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. Let me know if you... Can you hear me okay? Funny acoustics are open. I, um, I... may have misled somebody by saying I was going to talk about, I don't know what I mumbled, I'm not good on the spot. So at word meeting I said something like, the middle way and non-duality is something general. What I should have said was, the living dynamic function of the middle way. So if you don't want to hear about that. I didn't mean to give false advertising. It's so lovely to be here. And thank you to everyone who's here, every single person who's here, part of this living human stream of caring for this place.

[01:13]

And for those of us who came further down the stream, we're not so visible maybe, but there's this current of humanity. that even if you're only here for a few days, we're a part of. And we're doing this for ourselves and all beings and everybody that will come after us, you know? So thank you very much for your loving care of Tassajara. Such a precious treasure in this world. And thank you, Tonto Greg, for inviting Corinne, Charlie, and I to come down. We got really excited. when Greg said, what if you come and teach the students? We're like, let's find our whole summer around this. And so we did. And also I have the great, it's such another kind of treasure for me is that my beloved teacher, Galen Godwin, is here, abbot of the Houston Zen Center.

[02:16]

And we rarely converge on this place, but we lived here for many years together and worked in the shop. Galen was the... Kaylin is my primordial plant manager, as well as my Dorma teacher. And yeah, we got to sit next to each other in the Zendo this morning, and I was lots of memories. I think at one point I actually advocated to the Eno to sit next to you long ago. So I was like, I need to learn things from Git. So thank you to all of you. So, Suzuki Roshi, the founder of San Francisco Zen Center, has said many things. Lots of his talks are recorded and transcribed. One thing that he is said to have said is, the most important thing for a Zen student is to not be dualistic. I think he's probably said other things are the most important too.

[03:17]

But that was one that he put out there. The most important thing is to not be dualistic. Which is a beautiful idea. And we can engage with that idea like, oh, how lovely. I think I won't be dualistic. But what is that? What does it actually mean? And what does it look like? And I think that's actually just a question that if we end up going to be Zen students, we live with that question. But I'll give you a little bit of my, just sort of my recent musings on what is non-duality and what is it Like, how does it actually function in a human being's life? So the primary middle way, or if we think about non-duality, it's abiding in the middle way. We can look at the historical Buddha's story. So the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, just in brief, for those of you who haven't heard his story. The kind of mythology of the Buddha is that he was raised in an environment of...

[04:21]

total sense satisfaction his every and you know this probably wasn't true but the story goes like this because they're setting up one extreme of existence so he was raised in an environment where his father tried to keep him from um any pain any upset um ever seeing death ever seeing aging ever seeing illness so so on so on the one hand we have this like deep kind of um Satisfaction in the desire realm. And because of who he was and his many past lives of endeavor, there was something in him, though, that was like, this isn't it. And he longed to see what was beyond the confines of his upbringing. And the story goes, he got an attendant to take him out into the world beyond what his father could control. And he saw, on one day, he saw... person who was aging on one day he saw a person who was sick on one day he saw a person who had died and it awoke in him like oh there's more to it than this and he left home he left you know this kind of a heaven realm and his wife and his newborn child and um and he went then he went so here he started here and then he went way over here so he went and studied with ascetics

[05:47]

who the main practice, I would say, quite distinct from Zen, was to really kind of move away from the suffering, like the world of suffering, move away from that suffering. So move away from, like, he left his relationships, his intimate relationships. He left being a father. He left all the comforts of his home, and they would practice meditation sort of endlessly, and not eating... To the extent that, you know, the story goes like he was subsisting on two sesame seeds a day. And maybe some of you have seen these statues of the Buddha where he's completely emaciated and they say his belly stuck to his spine. And so he's gone pretty far to the end of turning away from the world of sense desires. And in an attempt, you know, in a genuine attempt to relieve suffering... But he has a moment of turning where a girl named Sujata is making a rice offering and maybe mistakes him for the spirit of a tree because he's looking otherworldly at this point.

