This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good afternoon, everybody. So what I wanted to talk about... was something that I've been thinking about for a while now. And it has to do with something that Suzuki Roshi said. He left a lot of advice. And one of them that particularly interested me was when he responded to somebody by saying, don't be disturbed by your mind. Don't be disturbed by your mind.

[01:04]

Just hearing those words, I mean, very powerful and absurd. And what is he talking about? Don't be disturbed by your own mind? Is that something we want to hear? Would my mind disturb me? Would it lie to me? Would it try to fool me? Would it try to convince me that what I see isn't really happening? That the way I've been trained to see myself and other people might not be true? Would my mind do that to me? Yeah, of course. Of course it does. But I think it takes quite a long time of practice to be able to come to terms with that. Because we usually think that our minds tell us the truth.

[02:12]

Don't we? Don't we, really? What else are we going to rely on? So that was some advice for Zazim practice. You know, and certainly when we do our practice, being on a Zafu is about the easiest way to do our practice. But then we're also given the instruction to take it wherever we go and apply it in whatever we do. So it's Zazen is a special relationship to the mind and body that will free us from suffering. free us from suffering, since that's what this is all about. So sometimes, this is really like the beginning of the summer, I guess, so people haven't really suffered enough yet, do you think, Greg?

[03:14]

So for those of you who are going to stay long, don't give up hope. It'll get worse. And sometimes we think that that's suffering that all the other people and squirrels and weather do to us, we think that that's somehow a mistake, but actually it's the gateway of liberation. If we don't be disturbed by our mind. That's the catch, and it's a big one. So there was another piece of advice too by Reb Anderson, one practice period when he was here, some years ago, and he came out with, okay, so meet everything with complete relaxation. Oh yeah, great. Doesn't that just make you tighten right up? Meet everything with complete relaxation.

[04:17]

Complete relaxation. What would that be like? If you bring to mind a situation where you just automatically find that you've tightened up, how can you bring relaxation to that? Who's going to do it? Actually, who's going to do it when you're all tight? But actually, it's the mind that's tight. It's the mind that's tight. The way I see, the way I've seen it, as Tenzo, I think, was... Of course, Fukuten is... was for me the hardest job, the hardest job being in charge of the kitchen crew. But made it through that and then was Tenzo for two years. Made it through the first year barely by the skin of my teeth and it was in the second year that I realized that there was, there could have been another way I could have approached all this which was to actually

[05:21]

Practice meeting everything that arises with an open mind and a forgiving heart. I finally wrote that out and tacked it above the altar in the kitchen to remind myself. So those are some instructions on a way to practice with our life. So what is it about the mind that could possibly disturb us? Well, what does the mind do? Really, what's its job, do you think? Secrete thoughts. Yes, yes. Secreting thoughts. We have a pancreas. We have a pancreas, and what does that do? secretes insulin.

[06:22]

So we have a mind. Actually, well, you know, that's just the way we talk about it. Actually, we don't have a mind, right? We experience in mind and a special part of mind, which is called the discriminating mind. It's about this big. But it... But it controls most of our life because we don't know how to form a workable relationship with it. And so what the discriminating mind does is that it secretes thoughts. And there are two ways to look at thoughts. There are two kinds of thoughts. One are called natural thoughts. And those are the ones when you're sitting here. Do you notice?

[07:25]

They just pop up out of nowhere. It could be about anything. Oh, what's happening next? Why isn't he talking? What was for supper? So it's like popping corn. Just boom. Or bubbles in a glass of soda pop. You know, where do they come from? It's a great mystery. And where do they go? Great mystery. Yet, that's the nature of it. And so we have in our mind, in the mind which we inhabit, we have natural thoughts. There's another kind of thought, which are called deliberate thoughts. Deliberate. So in a case of silence where nothing's going on, the natural thinking will give us items that we may choose from to develop and entertain ourselves.

[08:34]

Because the mind, when it doesn't have something to do, gets very anxious and agitated. Have you noticed? When there's something not going on, we get kind of anxious. Unless we've spent... too many years here, by which time that kind of not much going on is a welcome relief. But most of the time I think it's kind of, it's very agitating. And so that's when, that's where we do our planning and our dreaming and our hoping and our fearing and our worrying. It's best to observe this mind, to observe it, like during a seshin, where once we get past the doormat of boredom, then we get into the room of deliberate thinking.

