on Lucas Valley I was... watching hawks, as I was riding by, watching hawks gliding through the redwoods. And coming down the other side, I looked up and there was a heron right next to me on the grass forage. And you just get to connect with these things on a bicycle in a way that maybe you don't in a car. Just, again, last week I saw a bobcat in the Marin Headlands, just riding along on the Rodeo Beach Road, and then off to one side was a bobcat. And these are the kind of things that I love.

[34:30]

And there's also the physical challenge of getting from A to B. Can I get all the way out there and back again in one piece? And I still find that mental space and physical settling a really enjoyable thing, allowing the earth, grass, trees, walls, tiles, and pebbles to engage in that Buddha activity and to be right there with them. So our core practice is Zazen. And through Zazen, we learn how to be intimate with the present experience of our life, and to make meeting these moments more powerful than thoughts about past and future. And Dogen talks in the Bendowa about how each single moment of Zazen, each relative experience that each individual is having, calls forth, cannot help but call forth, the absolute timeless quality of Zazen.

[35:36]

practice realization that intimately connects us, all of us, to all Buddha Tathagatas. So we learn to take that off the cushion. We learn to take that into the other situations we encounter. We can meet each situation with our intention. So I still intend to live lightly in the world. I still intend to meet everything with greater compassion, to welcome everyone and everything. And I keep failing to do that, and I will keep trying, wherever I find myself, hoping to make a difference in the world. A bicycle ride can be a wonderful metaphor, but it's also a wonderful present moment experience in itself. And for me, it's always been a ground for continued mindfulness, wherever we find ourselves, whatever we're in the midst of, the joyful and the difficult. So we have to practice continually embracing all the emotions of the landscapes that we pass through.

[36:42]

I think I probably have time to read the piece again. I don't want to go on longer than I need to. Again, just allow yourselves to relax completely. Let go of hundreds of years. Open your hands. have been simply transmitting wondrous dharma, actualizing Anyuttara Samyak Sambodhi, for which there is an unsurpassable, unfabricated, wondrous method. This wondrous dharma, which has been transmitted only from Buddha to Buddha without deviation, has as its criterion Jiju Zamai. For disporting oneself freely in this samadhi, practicing zazen, in an upright posture is the true gate. Although the Dharma is abundantly present in each person, it is not manifested without practice. It is not attained without realization.

[37:48]

When you let go, the Dharma fills your hands. It is not within the boundary of one or many. When you try to speak, it fills your mouth. It is not limited to vertical or horizontal. Buddhas continuously dwell in and maintain this Dharma, yet no trace of conceptualization remains. Living beings constantly function in and use this Dharma, yet it does not appear in their perception. As I always say, don't even think about it. The wholehearted practice of the way that I am talking about allows all things to live in enlightenment. and enables us to live out oneness in the path of emancipation. When we break through the barrier and drop off all limitations, we are no longer concerned with conceptual distinctions. So I do hope you find ways to manifest that in your own life, wherever you are finding yourself, however you're getting there.

[38:58]

on a bicycle, or in a car, or on foot, or not moving at all. I'm going to preempt Gene here a little bit. Sorry, since I have the floor. I know Gene is going to make a lot of announcements, but I want to put in a little plug ahead for tomorrow's bike ride that Miles there in the pink shirt has put a lot of work into. It's an interfaith bike ride that is going to begin at the SF Lighthouse Church. on Sutter, and I think that's Sutter right by Van Ness. We're going to stop off at various congregations, like the Unitarians, come on down past here, the First Baptist, St. Francis, head down to Hartford Street, down into the Castro, and then wind our way round, past the Wiggle, round the Wiggle to Golden Gate Park and have a little ceremony. And we have strawberries, thanks to Roger. And Bike Coalition also gave us some wonderful energy bars, which if you haven't grabbed one yet, you might have some left for tomorrow. So thank you, Miles, for organizing that. My responsibility as part of Back to Worship Week was to organize photo shoots.

[40:04]

So I would like to make a request, unusually, that instead of heading out towards tea and cookies once you've left the room, that we gather down there by the Zendo door if you came by bicycle, or if you didn't today but usually do. If you're a bicycle-inclined person, we'll meet out there and maybe take a picture of as many people as we can fit into our picture. and enjoy the goodies out there. Thank you very much. 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 sfcc.org and click giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[40:55]

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