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, everybody. Wonderful to see you all. On behalf of my Dharma sister, Ketu Leanne Schutt, and myself, David Zimmerman, I'd like to welcome you to Beginner Mind Temple and to the first talk of our spring practice period together. I don't know how many people are here for the first time. Is there maybe a show of hands, just out of curiosity? Wonderful, wonderful. As Lynn and I were waiting upstairs, we were talking about the first time we met. at Tassajara in 2002, that particular summer. And she has a much better memory than I do. So we were just kind of drumming up, you know, how we came to Zen Center and what we were doing that summer.

[01:05]

And who knows, maybe, you know, so many years later, you'll find yourself also up here in some way, sharing your particular path and your particular journey. So, in fact, may it be so. May it be so. This is, like I think I said, the first talk of our spring practice period. This is a six-week practice period that Lynn and I are co-leading. If you are new to Zen or San Francisco Zen Center and don't know what a practice period is, it's a period of concentrated study in which the community comes together, kind of settles in a little bit deeper, more deeply into their practice and see the ways that we can support each other in our studying the great matter of who are we and what is this life and how do we live it.

[02:07]

And actually, practice periods have their root in a 2,500-year-old tradition going back all the way to Buddhist time when during the rainy seasons in India, the Maniket monks decided to pause for a period of time due to the weather and study together. And here we are, thousands of years later, kind of doing the same thing. So it's a beautiful tradition that may continue for thousands of more years. The theme of the practice period that Lynn and I have chosen is wise effort in everyday life, harmonizing stillness, and activity. And most of the Dharma talks that will be offered over the next six weeks are going to be touching on this particular theme in some way. They'll be either offered by Lynn and myself or a series of guest teachers as well.

[03:10]

And then we have also a practice spirit class on Tuesday nights that is also exploring this particular theme together. Then I thought about what it is we wanted to introduce on the first night. And she suggested, well, maybe as a way to have a personal introduction of ourselves, as well as the topic, and that we might have what we call an effort-seeking mind talk. For those of you who are aware, we have something here called Way-seeking Mind Talk, which is to talk about how it is that someone came to practice. What were the particular causes and conditions that led you to take up practice in some way? And so we're going to be kind of using that particular lens to talk about not only ourselves and our lives, but also the way that effort has manifested ourselves

[04:13]

and particularly through practice. And also we hope that this will encourage each of you who are participating in the practice period to study for yourselves the ways in which you have worked with effort, what you've identified as your particular habit patterns around effort in your lives, what were the causes and conditions in which you kind of find yourself still acting out and manifesting in some way, in the way in which you take up the endeavors in your life. And looking at ways that you, we, have been both skillful and unskillful. in those endeavors and how it is that we might bring more intention and awareness to our efforts as essentially a liberative effort, the fundamental effort that we are making here in our practice together.

[05:19]

How is it that we can wake up and be in harmony together and express our lives from a place of deep understanding and deep compassion? So the several areas that we're going to be touching upon, dimensions through the practice period in which I'd like to encourage of you as you listen to our particular effort-seeking mind talks and as you think of your own effort-seeking mind, look at the ways in which you have made effort if you have a meditation practice in your particular meditation practice, the ways that effort has manifested in your relationships, in your life, the ways that effort has been expressed through work, and then finally the ways in which it's been, you've taken it up through your engagement in the world.

[06:25]

So keeping these four dimensions in mind as we go on this journey together. I imagine well, I don't imagine, I know, that I have a tendency to be what we could call an over-efforter. And in that process, I also have a tendency to multitask and try to do many things at once. I also find myself, as I go about the day, some way leaning into my day as I walk, you know, go around the temple. I have to catch myself because I'm kind of rushing ahead. trying to get to the next thing. And I have to deliberately pause and make myself kind of come back to the body and settle in a little bit more deeply and notice where is my mind? Where am I going? What's leading me? What am I pursuing in some way?

[07:27]

What am I trying to grab onto? And I also have a tendency to like things to be a particular way. And so many times I'll find my effort is kind of manifested in trying to control certain outcomes or control ways of how something unfolds because I have a particular vision of how it should be. I wanted to offer a quote by Suzuki Roshi. And he says, unless we know the origin of our effort... we don't actually understand our effort. We have to understand the origin of what we are doing in our lives, in our practice. And so in terms of the Dharma effort, it's always going to be a very important part of our practice and part of the journeys that we are making through our lives.

