This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening and welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. My name is Ed Sadezon and I'm curious if there's anyone here for the first time. Special welcome to you. We are in, I guess, two-thirds or three-quarters of the way through a practice period here at City Center. And we are studying a very famous poem, the Xing Xing Ming, Trust in Mind. This is a poem by the third ancestor Tseng Tsang. It's a very important poem in our tradition, probably one of the very first poems written in China in the Zen tradition.

[01:01]

Zhao Zhou, who was one of China's great Zen masters, was so fascinated by it that he wrote four koans using just the first line from the poem. And that was case two, 57, 58, and 59 in the Blue Cliff Records. So I thought, since that's what we're studying this practice period, I would dive into I thought I would do all four koans originally, but I only seem to have gotten through the first one. So let's see how we go here. So this is case two, Blue Cliff Records. The great way is without difficulty. That's an encouraging title right out of the bat, isn't it? The great way is without difficulty. Okay, so Zhao Zhou teaching at the assembly said, the great way is not difficulty. Just avoid picking and choosing. As soon as there are words spoken, this is picking and choosing, this is clarity.

[02:09]

This old monk does not abide within clarity. Do you still preserve anything or not? So that was his original statement to the assembly. And a very strong monk raised his hand and said, since you don't abide within clarity, clarity is another term for enlightenment, what do you preserve? You know, what do you preserve, meaning what do you maintain? If you're not hanging out in enlightenment, what do you do? Giao Joe says, I don't know either. So the monk says, well, since you don't know, teacher, why do you say you don't abide in clarity? And Giao Joe says, It's enough to ask the question, just bow and withdraw. So that's our story. And believe it or not, we're going to try to talk about it for 30 minutes here. That's the beauty of these Zen things.

[03:13]

They try to capture in just a few sentences something that you can just gnaw on, well, for a lifetime. So just a couple of things for those. How many are... Familiar with Jiaojo? A few. Okay, so I'll say something. He was one of my favorite teachers and one of Suzuki Roshi's favorite teachers. He was 778 to 897, supposedly 120 years old. He was a disciple of Nanshwan and he stuttered under him until he was 60 years old. So he met his teacher when he was 20 and he stayed with him for 40 years until his teacher died. So he studied, and his teacher was a very famous Zen master. But he didn't feel like he was yet mature enough in his practice to teach, so he went on 20 years of pilgriming, went to all the great Zen teachers in China. And then when he was 80, he settled down and taught at the Quan Yin Monastery until he was well past 100.

[04:18]

And many of these stories that are in the Blue Cliff Records, and there's many of them, happened during that period when he was teaching. So I'll just give you a couple of classic examples of Joujo's style. A monk asked Joujo, what is the meaning of bodhidharmas coming from the West? And Joujo said, the cypress tree in the courtyard. I'll repeat that one again because it goes by fast. What is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the West? Well, this is just a sort of a fancy way of saying, what's Zen practice about? You know, Bodhidharma was the founder of Zen. He brought it from India and founded Zen. So the guy's saying, in his fancy way, and there's lots you can go into about that, but just say, what's Zen about? And Zhao Zhao says, the cypress tree in the courtyard. I actually went on a trip to China and visited a bunch of famous monasteries, and one of the places I stayed in for several days was Zhao Zhao's temple, which is this...

[05:21]

enormous, beautiful temple in China, in Jiazhou. Jiazhou is the name of the province. And they have these huge courtyards between the enormous buildings. And there are these massive cypress trees in the courtyard. So I kind of imagine him standing sort of under a cypress tree and a monk comes up and says, what's the meaning of Zen? And he says, the cypress tree in the courtyard. And there's something true about that. If you could really understand what a tree is about, you would know a lot about Zen. So for those of you who love trees, continue your studies. They will be very helpful to you. Here's another classic. This case is titled, Wash Your Bull. A novice had just entered the monastery, walked up to Jajo again and said, please, I've just entered the monastery, please teach me. Xiao Zhou said, have you eaten your rice gruel?

[06:23]

And the monk said, yes. And he says, go wash your bowl. That's the end of that one, too. He was very direct, you know, just sort of layered. So, yes, it's functional if you've eaten your rice gruel, go wash your bowl. But also, if you actually 100% with your whole heart and mind wash your bowl, Wash the bowl you ate out of. The whole world is there. There's nothing more. That's enough. This is that Zen thing. Every moment is a practice moment. Even washing your bowls. Even doing the dishes here at City Center. So he was very down to earth. Very sort of straightforward. And he was famous for being simple. That was what he was famous for. And that's probably why he became probably the most famous Zen teacher ever. in China. One time when his chair broke. In China, when they give lectures, they don't sit like this.

