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. The fundamental problem for human beings is a feeling of being separate. of the anxiety that comes up from being separate from the universe, from Earth, from wind, from water, from light. So isn't that wonderful? We have a wonderful problem.

[01:00]

And as people who want to be living truly, then naturally we want to meet this situation and see into it. So actually to welcome this as our birthright, this problem of sometimes we say existential angst, actually as our birthright, and to welcome it and study it as a natural expression of our enlightened nature. So I want to welcome you all here. You did good coming here. It's a good thing, right? It's a good thing to be here today. And so you're welcome and welcome all of your parts.

[02:12]

Every bit of you is welcome, including the parts that aren't so sure right now whether you want to be here. And those parts that ache. It's fundamentally a good thing to come together and acknowledge that we have this common problem as human beings. and we can support each other to look at it and look at how to find our composure with it, look at how we can be at ease and move forward with some confidence and joy in the face of this reality, maybe one side of reality. So right now I'm here on this beautiful day, realizing it's a bit of an aberration to have such a warm, sunny day, middle of November, and at the time of year when things get darker and darker.

[03:22]

Because we set our clocks back, it'll get dark pretty early today, so I know it affects people to have the limited hours of daylight and a low angle of the sun. So it's good to take that into account when you take care of yourself this time of year. And I'm reflecting on that last week we had Kaz Tanahashi here speaking about the translation work that he's been engaged with for many decades actually. And so we had a celebration of the publication of Dogen Zenji's Shobogenzo, or the treasury of the true Dharma eye, last week. And in a couple of days I go to Japan and I'm going to be speaking to the Young Priests Association of Nagano Prefecture.

[04:29]

So I'll take Dogen back to Japan. It's quite a treat to be able to do that. And then also my brother is visiting. My brother and sister-in-law and nephew are visiting, actually. And I asked my brother. My brother teaches communication. He's a professor of communication at Southern Illinois University. And so I asked him, what's the most fundamental problem in communication? And he said, gave me a very wise answer. He said, unrequited love. And I asked him about it this morning, and he said, that didn't happen. And I realized that was a dream I had. I actually... I had a very vivid dream of asking him this question. And then he thought about it for a little while, and then he said, the answer is 42.

[05:38]

Some of you know what that means. There's a whole explanation for that that I don't quite understand yet. But I thought Dogen's poem, actually I read Dogen's poem, about the point of Zazen. I read it at the beginning of the conference last weekend, and I thought, it speaks to this, although you may not recognize it right away. So Dogen wrote this poem, Shobu Genzo Zazen Shin, or The Point of Zazen. And Kaza's translation goes like this. The hub of Buddha's activity, the turning of the ancestor's hub, moves along with your non-thinking and is completed in the realm of non-emerging.

[06:46]

So, there it is. I read Actually, I told my wife, Elaine, those lines yesterday. And she said, you already lost me. So I want to read the whole poem and then I'll comment on some parts of it. And see how that works. So again, it begins the hub. of Buddha's activity, the turning of the ancestor's hub, moves along with your non-thinking and is completed in the realm of non-merging. As it moves along with your non-thinking, its emergence is immediate. As it is completed in the realm of non-merging, completeness itself is realization.

[07:52]

When its emergence is intimate, there is no separateness. When completeness reveals itself, it is neither real nor apparent. When there is immediacy beyond separation, immediacy is dropping away with no obstacle. Realization beyond real or apparent. is effort without desire. Clear water all the way to the ground. A fish swims like a fish. Vast sky transparent throughout. A bird flies like a bird. So in this poem, Dogen was actually commenting and slightly revising a previous poem written by Hong Shui Jingzue, about 100 years earlier.

[08:56]

And for those of you who want to study that, you can take a look at Teigen-Leighton's translation of the cultivation of the empty field. But now, before I comment on it, I'd like to just recall a little bit about the ache, the pain of separation, how painful it is to be caught in the mood of unrequited love. And Sarah Vaughan recorded a song, 1950, called Can't Get Out of This Mood, and written by Lesser and McHugh. And then I guess it was re-recorded last year, Nina Simone recorded it last year. I don't know, some of you may know. Nina Simone's version is more of an upbeat version of Can't Get Out of This Mood.