[08:28]

And I think the kind of effort that we bring to our life reflects a great deal about who we believe ourselves to be and what we value and what it is that we have faith in and what we sense to be possible. There's a stanza from a Rilke poem that has haunted me for many years since I first came across it in college and and I wanted to share it with you. We can so easily slip back from what we have struggled to attain abruptly into a life we never wanted, can find that we are trapped as in a dream, and die there without ever waking up.

[09:30]

This can occur. So these lines encapsulate for me both the great aspiration and endeavor that has informed my years of practice, this great wish to wake up out of the delusion of a separate self, out of the experience of suffering that comes with that, and also the fear that is underlying that. that I will die without waking up, that I will die without knowing who I truly am. And in those lines also is a reminder, an acknowledgement of the difficulty of sustaining one's effort throughout one's life, sustaining one's motivation, particularly in the face of difficulties and self-doubt and other hindrances. What keeps us going when we are deeply challenged?

[10:35]

How do we find what it is that sustain us in our great endeavor, whatever that great endeavor may be for you? Those lines also I realized just recently are kind of echoed on the Han in Zen temples. And for those of you who don't know what a Han is, a Han is the wooden instrument that we hit that calls us to meditation each time. And usually the verse is something along the lines of, Great is the matter of birth and death. Quickly passing. Gone, gone. Awake each one. Awaken. Don't waste this life. And I think these lines express such a singularity an urgency, an import in terms of one's effort and the effort required to fully awaken out of the dream of self.

[11:41]

I came to Zen practice and Zen center in my late 20s and I was particularly interested in and learning how to meditate because I had heard that it would help me in some way to learn how to be more present in my life. And that was something that had for a period of time really been coming up for me, how it is that I could be more present. A deep yearning that I had found years ago in stemming from my childhood, that I was still working out in some way. And at the time, my father was dying of colon cancer, and I was looking for a way also how to heal our relationship, bridge our relationship, and be able to be more present for him, more connected to him before he died. And I was also going through a number of difficulties in my life and thought, again, that maybe this would help me to find my path forward in some way in a difficult time.

[12:50]

I think also a lot of my endeavors, and maybe some of you might recognize this for yourself, around making an effort was to be a better person in some way, to achieve some state of being that would be good enough. And in order basically to be safe, to avoid abuse, and to avoid being abandoned in some way. And I'll say a little bit more about how those kind of were seeds of my particular efforting and the ways that they were rooted in my childhood. And even though a lot of those particular veins have softened over the years, and I don't find them to be as strong, motivating forces, they are still there in some way. I still am finding myself allowing them to unpack and unfold, reveal themselves, become untangled, and perhaps solve it and let go in some way.

[14:05]

I was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which is the heart of Mennonite and Amish country. I don't know if anyone here knows that particular area or that particular faith. My ancestors... came from Switzerland and Germany in 1732, fleeing religious persecution as Mennonites at that time. And I think I've inherited from my Mennonite heritage and through my father particular working class ethic, what it means to work, the importance of work, the value of work, and particularly that one should work hard and one should work completely and doing it so for the benefit of the family, but also as a way to offer it up some way. In this case, for Mennonites, offer it up to God. And also there's a tendency to overwork.

[15:08]

And so this point of how it is that we manifest our value and purpose in life through work, was something that was there from the beginning. My father was a machinist. He had only gone to eighth grade. And so a lot of his effort was around how to sustain the family by working multiple jobs. So he was a machinist. He would also do construction work on the side. He was what we called in the past a garbage collector. And I remember that he wasn't home very much because he was often out working. And when he was home, he was either crashed out sleeping on the couch or he was doing various projects around the house. And he would often yell at my brother and myself to help him out in some way with the work. that he wanted to do, but it was always kind of his way of doing it rather than trying to educate us how we might take up the craft of what he was trying to do in some way.