[07:26]

They sit on very fancy chairs, these big kind of chairs with big wide arms. So his chair broke one time and all the monks were wondering what to do about it because it's probably a very beautiful chair. And he went outside and broke a limb off a tree and tied it to the broken leg and refused to let anybody fix it. So I liked his style. So back to the case. We know a little bit about jiao jiao. The great way is not difficult, just avoid picking and choosing. The great way, way is the translation of the word Tao, Taoism. Zen is actually kind of a marriage of the Buddhism that came from India and Taoism that was in China. And that's where that wonderful term way, or path, So Tao is used to denote both the Buddhist path or way, and sometimes it's denoted the result of practice, that is enlightenment. So it connotates both the noble eight-fold path of Buddhism and awakening, and the awakening which the path allows you to realize.

[08:36]

So that's good. The great way, the great way of Buddhism, the great way of enlightenment is not difficult. The path to enlightenment is not difficult. Okay, I'm on board. So what do we have to do? Just avoid picking and choosing. So that, you know, I mean, you think, well, okay, I've got the message. You know, the route to enlightenment is I'm just going to quit picking and choosing. Quit my preferences. I don't care. You know, if it's hot, that's all right. If it's cold, that's all right. If, you know... I could sort of work on that a little bit, right? I got a lot of preference. You can all imagine all the different ways you kind of wished this food was a little bit less salty. One of the places I used to enjoy practicing with this, or one of the first times I kind of got the hang of it, was, I don't know, how many of you have had tea when we have sashins in one-day sittings? Not so many?

[09:38]

Some? Yeah. It's a very formal affair. We sit like this, on our cushions down in the Zendo and it's three o'clock in the afternoon and people come in with first a tray of cookies or nuts and dried fruit. And they go up to you and you can either choose a cookie or that's your first choice. Do you get the cookies or do you get the fruit and nuts? So you go for the cookies, let's say. Then do you get the cookie nearest you? Oh, but right next to it is a slightly bigger cookie. I love chocolate chip cookies, and it's a chocolate cookie. I go for the bigger cookie. But then I feel a little guilty for having gone for the bigger cookie. So next time there's a little smaller one right next to the one, I go for that. And then I feel, I don't know, why did I mistreat myself? I took the smallest, you know... I mean, this all happens in your mind in a fraction of a second, right?

[10:41]

And yet there's some suffering going on around this choosing your cookie or your nuts. And this is our life. Just if you observed it a little bit, the enormous amount of suffering you put yourself through over the most trivial preferences. This has nothing to say about something more important like... somebody doesn't treat you well, I wish that person treated me better. They disrespect me. They're never nice to me. I mean, really what I would prefer is that everybody loves me and that all my friends are healthy and live forever and like me too. In fact, that there's world peace. That's my real preference. But that's not going to happen. That's not a desire that is going to be satisfied. And a lot of these desires are very important to me. So it isn't just picking the right cookie that causes me suffering.

[11:43]

There's just a lot of... And the world is messed up out there, that's for sure. But also, how do I deal with this? So, we want something, and if we don't get it, we're unhappy. That's our life. Even if we get it, soon enough, it goes away. We want it back. Eventually we won't get what we want. The people we like leave us. People we don't like are sitting next to us. I used to have a rule that if you were sitting a one-day sitting, you would always be assigned to sit next to the person you dislike the most. I didn't know whether this was part of the... Kanto's plan or the Eno's plan. This is basic Buddhism. All conditioned existence is suffering.

[12:45]

What's the cause of this suffering? Our grasping and rejection. We want more of the stuff we like and we want to get rid of the stuff we don't like. Trying to keep what is pleasurable and trying to eliminate what is not pleasurable. Our self-centered desires drive the greed, hate, and delusion that is the source of all our suffering and bad conduct. So this is basic Buddhism. I picked up a phrase from a talk I heard of Norman Fisher's that I like so much I've been letting it run around in my head for a while. It's the following. Self-concern is the organizing principle for all our thinking and feeling. Did you get that? Self-concern your concern about yourself is the organizing principle of all your thinking and feeling. Reflect on that a little bit. There's a lot of wisdom in that. Especially if you're sitting a sushin, you might watch how many of your thoughts and stories, the hook in it is it's all about you and how you were treated or mistreated or aren't happy.