[06:50]

And he's almost, he's going to die. Like, I think we can take this into account. And so she offers the rice pudding to him. And I feel like this is a pivot of our tradition where he accepts it. It's like this is like sort of the first step on the path of the middle way that... So he took in this rice offering, and then over the course of that night has this epic endeavor where he fully wakes up. And at the end of that night, when he wakes, he sees the morning star. He says something like, oh, architect, he sees like the mecha nations. Oh, architect, I see this house that you built of suffering. I see how it works. It's rooted in attachments, and you're not going to fool me anymore. Not that there is maybe a particular architect. But he sees how suffering is created. And he sees how through creating any more. And then he says, I and all beings awaken together.

[07:54]

So he enacts. I feel like this moment of his waking up is an enactment of non-duality. And then his expression is, you know, because he's seen so thoroughly how he's not separate from all beings. His experience was me and all beings are awakened together. So there's like living non-duality. So that's like, this is in all schools of Buddhism. I don't know if the mythology is all the same. But we have this primary dualism of like worldliness and transcendence. And the Buddha says, the middle way... the dynamic exchange of being in the world but also having a wider view is the path that we walk as Buddhists. If we follow Buddha's path, we follow that path in the middle. And then he said a lot of other things, you know, right view and stuff. But all of the Noble Eightfold Path depend on an understanding of, or maybe more like an openness to, that I and all beings are not separate from one another.

[09:07]

And then these, you know, a lot of philosophy developed in India from there. I'm just going to go like this. And then like, you know, hundreds of years, maybe like a thousand years, Nagarjuna. And there's concepts of the two truths. Are these things that people have heard of, the two truths? Great. So you've got, and to me, there's kind of an outgrowth from this primary duality. There's the particularity of our world, conventional reality. I'm over here. Seifu's over there. There's tables. There's fans. You know, we use these conventions, and they're pretty useful. So that's here, where things are distinct from one another, where we pull the conventions out so that we can look at things. And the other side, or an equal truth, is all things are connected. I'm over here, but actually I'm breathing in oxygen that you just might have breathed out. And, you know, my mother's here in me.

[10:10]

your parents are here in all this where there's a bigger view of what any one thing is. This is ultimate reality. So that beautiful idea of these two truths existing and really kind of living together as one another, that the truth of each gets expressed in one another, started to develop. But a tendency that I think a lot of spiritual people have, and I think people also who sincerely want to end suffering, is to be like, a lot of suffering, all of suffering, is kind of detectable over here for us as human beings in the realm of the convention in particular. So if we're not being careful and diligent, we start to go like this. I think the ultimate might be a little bit better than the particular. And if we're not being diligent for a while, like over decades, it might even go like this, where it's like, where we might imagine that to resolve suffering, we have to turn away from the world of particularity, spend all of our time, like, lost in a beautiful dream of everything being one thing and all connected.

[11:22]

But it's problematic, as I'm sure many of you have discovered for yourself, actually. We've already probably gotten lost in, you know, a real... sense of things being so universal that it's like actually hard to make a cup of tea and have breakfast. And when this teaching came from India to China, there was an amazing, wonderful scholar named Zhiyi. His ideas became the Tiantai school of Buddhism. And he was worried about this thing. He was worried about the hierarchy of making a hierarchy out of the two truths, actually out of getting dualistic about non-duality. And so he started teaching something quite different, which is that for the bodhisattva vow, and I'll come back to that in a second, but for the bodhisattva vow, which is the heart of the Mahayana practice, which then is a Mahayana bodhisattva school,

[12:31]

For that to have relevance in the world, we cannot do this. We have to diligently remember that the particular and the ultimate are equal, and they have equal value in how we practice and function in the world. So the bodhisattva vow, quickly, in a nutshell, is the vow that one would not awaken for oneself before all beings awaken. It's a beautiful expression. It, at least to me, for many years, sounded like quite an altruistic expression. I was raised where this would sound like this. Everybody go first and then I'll go. So this is, sure, that's a lovely idea. But the Bodhisattva vow, I think more and more, I feel like the, I was going to say the magic of it, The power of it is that actually it's just an expression of reality.