[16:20]

My father, due to various circumstances, my parents separated when I was five. And I ended up, my brother and I, in children's homes, Mennonite children's homes, as well as a foster home and back into a children's home and back into another foster home. So from the ages of 5 to 10, I was basically back and forth between children's homes and foster homes. And then when I finally did return to my father's home, we were mostly latchkey kids and seldom saw my father. One of the ways that I kind of discovered... that I could get his approval and acceptance was by cleaning the house, taking care of things, putting things in order. And that helped not only to make sure that he didn't get angry at us and start hitting us in some way, but also that I could be seen and validated as good in some way.

[17:23]

And so I can still find myself At times, whenever I get kind of anxious, wanting to clean the house in order to have a sense of calm and harmony and a sense of subtleness in order to feel things were okay. I'm going to take a glass of water. I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be of service in some way, but I wasn't actually clear how I would be of service. And I think the seed of service came out... not only from the Mennonite faith, but particularly when I was in the children's home, many of the women there were very devoted in their spiritual practice to the idea of service. And so their way of attending to us as children in the children's home and how they cared and how they took care of the place really spoke from a deeper place about what service meant to them as a way of offering themselves up.

[18:39]

And so I still find that coming to Zen Center at some point, recognizing how service here, the way that we do work practice, anchored in our spiritual practice, deeply informs this place of how can I offer myself up to the world in a larger way than just about doing something for myself. And I had, when I first got out of college, was thinking of what ways that I could find a career path or a vocation. It was pretty kind of unclear what it is that I wanted to do. I got a humanities degree, and I was like, well, what am I going to do with a humanities degree? I really enjoyed it, but I wasn't sure how I would manifest it. And I had considered working for a not-for-profit, so when I first moved to San Francisco, I ended up getting a job at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. and worked there for a number of years.

[19:40]

And then I also afterwards worked for other healthcare organizations, all with the attention of how can I be of service? How can I help others in some way? But what was still missing was this kind of larger vision of how it is I wanted to be in the world exactly. So there were so many years what I put emphasis on, the question of what? What do I want to be? What do I want to be when I grow up? And found myself focusing on that particular question. What, what, what? And what I ended up doing after I started to visit Zen Center is realize that I needed to change the question from what do I want to be to how do I want to be? So this was in about 2000, I decided to stop my so-called career search and trying to figure out a lifelong vocation and instead move into Zen Center and deepen my practice and clarify the great how, how it is that I wanted to be.

[20:56]

And I thought I would do this for a year or two, and then I would move on. Having clarified the what, then I would be able to figure out next steps. And here I am 18 years later, still practicing, and I'm tremendously grateful that out of this question of how do I want to be, I have discovered the what. I'm a Zen priest. I never thought that I would end up being a priest, nor a Zen teacher, nor spending my life in a spiritual community for this period of time. and having a vision of how it is that I want to serve humankind and all beings. So I feel very grateful to discover a practice that supports presence, compassion, conscientiousness, diligence, and service, and also is an expression of right livelihood for myself.

[22:02]

I'm just going to take a moment to very briefly give a couple of vignettes of my practice efforts here at Zen Center when I finally came. Both Leanne and I... I've been joking that we are recovering perfectionists in some way. And I can say for myself that a lot of that, as you probably kind of have heard in the background, comes from a desire to keep things perfect, meaning keeping things safe in some way, some way reliable, dependable. And in doing so, also at the same time, coming from this place of... thinking that there is a separate self or a separate me here that needs to be seen or loved or deemed okay. And I think a lot of the forums here at Zen Center can exasperate that particular quality where we try to get things right in order to be approved or perfect in some way, that I will be worthy enough if I just do it right.

[23:12]

And... And as Suzuki Roshi reminded us, we're perfect Jez as we are. And so for me to discover what does that actually mean, to be perfect Jez as you are, not having to make an effort to be one which is perfect. Many years at Tassajara, my second summer there, I ended up being the head of what's called Bag Lunch. And in Bag Lunch, we make kind of a packed lunch, put out spreads, cheeses and breads and other things for people to take away and enjoy on their hikes and so on. And I really enjoyed this job. I really wanted to take all of my creative energy and effort and create an offering that was very special for people that really... brought joy and happiness to them.

