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. So when I thought about what would I like to say this morning, um, I want to share with you my conviction, confidence that this way of life is effective, that there's freedom embedded here somewhere. And I think most of you have that feeling a fair amount of the time. And I think almost all of us really wonder about it sometimes.

[01:03]

Why am I here? Why is this thing happening? And is it really doing any good? And am I the right person for it? If I did it better, wouldn't it work better? You know, some version of doubt. So... even though you may be all totally convinced this morning, still I'm going to go ahead with this impulse to share this with you. So this will be my version of who are we, what's our problem, what can help, And what's Tassajara's place in that? With, of course, some Dogen thrown in and maybe a little Mary Oliver if we get to that. And almost certainly time for comments and questions by you, since I'm used to lecturing in the summer when we have to go to bed and we don't get to go to bed for a long time now.

[02:19]

We won't stay here that long, but we will try to stay for a long time. a little longer than we usually do. So if you, if I'm, as I'm talking, you have any questions, disagreements, other thoughts, if you can, save them and bring them up later because as Linda Ruth and some of you have been saying, you know, these words that we're using cannot be correct. It just doesn't work that way. So there's always bound to be room for, well, what about that? What about this? And also they are what we have since the first answer to who are we is we're this funny thing called humans. So before that, before we're humans, we go back a step. Who are we? What are we? I would say we are so deeply surrounded by...

[03:23]

not knowing that we can't actually stand it, to think about it, how unknown everything is, everything that surrounds us. When we have some memory and experience of our past, great, and however accurate or inaccurate it is, we have that, and it's part of us now. And we have sensory equipment for now, for right now. And we have basically nothing except imagination for the future. Okay, we don't have to spend a lot of time thinking about that. It's kind of overwhelming. But it is good to remember once in a while because we do spend a lot of time thinking about the future as if we had a lot more than that.

[04:27]

As if we had a lot of knowledge about what was going to happen there. So just to touch base with how unknown it is. Then the other thing that we are is... completely embedded in dependent co-arising in connection we're completely supported by created by everything else by everything you know with our parents and their past and you know our species past and other species and by Everything that's happening right now, we're completely embedded in that. And then comes the human part. Besides that, which we share with everything else, we have this mind, you know, it's part of our sensory equipment, but we've got a mind which thinks about things, tells stories about things, and especially tells stories about things.

[05:43]

This thing. And it's got a sense that there's a me here. Fine. But our sense is it's separate. Or it's at least separatable. Like, it may be connected to something. You know, we may feel our connection to anything. any person, anything. But then there are other things that we have this idea that we can somehow get away from. And in fact, part of our sense that there's a me and, you know, it's this, and it's true, you know, this is the, and all that dependent co-arising and all that that I am completely connected to, still I'm closer connected, my, what I call me, my consciousness. is more closely connected to this area right here, this body, these senses, and each one of you is the same way.

[06:49]

So that's true. Then we think, oh, it must be my job to make sure that it's safe and make sure that it gets the separation it needs when it needs it or gets the connection it needs when it needs it. So we... You know, it's actually much deeper than a thought. You might have that thought that it's more like survival instinct. You know, it's an instinct. It's like, oh, here's the part of the whole universe that I've got to take care of. And then we develop various ways of doing that based on whatever we've got. You've... A lot of you have heard me say this before. I think we take what we've got and use it to protect ourselves. So if we have strength, we use it.

[07:50]

If we have intelligence, we use it. If we have beauty, we use it. If we have anger, we use that to get the kind of separation or the kind of connection we need. If we have the ability to be nice, we use it. So we find our survival skills, not so consciously, but pretty effectively, and given that we've all survived, right? No, not really. But still, we build a life around our survival skills. So then, what's the problem? Well, one thing, we start to find out that our survival skills are, you know, they work, but they still cause us pain, and they cause other people pain. So we start to notice this pain, and we start to wonder, what can I do about it? And that's where, for all of us, somewhere along there, Tassajara came in.

[08:54]

Tassajara. where you come and they tell you. Just do it. Do this simple thing. Do these simple things. Go in that room, in this way, sit down, sit there for a while, stand up, walk around, go to the bathroom, come back, sit down, sit there for a while. Get up, chant, bow, receive food, eat. Do these simple things. Fill up your whole day with these simple things. And do it with other people. Don't do it by yourself. At Tassara, don't do it by yourself. Do it with other people. One reason, at least, because one is it's a lot easier to do it for a while, for most of us.