[09:59]

But I think Sarah Vaughan was really aching. Just a couple of lines from that song. Can't get out of this mood, can't get out of this feeling. Can't get out of this mood, heartbreak, here I come. So this is the first step. Acknowledging. Being caught in the mood. And acknowledging, well, it's dumb. But it's all about love also.

[11:04]

And so to be willing to meet that. That mood. I offer... I say that it's good to have an antidote and it's good to have the practice of loving kindness for oneself. Loving kindness for oneself, including the mood that you're in. So loving kindness for the mood itself and all the strings that are tangled up in it. And it may take a while, lifetimes, to untangle. So in the meantime, what I've been doing the last few times I talked to you was to remind people of loving kindness meditation. So loving kindness meditation is a compassionate practice that you can bring to generate the capacity that you have for compassion for yourself,

[12:18]

and for others. So this is May I Be Happy. So why not, it actually is helpful, actually, for everyone to do this. So I'll say a line, and you can just kind of murmur it to yourself, but out loud a little bit, together. After each line, we'll do this. Recalling generating compassion for ourselves. May I be happy. May I be joyful, free from fear, and live in safety. May I be at ease and abide in peace. And as you reflect on that a moment for yourself, And it's also good to offer the loving kindness practice to someone else who may need it.

[13:25]

You might think of someone right now for a moment, of someone who might benefit from extending compassion to them. It could be someone sitting right next to you, or it could be someone at some great distance. But wherever they are, You can take this from yourself to others by repeating it like this. May you be happy. May you be joyful, free from fear, and live in safety. May you be at ease and abide in peace. So this is I say, foundational for Dogen's poem about Zazen.

[14:26]

That Zazen is a practice of profound compassion. And profound compassion is a gate to wisdom. And wisdom is a gate to compassion. They each open into each other. But if you're caught in feeling some separateness, that's a time to remember, to bring in compassion, to bring in loving kindness. So Dogen begins this poem, the hub of the Buddha's activity. The ancestral hub, the turning of the ancestral hub, moves along, with your non-thinking and is completed in the realm of non-merging. So just to take that opening stanza.

[15:28]

First of all, hub. This is, I think, unique to this translation that caused Tanahashi and Philip Whelan, the great poet, priest Philip Whelan, I think probably came up with the term hub. And hub is a very simple word. Other translations have it the essential function and the essential function of Buddha's activity or the functional essence of the practice of sitting zazen, the functional essence. But I like hub. Hub is just this place where things turn. I looked it up, actually. There's another word that is closely related, hob. There's hub and there's hob.

[16:32]

Turns out that hob is like a little shelf in the back of the fireplace where you kind of keep things warm. So there's a warmth, I think, that comes along with hub. And it's a focal point and it's where the center portion, you know, where the wheel turns, where the propeller turns, that center portion of something that's turning. So when you're sitting zazen, this is it. You are the hub. You're right where things turn. Of course, it's true all the time. You are actually right where things turn. And when you're present in this moment, when you're actually present at the hub, then you have the power to turn things as things turn around you. But if you're not there, if you're not at the hub, then you're someplace else.

[17:35]

Then you're being carried. You're farther out in the wheel, and actually you're just being carried by it. So a lot of what life feels like to people who are not present is being the victim of circumstances, being pushed by circumstances, being a kind of helpless being. So this practice of zazen is bringing one into one's own power, actually, bringing one into one's own place of turning, a place where one can actually receive everything that is in the world of circumstance and act within within that with some accuracy and precision and joy so the word hub I think is just great and I'm deeply grateful to Kaz and Philip Whelan for coming up with it an earlier translation the first one I learned was was the point was acupuncture needle

[18:43]

And I thought, well, that's pretty good. It has a sense of really being focused. But it doesn't have that same quality of the liveliness of the turning of the hub. So anyway, various translations of that first phrase. But here, working with the notion of the hub turning. So this is Dogen focusing on this. And then he says, this moves along with your non-thinking. So usually we're involved in thinking. And we don't really even know what non-thinking is. Because non-thinking is in a realm that we can't think. So we can't grasp it. We can't hold it conceptually. It actually is that elusive. He's saying this is where it's at. This hub is in the realm of non-thinking. And it moves. When there's non-thinking, that's when things are moving.