[24:14]

And I put so many extra hours into working and really putting thought and effort into it. And I happened to be paired with a co-worker who was basically the exact opposite. I'm basically a greed type. So the more, the better. I like more, more, more. So I wanted 20 spritz. And all she wanted was basically three. She was like, you know, we can do peanut butter, egg salad, and hummus, right? And I was like, no, no, no, that's not enough. It's not enough. People won't be happy. They won't be sustained, you know. So I would be kind of whirling circles around her, you know, in all my efforting to just make more, more, more, and make these beautiful displays that were towered on the tables, you know. And she would spend an hour cutting tomatoes, a tray of tomatoes. And it took us a while to, we had to have an immediate conversation to talk about our particular work practice styles, but finally come to a way to find how it is that we could balance our particular view and energy, not only for ourselves, but how it is that we could work together in a way that would be harmonious and acknowledge that we each had something special to bring in our efforts.

[25:32]

I... One other vignette I want to share is I was also on what's called the Do on Rio, which is during a practice period, which is the group of students who are responsible for ringing the bells and the instruments and leading the chants and training the servers. And it was a job that many students really want. It's a kind of very visible role and task, and people yearn to do it. And I was very happy to be on the role. But it's also a position that you're always on. You're very visible, and everything you do, other people are seeing and observing, including all the mistakes. So for someone like me who does not like to make public mistakes, being on stage like that, making errors all the time, and trying to support others was a little stressful. I remember going into Paul Haller once, who was leading the practice period, And complaining about how tired I was of always doing, doing, doing.

[26:36]

It felt like it was a non-stop job. And I just really wanted to just be. And, you know, what a Zen teacher is going to say to you? Well, you can just sit in Zazen and just be. Because Zazen is just this resting in being. And I wasn't... At the time, I couldn't be convinced that that was true, and I kind of basically rolled my eyes and said, even zazen feels like another form of doing. And it's taken me a number of years, but what I've come to discover is that meditation or zazen, it's not something that we do, it's something that we are. And I'm going to unpack this a little bit more next week during my Dharma talk. So I'm going to wrap this up. And so Leanne has time to share her particular effort-seeking mind. And thank you all for listening.

[27:38]

Thank you. My name is Katie Lanchett. I'm from Vietnam originally, from Saigon. I was old enough to experience and remember the Tet Offensive, so I'll give you some context. My first memory, actually, of my childhood is there is a beach town outside of Saigon that's really popular still to this day. in part because it's not that far from Saigon, and it's also famous for crabs there. It's called Wun Tao. And I was, I don't know, maybe two and a half, three, four, yay high or something, and I was on the beach, and I saw a little fish struggling, right?

[28:53]

Right? First, you know, that flipping they do side to side, and then the head really struggling. And my memory is I picked it up by its toe, and then I heaved it as hard as I could into the waves. That's my first memory. I don't remember what happened after that. So my memory of Vietnam is mostly... my mother and my father were not married. They were third cousins, and they ran off and got eloped because the parents didn't want them to marry. So I was born out of wedlock, which was a huge no-no in Vietnam, and especially in the 60s. And then my father, who was a gambler, a womanizer, and a singer, right?

[29:56]

Left when I was one, I'm told. I have an older sister who's 20 months older. So my memory of my time in Vietnam was really a series of moving around a lot because my mother had to work, you know, raise us by herself. And then with some time at the time, I didn't realize it, but, well, I realized that she had breast cancer. In fact, she died of breast cancer when I was eight, and I was adopted after that. But in terms of when she got breast cancer, I didn't know until later, but I was two when she first got breast cancer. So all my understanding of my memory of moving was very much just like, you know, as a child kind of memory, just like... this apartment or the scene of an apartment or something. And as I think I might have said in another talk, one of them was above a heroin den, really unsafe places.

[30:58]

And then when she got sick, she would go to the hospital and then she couldn't work. So then after that, we'd move into with her half-sister into a house that they rented, which was behind a dump at the city, well, the district dump. So the smell of garbage was always there. And my mother was a clerk at the American Embassy. That's key. She worked in a typing pool first, and then she worked as a clerk. So when she couldn't work, we'd live with her half-sister family, and they were incredibly mean to us because we were, you know, conceived out of wedlock. And she's actually the younger sister, which... You know, in Vietnam, hierarchy is really important and respect for your elders, except there's this whole topsy-turvy thing, right? So, you know, I appreciate practice because to me, practice is the hardest thing to this day and probably for all my life.