[13:34]

And our work as individuated human beings in engaging with the bodhisattva vow is to feel out how is that an expression of reality? How is that an expression of reality that I and all beings are actually not apart from each other? And any liberation that happens in the field of anyone is everyone's liberation. So... Because the bodhisattva vow was so important, he said, you know, if we do this, we don't care enough about the world to be bodhisattvas in the world. We won't, that this, the two truths won't function. They won't have their function. We go like this. And then we, sorry that this is recorded. I'm moving my hands around. I'm moving my hands from either being side by side or being one on top of the other. And that we go like this. And then actually, it's not that the middle way is the midpoint between them. It's that the middle way is like this. And now I'm mixing my hands up.

[14:37]

So that the particular, so that when we look at the particular, we see, or we don't see, We can't really get at the ultimate with our mind, but we sense, we're open to the fullness of all that is not seen when we see something conventionally. And when we see something, when we see the connectedness of all things, we don't lose sight of particular individuated reality. We don't lose sight of the world. So that's the living dynamic exchange of non-duality or of the two truths. But it's a hard thing that we can't see. I want to leave time that we can talk to each other. It's a hard thing for a human brain, maybe especially if we're raised in cultures where, from a very little age, we're taught to...

[15:42]

apprehend with our brain you know our brain is like hum you know what comes after a b you know i've got it i've got this thing everyone goes yay and so we're like oh they like that okay apprehend apprehend apprehend so we're taught this kind of thing with the mind so then this this thing comes along we hear these teachings of buddhism and there's i don't know how it is for you but i i imagine i'm not alone in this feeling of like you can feel something immensely true but it's you can't really pin it down. You know, we can't get our mind on it around, like, well, how are we all connected? And sometimes there's these beautiful, there's beautiful things from science or Thich Nhat Hanh that kind of hint at it. Both science and Thich Nhat Hanh providing. And the Dalai Lama. And other people. But, so there's, so I'm remembering maybe one of the first books I read in Zen was The Heart of Understanding. Do people know those books? A tiny little book by Thich Nhat Hanh written many years ago about the Heart Sutra.

[16:44]

And he says, you know, so those of you who haven't read it, he's like, so you've got this paper that this book is written on. And in this paper, there's the son and the lumberjack and her parents and the people that made the paper. So he's pointing toward connectedness. or ultimate reality with that, you know, so that we, so that we take the convention of like, yeah, that's a piece of paper. And it's the life expression of a paper maker. And it's the, you know, it's the legacy of his parents and all like that. Or we hear things like, um, I remember, I remember the class where I heard my organic chemistry class, where the teacher said, you know, we were talking about all the metals on the planet. They all come from stars, even the ones in our body. And it's like, there's a hint you know wow okay like stars or we're stars that's awesome you know so these things are pointing but the apprehension of it we can't get to because the immensity of all the conditions that make up anything that we point to like a greg is beyond knowing actually but we can do this cool thing

[18:00]

where we can look at something and call it a Greg, and we can know that this convention that I make of a Greg has immensity beyond my comprehension too. And it helps, actually. So that, you know, Greg says this one day, and then the next day maybe he'll say something that contradicted the day before. And I could be mad and be like, wait a second, you said something else. Or I could be like, oh, you're an immensity beyond my comprehension. Maybe you'd change your mind or something like that. I'm enjoying this really neat book called, all summer I've been spending time with this book called Emptiness and Omnipresence. I really recommend it. Again, like my pitch this morning, maybe it doesn't sound that exciting. And it's written by a guy, I think his name is pronounced Ziparin, and about the Tiantai school of Buddhism. which is the precursor of Zen. Dogen started in this school. So Dogen's thinking is deeply flavored with Tiantai thinking.

[19:06]

And he uses this great metaphor for trying to include the immensity. He said, if we think of all conventionality, all conventional distinctions, our thoughts, our ideas, other people, chairs, fans, all the stuff that we name, words, as an iceberg, the part of the iceberg we can see above the ocean. And then we think of ultimate reality as what's below the ocean. Everything we encounter, it's not that we can see what's below the ocean, but we can allow for the possibility that it's there and that it's so vast that we can't even see it. In the Genjo Koan, Dogen Zenji, I think he's actually, you know, it sounds all, I don't know how it sounds to everybody, but he says things like, you know, if you go out to the midst of an ocean where no land is in sight and you view the four directions, the ocean looks circular and it doesn't look any other way.