[10:03]

Some people might be easier to do it by themselves. One young man came here after having sat in a closet in his parents' house for two years. Some people, it's easier to do it by themselves. Nonetheless, the instructions at Tassajara are to do it with others, and besides that for most of us that might be easier, it also, you know, this... We get an idea of things. We can't help it. We get an idea of things. And being around other people who insist on having different ideas is actually a very healthy thing. It's like our ideas clash with each other about the simplest things. You know, like the other morning, yesterday morning, I think it was, we had a very exciting breakfast. Some people didn't even notice. Great Francis told me he didn't know anything was going on and told me he apologized.

[11:04]

But a lot of us knew something was going on. And I helped in my very well-meaning way to create the confusion because I got an idea. Because I'm sitting right there and Mahin went by, the soku went by to serve the second pot. to the Abbas and the Chusot, and I didn't have my eyes completely down. I saw what was going by. And I got this idea in my mind that the apple crisp was the second pot. Fine. Not a very harmful idea. That's one of the great things about Tassajara. It's full of not very harmful ideas. Thousands of ideas. Oh, we should chant at this pace. Oh, we should... Lots of ideas that we can, you know, simplify, get a hold of. So I got this idea. So then when the servers come to heroine me with the yogurt, I'm like... So they went away.

[12:14]

Somewhere else. Somebody else comes with the yogurt. And I'm like... And they're looking me in. Hero's probably wondering, what is she doing? So he, at that point, my projection on him, he said, well, he sent them to the, because the Addison and the Chousseau didn't have their yogurt yet, he sent them there. Then I'm noticing we're not getting any yogurt or anything. So the next time a server comes by, again, the same server, I'm like, It's all gone now. Anyway, it all turned out fine. Some of us had yogurt in the second pot. Some of us had it in the third pot. But I think we all eventually had apple crisp, yogurt, and cereal, right? We had a great breakfast. And eventually, maybe not until Maheen apologized, did I realize, oh, I had an idea.

[13:20]

I mean, we have ideas all the time, but they particularly show up when they clash with somebody's. And then I said, oh, I had actually the wrong idea. I had the idea the yogurt was supposed to be in the third bowl. That's the wonder of Tassajara, right there. It's like, we can have ideas, and we do, and here are these other people doing this pretty simple thing along with us, having ideas too, And they run into each other. They don't always match. They match to a tremendous degree, which is wonderful. Here we all are. All at the same time, all dressed, almost all of us dressed alike. Close enough. But those ones that clash, those are the interesting ones.

[14:20]

They show us something. They give us a chance to... delve into, okay, what's the problem? Where does this pain connect it to my survival instincts? How does it manifest? How does it come up for each of us? Excuse me for bringing this up, Kim, but you were all there at Shosan when Kim had her wonderful interaction with the Abbas. And said something like, I don't like myself, so I get mad at all of you. And I think we all felt, oh, not about Kim. Whatever, Kim had her insights however she wants, right? About us, we have our insights. That kind of, kind of complicated. You know, it's a kind of subtle, complicated thing that goes on inside us.

[15:22]

And it's not the same in each of us. We have our times when we see, oh, that's how that's working. That's the intricate, small, dependent core rising of how that habit, that survival habit of mine happens, the one that sometimes causes pain. So in this simplified, you know, sit down, get up, do it for a long time. around other people who have got a little different idea, who do it a little differently so that it shows up. Sometimes we get this, oh, that's what's happening in this particular part of the universe, how it goes together and something about how it causes pain. I was reading Dogen.

[16:32]

I read Dogen, especially when I'm going to give a talk. Dogen, what do you think about this? There's a fascicle that he has, which is pretty confusing, mostly, to me. I think Kaz calls it Dharma... I've got it written down. Let me see. Tom Clary calls it the nature of things. Oh, and Cos calls it Dharma nature. And it's talking about the nature of things and how we are part of dependent co-arising, how nothing can get outside. That is the nature of things. and how we can't get outside of that, how it says, you know, flowers blooming and leaves falling is the nature of things.