[13:58]

So... that makes us realize that all this picking and choosing is related to ourself, making our situation better, our desires and preferences. So you think, well, okay, that's not working so well. I can't satisfy all my desires, all my preferences, so I'm just gonna hang back. I'm cool, whatever's happening is all right. I was born in the hippie days. I mean, I was raised, I went through the counterculture. In the hippie days, we used to say, It's all cool, man, whatever. Any of you that are old enough to remember that. But unfortunately, I don't think we'll ever get to that place where we're just cool with whatever happens. That's that place of serenity and clarity that happens if you quit picking and choosing, if you have no preferences. But even if you were managed to get there for a moment, in our koan, Jiaojo says, this old monk does not abide within clarity.

[15:04]

Even if you could get past all the picking and choosing and really be in that serene, calm, beautiful state of mind. Jajo's saying, don't hang out there. Because if you hang out there, pretty soon you're going to like it there, pretty much, and then you're going to be unhappy when that goes away, which it certainly will. About five minutes after you get out of the Sashin, it'll go away. Or maybe eight minutes, as soon as you walk out on the streets. So I've jumped ahead a little bit here. Let's look at the second line of the koan. Did I skip a... No, all right. As soon as there are words spoken, Jajo says, this is picking and choosing. This is clarity. This old monk does not abide in clarity. Do you still preserve anything or not? So what should we do? It's kind of strange the way that's written.

[16:07]

Do you still preserve anything or not? Preserve means to maintain. It's kind of a metaphor for attach or caught. And clarity is kind of like emptiness, so another way it could be rewritten is I don't have it here. As soon as words are spoken, this is picking and choosing. This is clarity. This old monk does not abide within clarity. Are you still attached to anything or not? So Jaojo's saying, I'm not abiding in picking and choosing, and I'm not abiding in clarity. What about you? Are you attached to anything? Where do you abide? So this sentence is interesting. As soon as there are words spoken, this is picking and choosing. In Buddhist psychology, there's a... analysis of perception and language, as soon as our consciousness grasps an object, like we see a tree, we name it, and as soon as we perceive it, there is already picking and choosing.

[17:18]

There is already attachment and aversion. We can't see something without either being drawn to it or repelled by it. In fact, I don't know, watching some program about how we see. It's very complicated. Seeing isn't just a matter of a photograph being taken in the back of the eye. The eye has some information that comes in, then it goes back into parts of the brain, and the brain starts forming a picture of it based on its previous experience and all kinds of stuff. So whatever we're seeing, we're already involved in picking and choosing. That is, we build the world that we want to based on what our brain is doing. And a brain, of course, was conditioned to do this in our youth. And it's even more complicated than that because certain things we can't even see because when we were young and we were trying to adapt the world by having some relationship with our caregivers and

[18:23]

We had some kind of thing that didn't work well, and so we came up with all kinds of ideas that we couldn't be loved or various other things. And this whole belief system about what the world's like and who we are in that world was formed when we were young, and it actually influences what we see. That is, it picks and chooses the way we see and relate to the world. Does that make sense? Everybody get that? That is, we have a mental framework that was built very early in us that is what forms our... picking and choosing in the world. Which makes our picking and choosing really unfortunate because it's not like even-handed picking and choosing. It's very warped. So, I came across, a friend of mine sent me this commemoration addressed by David Foster Wallace that was given in 2005. marvelous address and I was just caught it by a couple of paragraphs and it starts off there are these two fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming in the other way who nods at them and says morning boys how's the water and the two young fish swim on for a bit and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes what the hell is water

[19:52]

What the hell is water? I mean, he just sort of went on to say, you know, the most obvious things, this was his lecture to these brilliant people from some wonderful college they'd graduate, we don't notice. And here's one of the examples he gave of one of the most obvious things. Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of. Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe. That's what Allison said. You were the lead actor in your plays, in all your plays, I think, at one point. I am the absolute center of the universe, the realist, most vivid, and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural basic self-centeredness because it is so socially repulsive.

[20:58]

But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hardwired into the boards at birth. Think about it. There is no experience you've had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of you or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV or your monitor, and so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, and real. It's amazing, isn't it, how that is the case. We have this dilemma. We seem to be hardwired to discriminate, and yet this is the root of our pain. We feel at some level we want to go beyond it We have some dream of serenity, some clarity, some peace that we might imagine in the future. And it's all around satisfying our own self-centered needs.