[09:37]

And I remember my first seshin, I was going to get through... Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, from beginning to end. That was my plan. I mean, what else was I going to do, just sit there? I didn't make it because other things were much more entertaining, like my leg about to fall off. Pain, pain, which is one of our greatest friends in the Zendo. It keeps trying to get our attention. It keeps drawing us back to, what do we call it? Present moment. Yes, that's what it's called. Which is a very difficult place to be. So we have these two ways of thinking. There's nothing you can do about natural thought.

[10:41]

Just try. To show you the power of your will, do not think of a white elephant. Really, apply your will. How'd that go? So the thoughts that keep coming, people will often complain like that's a problem. Oh, I have a monkey mind and I can't seem to stop my thinking and all. which, of course, is good news, because there aren't many who don't think. And I think it's... I don't know if medication will help that or not. So the thinking business is not a problem. It's not a mistake. It's not a design flaw. It's just the way it is. By becoming very quiet... it can over time, when it begins to trust quiet, will calm down a bit.

[11:46]

Calm down a bit. But what zazen helps us to see is that it's not really a problem. Because we don't try to stop them. We don't try to feed them. We just let them be. And when you let anything be, sooner or later it runs out of gas. So, So with the deliberate thinking, we can exercise our strength, our mindfulness, by when you notice that you're in it, to just bring it to a halt. Not scolding or anything, that feeds it. Or not chastising yourself, because that feeds it too. But just noticing that, oh my goodness, I'm thinking about... That new, wonderful Torrey gate down across from the bathhouse. That is nice, isn't it?

[12:49]

I want to remember this so I can build one when I get home. So when you notice that you're doing that, you just stop, just stop. And you do something else. You can't just stop without something else. So the something else involves our bodies. You know, being Aristotelian in our philosophy, the West is Aristotelian, you know. And one of the things that Aristotle discovered was that one cannot possibly live with any comfort in a world where there's paradox. And it's sort of in us, it's certainly in our conditioning, and in our culture, that all paradox must die. What just left in my mind was, shit or get off the pot.

[13:56]

How is that a paradox? Oh, okay. So Aristotle would say, you must do one or the other. You cannot do both. You know, I think that's a bad example. Somebody give me a paradox. Well, is it up or down? Well, it can't be both. Well, of course, that's just Aristotle. There are whole other ways of thinking where up or down, What do you mean up or down? It can be up and down. Can this, well, can this particle be here and not be here? Well, Aristotle would say no. But somebody else, like some mechanic of the quantum variety, would say, well, sure, no problem.

[15:03]

Thank you for asking. So, oh, so we think We think that the mind and the body are separate things. And that, like if you're a doctor, you can't treat both at the same time. I mean, you have to choose one. But of course that's not true. So in our hospital, which is right up there, we deal with a non-Aristotelian world, which is a world of unity, a world of the many and the one where paradox is the way of life. Paradox is the way of life. So whenever you find yourself caught in a paradox, meet it with complete relaxation because they are not separate. Like if this is good and this is bad,

[16:07]

if this is where your attention is, they're separate. But you have to notice that, you know, what underlies the good and the bad? You know, all this. They're always connected. And when you bring up one over here, automatically its opposite is over here. So they're not opposed. They complement each other. So we deal with mind and body in Zazen. And if you don't think so, Wait till your knees start to scream in pain. So the mind and the body are actually one and the same, though different. So what our practice is in dealing with our minds and our bodies involves where we put our attention. And that's one thing we can actually do.

[17:09]

And I think that is a really neat skill. Because right now, perhaps some of your attention is coming to the sound of my voice. But you can put your attention in your left foot. And then in your right hand. Then to the tip of your nose. Effortlessly. Isn't that amazing? So what we do when we find that we've gone off on a tear by deliberately thinking something to keep it alive, then we stop it and we put our attention somewhere else. And we put it into the body. And what's usually the thing that we do when we put our attention into our body is follow the breath. which is, um, we're quite fortunate to have it.

[18:11]

And what's really cool about the breath is we don't have to do a thing about it. We can't really stop it. Have you tried to stop breathing? I mean, it works pretty good until a certain point, and then the body takes over by itself, which I think is, I think that's really kind. So, so we watch the breath because it's there and it's always there. as long as we're, you know, here. And we just watch it coming in and going out. And just in doing that, and one of the great things to do with that is to watch your belly. Because when we, you know, when you sit and you breathe in, your belly pops out. And when you breathe out, or when it breathes out, it falls down, it falls, it goes in. So breathing in and whoop, breathing out and whoop. So that's always there. And I think that's entertaining enough. I find it entertaining.