[17:36]

And we may think that in the nature of things, there can't be, you know, the nature of things is kind of like a, it's called whole show. It's like a big thing. It's like enlightenment. You know, enlightenment is a tricky word, right? We have this, I think a lot of us have this feeling about enlightenment that it would be a thing that would happen, maybe to me, and then things would be better. Like, I don't know exactly what it is, but I would see more clearly the smoke would be gone, you know, and I would... See clearly now for a long, long time for the rest of my life. So I think enlightenment, that's a little tricky to say that. I think it's a little misleading and that it's better. I like to say freedom or liberation, which I think we can imagine coming more in small pieces.

[18:45]

Like there might be freedom now in a particular situation where we feel caught. We might find freedom there, and how would we do that? How would we be enlightened in that moment and be free in that moment? So this Hosho, or the nature of things, is kind of like that. It's like, where is freedom? Oh, it's in the nature of things. It's actually the way to be free is already in the way things are. So some people might think that the way to be free doesn't have anything to do with flowers blooming and leaves falling. That's kind of just like every day, the nature thing. Every day depending on the horizon, every day life. Flowers bloom, leaves fall. That might be the kind of thing that you actually need to get away from to get to enlightenment or the hosho nature of things.

[19:54]

Dogit is saying, people might think that, but actually leaves falling and flowers blooming is the nature of things, and thinking that leaves falling and flowers blooming is not the nature of things, it's also the nature of things. Yay, Dogit. He says... Because these are thoughts that fall out in a pattern. We have a pattern. We're in a pattern. We're in the pattern of, I have a self. I need to protect that self. There must be a better way than this. I don't see anything that those leaves falling and flowers blooming are doing for me. There's got to be a better way. There's got to be a whole show and nature of things that is freer than this. I think it's like where I don't notice that leaves are falling and flowers are blooming, where I'm above that somehow, where I don't feel pain, where, you know, I don't get an idea about apple crisp.

[21:07]

Where the servers always serve exactly right. But Dogen's saying, no, actually... To examine the nature of things, the way they actually are, that's what freedom is. Another thing he says that we chant in the Genja Goan is enlightenment is like the moon reflected in a drop of water. Very interesting, this analogy. So the moon is reflected in a drop of water. And he says that the moon is not... Broken? No, the drop's not broken. Neither of them are broken. I forget which. What's he say? The moon does not get wet and the drop is not broken. The water is not broken. So in this analogy, kind of simple analogy, we are, let's say, we are the drop of water and this freedom is reflected in us.

[22:15]

And it's reflected in us in a way where both are still completely functional. There is a drop of water, there's a human being there that's still completely a human being, still has thoughts that fall out in a pattern, same old pattern, still has an experience of self and an experience of survival instinct. And yet, right in that drop is this freedom How to live as a human being. How to live as a human being. How do we be there with this drop, you know, the particulars of this drop of water, and with the freedom that's there. That's what studying, that's what Tassajara is about. How to be that way with ourselves, that we can let the human being be there, not be broken.

[23:19]

and let the freedom be there see how do you be with this self in a way that can still be free and I so First I want to say, life is not just like this at Tassajara. Life is like this everywhere. This is not just something that can be studied at Tassajara. This is the dependent co-arising of the whole world and the whole human world as it is. So we can and have to be able to live anywhere. we are very very lucky to be able to be at a place where the the main thing is to somehow let us have an experience of that how to be with a drop of water that is me that is you closely enough gently enough acceptingly enough that

[24:47]

we can see is it true that there's freedom here because it doesn't always feel that way you know when we get close to ourselves or even when we don't get close it doesn't necessarily feel like freedom but what Buddhism is saying what Tassajara is saying is go closer go really close to that drop of water go in a way that you don't disturb it that you're just being there with it let it be what it is and be there with it and see, is the freedom there? Is the moon reflected there? Can you see it? And I think we've all had some experience of that. When we see, oh, I'm having an idea. It's an idea. It's fine. It's an idea. Or I'm having a feeling, in some ways even. more impactful sometimes you know we have feelings and some of our feelings are like really strong and some of them are are very subtle and still strong they're like an underlying feeling that kind of runs our life at a certain moment and we might not we might not even be so aware of them but yet they're they have such an impact can we let that feeling be there

[26:17]

And be gentle with it, be close to it, be accepting of it, be respectful of it. Let it be, but let it be a feeling. You know, not turn it into the truth, either the truth that I have to get away from or the truth I have to hold on to and convince the world of. Neither one, it's just, it's a feeling. And then what feelings do and what ideas do and what everything else does, is they come and they go. They change. That's the nature of the pinnacle rising. It ebbs and flows. So we can discover that firsthand, and we can discover it about some of the things that are most important to us, like the fact that we don't like ourself, or like the fact that we feel pretty sure nobody else likes us, or not enough people like us. or they don't like us enough, or that I'm right, or that I'm wrong.