[32:08]

The hardest part of the Four Noble Truths for me is always the first one, right? To really understand suffering, to really be able to be with suffering. What is that? So that memory, the other really clear memory is that, so my mother had breast cancer, and then she had a double mastectomy, and we ended up living in a hospital for two years, and I lived in the corner of the hospital. And it was a cancer hospital, just a bit outside of Saigon, but since it was the war, there were a lot of GIs. So my first memory of being in the hospital was the elevator opening up, and a person...

[33:10]

with swollen neck, and you know, this is one, it's Vietnam, if you've been in any, what's called third world country, hospitals are not like here, you know, this is like, I don't know, it's like a palace or something, right? So, and it was also 1960, let's see, I left in 73, so 70, 71. So, huge swollen pus, blood, Immense suffering, right? And being just utterly afraid, right? And so, well, I have some memory. Most of my memory of Vietnam, or excuse me, of being in the hospital was actually out in the garden, right? There was a man-made, you know, pond with water lily and lotuses and trees to climb. And I remember my time spending trying to chase animals dragonflies, you know, those big blue dragonflies, right?

[34:14]

So in recent time, I've really reflected on how that was my way from six to eight of dealing, most of my memory of that time is in the, I'm always by myself, besides the animals, right? Or the dragonflies. But And so it's really to stay out of the internal part of the hospital, right? The suffering that was there. So that's, I think for me, it really taught, to me, it really showed this whole, this effort that I think we all have, which is to get away from suffering, right? To be so overwhelmed by it, we don't know what to do with it. that I was adopted. My mother was dying so she had her boss at the embassy write a memo that two of her two kids were to be adopted and we came as a pair.

[35:21]

So we were adopted by Dr. and Mrs. Shutt and they were European American and they actually met and got married there and then they had just moved to Bangkok when they came back and decided to check us out and adopt us. And so we lived in Bangkok first, and then we went to Virginia to be Americanized. And then, let's see, what do I want to say about that? So even though there was a lot of chaoticness in my life, In Vietnam, in the sense of moving a lot and very unsafe environment, basically, well, before we were in the hospital, we would move from apartment to apartment. And yet most of the time I would spend on the street because inside was less safe than outside, right?

[36:22]

So having been adopted, I actually had a lot of safety in terms of physical safety. because they were middle class and good Christian people. And yet they were very much into making us into their image. And they were quite a bit older. My mother was 48 when I was adopted at eight. And so there was really a sense of, oh, and I didn't understand English, right? And they had no sense, this is 1973, of multiculturalism or anything like that. So, like an example, we, in Vietnam, if people here know pho, right? Pho is actually, you can eat pho any time of the day, but it's actually really popular as a breakfast food.

[37:25]

So you can imagine in Vietnam, you eat savory food. for breakfast, right? So then we got adopted, and my mother, you know, who had access to the PX, right? You know, being American, bought us, what does she buy us? Lucky charms, tricks, right? Corn flakes, right? Frosted corn flakes. And then they'll put milk on it. I never had milk before. And it was all sweet, and I could taste the eight vitamins that were added. Do you guys remember when you used to say that on the box? I could taste every vitamin that was added. And I really couldn't eat it. And she interpreted it as being really willful. And so, one, I would get punished for it, but then I had to go to school. So then she would save it for me to eat when I came home.

[38:26]

And then when I didn't eat my dinner, oh, salad, I really dislike. How often do we have salad here now? Salad, I really couldn't understand. So then from dinner, I couldn't eat my salad, so that was safe for breakfast. So then I would have to eat that before I could eat the cereal, which then I didn't finish. You know, you get the gist, right? By the way, she was raised in the Depression, so wasting food was like really... not done. So that's where that came from. And yet for me, I just really couldn't understand what I was doing wrong and I was punished a lot. And so there was just really this sense of not understanding and then trying so hard, trying so hard to do it right and to be accepted, to be seen. I think we have that in common. and that moving around. So I want to talk about, you might be going over a little bit there, you know, son.

