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 morning. Welcome to all of you near and some far. And thank you for coming. And what to remember upon awakening in the morning. Or we could just say, what to remember upon awakening. Good morning. Thank you for this day, for this moment. And welcome to whatever thus comes. what to remember upon awakening.

[01:05]

Thank you. Welcome to this moment, to this day, to whatever thus comes. Our eyes wide open and still good morning, welcome to this something that's like vast, Wide, unknowable, ungraspable. We don't know what's going to happen in the next moment. Like, I wasn't even clear that I was going to say it in that way when I came in. But we say, welcome to this ever-changing, impermanent world. Now, maybe if I was courageous enough, I'd say, well, that's it. We got it. Maybe you got it. But did you know or have you heard that a Dharma talk is actually an invitation into a conversation?

[02:15]

This is like not a class or anything. It's an invitation into a conversation. And right now the conversation might look like it's between you and me. But if you get really still, you might sense that there's an internal conversation going on as well. You're having a conversation with yourself. And what happens when we gather together is that we remember together. We might be reminded or remind ourselves of something that we thought we knew or we wanted to know. So this coming together And remembering together what we're doing here is part of what matters. Or maybe you'll find out what you're doing here. That's another possibility. So some of you might know that we just came out of a January intensive.

[03:19]

And what that means here is that for three weeks, people come from far and wide. We had people here from Germany and Austria and Australia, Sweden, Canada, and across the United States. And for this time period, we sat together and studied and ate together and worked together and washed dishes together and worked the farm and... Soji'd the temple and just basically took care of everyday life here in the middle of studying and teaching. And then the last week we sat a Sashin. And if you don't know what a Sashin is, it's five days of concentrated sitting. We got up at, we started sitting at five in the morning and then it ended at nine at night and we had our meals in the Zendo.

[04:24]

concentration. And our teacher, our host, was Tenshin Roshi, and he's been studying something called the Avatamsapa Sutra, which is a book that's about 1,600 pages, and sometimes I feel like it weighs 20 pounds, but probably it's five or two and a half. Anyway, I could use it for my morning reps. It's like vast. So I'm not going to talk about that. But what he did bring in the beginning, which is what I'd like to bring to you today, that has really registered for me, and I hope it has some meaning for you, that was a statement, was an invitation to us at the very beginning. And it went like this. Receive silence and stillness.

[05:32]

Remember silence and stillness. Practice silence and stillness and transmit silence and stillness. receive, remember, practice, and transmit silence and stillness. So how do you understand this for yourself? This silence and stillness. And why would even remembering this samadhi, this concentration, this calm, this presence, actually matter today in this noisy world?

[06:41]

This noisy outside world, and I don't know about you, but this noisy inside world. So... You know, I'd like to play a little bit with this transmitting silence and stillness. What is this transmission and what happens in this? In this silence, it actually offers us an opportunity to listen to our internal voices and also to make contact with something that matters to you. It offers us, in the Zen tradition, we come into this silence and stillness and sit so that we can remember what was it I wanted to do in this world or what do I think would be beneficial. The bodhisattva vow is how to be of benefit. In one of our chants it says to save all beings. So now, parenthetically, I'll do a little confession.

[07:44]

Saving is a little tricky. but certainly being present for suffering people, being present for our suffering self, maybe in a way that helps liberate us in a moment. So in this silence and stillness where we can hear ourselves, we also have an opportunity to make contact with something that I would... I'm struggling a little because I had to look this up in the dictionary. I had studied with a homeopath for a while. I thought I was going to be a homeopath, but hey, life takes a turn. And he said that everybody has their own genius. So how I'm using that word right now is you have your own gift, your own particular skill, your own particular talent.

[08:49]

your own particular way of relating in the world that really gives you juice. It might be kindness. It might be openness. It might be curiosity. But really coming into contact with that at your still point and then making that be your referent. So recently... Maybe before I say that, I want to say this thing about transmitting and receiving silence and stillness. I was impressed by how much this tradition refers to that. Maybe some of you have read the books like Stillness Speaks, Sit Down and Shut Up, or Silent Illumination, Illuminating Silence. The other side of silence, the language of silence.

[09:56]

So this seems to be a big, big topic here. Silence, the way Thich Nhat Hanh refers to it, is the power of quiet in a world full of noise. So going back to this thing that's your thing, Our abbot, Jerry Yu, has been, in recent talks, focusing us on posture. And last week he talked about kindness. So some of you may already know this, but your posture is related to attitude. And your posture is transmitting something. Right? Okay, back up. I'm back. So posture is attitude, and that will show on your face and in your gestures and your way of being.

[11:04]

And I've mentioned this to some people before, but apparently in sailing, if you're giving a communication to somebody about how your boat, your ship is in the water, you communicate that in terms of its attitude. So what's your posture? And last week he talked about kindness. So that's one possible referent. And what was really wonderful was that this week, and he said, if I've got it right, is why would you do that? I mean, what for? Or actually, I think he said, why not? So this week, it seems like a small thing. Kindness might seem like a small thing, but this week I had an amazing experience of kindness.

[12:14]

And I want to share it with you because... I think in this world where there's a lot of turmoil and angst and trouble, to remember, to really remember that sometimes a small kindness, which for me in this case was kind of a big one, can come along by surprise. So I left here on a Friday after the intensive in the pouring rain. hanging on to the steering wheel to get back to Enso Village, which is where I live now after living here for so many years. And I realized that I'd forgotten to do an errand. And so on Saturday, in the more pouring rain, I drove back. And before going back, I thought, well, I haven't had anything to eat.