[19:15]

But what we're actually doing is that we are bringing together a body and mind. We're bringing what is supposed to be opposite. We are bringing it together so that we can see that it's actually one. And not to get attached to... to that either, that process of bringing together the many and the one because the whole point of Zazen is eventually to notice what happens next which is there's a great leap beyond the many and the one. So we don't really have to worry about things too much. So when we combine the mind, our attention with our body, the breath, then we are really seeing the nature of reality, which is that the many actually show us the one when we put them together.

[20:26]

And we can see that the one only manifests itself in the many. The one manifests itself in the opposites. Just as one example. So all this is for one purpose, which is to guide us towards the present moment. I was a philosophy major. in college I think I may have read you know what maybe two or three pages from some books in college not much but one of the things one of the things that I noticed because actually you know we talk about Aristotle and Plato usually at the beginning at the beginning of the course in

[21:31]

the history of philosophy. So most of that I was... I may have read a bit, although I do question that, but I was maybe some of the classes at that point and tended to slack off towards the end of the semester. Maybe you didn't need to know that about my... about my university career, but... I think it was St. Augustine talking about time and... He pointed out that the past was no longer there and the future was not there yet. So all that we had was the present, which, you know, that was startling enough. I never thought of that because when we think of the past, you know, it's right there. It's right behind me. You know, I can see it. I can remember it. Of course, years later, I noticed that the mind, the present mind shapes the past. Have you noticed how your story has changed over the years about who you were and what you've done?

[22:36]

So our minds are really cool in shaping actually what we think is the truth. In fact, there's a special part of a level of consciousness that's responsible for making up facts in order to confirm our truth. But then he looked at the present moment And he said, well, just how big is that? How long is that? He said, is it this big? No, is it a minute long? Or is it a half a minute? Or is it a half of a half? Or is it smaller? And that was, when I heard that, I thought that was really cool, but it was just too much, just too much for me. So I didn't think about it again until 40 years later. And we're left with Dogen Zenji, who is where our form of Zen comes from.

[23:40]

And he wrote about time, which I won't go into, other than to say that the present moment is all there is. And it ain't much. It's not much. So as much as we can to try to find it, I think is probably worth the effort. And why? Because there isn't anything else. Think of the time that we spend feeling guilty about the past or trying to wish it away or worrying about things in the future. We spend a lot of time in those places that are no places. There is nothing there. Nothing. unless you ask a quantum mechanic. And they'll say, of course, the past, the present, the future are all happening at the same time, which is fine by me, but I don't care.

[24:44]

So the present moment. And what's so great about the present moment, other than it being actually the only thing that there is? Well, There's a little trick about it, but that's the only place where enlightenment happens. And we all want that, don't we? You all put in a request, didn't you, when you entered the gate here? I want to be enlightened. Sure, I'm a guest, but I'm going to be here a few days, so let's go. being here for, I don't know, 20 years. That's still my plan. I want to be enlightened. And of course, just in that sentence is the tremendous error. I want to be enlightened. And you know what?

[25:52]

Enlightenment... Maybe luckily, it's not what we think. It's not what we think. It's not something that happens to me or to you. In fact, it's not a happening at all. It's just a waking up with no one to awaken to something else. So, thank you very much. Goodbye. There are stories of... enlightenment, especially in the Zen tradition, in particular in our ancestors, our Zen ancestors from Shakyamuni Buddha to you and me. And you remember when Shakyamuni Buddha awakened? When he awakened, remember what happened? He was tempted and all this.

[26:54]

You don't want to wake up, Siddhartha. You know how tough things are now. What if you became more sensitive to them? You don't want that. But he weathered those storms and at one point he looked up and he saw the morning star. He saw the morning star. Star. We know it to be Venus. He didn't. And actually, you know, it doesn't matter. But he saw it. And he awoke. He awoke. Because in that particular, he saw the whole works. And that point of light, it finally hit him that it's all one. And even bigger than that. In other words, looking at that... point of light, he awoke.

[27:55]

It had his full and complete attention. Complete attention. And he saw what was going on. In his successor, Mahakashapa, You'd think, you know, you'd think if you were going to have a successor, there'd be kind of an exam. You know, okay, Maha Kshapa, tell me what you know. And if you gave the right answers, then okay, you can be my successor. It wasn't like that at all. You know, the legend, the story is that the Buddha sat down to give a talk and he didn't say anything. How long would we last in that kind of a situation? But he just sat there and at some point picked up a flower, which I imagine somebody picked, thereby killing to death eventually, just so we keep everything clean and in the open here.