[22:07]

But actually, there aren't two. So this is our classic Zen story, pitting two polar opposites. I'm picking and choosing over here, which is causing me all kinds of suffering, or I can... Eliminate picking and choosing and be in serenity over here. But this is a kind of not really true different possibilities on the one side picking and choosing and on the other side letting go of it. It's a false dichotomy. It's already confusion. There is no such thing as enlightenment outside of the everyday life of picking and choosing. There is no such thing as enlightenment outside of the everyday life of picking and choosing. Enlightened mind is built into every moment of our deluded human experience. It's right there, hiding in plain sight.

[23:14]

Buddha nature is in every moment. It is not a special moment. It's not that it's here and not there. Life is just like that. So the question for us is, do we allow that in? Do we recognize enlightenment in the daily picking and choosing that we do? Or do we close ourselves off to it? So like every sound we hear, there's picking and choosing. At Tashara, there's a wonderful lecture Suzuki Roshi gave, and he was commenting on the Blue Jays. If you've ever been to Tashara, the Blue Jays are very, they squawk a lot.

[24:18]

They make a lot of noise, and they steal your food. So they're not liked an awful lot by the students at Tashara. They're very irritating. Apparently the blue jays were squawking overhead when Tsukiroshi was either, I guess, preparing his lecture or giving the lecture and kind of getting in the way of everything, making this loud squawking noise. And so Tsukiroshi said, you think the blue jay is out there bothering you? But I feel the blue jay is in my heart, singing to me. So this separation we feel. Oh, that blue jay is out there bothering me with a squawking.

[25:21]

But to Suzuki Roshi, that blue jay was inside his heart, singing to him. because he felt that connection to the Blue Jay, to everything. So our dilemma is that we're both, well basically we just feel we're over here alone and there's all that stuff out there that we either want or don't want, that sense of enormous separation and aloneness. But that's not really true. So the question is, how do we overcome that? How do we get away from all this trying to manipulate that outside world to get all the things that we want? And from the Vimalama Kirti Sutra, I came up with this little sentence

[26:28]

Vimalakirti says, if you look carefully at the moment, this moment, love is a spontaneous overflowing of the great joy in seeing the radiant nature of reality. If we look at what's going on around us and are not so busy trying to manipulate it, trying to alter it, but actually feel it, sense it, experience it, just be alive. The radiant nature of this moment is what produces the feeling of love and compassion. That's what Vimal Kirti says. If you can step away from that separation, if you can quit labeling all those things, but actually be awake here to what your life is, then you have that feeling of compassion.

[27:38]

So it's not desire that is the problem. the desire that pushes all this picking and choosing. It's the attachment to the objects of desire. It's the attachment to I want that thing. If we can focus our intention on the experience of sensing, hearing, seeing, the experience of just being alive, not the problem we are having fulfilling our preferences, but just the experience of just being alive Then, well, that's an amazing thing, just being alive. Isn't that enough? Do we just remember? Well, we don't remember very often because we're so busy with our daily problems that we've forgotten totally about the fact that's the actual water we're swimming in. The actual water we're swimming in is the fact that we are alive and aware of the fact that we're alive, but...

[28:59]

we hardly ever notice it because we're so busy with our problems. Our problems which are trivial compared with the fact that we're alive. So that's the real water I think David Wallace Foster was talking about. So how do we live in this world and not be caught by the world of picking and choosing or the lust for enlightenment. So I'm going to continue with our little koan. This old monk does not abide within clarity, so what should we do? At that time the monk asked, since you don't abide within clarity or enlightenment, what do you do? And Jajo says, I don't know either. Do you think he was just kidding him? No, I think God just said that.

[30:02]

I don't know how to live life. I can't give you a formula for how to live life. If we had a formula, it would already be published and we'd all be doing it. And that's nice the way he said, I don't know either. It's not like, I don't know just like you don't know. Life is tough. It's hard to figure out how to sort out this whole... Anyway, even though there's no formula, I'm going to continue saying things to you. So I've been saying all night long that desire, desire is what drives all this picking and choosing. And we think we can defeat desire by eliminating it or purifying it. But that's not the way we work with desire. We awake through desire by widening its scope.

[31:08]

So we've reduced our desire to something small and personal. We've reduced our desire to getting what we want for our personal self. But our desire is much bigger than that. It's much more than that. human desire is actually awakening itself. Our desire is what's driving us forward. And it's only our confusion that we get attached to an idea about what that desire wants us to have. Just a quick comment about the actual world, because we... I might just say, you know, mostly I've been talking about how we internally deal with our picking and choosing, but I should remind us that picking and choosing is a very important thing.