[27:23]

There are many, you know, important, very important thought feelings going on in us that tend to make our life, also tend to make our life complicated. So can we be there? close enough to them to see is there any freedom around this deep feeling, thought, experience. And I think Tassajara is set up actually to give us some of those experiences. It's set up to have somebody bring the yogurt when you're expecting the apple crisp. It's set up to have You know, the hams start really early in the morning. And that brings up certain thoughts and feelings in us at various times. It's set up to have us work with people who we haven't chosen.

[28:31]

Have us sit next to people we haven't chosen. Have us sometimes sit next to a person we have chosen. An even more dangerous situation. So, you know, as I say, life is really set up this way, too. It's not just tasahara. It's just that tasahara has taken away a bunch of stuff and said, do this, now do this, now do this. No, no, no, no. Don't do it that way. Don't do it at your own pace. Now we get up and we do kinyin. Now sit back down. Oh, now you want to walk outside? No, no, no, no. Do it this way. How does that feel? Can we be close to that drop of water? Now eat this kind of soup. Okay, let me see if there's anything else that I wanted to say.

[29:34]

I know there's still Mary Oliver, right? Oh. Oh, that's all right. We'll talk about that another time. read you this Mary Oliver poem which I'm sure most of you have heard before. It just happened to be on this piece of paper that was in my room which as I was looking through things it came up and it's so beautiful. It seems so like what I've just been talking about. It's called Wild Geese. You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for 100 miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about your despair and I will tell you mine.

[30:36]

Meanwhile, the world goes on. Meanwhile, the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across landscapes, over prairies, and the deep trees, the mountains, and the rivers. Meanwhile, the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to you, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting, over and over announcing your place in the family of things. wild geese. You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about your despair and I will tell you mine.

[31:38]

Meanwhile, the world goes on. Meanwhile, the sun and the clear pebbles of rain are moving across landscapes of over prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile, the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to you, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting, over and over announcing your place in the family of things. You only have to let the soft body of your soft something of your body love what it loves or hate what it hates or despair what it despairs. Let it do what it does, but stay close to it. Stay so close that you can see how real is it? You know, how much is it there and how much is it empty?

[32:41]

You know, it's both, right? It's form, it's emptiness. It's really there, it's not there. It's really there, it's not there. And one more thing, in this situation of do this, do that, do this, do that, we can start to feel that maybe freedom would be either maybe not to have feelings or to be controlled, essentially, to be quieted. It's my experience at Tassajara that actually things get more out of control. I mean, it's in this valley, right? It's relative, but that feelings, that actual, even actions, often happen that we don't plan.

[33:56]

It's like somehow we get less sleep, we sit more zazen, we work hard, and we get pushed to the edge, and a little something happens, we get pushed over the edge. That's part of the plan. It's not about control. It's not about, you know, I get an idea of how I should be and how I make myself into that. It's like, is it safe to be you without your plan? Is it actually safe to be the part of dependent co-rising that you are? That's what I think Buddhism is talking about, saying it's... You are part of dependent core rising. You're made by everything. You're making everything. It's okay to be that. It doesn't mean that we don't have thoughts and feelings that we should refrain from acting out. But that refrain from is in us too. Is it?

[34:57]

That's our question. Here we are in this controlled setting. Sit down, do this, do that. to discover, is it okay to actually be me? So I'm wondering, do you have anything you'd like to add or thoughts or questions? Yes, Jane. When you were mentioning the thing about thoughts and feelings is that they change and they arise and then they pass away. Yes. Often I feel like that's sort of an admonition to not do anything. to just sit with it and wait and see what it passes up. And I don't think that's what you're saying, but I think in that it confuses me when the time to act comes up versus when. I feel the same way. Whenever I think about it, that's what I feel.

[35:58]

It's like when to do something, or really how to decide anything. Let's say you want to do something. Well, first of all, waiting is doing something. We don't really have the option of not doing anything. It's not one of our options. We are an active event happening. So waiting is doing something, saying something is doing something, getting up and running out of the room is doing something. Yeah, this is one of the questions. What's his name? Adyashanti says we don't really make any decisions. And I don't know if he's right, but I think he might actually be. We spend a tremendous amount of time thinking about decisions, planning decisions, making decisions, making them over, making them over, remaking them, deciding whether it's the time to make them.