[20:09]

So you can be there, you're a person, you're a human being, and you're like, look, it's a circle, I can see this, it's verifiable with my eyes. But then he says, but the other features of oceans and mountains are infinite in a variety and whole worlds are there. And it's so not only around you, but also directly beneath your feet. Or I would say of your feet. Your own feet are a convention you can pull up, but there's an immensity to them that we can't even quite know. We're in a drop of water. So the ocean's vast, and it includes the vastness, and tiny things like drops of water include a vastness that we can't know. So this is how I think we can engage the idea of not being dualistic. We see something, we think something, we hear something, we do something, and then we also include a sense, not necessarily a knowing, but we include a sense of what's below the water of the iceberg.

[21:13]

Suzuki Roshi... That quote, the most important thing for a Zen student is to not be dualistic, comes from Zen by Beginner's Mind. And he's describing Beginner's Mind. It's actually the paragraph where he's describing Beginner's Mind. So he says, for Zen students, the most important thing is to not be dualistic. Our original mind includes everything within itself. It's always rich and sufficient within itself. You should not lose your self-sufficient state of mind. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it's always ready for anything. It's open to everything. In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind, there are few. And this is a quote that I feel like I've heard many times. I hear it actually of people that have nothing to do with Zen.

[22:22]

I've heard that sentence spoken. People love it. Or points to something that's really important for a lot of people, even outside of Zen. And I think at first we hear it, I think we can hear it like, beginner's mind is a kind of innocent mind. And it's like a child's mind or something like this. But more and more I feel like, I'm wondering if he was pointing, I wonder if he was pointing at something different than a child's mind. Because when a child, I think what he's pointing to actually is direct experience. A beginner's mind is open to direct experience. And if we're open to something fully, we're open to the whole massiveness of it, even if it's something we don't know, you know. So kids encounter little ones, you know, like one and a half, three, or even below that for sure. But at one and a half, they start... taking verbal note of the things that they're seeing. And people are like, oh, no, no, honey. That's a boy.

[23:23]

That's a girl. And then they start to make those distinctions and chop the world up and learn about conventional reality and get rewarded for it and function in the world because of it, which, you know, we shouldn't give up. We shouldn't try to just school our kids in ultimate reality. It just wouldn't be fair. But... Suzuki Roshi wasn't talking to children, he was talking to adults. He's talking to roomfuls of people who had been schooled in conventional reality and how to function in it for many, many years. Maybe they were younger than some of us, but still, they were way in now, into how to be reductive about whatever was in front of them so that they could function in the world. Well, that's a person. That's my job. This is my identity. I'm a self. So, Beginner's Mind, I think, actually points to... a kind of maturity. So it's not an innocent thing. It's an effort that we make with an adult mind to kind of turn the current on the tendency that we have to think we know stuff.

[24:29]

I mean, knowing stuff is fine if it's held in a gentleness where we're open to other things coming in, like a kind of tender knowing that's permeable. And the capacity of the beginner's mind is, and more and more I feel like this is what maturity is about, is the ability to hold complexity. We don't have to like slide into dualism and slide into reductionism. We can tolerate actually more and more what's in front of us being more than we can know and still function in it, you know, not fall away to the side of like, this is just more than I can know. And he points to that, I think, when he says, Oh, everything is in it. Everything's in this mind and it's empty and it's ready for everything. So it's almost four.

[25:30]

I thought it might be helpful for me to give you just a real life example, this abstract idea of how to dynamically exchange or how I, how I've seen that and, and how it's actually a path of less suffering. or can be. One of the ways I've been watching it is I'm keeping a close eye for myself. Well, actually, since I lived here, I've been pretty committed to watching the function in my life of race and privilege. And when I lived at Tassajara, and this was, I moved to Tassajara in 1998, in January. 20 years ago, there was a big, it's somewhere in my time there, and I lived here for nine years at Tazara in Green Gulch. There was a movement for trying to get people's minds and the institutional mind to open around this.