[19:46]

Now, that's also where we say things are still, right at the center of the hub, whereas things may be whirling around out on the perimeter of the wheel, but in the center, there's also a feeling of stillness. And that stillness is where things are turning, but that's also where things are moving. He, Dogen, in his commentary on this Zazen Shin fascicle, says... that once there was a Buddha ancestor, great master Yao Shan, who was sitting Zazen, and a monk came up to him and said, what do you think when you're practicing meditation? What do you think when you're sitting? And Yao Shan said, think not thinking. And then the monk said, well, how? How do you think not thinking? And Master Yao Shan said, beyond thinking.

[20:54]

Again, various translations. Another translation literally is to say non-thinking. So non-thinking is not something that you can do. Not when you're thinking, I do it. Because as soon as you think, I, then you're all involved in thinking, I. So this practice of stopping is actually letting go of I. Letting go of the thoughts that have I. Doing something. So this is an entering gate to non-thinking or an entering gate to beyond thinking. Amazingly enough, everything's happening in the realm of non-thinking. The sun comes up. the moon goes through its phases, the waves, the tide rises, tide goes out, birds sing, the rain falls, plants are happy and grow, all without thinking.

[22:06]

It's quite amazing, actually. So, then there's this sense of gratitude, right? The sense of gratitude that comes up with all of this that's happening in the realm of non-thinking. And then Dogen says it is completed in non-merging. This is a very interesting phrase, completed in non-merging. Usually we're trying to get connected, right? We're trying to, where there's a sense, if I'm feeling lonely or if I'm feeling separate or if I'm feeling that someone is not, you know, paying attention to me or someone's not loving me or whatever, then I want to, I want to connect. And Dogen's pointing out that in non-thinking, things are already connected. Things are already not separate. It's the thinking that actually separates things.

[23:09]

As soon as we have the thought, thinking, it actually is dividing. Dividing the world into me and something else. So he's saying, this is just a little reminder, a very simple phrase. Things are moving in non-thinking and completed, already completed, in non-merging. So that means you don't have to make things merge. Now, please sit comfortably. I think some people are saying, okay, I've heard enough of this. Time to shift and get comfortable. So, yeah, you can shift and get comfortable. And that's also non-merging. But then you can have confidence that, okay, it's good because it's already complete. So... The hub then, this hub of Buddha's activity, this vital center of things, never stops, actually.

[24:26]

And we might be paying attention to it or not. Most of the time not. Most of the time involved in thinking about something. Which is okay. Thinking has to happen. You know, we're human beings, and that's what we do, we think. We have brains that, for good reason, are thinking. We have to take care of things by thinking. But how much are we caught in our believing and our thinking? Or how much are we actually just noticing, oh, there's thinking that is helpful and thinking that is a burden, or thinking that is a kind of bondage? This comes back to a fundamental feeling of having confidence in the universe. Having confidence in the universe that's already supporting you in this moment. Whether you're thinking about it or not, you're breathing.

[25:29]

Whether you're thinking about it or not, your heart's beating. And this is the universe already taking care of you. So yesterday we had a little gathering at Green's Restaurant, wonderful restaurant by the way, and Fort Mason in San Francisco, with my brother in from out of town and my daughter and her husband Robin coming up from Los Gatos, with baby Chloe. And baby Chloe is my granddaughter and baby Chloe is nine months old. And she knows my voice. but she's never met my brother, Nathan. And so they come into, she's being carried into greens and she's kind of being held up, you know, and she's, and I say, Chloe, this is Uncle Nathan. She looks at Uncle Nathan, she looks back at me.

[26:31]

Uncle Nathan says something, oh, hi, Chloe. She hears his voice. She looks back at me. She looks at him. I think there's something maybe similar in our voices. She's right here just looking back and forth. And then she kind of smiles. And Uncle Nathan takes her, and she's kind of happy looking at Uncle Nathan. So I think this is... some nine-month-old, not thinking. Not thinking, but she's taking in everything. Taking in everything and seeing, you know, how is it? And who is it? And I think that, I think, and thinking about it, I observed,

[27:34]

I observed a loving connection. And a nine-month-old is feeling well-loved. And so the whole evening she'd get passed around from person to person and never worried about it. Never made any fuss. She did some spilled things and did the usual. So we had to clean up a little bit extra after her. But I mention this because this is most important, that human beings have this fundamental difficulty when we start thinking. And before that, actually, it depends. How are we taken care of, I think? So it's very important for human beings to feel that they're taken care of. basic level, taken care of and greeted and seen, which are all acts of love and compassion.