[29:05]

And he held it up. And you can imagine people's responses, you know, the ones in the front row are saying, okay, now what? What's going to happen? And the people way in the back were, I can't hear him. What did he say? What did he say? So he's holding up this flower and he looks around and there's Mahakashapa over here. And all of a sudden, Mahakashapa smiles. And Shakyamuni, his eyes twinkle. I'm not sure how to do that. But that's what the story says. Twinkled. And I said, I have the treasure. I am the treasury. And I give it to this guy right there, this person. And so Mahakashapa was his, because there was something that happened between them, which was the elimination of the between. Another way to say it, in other words, Mahakashapa,

[30:09]

the Buddha got Mahakashapa's complete attention. Complete attention. And in that complete attention, he was awakened. There was awakeness. The next one was with Mahakashapa's student, Ananda. Ananda, the faithful one, had been with the Buddha for, you know, many, many years. But Ananda had been very busy. you know, taking care of the Buddha. And so he never had time to do all the stuff that would lead to awakening. And so at one point when Ananda was ready and he kind of started applying himself to the practice of working with his mind and his body and honing his awareness and presence, he came to Makashapa and I suspect Mahakashapa could smell it on him, on Ananda, that he was ready. And so Ananda, you know, usually there'll be a question.

[31:16]

The student will ask a question, inviting a response from the teacher to aid in awakening, or the teacher will ask the question, inviting the student to be awakened. And you know, I don't even remember the question right at the moment, and please don't help me, because it's not the point. So Ananda asks a question, a question that's not of the usual variety. There's something different about it. There's a closeness between the two people involved. It betrays a closeness and a deep trust. And Mahakashapa said, Ananda, And I think Ananda kind of said, so would you answer my question? And Makashapa leans over to him and says, Ananda. And in that moment, Ananda awoke.

[32:22]

It's... It's that experience when somebody calls your name and it is, and everything stops and you are met fully and completely. And they have your full attention. So he woke up. Then Ananda had a disciple too called Shonawashu. Or Shanaawasa, I think. whatever it is, Pali or something. And they had developed a relationship with each other of trust and closeness. And they were sitting together when the time was ripe. And Shonu Asha asked a question of Ananda, you know, some really cool Zen question, which is rarely the point.

[33:31]

But... It betrays a closeness, a deep friendliness, friendship. And Ananda probably said something and Shonawashu didn't quite get it. And then Ananda takes the corner of Shonawashu's robe and tugs it. And tugs his robe. How sweet is that? Tugs his robe. Have you ever had a child come and try to get your attention? What do they do? They pull on your clothes somehow. You cannot ignore it. They know instinctively that this is the one thing that will work, that will get one of the giant's attention. So Ananda tugs Sonuwashi's robe, gets his complete attention, and he awakens.

[34:37]

He awakens. And my favorite story is between a master and disciple, student, in which the student asks a particular question. And that question was, So, Master, what's beneath that robe? What's underneath your robe? Like, have you asked that question much? Oh, actually, people do ask us, don't they? What do you wear underneath that, those robes? You know, it's kind of an inappropriate question, don't I think? It's like going up to someone and saying, So what's under that T-shirt? That I've never been asked. So the student says, what's underneath your robe?

[35:41]

And the teacher, knowing that the time is right, says intimacy. Intimacy. And, of course, the student awakened. It had his full attention. So we're left with intimacy. And, you know, I think... I think intimacy is a good American... word for enlightenment, actually. We think, I think, at least I always thought that enlightenment would be something that comes kind of in a flash and gets, you know, where all of a sudden you're smarter and much more attractive and there's something really much cooler, much, much cooler, able to approach any situation with, you know,

[36:58]

you know, um, confidence and, uh, well, you know, you know, like, uh, like the pictures of, um, really cool people in magazines, you know, just like that with the right outfits, you know, but actually, um, enlightenment is, um, it's like going to the dump and getting rid of all that stuff, you know, recycling dump. Uh, uh, it's, uh, I don't know if it's built into the word, but it really is a lightning. We become lighter. We don't gain anything. We lose almost everything. Almost everything, except what really matters. And that's not a thing. I think it's finding our true nature. which is one of intimacy.

