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 evening, everyone. Thank you for being here. I thought that, you know, I would kind of introduce my subject for the intensive tonight. And what better way to start that than with the words of Suzuki Roshi from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Forgive me if I cover my face because I am that blind. Excuse me.

[01:02]

If you want to understand Buddhism, it is necessary for you to forget all about your preconceived... Let me start again. I can't see. Let me see. Is there another light? Sorry. Sorry. If you want to understand Buddhism, it is necessary for you to forget all about your preconceived ideas. To begin with, you must give up the idea of substantiality of existence. The usual view of life is firmly rooted in the idea of existence. For most people, everything exists. They think whatever they see and whatever they fear exists. Of course the bird we fear and see exists. It exists, but what I mean by that... may not be what you mean. The Buddhist understanding of life includes existence and non-existence.

[02:02]

The bird both exists and does not exist at the same time. We say that a view of life based on existence alone is heretical. If you take things too seriously, as if they existed substantially or permanently, you are called a heretic. Most people may be heretics. So addressing all my fellow heretics out there. This is a very, seems the way Suzuki Roshi expresses it. Seems simple enough. It exists and it doesn't exist, right?

[03:03]

Makes a whole lot of sense. And in a way, I can hold that in my mind and intellectualize it and kind of understand it on a very surface level. But it's obvious in my movement in this world that I don't understand that at all. If I go up to someone or someone comes up to me and they say, you are nothing. I might get a good hard slap for that. Or I might make someone hurt someone in saying that. Even though in the way I kind of mean it, I want to mean it, it's not an insult. It's simply a reality.

[04:06]

It's the reality. of our true nature. It's very hard to see myself as nothing but part of the fabric of the universe. And that's the basic delusion. This is the... in a way... I always kind of say, and people are going to get tired of me saying this, that the first teaching of the Buddha just about sums it all up, you know. Not for all of us because, you know, we're human beings and we have to take it apart and make commentaries and analysis and, you know, programs, you know, all that. the truth that there is suffering, that the origin of that suffering is my delusion, my refusal to accept impermanence, my refusal to accept interdependence, my refusal to let go of this I, me, mine, and this you, not me.

[05:35]

that there is a way beyond this delusion, this suffering, that I create an eightfold path. Somewhere in my reading, which I can't find it again, I do too much reading, too much searching, instead of... whatever it is I think I'm supposed to be. Vigabody says that the Buddha started with the most advanced teaching. Just because it's the first teaching. It's not, you know, Buddhist 101. It's the finest, most important, most exact part of the teaching.

[06:44]

And as I said, everything else that comes after is explanation and commentary and argument sometimes. Finding the words for something that in a sense is wordless. The Eightfold Path as a recipe for removing delusion seems simple, you know, until you try to figure out what right or wholesome means in any context because it's complicated. It is as it isn't.

[07:46]

It's so... It's complicated because I make it complicated because of my judgments and my ideas, my constructs that get in the way of actually following the path. I always pick something that's ridiculous and ridiculously hard to talk about. I don't know why. But I do so because it's my it's what I'm working on.

[08:50]

What I'm always working on. Trying to get past these ideas of mine. And trying not to layer this with more ideas. Here we go. To be nothing. Is. I want to say possibility. It's a whole opening of possibility. A whole opening of being. There is. Where do I start?

[09:51]

There is no way to predict or to understand. Well, I don't want to use that word either. There is no way to really know who I am. When I say I want to know who I am, as I said once long ago when I was about 20, need to know who I really am. And I don't want to make fun of that because when you're 20 or 16, I was 20 going on 16. I admit that. 20 going on 12 maybe. I didn't know what that means. And to say it now, I don't know what that means either. And that's all right because knowing is

[11:01]

It's not the point. Knowing who I am, it doesn't matter. At 20, looking back, well, let's go back even further because I wasn't yet 20 when I first started this journey of mine. I think I was about 16 or 17 sitting in an auditorium. in a religion class presentation done by a religion professor, where he invited an Indian man in a white shirt, whose name I don't remember, whose tradition I don't even recall. You know, I was paying so much attention in class. And we sat in an auditorium, and this Indian man, with an accent that I was not at all, you know, used to hearing.

[12:04]

So most of what he said I didn't really understand out of, you know, just not having the experience and being ignorant of, you know, other people because it's, you know, way back in the 80s and, you know, I'm from, you know, Queens and my understanding of the world was very limited. You can be provincial even in New York City. And so I'm sitting in the auditorium and I'm listening to this same song, you know, of this man explaining to us meditation. And one word he said that I could really, you know, I understood some of what he said, but just breathe, you know. He said it with that beautiful kind of accent.

[13:04]

He had a light, sing-songy voice. Close your eyes. Sit still. And I did. And the room, this giant room, got quiet. And something touched me, or I touched something. Don't know, either way. And that was my first experience of meditation. When I think about it, you know, that little instruction. Breathe. Breathing is the least. body-mind does. It's the basic.

[14:11]

It's the first thing that happens when we emerge from the womb. It's the last thing that happens when we go, when we disappear, die, move on, however you want me to say it. So basic. But. When I got up from that seat. You know. I had that little memory of that. Experience. Of just. And. The whole world. the chaos of life came back and just destroyed that moment.

[15:14]

But the memory was there. That little experience that could have easily been forgotten, you know, in the chaos of my life stuck with me. I went searching for it again and again, searching for that moment, searching for a permanence of that feeling of just, you know, for a millisecond of And that's a delusion. You know, I started with that little delusion that somehow it's out there somewhere.