[37:01]

Do you really make them? When it comes down to it, you know, if you're having the feeling and you're sitting in Zasnen, well, we can call it waiting, you know, but basically we're being as close to it as we, or maybe one possibility anyway, is to be as close to it as we can get and let it be gentle with it, let it be there. You know, when we meet each other, we're always communicating. We're always sending out pharognomes. We're sending out vibes. And they're being interpreted. Not always correctly. And somebody said the other day, you know, what can I do about that? Well, not much. There's... I mean, we're all trying, you know, we're trying to send out the right messages.

[38:04]

So, but we are, we're sending, we're sending, if we're trying to send the right messages, we've got this trying message and we've got this message right with it. So that's the question, you know, is it okay to just like, whatever, what happens? If you have a sense, if you have a feeling and you have a sense that if I express this feeling, It's going to cause some upset. Okay, that's a legitimate part of your feeling. There's some reluctance in the feeling. They're pretty complex, these feelings. They may start out looking like, I hate this. But it usually doesn't stay that way. It really was never that way. It's just like our first take on it. So in a way, it's just... If we can do this gentle thing, be close to them, we have more possibility of being included in the wonderful mandala that's going on that we're already totally a part of.

[39:17]

We're totally functioning in it, but mostly we're looking at it from our idea, whereas we could get closer to it. And we still won't see everything. We can't. That's not within our capacity. but we'll have the more possibility of appreciating the flow of us and others around us. Say that whole thing again. Acting could be sort of within the watching and just staying close. It has to be. There is no non-acting as long as we're alive and even after we die. we'll, you know, we'll become part of something else. So, acting, yeah, we're acting. Yes, Kathy? I'm having an appreciation for the safety that is here.

[40:19]

And, you know, Mary Oliver relies on nature to provide us with safety, you know, and... In our ritual space here, the altar is what Dogen is writing about, rocks, trees, grass, and walls. It's also nature, this sort of, it's not you and me in the same way that it could be, in the way it could be expressed otherwise. And there's a stone Buddha on the altar, this sort of, inanimate things that are arranged but are imbued with the meanings of our tradition and its interbeing. And that when we practice together in the space of ritual, all of these bodies are joined in the Buddha field that we're creating together in the safety of... It's almost as though the skillfulness of our tradition knows that we need to have that safety.

[41:29]

And that in the course of the day, being here, interspersing maybe the space of ritual with everyday life. You know, are we stepping in and out of that safety or? Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's interesting hearing you talk because... I agree with what you said, but also most of my non-safety at this point, lucky me, comes from other people, mostly my friends, right? That's where I feel non-safe. Lucky me. Lucky you. We have enough food. We have enough shelter. We're not being bombed by people we don't know, so we get to be afraid of our friends. And...

[42:29]

Our friends have decided, with the help of ancestors, to set up these particular spaces and do these ritual things. And we've decided, they decided, and we decided to go along with them to fill up most of our day with that. So in a way, what's safe about this space for me is that everyone comes here and sits quietly. You know, they're not telling me what they think about me or about Tassara or about anything that I care about. I mean, internally they might be saying all kinds of things, but here we are protecting each other from ourselves. And ritual spaces can be very dangerous you know, either really dangerous or feel dangerous, and I think we've all felt that about this space, right?

[43:34]

When we first came, we felt dangerous, felt like it was the right way to do things, and I don't know what it is, and all these people do know how to do it, and they're going to kick me out if I don't do it right. I mean, most of us had some kind of that sense. So we continue to make it safe by, you know, and you may... look at the Buddha and get that feeling like, oh, this is how I want to be to make other people safe. I want to be whatever, accepting or something. Or offering. I want to offer. I think it is embedded in them, but I think even our rituals can be made non-safe. So we have to keep doing it. We have to keep making it safe for each other. And the hardest person that's for us, for me, to make it safe for is myself. To do this thing of let that feeling be there.

[44:38]

Don't take it at first value. Don't try to solidify it. Let it be this breathing thing. Let this other person be this breathing thing. Don't solidify them as... You know, a person who bows wrong or right. So, yeah, thank you for bringing that up. Yes. Yeah. What you just said really reminds me of the Buddha's Sutra on foam. Foam? Foam. Yeah. Apparently, in the Buddha's time, at least, on the Ganges River. These huge, you know, globs of foam would come down the river. And he wrote a whole sutra about what a monk does on encountering a big blob of foam. And I love it because it's foam. And it's probably, you know, there could be a version to that.