[37:58]

It's not a little thing. It's not like there's a little statue of a little Buddha inside. It's that supreme, subtle, astounding intimacy where there's no between. In Christian mysticism, there's a teacher, monk, Meister Eckhart, and he put it this way, he said, between God and your own soul, there is no between. Try to picture this. Between God, the all, and your own soul, which we'd say Buddha nature, though not a thing, there is no between. There's no space between us and who we truly are. Isn't that great? Doesn't that just make you smile and feel all cozy inside?

[39:01]

And we spend so many years looking and looking and looking for it. We are it all along, all along. And I think that's particularly the good news of Zen Buddhism, that you don't have to find it. It finds you. You are it. And there's a way of... describing that, which is the ocean, you know, the ocean, right? It's pretty big. And if you think in terms of the ocean being the all, we and everything else, everything else we call existing. Exist means to stand out. To stand out from the one. As an individual. But things and stuff... know that there's no problem with that. They don't have a problem with what happens when I'm no longer a little thing.

[40:06]

What happens to me? What happens to me? That I know on good, on good, what do you call that? On good? A good authority. Is that what you, who said? Very good, thank you. On good authority that they don't, that things don't think that. They don't worry about what happens to them when they vanish, when they die. But we're different. We're like waves on the ocean. And when we're born, there's no problem. There's this really cute little wave, little sweetie pie, little wave, and it grows up and becomes a bigger wave. But something happens in its consciousness. Something develops. It develops in the minus level of consciousness. And it's the idea of the I, of me. All of a sudden, it's not just a wave as a manifestation of the sublime perfection of the one. All of a sudden, wait a minute, folks, I'm here.

[41:09]

And how that develops is sort of like a semi-permeable membrane that grows between the wave and the ocean. And the wave, after a while, forgets that it's even part of the ocean. But actually, it is, and always has been. And there are semi-permeable, just permeable, not semi, wholly permeable. But me, I concentrate on the difference, on the membrane part, and I forget that the ocean is always flowing in and out, always. And then I noticed there are others that aren't me, you know, friend or foe is to be determined, right, for one's safety and survival and sense of security. But actually what's actually going on is that it's all flowing together as an expression of the one ocean.

[42:16]

It's just a little mistake we make. But that mistake, of course, leads to a spiritual maturity which couldn't have happened unless... unless I was there to mess it up. So we have a thing in Zen about, Duggan says, that practice is one mistake, is one continuous mistake. One continuous mistake, and that's important to know. Really, really, really, really. Because in our culture, mistakes are bad. We get fired because we make mistakes. We get disapproved of when we make mistakes. We may be spanked because we make mistakes. So mistakes are something to be avoided at all cost. And how do we do on that score? We can't. Why? Because we only learn because of mistakes. We don't learn through success because there's no problem. We learn only when there's a problem, when we hit the wall or make a mistake or our identity gets called into question.

[43:21]

and we feel something horrible has happened, there's been some mistake. So mistakes are actually the meat of practice, the doorway to practice, just so you know. And any kind of self-condemnation is purely extra, like sour icing on a cupcake, but purely extra. And something, again, and a mistake, something that will help us open the door. which has never been closed because it doesn't need to because there are no walls to begin with, actually. So who's following this that can tell me what I'm going to say next? Over here is pretty helpful. Mistake. What was that mistake? Sorry? Oh, no, but that's a good idea.

[44:25]

Thank you very much. So our practice mistakes are okay. I mean, essential. Wow. I wonder if that was going to be interesting. Intimacy. You know, when you think about intimacy, you know, what is that? We don't use that word so much, do we? It's almost like too close. Like we usually say it kind of like, oh, they're intimate. That's rather intimate, isn't it? You know, like it's something not quite right or that it's much too personal to even go there. And yet, you know, I think it's our deepest longing, our deepest longing to be intimate.

[45:28]

We go in nature. Why? Because to be intimate with nature is to see where we come from, you know, how we're connected with this earth, with the sky, you know, which is everywhere. It's everywhere. And it's the feeling separate from us that makes us feel so isolated and alienated. Did anybody here grow up thinking that they were from another planet? No. Is there anybody? I was. Well, three of us. Or at best, must have been adopted. It's that unrest, I think, that comes from from that sense of, um, ego that develops, you know, when we're, when we're waves, when we're little waves, where we feel, um, really cool to be, um, separate, on our own, uh, individual as nobody else like me.