[16:19]

You know, I don't know why I thought it was out there. I mean, it was just me in one seat. You know, I'll have to do this. So in my search for that moment, somehow ended up doing Zen. In a sense, I'm a little more mature with a little bit more experience and reading all this stuff and being with people, you know, who are also working on this. And understanding that That little millisecond of freedom is not... I don't have to cross the country to get it.

[17:31]

I don't have to cross the country to know it. And it's not something that I can hold on to and grasp. But it is something... that is always accessible to me. If I let go, if I understand or if I can really get to an understanding that just of that Nothing. Zazen intrigued me because in sitting Zazen in the words that were being tossed around the room by my fellow practitioners,

[18:44]

in various rooms throughout my life, full of cushions and people, beings seeking freedom. The dropping of body and mind, that freedom, that just, You know, we say Shikantaza just sitting. Just sitting. There's nothing else. Nothing here. Just letting go of all of these ideas, of this idea of who I am. everything.

[19:51]

Allows me to not skip the pain of life, old age, suffering, death, confusion. to understand that that is not. It's not that it's not real. It's not reality. And that sounds crazy because we all know that in living life, these obstacles, quote-unquote, rise up. And I try to avoid them because pain is, you know, pain.

[21:05]

But that's it. Pain is just pain. I don't have to do anything with it. All I have to do is just. Because the reality is, that the moment I start struggling, the moment I start suffering, yeah, I get further and further away from the true nature of this life. And I push everything that is supporting me, you know, in this fabric of existence, you know, we are the warp and weft of this fabric that holds it all together. And the moment I try to run, you know, I try to remove myself from that weave because of pain or trying to avoid

[22:21]

what is, I just cause more suffering for myself and others. If I can just let that nothing be. It's really hard to talk about this. This is what I'm working on. When I tell myself that I am nothing, you know, the delusion pops up. I am nothing.

[23:27]

No, that's not it. It's not this wonderful, magical, nothingness of, you know, I'm still a part of this world, part of this weave, this interdependence that we're all kind of struggling with. This idea that my... existence depends on the existence or the I share it with the myriad beings most of whom I can't even see and that I affect all those myriad beings

[24:29]

With my movements. And struggle. And delusion. I don't want to believe that. I just want to be me. I just want to be. So that's what. You know. I'm trying to talk about. In this intensive. that struggle of not really understanding the nature, my true nature, that is nothing. wanting to really be free of these ideas of who I am.

[25:44]

Intellectually, I know that the girl sitting in the auditorium all those years ago, in touching that little bit of freedom, Somehow, the trajectory of my life could not have been planned. This has nothing to do with what that woman girl thought 30 years ago. Maybe not 30, more than that. Wow. And nothing. And the ideas that I had at that time of what my existence would be and who I was would have told me that I'd be sitting here today.

[26:49]

Nothing that could have predicted that. And looking on that, Sort of how that became. How I became. And what I'm still becoming. I can't predict what I'll be tomorrow. And there's a great freedom in that. Sort of a great idea of freedom in that. But to really feel that freedom here. And know that that's okay. It's a life full of plans and a life full of ideas and a life full of programs. Still, none of which panned out.

[27:58]

Not exactly the way I planned it. none of which, and I still have that expectation, I still can't let go and just let it be and just. I was trying to start to talk about Zazen for me, but the thing about Zazen, the just sitting, Go back to Suzuki Roshi. There's a video that I can't find right now either. Maybe they don't exist. Maybe I made this all up. That could be possible. Where he describes sitting in the Zendo and hearing a bird outside. I watch that video a lot.

[29:00]

I don't know why I can't find it. But there's this moment in Yoga Kara, which I... really have a hard time with is kind of addressing he's kind of addressing the yoga there's that millisecond that moment before when the bird sings where it's just it's not even bird where It's just existence. It's just not even me, but there's no separation between that song and the body-mind that's sitting here. There are moments in Zazen when the body and mind have dropped.

[30:06]

where there's no definition of me here. There's no separation between me, both me, I, and the rest of existence. And that's the just of the just sitting. It's not even something that... that I can point to. But it's just a little glimpse, a little taste, a little millisecond of when I know that reality, that absolute reality. And I think that's what brings us all back to Zazen for all these years, is

[31:13]

painful as the legs get, as boring as it can get, as tedious as it is to, you know, look at a wall for hours a day. There's an inkling there that the Buddha connected us to and that we're still working with. In a sense, be nothing is kind of a little joke. A little snide sort of joke. Be nothing. And the reason why it's a joke is because it's kind of a silly negation.

[32:24]

But it's not negative at all. It's the illusion. That makes it negative. The delusion that almost that it can't, we can't do this. We do it all the time. So I don't know how long I've been talking. I can go on forever. And you still won't know what I'm talking about. and I probably won't either. But let me see one more. There's a... What really, I think, comes up, you know, for me, I'm calling what we like to call

[33:47]

or what somebody called enlightenment, liberation. Words are hard. I'm calling it liberation because enlightenment for me kind of keeps me in this kind of intellectual space, to be enlightened, to see and know. And I know that's not what people are trying to say. But in that looking into my own situation, I just want to be free of birth and death and suffering in the way that Otama was free from birth and death and suffering.

[35:01]

They're not things I can run away from, but they're things that I can be with and allow as part of the nature of being a human being, a living being on this earth, that arises and dies, that gets old, that's born, that gets old, ages, gets sick, and dies. And know that that is perfect. That is the perfect existence to arise and fall, without suffering because the suffering, the pain and the aging and the death is not the suffering. It's what I do with it and my struggle to not accept my own impermanence, my own dependence on all of us.

[36:15]

my own inseparable nature from the fabric of this universe. And that is not at all completely expressed what I want to express, but bear with me. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[37:05]

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