[26:31]

And it's painful, you know, to keep an eye on that. It's race and the conventions and the difficulty around it are... are conventions we've collectively made, and there's immense history, as you all know. But recently, one of the things I do more and more, actually, is I help facilitate Jizo ceremonies. And there's lots of reasons why Jizo ceremonies have come into my life, but I really like them. And I also work as a grief counselor. So a Jizo ceremony is not exclusive to Zen. A ceremony where we... make offerings to the Bodhisattva Jizu. And if I had more time, I'd tell you lots and lots about Jizu because I love this being who is the Bodhisattva of fearlessness to make small offerings. You've seen maybe that Jizu out here has these little red capes. Or if you've seen this guy out in the garden with his little red capes and sometimes hats. For people who have died, usually children who have died.

[27:37]

And we make those offerings and then they get transmitted across. But in talking to various people about this ceremony, it was pointed out the perilous ground of cultural appropriation. And I was like, yep. This is tricky. This is tricky ground. And I am a white American citizen, woman. And I put on these robes, you know, that are like Indian, Chinese, Japanese. And I And I've, you know, my whole, my life pivots around Zen Buddhism. So sometimes, like, in the moment when that got pointed out to me as a tricky realm, I mean, I've seen it before, but somehow this one, like, hit me, and around this ceremony in particular, which is something that I helped bring into the world, it's like, there's a moment of, like, well, maybe we just shouldn't do it.

[28:38]

You know, let's just not do it. So... Here's the particular, and it's difficult. And it could just be like, I could just go way over here and be like, yeah, this is tricky, so forget it. You know, the particulars, I can't deal with it. But for me, living and practicing as a Zen priest is inextricable from my life and everything in it, actually. And this, the way that the kind of ultimate reality functions is, where everybody's included, right? Like Zen Buddhism is not just Japanese, it's for everybody. And the doors are open and we're all in this together. And in fact, we're all already here, even though you don't know, I mean, we could go there. So people have come sometimes and said, you know, I don't feel welcome at this Zen center. And people, and it is possible to respond from a little bit too far over here and be like, but you are, you're totally welcome.

[29:41]

And it's a little bit too, it gets a little mushy over here. You know, if we're way too far over here, we get floppy in our ability to work with the suffering of the world. We can go way over here, you know, where I can have that moment where like, maybe I should just take my robes off and never wear them and just wear jeans and something and never chant in Japanese, whatever the ideas that can come. But that's too rigid and like kind of, it gets brittle over here where we're not, we're not pliant anymore. So for me, there's just living with the dynamic of it. If I chopped off the immensity of the way that I feel like these teachings live in me, it would really be a denial of a whole chunk of my life. But if I chopped off hearing from somebody, you know, it makes me uncomfortable that you're not recognizing where this came from. then it would be also chopping off too much of my life.

[30:42]

And I don't think it would be middle way. Maybe you could think, well, if I chopped off both, I could land in the middle. But instead, I think our effort is to do this. Receive the nourishment of getting a wider view. Come back over here and listen when someone says, I'm in pain. And really, this movement, the figure eight between these, extremes is compassion we have our own hurt in our lives in our particular lives that is one half of the heart of compassion you know this is empathy and our own pain actually our own vulnerability opens us and tenderizes us but we also have the vastness of a wide view that is the other half of the of the heart of compassion skillful action I think, only comes when both things are included. So I think that's, or that's just one example.

[31:45]

We can do this with, I think the truth is we can do non-dual practice with any duality we can conjure. We have our big ones like male and female, right and wrong, me and everybody else, all this stuff. We can do it with chair, not chair. And we can live with sort of that iceberg sensibility. I'm like, yeah, yes, it's totally okay that I'm calling that a chair and there's a forest and there's a craft person and there's the person who carried it in here today and all this stuff. I think that's all I'd have to say. I'd love to hear how it is for you. and then the history of Zen in America and the criticism of Jungian architects and phenomenology as a kind of bright brown ideas about Zen.