[39:33]

So David and I, let's talk about Tassahar. So we got there the same summer, 2002. And so we stayed this summer. I was in Cabin Crew. I don't know where you, where were you, David? I was in the dining room and then later to Eno. Okay. So our first practice period, we were friends. And David and I would, oh, for those people who don't know, you wash your clothes by hand or put in a bucket and you like squinch it up, right? And then you hang it up to dry. And in the winter it rains there, right? So David and I would, every four and nine day, right, would wash our jubans, wash our kimonos, And then we would be in there, in the back of the dining room, ironing both of them. Ironing. Ironing them. So that was our first practice period.

[40:38]

And our oreo key cloth, of course. And then, by the second practice, my memory, by the second practice period, it was just the collars and then just the bottom of the... kimono, like the parts that are seen, right? Because that's a lot of work. You only get 10 hours off at Tassajar, right? And you need a nap and you need to eat and hike hopefully, right? So that gives you a sense of what kind of efforters we were on that. I became head of the garden pretty soon and I knew nothing about gardening. Well, I had a vegetable garden, but I knew very little about flower gardening, which is the book. of gardening at Tashara because of the altars, right? And because of the way that's deep in the valley, the sun, by 3 or 4, you know, you guys who've been there know, when the sun goes down, all of a sudden the valley gets dark. So the difference between the upper garden and the low garden and how much sun it gets is vast.

[41:42]

And so I worked really hard. And there were just two of us, another... a priest from Italy, Licia, and we would work so hard. We did little planters, of course, and we would replace them. We had covering, we had netting, we dug underneath. Oh, there are gophers who live there and lots of birds and bugs. Wendy Johnson, you know, she came and she goes, oh, you guys are like the queen of netting. because we had netted everything to try to keep the bugs and the birds from eating everything. And we did it three times, and we did a lot of digging. I got carpal tunnel. I had a back problem. Oh, I was also one of those kind of people. Well, I was not the first in the Zendo, because Joan Armoral will claim that. She will claim that. And Nadja was probably really close.

[42:43]

I was probably the third one. in the Zendo every morning. I volunteered for everything. I was, when I ordained, Mary Mosin said, oh, you're the, you're, what did she say? You're a form queen, aren't you? So that'll give you a sense of, you know, right? So that's the kind of effort I was there. I did it so much that by the, I think it was the fourth practice period when Rev was there, I, I used to sit full lotus. Then it was half. Then it was quarter. Then I moved to a chair. Back and wrist problems and shoulder problems. Then I was on the floor. And then on sashin, all I could do was to move all the time. I would walk. I was a sashin in a practice period in which one of the stone room had been converted to an exercise room. I was either in there or

[43:44]

kind of dancing, I just really had to move, or walking, right? And I remember I went to see Rab one time, and people were encouraging me, right, to relax, right, and to take breaks, and not to make sure I was in the Zendo all the time, because I was having such a hard time not following the schedule. And so I went to see Rab, and, you know, and I was like, I'm just having a hard time. And he said, well, I hear that you should be resting. I said, but Reb, Reb, how will I know? How will I know that I'm not being lazy? How will I know that I'm not being lazy? You know, I can rest, but how will I know when I get to the point where I'm just being lazy? He looked at me and he said, well, you don't know. You don't know. You don't know when that point is going to arrive. You don't know when that point is going to arrive. And... The lucky thing, though, is that you've been here for a while.

[44:47]

You have a lot of friends. So hopefully, one of your friends or one of the teachers, when you get lazy, if you get lazy, they'll come to you and they'll go, Lynn, Lynn, are you being lazy? Maybe you should come into the Zendo. So can you just let people support you? So that was a huge lesson for me. Huge lesson. So we don't do it alone. We don't do it alone, and that was the big lesson I learned, and that it isn't so much my effort. You know, when we thought about this, and so we were calling it, you know, way-seeking effort, and I was thinking for a while it was like effort-seeking the way, right? That's how most of us are. And thinking about this, I actually realized that the Buddha, The Buddha was also an over-efforter, wouldn't you say?

[45:48]

Wouldn't you say? Total over-efforter, right? First he was all secluded, then he decided, I gotta know, I gotta know. What it is? How do we end suffering? And how did he do it? It's true. That was the condition of his culture to go off and be ascetics. They would starve themselves. There's a whole thing about how he only ate one grain of rice a day. Isn't that over-effort or not? The Buddha was an over-efforter to the extreme, in fact. In fact, when I was looking it up, Well, so he was an over-efforter, right? And it got to the point where he really had very little energy. And then, this is the part I was looking up because I couldn't remember all the exact details. Is that my memory, and actually I didn't find too much and also kind of varied, so I'll just tell my version of it, is that he remembered.