[28:43]

So this is, when this doesn't happen enough, you know, doesn't happen consistently enough or for whatever happens, you know, there are traumatic things that can happen that we can't control. We have some opportunity to work with the situation but there's a lot that we can't control so things happen and then we're doing sometimes we're doing a kind of repairing of what's frozen into a kind of a feeling of separateness or frozen into a feeling of kind of fear or mistrust so when that comes up when there's fear and mistrust, then it takes extra attention, extra, say, effort. I say extra, but that's actually not right. It just takes what it takes. It just takes what it takes, and that's our work.

[29:49]

Fundamental work at the place of knowing the value of non-thinking. Fundamental work at the place of not being caught up in the bondage of the thinking that separates us so that we can actually be helpful because we understand that we have a fundamental confidence in our connection. Sometimes we say that's our true nature or our Buddha nature, that we fundamentally are all completely interwoven. And then each of us as separate individuals, independent individuals, express that to each other, to remind each other that we are actually fundamentally all participating in this same universe. So, meeting each other is, you know, it's easy to meet the baby, right?

[30:55]

Because, you know, they're not thinking. It's so easy to To meet someone who's not thinking. The baby's not judging me. The baby's just doing whatever the baby's doing, and it's not assuming something separate. The baby's not assuming separateness. So it's easy to meet a baby. It's harder to meet some other person, even when they get to be, say, two years old, It's harder to meet, because then they have their own ability to say, you're wrong. And even a grown-up doesn't even want to hear that from a two-year-old. So then we try to strategize how to get the two-year-old to behave.

[31:59]

And how much more difficult is it to hear it from someone else who, say, is your peer? Oh, you're wrong. Hard to hear that. It's hard to feel even an implication of that. Someone's not quite confirming what I... Someone's not quite agreeing with me. Even to suspect that is kind of... it puts a little bit of a crimp on things, right? And then when someone is in a position of more power than oneself is, to hear it from that, that's really difficult. Someone saying, you're wrong, and they have some power over my life, right? Some way. It could be a judge, an official judge, right, on the bench saying, Okay, I sentence you.

[33:01]

Or it could be just someone that you happen to meet anywhere who you don't even know, saying you're wrong. Or it could be a good friend, but still someone who has power. It could be a parent, a grandparent, a great-grandparent, a great-great-great-great-great-great ancestor. So scary. So then it's very difficult to face that and be present at the hub of non-thinking, to be present in non-thinking. What usually happens is you start desperately thinking, trying to figure out a way to cope with whatever this is. So we have then learned over the years, each of us have learned many, many patterns of coping, many mechanisms of that then we tend to fall back on. It takes a kind of courage then to sit still.

[34:05]

It takes a kind of courage to sit still in the midst of all that. So this practice, what we call the practice of sitting, is fundamentally this courageous act of being willing to be still. in the midst of all those old thoughts and beliefs that one's self carries around and one's self thinks is the universe but actually is all in one's own thinking. So then how to be helpful to how to be helpful to the universe. depends maybe on one's own ability then to be willing to be present, to be present at this hub, and to notice thinking, and then to not develop thoughts built on thinking.

[35:16]

So non-thinking then is not to develop more thoughts. And that includes not developing the thought to suppress thoughts. So it's not helpful to have the thought to suppress thoughts. That's another thought. So the best way is to center yourself in your breath and your body. So whenever you notice the thoughts beginning to rev up, even if for a second you can come back to breath, body. Now, it's very hard to believe the power of non-thinking. Usually we think, and we think that our thoughts have power, and our thoughts do have power, and that's something that we actually know about and we can hold on to. So it's a kind of a secret to place a higher value on pure awareness, place a higher value on pure awareness than on thinking, than on thinking about pure awareness even.