[33:05]

When you think of a history of Buddhism, ideas about a pure Zen, a pure un-colonized Zen. That's tricky. Yeah. And in history of race, do you see something happening that is kind of interesting about the movement of Buddhism through this country and the increasing awareness of race in which conversation... And how does other teachings of Columbia play out in that view? Yes. Yes. I think appropriating and the mind of appropriating that comes from the heritage that at least I come from.

[34:07]

You're right. I come from... Northern European people. I mean, probably further back, something else happened, but for a long time, very Northern, very white people who went around the world. Same thing, actually, like that kind of apprehending. This is mine. You know, I see it. I take it. Religious structures that went behind that. I mean, this is loaded and vast stuff, but ideas of spiritual reality that said, that said that was okay in some cases, you know. If you can take it, it must be ordained. So, you know. Yeah, that's the culture. That is a lot of my personal cultural heritage. And so the mind, a mind that I have grown up with that, and also my education comes from there, that says, you know, when I found Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, I was like, well, that's cool.

[35:08]

I'm going to go check that out. There wasn't a thought of like, I shouldn't. Or maybe that would be inappropriate. It was just like, I want that, you know? And I see in that a heritage of greed and cultural acquisition that has totally denied loss or suffering. Yeah, somewhere in that exchange with the person I was talking to from EBMC, which it was so cool. One article was about... what happened for Japanese Americans in California when the internment started, and even before that, where people had to take all their Buddhist accoutrement and bury it or burn it. So for me, my next-door neighbors, actually, where we live, met in a Japanese internment camp. So right there, right where I live, this is a living reality.

[36:10]

So I think just to... open this is the mind the non-dual mind i think is like wide you know just to open and say i'll include that as part of the story of how i'm sitting here and ever did zen practice and ever you know um i think that helps actually and i or i think it's a step toward um something whole or more whole we'll never get whole whole right but but to keep inviting in. And especially, and maybe I think for those of us who identify as white, especially when someone brings something that calls into question our heritage or all that we've carried and says, like, you know, it's not really okay that we say, tell me more. I'm here to listen. And as opposed to, like, yes, it is. I didn't make it. I mean, there's, you know, many things we do. I experience in our sangha, Our sangha is not exclusively white, but it's predominantly white, and has been, where I teach at Stone Creek Zen Center in Sebastopol.

[37:19]

Our town is predominantly white, but not exclusively. And also, folks in our sangha are, the majority of people in their 60s and 70s, I've seen in the last year a willingness to not be defensive. and maybe change some thinking about what it means to be like a progressive white liberal and be open to like, oh, maybe there's things going on there that I haven't seen. And I find that encouraging. To answer your first question, like, do I think there are things happening? I think there are things happening. And I think it's really, I think Zen practice and its whole heritage gives us amazing tools for opening to what is painful. your good rule of figure eight. Sorry, folks, who are listening.

[38:22]

On that dualistic side, I have a groove that I slip into. We all have our grooves, yeah. It's really groovy. At the same time, not very groovy. I simply put it on the transited side, and then... I'll forget that groove is there, and I go to it, and then I believe it, and I think it's real, and I'm just wondering, because today, often said there's not a pill for this. Yeah. Yeah. I know the feeling of being in that groove, and I know the feeling of being up, out, and around that groove, and enjoying it. So, is this just a matter of years and years of breathing? Everyone says, go back to your posture and your breath, and I trust that, and I don't think... Yeah. It's not a short You want a pill? I think, well, I think that in some ways that's what I'm trying to point to with this new way for me that beginner's mind is living.

[39:24]

It's like, if we first hear it, it's like, oh, I just need to give up my ideas. I don't, I mean, okay, maybe that would work. That is an effortful proposition. So for us to cultivate non-duality is like, it's effortful. I think our, I think we're wired to think dualistically, like very primitively. We want to make distinctions. We want to think reductively. And it's all about like, who's going to kill me? Who's not going to kill me? You know, way in this animalistic way. So when we're stressed, I don't know how it is for you, but I find I get more reductive and I slide more into being lost in the particular when I'm stressed out, when I don't have enough sleep. I mean, there's very basic things when I'm not eating well, like when I'm not tending to my human life. and making room, including this vastness requires spaciousness. And that's a kind of privilege right there, to have any room.