[47:01]

When he was young, some account, he was eight. Remember how when he was still back at the, I was going to say the temple, but no, he was still back at the castle. And his father, being the king, they're a different version. One version is every year they go to their farms and they work the farm just like, you know, their vassals, basically. But they work the farm. And so he, the Buddha, it was hot out. So he went and sat under a tree. Many accounts, this was an apple tree. And he sat under the apple tree. And he had a sense, you know. Oh, the key, key point is that he looked around, right, a couple versions. One is that he thought about, right, all this plowing that they'd been doing at the farm that day when he saw that, and how many bugs and animals have been killed, right, in this place. plowing of the fields.

[48:01]

Other versions are like he saw, you know, a lizard eating a bug, a snake eating a lizard, and just really felt that suffering, right? The suffering of these animals. And so then he, different version, but basically that he kind of reflected on that and really settled into a deep meditation in which there was a sense of ease, right? That even in the midst of all this suffering, there's an ease that can be accessed. Here's a version from the PBS series on the Buddha. Do you guys remember that? I like this one because I'll tell you why. The commentary. Here's a... The commentary is... So he sat under the... It was a beautiful day. His mind drifted, and as if by instant, he crossed his legs in the yoga pose of meditation, and the natural world paid him homage.

[49:10]

As the sun moved through the sky, the shadows shifted, and the shadow of the rose-apple tree where he sat remained still. He felt a sense of pure joy. And then they have commentaries from different Buddhist experts, and here's Mark Epstein. The joy that he found is in the world that is already broken. It is in this transitory world that we're all a part of and the fabric of this world. Despite the fact that it can seem so horrible, the underlying fabric of this world actually is that joy that he recovered. Recovered. Let me read this again. Despite the fact that it seems so horrible, the underlying fabric of this world actually is that joy that he recovered.

[50:11]

That's important. Recovered, right? We know it again. Remember. That was his great insight. But he says, I can't sustain a feeling of joy like this if I don't take any food, so I better eat something. In that moment, a village maiden mysteriously appears, carrying a bowl of rice porridge. I love Jane Hurstville, who also practiced with us in our tradition. She said, and she said to him, here, eat. That moment of generosity and release when he accepted the rice was a decision towards life. It was what in the Christian tradition might be called grace, that you cannot do it completely on your own. And in Christianity, the grace comes from the divine. In the story of the Buddha, the grace comes from the ordinary kind of heart of a girl who sees somebody starving and says, eat.

[51:22]

Jane goes on to say, This is about the Buddha. He was actually an utter failure. I like that. He had been clinging to the path of asceticism, and when he took the food, what followed was the return of his original question. Life is painful. Life involves change. This is still a problem. The problem didn't disappear. And here's from a D. Maxx Mormon. But the man who become the Buddha realizes that extreme deprivation isn't the way to go. We can live as normal human beings. We can eat and drink. We can sustain ourselves. Our needs are important.

[52:25]

And in fact, we kind of need to eat and drink. and be normal human beings in order to break through, in order to attain the kind of realization that he was looking for. So not in a way, you know, the Buddha in our tradition is an example. I mean, he was an actual human being, and he's an example to us. So I really thought about that fish. It's just a natural movement when you see suffering to just try to alleviate it. To try to put that fish back into where it's ground of being. And I think that probably most of us have some sense of that if we think about it. At some point in our life that we could respond appropriately and it wasn't And was it right?

[53:28]

Is it wrong? Should I do it? Should I do it? Does it take too much effort? Is this enough? It's just responding, that connecting to suffering, letting it in deeply, and then doing your best effort. So we hope to talk more about that. Again, our inspiration for this way-seeking effort, effort-seeking way. talk, it's really for you to start reflecting about what's your journey? How has your life shaped you in terms of what have you thought about as effort? What are your conditioning? What is it that is important to you now? And in that, what is the ease and the non-efforting that's also always here? Thank you. I look forward to sharing it with you.

[54:33]

Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[54:59]

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