[36:42]

A higher value on just awareness of the breath, awareness of the body, awareness of where thoughts arise, just to be cultivating moment by moment this awareness. It doesn't give you anything that you can, say, pack up and store for later. Except that it does give you kind of a subtle feeling of participation and of some confidence. And more and more you can trust that subtle feeling that actually it's okay to be present. So Dogen's encouraging this and saying this is a practice of making effort

[37:50]

without desire. Making effort without desire. So this is making effort and the effort is simply to be awake. The effort is simply to be aware without even hoping for some particular result, some particular outcome. Having some confidence that This is being right at the place where things turn. And here is where one can be helpful. So the first step is to notice, say, the tendency to get caught out on the whirling wheel. And then I'd say again to cultivate compassion for everything that's happening. And the more you cultivate compassion, the more you come to being in a place at the center of things.

[38:58]

And there, then you have a chance to completely accept oneself and all the tendencies and things that have ever happened, all the history that's ever happened that has actually supported this moment of existence, to accept all that as having contributed to this with all of its pros and cons, and then to see as you become more present and able to see things now, see what is right now, then there's naturally a response to be helpful. So then this is engaging in a practice with others, with other people, with the earth, with the water.

[40:06]

Water is everywhere, we're full of water. With light, or fire, with the breath, the atmosphere, That we're all breathing together. We're breathing it together with plants. So this then is this feeling of being willing to participate and extend in a helpful way. Which means then, okay, naturally looking. Okay, how to be helpful. Which means that when you're doing something, you pay attention to the impact that it has around you So now we're building a building up here in the parking lot, above the parking lot. You can see it from the parking lot. And we're making an effort for that building to be low impact, even though there's a big impact in building a building.

[41:09]

But over the years, to have it be as energy efficient as possible. So that during the whole lifetime of using this building, that that the impact on the, say, the carbon cycle, which I think probably everyone here knows about, right? So the impact on the atmosphere is minimal, as minimal as we can make it. So this is, sometimes it's actually a complicated project to keep it simple. A very complicated, a tremendous amount of thought goes into doing something in a way that we can live, take care of our lives as human beings, and have it be a light impact on the environment.

[42:18]

So all this comes from a sense of wanting to be, you know, true to this life, which is given by many things, to realize it here at the hub of existence, each person here at the hub of existence. There's this line from, I think Ted Sorensen died just recently, and there's this line, so it's, Sorensen Kennedy, right? Ask not what your universe can do for you. Ask what you can do for your universe. So this is how things then move along with non-thinking. So the experience may be kind of going into thinking and out of thinking.

[43:19]

But at some point, I hope that each of you has a chance to realize the power of non-thinking for yourself. Very, very important. This realization, very important. And I think I should stop. And I want to end with a salute to the universe called What a Wonderful World. Louis Armstrong and others. And I invite you to join in. It ends with, oh, yeah. And so I think that's maybe, for me, that's like amen. Or Svaha, which we end our Heart Sutra with Bodhi, Svaha.

[44:20]

Svaha maybe literally translates as so be it. But here it's, oh yeah. So many of you know the song, so you can join right in. But we'll do it twice, and then the second time, more people can join in. I see trees of green, red roses too. I see them bloom for me and for you. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world. I see skies of blue and clouds of white, the bright blessed day and the dark sacred night. And I say to myself, What a wonderful world. The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky, are also in the faces of the people going by.

[45:26]

I see friends shaking hands, saying, how do you do? They're really saying... I love you. I hear babies cry. I watch them grow. They'll learn much more than I'll ever know. And I think to myself what a wonderful world. Yes, I think to myself what a wonderful world. I Yeah. So we'll do it one more time, and then the next time we do it, yeah, everybody's really got to get into that. I see trees of green, red roses too. I see them bloom for me and for you. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

[46:33]

I see skies of blue and clouds of white. The bright blessed day and the dark sacred night. And I say to myself. What a wonderful world. The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky, are also in the faces of the people going by. I say, they're in hands, saying, how do you do? They're really saying, I love you. I I hear babies cry. I watch them grow. They'll learn much more than I'll ever know. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

[47:37]

Yes, I think to myself, what a wonderful world. Ah, yeah. Thank you for listening and for singing. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. 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 sf.org. zc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[48:27]

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