[40:26]

But we exercise the muscle of including the vastness. We make effort, we make effort. And then even when we're like at our nadir of being stressed out and lost in our dualism, you know, I don't know, like a bird comes by and we're like, oh. There's something else besides what my mind is conjuring. And even a moment, even a breath, brings spaciousness. So I don't think we need lots and lots of time, but we need to exercise the facility and always make effort. Yes, Catherine and Matt. What I love about Zen, It's for everybody. It's acceptable to everybody who comes in contact with it. It's not associated with a religion or an institution.

[41:28]

It's a way of being. And I think that was how I found it. I grew up in a very strong tradition. And the people that have, that I lived with all the years, are aware of Zen and internalize Zen into their lives. And even though they are identified with the strong Catholic tradition, if you go to their library, their bookshelf, you'll find many books. That's neat. And about Zen practices and guests. I just wanted to put that right on. I was guessing from, as you started speaking, I was like, your accent is making me think Catholic. I also was raised in a Catholic environment. And I know people who were raised in a Catholic environment that would never, would be frightened to come to a Zen temple because of the training around idolatry.

[42:35]

Yeah. So that's one piece. I've seen that, actually. And also, and it's just like, it lives in me. I was like, oh, yeah. We're not bowing to that statue. That's an important part. But that's not clear to everyone. But I think also, I think you're pointing to something very important and true, which is like Zen is for everyone. And not everyone does feel welcome for lots of different reasons. And I think that also is like right in this moment, kind of sociopolitically, It's our responsibility to look at what that is and respond. You know, people, I think there is a feeling Zen is religious. It shouldn't have nothing to do with politics. And I'm like, I don't, that's not the training I receive. Zen has always been responding to the suffering of the world it's in. And suffering comes in lots of flavors. And sometimes it's political and cultural, often. So I don't think it's outside the purview of our effort.

[43:39]

But I'm glad for your enlightened Catholic friends. Yeah, Matt. Can you say something about Zazen and how it relates to this? Oh, thank you. Zazen is a ceremony of... the awakened Buddha sitting, I think, and I've heard. So when we sit zazen, I feel like in Zen, this is our fundamental and our most important ceremony. And when we're sitting, it's not like we're copying Buddha. It's not like we are Buddha, but we are expressing Buddha in like, I think zazen is really an expression of non-dual reality. between every individual being and Buddha's awakening. Is that okay?

[44:44]

Yes, thank you. Yeah, what's your name? Melissa. Melissa. There are a lot of things that are really exciting for me here, but I really like the idea of the difference between the aspiration of the child mind which I find, you know, the beginner's mind is child mind, which, of course, when we see children coming through and they go, great, and everyone enjoys. And some people go. It's a real electrifying, and it's thinking that you're looking at that as a beautiful mind. But I love this idea. It's getting the adult mind as the mind that can cope with capacity. And I wonder if you could elaborate a little on that. I think that's very exciting to me. Certainly, ecology is thrown that way. We're trying to get a glamour of how connected things are and then back back, kind of collapse with fear. We get out to string theory and we're like, ah! I don't want to go there anymore. Yeah. I think this is what we support one another to do.

[45:52]

I think this is like the jewel of Sangha, actually. And the Dharma and the Buddha, no doubt. But I think we... Maybe the jewel of Sangha is underutilized in supporting one another to deal with the complexity as a way of maturing in this world, as a way of growth in this world. So, yeah, so we get together and we talk about Zen things and we read teachings and people come and talk. And then with one another, we really can make that an effort that we make. to not be reductive when we can. You know, we can't always do that. It's just not always available. We slide into dualistic thinking. But yeah, more and more I feel like, or mature is one word, or skillful, that the most skillful response really depends on a dynamic exchange. Yeah. And children...

[46:52]

teach us there's so much that they have to teach from this perspective actually of a dynamic exchange it's just that they don't have to they don't have to cultivate the way we have to cultivate and they will because we won't leave them there you know and it's sad yeah but it's also um one time i i turned to charlie who's my husband and was lamenting being a bad mom i think is what it was you know i was like here's a dualism for you i'm a bad And Shirley said, you know, if Kai had wanted a god mom, she would have been born in a different realm. And it does give a lot of credit to our daughter that she was choosing the realm she was born in. But she was born here, actually. She was born at Jamesburg. So she came to this realm. And she got a human mom. And she got a human incarnation. So we're human beings. We will revert to... thinking in ways that are reductive.

