This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Every morning during this intensive meditation retreat... This great assembly has got up between 4 and 4.30 and come to this room to sit together. To sit together in the midst of all of our difficulties and of all the suffering of the world.

[01:18]

We are sitting together. After we sit a couple of periods, then we rise up and prostrate to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. And then we chant. All my ancient twisted karma. Please chant with me. All my ancient twisted karma. And we do that three times.

[02:29]

Then during this retreat, We do refuge, chants and prostrations. It's not what we say, I take refuge in Buddha. And then we and then the bell rings and we bow and we chat. So should we do that?

[03:34]

Refuge in the corner. Before all the kings. And to read the bleak of the ocean. All of us pray. All of us pray. Refuge in the corner. And then we go on with the remainder of our day And people have come to this retreat and expressed great joy to be here.

[04:40]

And people are expressing having a hard time, being tired, maybe even using the word exhausted. having challenges of physical body when sitting, when bowing, when walking, when working. People in the retreat are having physical difficulties and emotional difficulties because of our ancient karma. We have a lot of consequences of our karma that we carry in our body and mind. And also because of the COVID protocols, we can't socialize as we normally would be able to.

[05:48]

We can socialize outside without masks, but the current protocols are not to socialize indoors, which for some people, is a real hardship leading to feeling isolation, even in the midst of this great assembly. In formal conversation, we are allowed to, with masks on, speak indoors. But I could go on of all the different difficulties that we're having. But our volume is, we say, before all beings. That's one translation of an ancient text, before all beings. Another word would be together with all beings, in the midst of all beings, in the presence of all beings.

[06:57]

And then it says, We vow, in the presence of all beings, we vow to immerse body and mind in the merciful ocean of Buddha way. And then we're challenged to remember each moment to immerse this body in the Buddha way and awaken true mind. That's what we say at the beginning of the day. And then we're challenged to remember that in the midst of many other challenges. second chant you know is vowing to enter we say the merciful ocean of the Buddha way the original says actually to enter the ocean of wisdom but of course the ocean of Buddhist wisdom is the ocean compassionate merciful ocean of compassion of wisdom and then we vowed

[08:33]

To bring harmony to everyone. Free from hindrance. Not that there's no hindrance, but that in the midst of the hindrances. That we experience in meeting each other in the midst of the challenges. We become free of the challenges. People. People often ask me, especially during intensive meditation retreats, they ask questions like, does it have to be so hard? Is it supposed to be so hard? And it doesn't have to be so hard. It's not supposed to be hard. It's not supposed to be hard. to get up in the early morning when we're tired and go sit in the zendho.

[09:43]

It's not supposed to be, but it seems like sometimes it is. We do need to be challenged in order to grow. And we don't have to look for challenges. All you have to do is be here and they come. Now you could leave Green Gulch and then you'd be there and they'd come. So challenges do come. We don't have to go look for them. We do need encouragement, I think, to not run away from them, to meet them with compassion and to immerse body and mind.

[10:51]

To be intimate with it is challenging. couple weeks ago when I was sitting in this seat right there, I started to feel dizzy. And then I thought to myself, I'm feeling quite dizzy. Maybe I'm going to faint. So I reclined backwards on that seat there. This was before the intensive. And the abbess who sits here came over to me and said something. I think she said, what are you doing?

[12:03]

And I said, I'm feeling rather dizzy. And then I drew my legs up and laid on my side at that seat. And then some other people came over. And said, do you want me to, should we call 911? And I said, no, thank you. I think I'm feeling kind of normal now. Not so dizzy. And I laid there a little longer. And then I said, I think I'd like to try to stand up now. So I stood up and I continued to feel kind of normal, not completely. And there are people around me. So I said, no, I'd like to talk. And this, I don't know how many people who were here who weren't right near me could hear me talking. Could some of you hear me talking who weren't right near me? No, I was talking quietly. And so then I walked out of the room and went into the Dock sign room and reclined again.

[13:23]

And I continued to feel kind of normal. And then some more people came and talked about 9-1-1 again. I said, no, thank you. And I said, I think now I think I'd have to stand up again, just walk up to the house and recline up there. And so I did. And then here I am now. After that. And. And then in the sittings after that, I was having a really hard time because I was kind of feeling like, is it going to happen again? So I'm sitting there watching for signs of dizziness. And then gradually, it isn't that I stopped paying attention. I wasn't hyper-vigilant, but just watching, keeping an eye out for... It was a little bit hard.