[32:17]

I mean, the world is messed up. I mean, we've gotten ourselves in a big mess here, us human beings. And we have to make a lot of really good decisions if we're going to solve global warming, if we're going to work together without so much strife. All you have to do is read the New York Times and then just in our personal lives how many difficulties we have. So this figuring out how to have a more compassionate, wiser relationship to our picking and choosing is important to being able to function and work in the world. And it's also true that we have to... So getting back to this thing I was about to launch into, our desire pushes us forward when we try to do something. And I saw this famous quote from the Dalai Lama, which goes...

[33:18]

Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. Not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck. When I was in business, we used to try very hard, launch the right product for the market, do the right marketing for it. Sometimes it was successful and sometimes it was not successful for a wide variety of reasons. And what was interesting is when the not successful ones were the ones I learned the most about. In fact, I would say my biggest successes came out of the ruins of my biggest disasters. And that can also be true for your life. Your biggest successes can come out of the ruins of your biggest disasters. I mean, we don't know where our life is pushing us, but if we are willing to accept where we've landed... and work from there, that's our best chance.

[34:26]

The Dalai Lama. That was a quote from the Dalai Lama. It's not one to forget. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. The next time you don't get what you want, it really feels bad. Hmm. Okay, I'm moving to the end. We awaken, as I said before, through desire by widening its scope. We've reduced desire to something small, to personal self-fulfillment. Desire is much more than that. Human desire is actually awakening itself. I always thought Dogen, whenever he would say something like that, he would say, and we should study this closely. We should study our desire closely.

[35:36]

So, this is picking and choosing, this is clarity. That's what Zhao Zhao said, and with these simple words, that was his practice. Oh, this is picking and choosing. This is clarity. I'm noticing picking and choosing in my life. I'm noticing clarity. I'm going to watch that. Picking and choosing, okay. Clarity, okay. I'm not going to get caught by either. I'm going to watch carefully what's going on here. Zhao Zhou says, I don't know either. We don't really know what's going on with ourselves, with the world, with hardly anybody else. I mean, we really have no idea what is going on. And yet, we have to trust something.

[36:43]

So we have to trust our own intuition, our own desires, our own picking and choosing, and we pay attention to that and we work on it. So if we work on it, we can turn it from a self-centered activity into a generous activity. If we work on our picking and choosing and our clarity, we can turn it into generosity from self-centeredness. So, the last sentence. The monk says, since you don't know, teacher, why do you say you don't abide in clarity? And Jajo says, it's enough to ask the question. Just bow and withdraw. So that's the situation.

[37:46]

It's enough to ask the question about your life. What's going on here? What's going on with my picking and choosing? Just ask the question. And then it says, just bow and withdraw. Just ask the question and bow and be grateful for your life. It's a nice little... So I'm going to be at Tassar next week, and we're starting a three-day sasheen on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, a three-day sasheen, so I'll miss the first two days of the sasheen, but I'll be back on Saturday. So I would... How many of you are sitting either all three days or one of the days? So for those who are sitting, what a wonderful opportunity to watch your preferences.

[38:57]

I'm sure at certain times of the sishin you'll wish things are different than they are. Sometimes quite different than they are. And at other times you'll think, oh, this is perfection, I'm just going to stay here. It's a wonderful thing to sit for three days, or sit for one day. You get a really good view of your preferences, of your life, of your mind in action. So, no picking and choosing during the Sashin means to know you're picking and choosing you'll get a really good chance to study it and one of the techniques I think you should use when things get rough is to pay attention to your breathing I hope you become really good friends with your breathing your breathing is one of the great things to make friends with

[40:06]

you always have it until you don't have it. And it brings you from your crazy brain into your body, into the life that's coming in and out of you with each breath. So it's a great practice and I really recommend for those three days that you pay attention to your breathing and make very good friends with your breathing. And for those of you who Don't get to sit this retreat. I hope that someday you'll get to do a retreat of one or three days or seven days. We do seven-day ones there. Or you could go to Tassara for three months and do nine periods of zazana a day and three seven-day sashins and really get into it. That would definitely transform your life. I'm pretty sure of that. But even if all you do is just sit a little bit every day, and every once in a while do a one-day sitting or a three-day sitting, you'll remember more that you're alive and that that's more important than the problems that you've got, getting all the things you're trying to pick and choose.

[41:28]

You'll remember more often, or you'll forget less often. Maybe that's the better way to put it. Hope you enjoy your sesheen, and I will see you next Saturday. 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, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[42:11]

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