[47:53]

We will use those conventions for great purposes sometimes, you know, as well as for evil. And we can support one another to get to open to the wider view whenever possible. I think actually, again, like to Matt's question, like, I think this is what Zalden helps us train in. So like, here I am, I'm a being, but I'm, there's enough... support in Zazen also to open to a wider thing than just my story, just my knowing. I think if we end, it's 420. So one more. Yeah, Mohin, I saw your hand before. Maybe we have time for what was it? Yeah. Are people too hot? So Mohin, and then I... Briefly? In three minutes?

[49:01]

Let me see if there's something that comes that I can say that. I think a lot about the non-duality of birth and death. In some ways I would say it's my number one preoccupation. And Dogen does some good stuff, I would say. spend some time with, you know, firewood does not become ash. And I think the teaching that he's pointing to is, well, let me flip it around. The teaching that I'm trying to point to, I think, comes from where I'm at with Dogen's expression there, which is like, I have this idea that I'm alive and that death is out there for me. And I have this idea that people I love used to be alive and now they're dead. And there is an immense below the water of the iceberg available with that conventional idea.

[50:02]

I don't know if that's helpful. But I think there is so much to open to around the conventional reality that things are born and die. And I think it takes us our whole life. last one do you have any thoughts on what the interpersonal implications are the emptiness of emptiness because it seems like the dynamic you're describing is you know you pointed out as like the middle way navigating our lives between these and often times when I think about the two truths and sort of the uniquely Buddhist aspect of them. It's that emptiness itself is also empty. And I, for me, I kind of, I kind of stopped there.

[51:04]

It's like a metaphysical exercise and I can't quite translate that as an interpersonal stuff. And I was just curious if you have good thoughts or experience. I didn't go further. Yeah. The parable, actually, this was another thing I was spending time with in that book. There's a parable that the Buddha uses about the raft. So the teaching of emptiness, or Buddhist teachings, we make a raft out of them. There's a river of suffering. We put this raft together, we listen, we do this... Great devotional thing of devoting ourselves to Buddhist teaching. We have faith. We get on this raft. We take it across to the other side. It's a totally different landscape than it was over here. And then if we think that our job is to pick up that raft and carry it around everywhere we go, we won't move anywhere.

[52:09]

We'll be stuck on the shore. We won't get very far. So that, to me, that's a parable of the emptiness of emptiness. It has its utility. in a human mind, but we're talking about freedom, right? We're actually talking about freedom and liberation, which I think only happens in moments. I don't think, I don't think awakening is something that like rises up in me because that is delusion right there. Like it rises. Oh, I get this thing and now I get to keep it. You know, I think awakening is again, like all beings, everything in the universe sometimes pops up in awakening. a chunk of awakening and liberation. And sometimes it manifests in a person. Because sometimes, like, so somebody comes up to you and they say, like, you did something wrong and I'm really upset with you. You know, there's an interpersonal exchange, right? And because we're also animals, we're like, and all of our whatever come into play.

[53:13]

But sometimes that happens and we're like, whoa. And because we've been really making a lot of efforts, something wider happens. Maybe we can turn it with some humor. Or we can hear, we're like, I hear you're upset. And I also can feel my stomach like, you know, like we're attending to everything in the situation. And there's like a moment of liberation. And what we've liberated is our own pattern of responding to a threat. So that's how I see it coming up interpersonally. Is that helpful? Or somebody walks up who you're like, I like that person, you know. And then they're like, okay. So like, I like you today. And you're like, whoa. You know, it's like, but even there it can be like, okay, I'm in pain. You know, we can attend to one of the things in the universe that's happening is our response and also this dynamic and we love them, you know. So we can liberate in moments, and that is a gift to the world, and it is a moment that all things awakened.

[54:21]

That's it. 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.

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