[45:41]

He says... The monk, you know, goes, gets close to it and studies it from every angle and really stays with it and follows it and looks at it and just receives this foam. And it just, every time something really hard comes up in my zazen, I think about the sutra on foam. That's great. Thank you. I've never heard of that sutra. Thank you. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. You know, if it were really a need, need is a tricky word, right? If it were really a need, I don't think there would be any question. Like if you really needed to go to sleep,

[46:43]

you'd probably just go to sleep. Or you start acting really strange. On the other hand, we live in a world where we also are encouraged to take care of ourselves. And we live in this world where we're also encouraged to push that boundary because we have so many ideas. Somebody was telling me, Or maybe I'll just say for myself, like, I used to not need very much sleep. Now I seem to need a lot more. You know, seven and a half or eight hours. But during the session, like from the beginning, not always, but this last session, and it seems to be lasting, I didn't need nearly as much sleep. So what is need for sleep? You know, I don't know that... Figuring that out is this practice, actually.

[47:43]

There may be a very worthwhile practice of figuring that out, but this one, it's really like, how do we stay close to ourself and try not to get caught by our ideas, try not to catch our ideas, try not to solidify our ideas and make it, it's this way. So, you know, we're asked to do things which really do push us. My first practice period, I was so tired. All the time. I was on general labor, and we were digging a septic system down where the yurts are now, or just in front of them, I think. Digging, digging, digging, deep holes in the ground. And I was really tired. But every day off, I felt fine. And I'd go to the Zendo, I'd fall asleep. But on the day off, I'd... I can take a walk. And after a couple of practice periods, I didn't have that same thing.

[48:43]

I wasn't digging trenches anymore. Who knows? And then I had babies. And it's also confusing. But the idea that I need this is worth exploring. And the good thing is we don't have to come up with the exact right answer. We've got some leeway. We can push ourselves. Most of us are in pretty good health. We can push ourselves for a while, for three months sometimes, and see how was that? What happens by the end? Am I totally worn out? Some of us are not in such good health, and we can't push ourselves that much because the edge is closer and farther down when we fall off. So, you know, there's nobody who really knows that except yourself. So don't... turn over your responsibility because you can't. Thank you.

[49:44]

Yes, Mohammed. You started by talking about doubt. I'm guessing that at the beginning of your practice you were having some doubts about this practice. I'm just guessing. And if you did, What are you that you were practicing? Did this doubt actually stop? Are you still doubting? How do we do that? What's the last thing? How what? You would, you know, that whole problem doubt. Because I'm telling you now, some of us still doubt. Really? Okay. Do I doubt? You know, I, like most of us, I think at various times I doubt, the main doubt that I have is whether something I am feeling or am is okay.

[50:50]

You know, like, if I'm upset about something, I mostly think it's not okay to feel this way. They should change, or I should change. So I think that same doubt can be about practice. It can be like, it doesn't feel right. Is this the right practice for me? Is it really accomplishing what I wanted to accomplish? What about that part of my life that isn't being taken care of right now? Some of us might wonder, is it true? And others of it might not. might wonder, is it true for me? Is it the right one for me to do? And I think those are real questions. Is it true? That's the question. Is it really true that it's okay to be you in the world?

[51:55]

That's the question. Is it true that this is the way... Is it right for you? Is this the time for you to be here at Tassajara? That's a question for all of us. It's always a question. I just think the way to solve the question is not the way we usually go about it, which is usually to think about it a lot from every direction. You know, turn it around. Sometimes we ask our friends, Usually we don't really care what they say. We just want to talk about it because we're talking about it to ourselves. But sometimes we do care what somebody says. You know, we go to a teacher who we really trust and we do care what they say. We still may go on without doubts, even if you hear words, right? Yeah, oh yes, we do. So to be there with whatever is there... and not think, I'm making up my life with my mind.

[53:03]

Like, here you are at Tassajara. You know, you may be here another three weeks. You may be here another three years. How does that decision actually get made? It's the same one that Jay was asking in a way. It's like, if we put our trust in, I'm going to think this out, and figure out who I should be, what I should be doing, I think it's pretty frustrating for us. But I would suggest be close to it. The idea of, if you allow me another one, when you were talking about living outside, there is... what you might say, the pain that people cause each other. Yes. And if there's a more, shall we say, volatile situation.