[46:34]

I'm the only one that actually suffers this way. I mean, it goes from light to dark. Um, but the, the problem with, um, that identity, which turns out in the end to be, to have been a false one, is that it makes us feel, we feel cut off and separate, and we feel cut off from everything, everything, from our own bodies. Can you imagine being cut off from your own body? How can that happen? And yet it is, we are, we are like that. So we do yoga, we do Zen practice, which is full embodied intimacy with pain and joy, you know, just to get back, just to get back in our bodies. In fact, we have a little device to save our life when we're children. If something really horrible happens to a child, they can leave their body.

[47:35]

They leave their body and go up here somewhere. In real heavy duty trauma, we leave. We leave. And so then we have to... To get back, we have to do some kind of a body practice. Nothing else works. You cannot talk yourself back into your body. Mainly because the body doesn't listen and doesn't care. So we have to do some kind of a body practice. And Zen is one of the best ones, I think. So we long to be rejoined. We long to know that... Everything is a part of everything else and that we are a part of that. I think that's the only true satisfaction in life, the only true contentment. Have you ever talked with somebody who's content? It's a different experience, I think, from talking with most people, don't you know?

[48:42]

It seems like there's something kind of wrong with them. They don't seem too concerned about themselves. They seem to be rather accepting, accepting even of, you know, me. They are able to listen, to actually listen, to make contact. And somehow you feel held by them. Boy, what a gift. The thing is, we're all like that. all of us. So we come to spiritual practice in order to heal that tear. You know, one of the two big earmarks of Buddhist practice are compassion and wisdom. Wisdom is where we see

[49:46]

without using our eyes, we see what's really going on, the truth, simple truths, actually, like everything changes. I mean, like, who doesn't know that? The question is, who likes it and who doesn't like it? That's where the suffering comes in. Everything's always, always changing and dying each nanosecond into the next, being reborn into the next. Nothing's ever lost. Nothing's ever created. It's just the same thing. Dying to one form and being transformed into the next. Seems quite obvious when you think of it. There is no real separation that the one that we have in our minds, which disturbs us so much, is not actually true. We're actually part of the ocean of being. And I think we know this. You wouldn't come to a place like this if you hadn't had that experience at some point.

[50:51]

And of course that experience is not really an experience because an experience takes somebody over here to experience this over here. And it's not that kind of a thing. It's an occasion where actually just for a moment or two you are present. And in that present moment, there's no you. Have you ever noticed this? Nature is kind of the best. It can happen in the zendo if you're paying attention, which is really hard. But when you're walking in the woods, why don't you watch for it? Whether you notice that if you're there or not. Am I watching this? You know, when I see something of exquisite beauty in nature, does it register to me like, oh, I'm seeing something very beautiful. No, it doesn't.

[51:54]

There's no you in it. Well, see if you spot it. There's just no you there. It's nature and nature. You know, they're not apart. They're one thing. So actually when you're in the present moment, there actually isn't much use for an ego. Ego's like a crutch, I think. It helps us get from place to place in the world that we actually live in. Oh gosh, I can't imagine what it would be like without one. No, actually I can't imagine. Except in those moments when I'm actually present, being actually present. And I think we do fine. Actually, in the present moment. I think it's when we lose the present moment and go in the past and in the future that we get in trouble. Because that's when we trip over chairs. So, living in a place like this, you learn to be very mindful.

[52:58]

Why? Because it's a smart thing to do. Have you tried getting around here at night? In the dark? And if you're not mindful, what happens? Maybe you don't know, but we should try. There used to be stone, big long tread, long tread, stone steps going down from up here down to the courtyard. And watching people fall over those was kind of like a hobby after a while, especially in the dark. And watching people after a Dharma talk in the night coming down the steps on this side and falling all over themselves trying to get down, it was really actually painful sometimes. But here you really have to practice mindfulness or else you get hurt. I think I will finish this by just saying that consider

[54:03]

Consider what intimacy might mean in your life. And what gets in its way for good reason. We don't develop these habits of mind because they don't work. We develop habits of mind to avoid intimacy to keep us safe. And the trouble is they become habits. We are total addicts, each and every one of us. very strong addiction to self. So to learn, to be able to notice the things that we employ to keep us safe from intimacy and then to get to know them, to befriend them with an open mind and with a very, very forgiving heart. Very forgiving heart. And to thank them and to be at peace with them. And they will stop working so hard when we meet them and accept them, so that intimacy becomes more of a possibility.

[55:14]

So Suzuki Roshi says, don't be disturbed by your mind. Thank you. 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, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[55:43]

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