[13:18]

I will... because I couldn't quite find my way back on the freeway, I'll stop and get a cup of coffee at Starbucks. So I did this unusual thing of leaving my bag in the car and just taking my wallet, went into Starbucks, got into the car, and drove back in the pouring rain. And I didn't notice. Is this a good place to put this in? I don't know. I'll put it in. I didn't notice that I had lost my wallet. And so finally, I got a phone message, which was kind of very incomplete, and I couldn't quite hear. The Bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokiteshvara, I'll call this person Marie in this case, called and left a message, which was very incomplete.

[14:20]

So I thought, oh, this is another spam call. I didn't even pay attention to it. And they went to the coffee shop. They went to the police. They actually drove out here to Green Gulch and connected with Cam. They called Kaiser. They did a lot of work to try and find me. And in the end, it was a maintenance person at Enso Village that came and rang the bell and said, did you see my message? Which I hadn't, and he gave me this piece of paper and he says, this woman has your wallet. And I called her and drove down in the pouring rain to meet her. There was a lot of storms recently to receive my wallet. So... Any of you, if you've had that experience or you know someone who's lost something like that, besides whatever cash is in it, you know replacing those cards and somebody getting your Social Security number.

[15:28]

I mean, it just, I would say, from a lot of distress. And this person put out a big effort. Now the question is, would that have been you? Could that have been you? this kindness that she offered, not dressed right, is something I would like to share, because that was a place, it was a practice of generosity, of ethics, of patience, of enthusiasm, and of a certain kind of gift and wisdom. So... What is it that matters to you? And for years, I practiced with the word imperturbability. So the question is, what is your word? Because that has the possibility of what you'll transmit.

[16:31]

So receiving your word remembering what matters, then practicing, and that will be your transmission. Now sometimes, remembering the silence and stillness, what I've noticed, I come to it by understanding the noise. So as I was remembering recently remembering this, thinking about this silence and stillness. When I first moved to Tassajara, they have something called a five-day tangario, where basically you just sit. There's no walking meditation or anything. You just start it. At that time, we started 4.20 in the morning, and then you go to bed at 9 o'clock at night. And by the third day, I was thinking...

[17:39]

The creek, I went into January, and the creek was running high, but I thought, if I don't get some peace and quiet, I think my head will burst. But where was the noise? It was, you know, this chattering mind. So one of the ways to maybe work through the noise Because that's usually in thinking, and in thinking is where our struggle, our difficulty, our confusion, our pain, our judgment comes from. What if you return to your breath? Mostly we go, maybe one of you will have something different to offer us, but mostly we go from thought to thought to thought to thought. but when we're sitting we could go from breath to breath to breath and when you get to the bottom of the breath there's a little turnaround and it becomes the in-breath and even that doesn't last

[19:06]

Some people can hold their breath a pretty long time. But even that goes down again to letting go. Maybe that's a place to rest in your quiet. And when you get really quiet, there's a whisper. It's a whisper of what matters that can come through. receiving, remembering, practicing, and transmitting. So I learned a new Japanese word. It's called, it goes, mokurai.

[20:08]

And the characters are... Silent thunder. So this, dropping into this silence, I'm this moment today saying your thunder is your gift. That will be the thing that you offer. Mokurai. Your silent thunder. Sometimes it'll look like patience. Maybe it'll look like dance or music. Or maybe it'll look like art. But to think about it too much is just confusing. So we come here together and sit together, and some of you have come today. Maybe even somebody will tell me

[21:12]

We'll have the opportunity for a conversation. What it is that brought you here that we might remember something together? What is it that you want to remember or that you think you're forgetting? That would be another way. What did I forget? What did I come here to remember? Let those two opposites, whatever it is, let the opposites play with each other. So just thinking about this, remembering silence and stillness and wanting to take care of something big or to make a difference, I'm remembering one of the quotes that is attributed to Suzuki Roshi, which is, you don't have to shine a light on the whole world. Just light it up where you are.

[22:15]

So I'm kind of in the power of repetition now. You can see there's different ways to say it. I'm trying to find a way that might be the conversation with you. That might be the conversation with you. So I've been thinking about what is this one-moment drop of reality. So if you put one drop... Oh, I'm thinking of something kind of negative now. If you put one drop of pain or of arsenic in a glass of water, it might make a big difference. But if you put one drop of generosity or kindness to a lost wallet in the ocean of a day, it might make a big difference.

[23:32]

So this one, I want you not to dismiss one small moment, one small word of kindness. You know, in this silence and stillness, when we feel our sadness or our pain, our fragility, our strength, we remember our humanness. And in that atom, in that moment, we actually remember our connection to everybody else. Someone out there is having the same experience. Receiving.

[24:34]

Did you hear yourself fill the rest of that in? Remembering. Not moving. Did I catch you? Did you say silence and stillness and then I said not moving? Yeah. Practice and remembering and transmitting. So one of the ways that... as important in this transmission is how we can extend this into our everyday activity of washing dishes, of raking, of not confusing sitting like just what we're doing here, but that presence.

[25:40]

We stop moving so we can find that place in ourselves that when we're on the farm or taking care of dishes or you're in the kitchen cutting carrots or making a soup, that you can remember this kind of samadhi. And then extend that point into your everyday activity. And what I remembered I want to read to you is a poem by Rumi. this extending into everyday activity. Rumi, where are you? Let the beauty we love, let the thunder that you are, that wasn't Rumi, let the beauty we love

[26:41]

Be the thunder that you are. Be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. Let the beauty we love, the thunder that you are, be what we do. There are hundreds of ways, there are millions of moments to kneel and kiss the ground. Hundreds of ways to meet the next person, the next moment. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

[27:43]

Let the beauty we love be who you are, be what you do. There's so many ways to express our appreciation and our reverence and our gratitude. And it's each one unique. eyes wide open welcome to whatever thus comes let this be your teacher and don't forget to say thank you yeah thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center

[28:44]

Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[29:03]

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