[14:24]

And then the intensive started. And during the intensive, I'm not feeling dizzy, but I am having quite a bit of difficulty being awake during the morning sitting. I have a feeling that I've succeeded in being awake during the morning sitting. Partly because of... If I were not to be awake, there would be physical consequences, which I would be quite noticeable. I'm mostly watching other people who are having difficulty. So the morning periods are I am able to stay awake, but it's quite challenging. And I. Someone might say, does it have to be this difficult? No, this is unusual.

[15:25]

This is unusual. Unusually difficult being awake during the morning sittings. And I'm betting on... Immersing body and mind. Immersing body and mind in what? What do I immerse body and mind in? In the way, yeah. An awake and true mind. I'm betting on that even while I'm having a hard time being awake. I'm betting on this. Difficulty. This body and mind. I want to immerse this body and mind in the way.

[16:29]

To awaken the true mind. And of course, it's hard to even remember that when you're feeling having trouble staying awake. But. It's not impossible to remember it. And as I've told many of you, in my first few years at Zen Center, I had a hard time sitting, very challenging sitting. I followed the instructions which I heard, which are sit on a cushion and put your left leg on your right thigh, put your right leg on your left thigh. And I did that, and then I ran into trouble.

[17:32]

And yeah, not all the time. And actually, I didn't say, does it have to be this hard? Because before I came to Zen Center, I already knew that doing that practice is hard. And I came to Zen Center to get help doing a hard practice. But when I got to Zen Center, It wasn't like the practice wasn't hard anymore. It's just that I got help. And because of the help of the community and the teacher, I was able to continue this kind of challenging practice of sitting cross-legged, often early in the morning. And even in those early days, I had this image of like, When I got up in the morning, I was a sponge full of suffering.

[18:36]

And that's the way I woke up. Suffering sponge. Somehow I have this great gift of being a suffering sponge. I'm immersed in the ocean of suffering and I absorb it. And then I become full of it. And then I get that body and put it on a cushion in the morning. This is what I thought when I practiced in the early days. And I sat on the cushion and I squeezed the sponge. Not to get rid of the liquid suffering, but to just engage it fully. And I squeezed it. And it isn't exactly that it went away, but I really fully engaged it. and felt almost every morning, by the end of the sitting, I just thought, I felt relieved by the end of the sitting, and partly because the sitting was over.

[19:42]

Kind of like the end of the sitting and the end of the suffering were the same thing. But the suffering was engaged. It was squeezed. It was hugged. It was, yeah, it was like embraced and relieved. And then I kind of like, okay, let's have a day. And then I went, you know, and my day then was like, I was kind of like in the mode of dealing with the difficulties of my day, which were not as, for me, I didn't work in an ICU unit. You know, I didn't work, I don't know what, But I didn't work in a really challenging situation. I just worked at, you know, the Bank of America Computer Programming Department. It wasn't that hard. The hard part was the morning sitting.

[20:46]

And I came to Zen Center not to have a hard time, but to do that practice, which I knew before I came, was hard. But I thought, well, that's the practice that the bodhisattvas in the Zen tradition do. to become bodhisattvas, these great bodhisattvas. They do. They learn how to face suffering and embrace it and not run away from it. And they don't try to make it greater or lesser. They just embrace what's been dished out to them or dished into them. And they have a hard time doing it. And so I'm having a hard time. So this is normal. I thought that from the beginning, that it was normal to be challenged in the practice. And I'd more and more heard about that. It's normal for bodhisattvas to be challenged. They normally are challenged.

[21:49]

It's in their face. And they vow to immerse body and mind in the way So, yeah, so, oh, and I also told a story, which is in some of those books of Vasuzuki Rashi. I went to see him one time, and I said that when I sat with both legs crossed, the pain was so much, I couldn't follow my breathing. I was following my breathing, but I couldn't follow my breathing because the physical experience was so intense. I was fully challenged just to be present with that suffering of the physical body. I didn't have any other energy to follow my breathing, although it was there somehow.

[22:53]

And I said, if I sit in half lotus, the pain is considerably less and I can follow my breathing. And he said to me, oh, maybe full lotus is good for you. Now, if people tell me stories like that, I don't necessarily repeat that. But in my case, he did not encourage me to sit in a less challenging situation. so that I could follow my breathing. He said, oh, maybe full Otis is good for you. And maybe it was. But anyway, he didn't tell me what to do. He just said, maybe that's good for you. So I continued to have a hard time for another year or two after he said that. And then this weird thing happened. There was no difficulty anymore. It was just like not feeling very challenged, not waking up and being a suffering soap sponge.

[24:11]

I never said that before. Suffering soap sponge. I wasn't. I was like, I don't know what to say. Anyway, I was not having a hard time. I won't get into what that's like. I don't want to make anybody get interested in what that's like. But, you know, I wasn't like running away from it and banging my head against the wall because I thought there's something wrong with not having a hard time. But I was wondering maybe if something was wrong with it. So I went to the university and I said, I'm not having a hard time. Am I missing something? Is something wrong? And he said, like he said, for you, maybe for you, the lotus is good. He said, maybe for you, not having a hard time is okay.

[25:13]

Okay. And before he said, maybe for you having a hard time is okay. Maybe for me having a hard time is okay. Maybe for me not having a hard time is okay. Maybe? Who knows? He said maybe. No, no. Like when people say things, he said maybe so. And not too long after that, things got hard again. Don't worry. It's a short period there where things weren't hard. There's a story from the Tang Dynasty in China.

[26:26]

There was a teacher whose man was... We call him, the name we call him is Horse Master. Master, Master Horse. And he was, you could say, maybe having a hard time with his body. He was unwell. And somebody, one of the monks said, One of the monks in the monastery came to him and said, teacher, how is your venerable health these days? And Matsu said, sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha. This is his expression of dealing with having a hard time. Sun-faced Buddha is almost an eternal life.

[27:31]

Wicked one. Moon-faced Buddha is a very temporary one. So we, whether we're sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha, having a hard time Buddha and not having a hard time Buddha, tired Buddha, not tired Buddha, having difficulty, not having difficulty, no matter what kind of Buddha we are, we have the opportunity to immerse this body and mind in the Buddha way. And the Buddha way is not asking us to have the slightest bit different body and mind than the one we have.

[28:36]

The one we have may be asking for another different one, a more awake one, a less challenged one. That one may be asking about that. But that one, that one wondering about some other body, that is a body and mind. And we do vow in the morning to immerse body and mind. It doesn't say this, but we can understand. We vowed to immerse this body and mind in the Buddha way. And again, this body and mind. In the sitting, in the chanting, in the eating, in working in the kitchen, we vowed to immerse this kitchen working body and mind in the way. and thus directly awaken. So we need great compassion in order to immerse this body and mind in every difficult situation that we are given.

[29:51]

To realize that the situation we're given is not different from Buddha's practice. And Buddhas realize that and accept that and encourage us to do that, practice that way. In a poem written about Maud's story, part of the poem goes, sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha. How many times have I gone down into the green dragon cave for you? The poet who wrote that, when he says for you, he might have been talking about monster, but he might have been talking about us.

[30:57]

He goes down into that cave for the Buddhism ancestors. He goes down into the cave of his experience. It goes down into the middle of January intensive. For the ancestors. To do that for them because they did that. I go down into the green dragon cave because Matsu did. Because Hizuki Rashi did. Because Buddha did. But also, I do it because for everybody else. I do it for everybody. poet says. This distress should not be taken lightly. But I would say it should not be taken too lightly or too heavily. It should be taken wholeheartedly, this distress. And so if any of you are not having difficulty, oh, that's okay.

[32:03]

It's okay for you. But let's learn to not take this distress too lightly or too heavily. Let's take it wholeheartedly. That's our vow, to immerse it in the way. And this, yeah. to take this body in mind and give it or immerse it in the Buddha way, that is immediate awakening. That's what a Buddha would do with her body in mind. She would take the body in mind and put it in the way, donate it to the way. And that's the Buddha's immediate, this body, immediate awakening.

[33:04]

And you need great compassion to really all his suffering and with everybody else's suffering into the Buddha way. And then another poet commented on this story and said, sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha. And the part I want to get to is the pearl in the bowl rolls on itself. Our body and mind rolls on itself with the Buddha way. Confidence in this, in this family, confidence in this teaching is called Grandmother Mind.

[34:15]

Confidence in this teaching is called grandmother mind. Or sometimes translated as grandmotherly mindfulness. Which is the grandmother remembering that no matter what's happening, what's happening cannot be separate from grandmotherly duties. No matter what's happening, the Buddha way can be none other than what this body and mind is going through. The Buddha way is not the slightest difference from what's happening now. Grandmotherly mind somehow remembers that. just like remembering her duties to a grandchild.

[35:22]

There's no situation where she's not devoted to the grandchild. And there's no situation in which the student of the Buddha is not devoted to this situation. No situation where this situation isn't the opportunity for the Buddha way. Including the situation of thinking this situation is not a good situation for the Buddha way. The Buddha way cannot be practiced with this. I can't remember even what the Buddha way is. And so this isn't a good situation. That mother of mine says, I hear you, darling. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[36:32]

Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[36:58]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_93.39