[54:08]

More which kind? More active. Active, complicated. Okay. And then we come here and we really still have pain anyway. Yes. And then we go on. Is the purpose of Tassajara to modify pain? Make it just a bit soft. What is the freedom in that? Or is it to make it a little more clear? Maybe it's to make it a little harder. Maybe it's to make it a little more obvious. In some ways I think practice is about getting a more and more subtle view of pain. It's not that there's less of it, it's that you see it sooner you see it you know it doesn't have to get so big you actually feel it when it's like a little bit like you know you say something and you see the look in somebody's eyes and you feel oh i hurt them so there's an intensity that comes with this interaction and you from that point of view we can involve this different sense of you know freedom yes

[55:27]

by finding out that actually you can live with that. You can be there and feel the kind of pain that you've just caused somebody. You say something, you see their pain, you feel pain. You actually feel your own pain. But you feel pain, and it's like, okay. I don't have to get defensive with them. I don't have to say, you shouldn't be feeling that pain. I didn't mean to hurt you. You can be like, okay, that was painful. And then, then there's still an interaction or not, you know. Thank you. You're welcome. Yes, Maheen. I was charged for airline ticket $400 extra because I was practicing. Actually, I was charged in conventional board $400 because I was practicing unknown and ultimate board. You were practicing what? In the ultimate world.

[56:31]

In the ultimate world? Yes. You got charged $400. In this world. In this world. Because I was practicing unknown. Exploring unknown and the ultimate truth world. Yes. So what about that? Was that here at Tassahara? Pardon? Was that here at Tassahara? No, everything. airline ticket. They charge you $400 because you were here practicing. No, I told them how come. They said because you are practicing unknown. Do you want me to repeat that? Let me ask you. So you got charged $400 more or you got charged less? No, more. More. They told you the airline. You made an airline ticket from here. Yeah. And they said, we're going to charge you $400 more because you're there practicing. Not there. No, nothing to do with Asahara.

[57:31]

It's between conventional world and ultimate world. I do not understand. She's not a bookkeeper. She's practicing unknown. Yeah, I was practicing unknown. I see how does it feel, exploring. Because I'm not knowing what's going to happen in the future. Yes. Exploring unknown. Yes. So you didn't make your ticket until too late? Right. Then they told me you'd be practicing that, so they charged you $400. Well, I think they charged you $400 because you made your ticket late, right? And they told you they did it because you were here practicing. Because you weren't paying attention to your ticket, right? No, because I didn't know what's going to happen, you know. No, I... Yes, okay, right, I know. I remember. We talked about this. It's a very good question.

[58:32]

Let me think about it. So what about that? That if you go along in the unknown, which we're always in anyway, but you actually notice that it's unknown, Instead of thinking, oh, I know, I just have to decide what I'm doing. It's partly that you noticed that it was unknown, but also you had desires in there, right? You had different things that you wanted to do. No, not really. I want to just explore to see how does it feel to be unknown. Okay. Not knowing. I was exploring. Yes. That's good. And there are, so the drop of water is both there and not there, right? Things are, its form is there. It's really form, so there really are consequences. Airlines really do charge you to ride in their planes. And they really do charge you more when it gets closer to the time. That's the way it is.

[59:34]

Fine. That's fine. Nobody said you wouldn't have all kinds of pain. So in this real world, then you have to decide, okay, am I going to, can I do this? Do I want to do this? Am I willing to take on that? I mean, you have to do something. You have to either buy a ticket or don't buy a ticket. And we don't know what that means. We still don't know whether you're really going to get on that plane or not. The practice is that you're just taking the consequences or just taking the consequences? Well, we don't really have any choice about that part. The consequences are always there and we really always take them. Sometimes we fight against them. But basically, that's where we live.

[60:38]

We live surrounded by consequences. It's called dependent co-arising. So, I mean, already... you know, you could have yelled and screamed at the ticket person, and that would have been a slightly, you would have taken that consequence and done a different thing. I doubt if you did that, right? No, I didn't do that. Yeah. No, I didn't. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, Sam? I don't understand staying close. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So in a way, I think it's just zazen, but that doesn't really help any because what is zazen? So if you have a feeling, if you notice you have a feeling, it's kind of like you take the part of your mind that interprets things and put it

[61:56]

next to the feeling. And let it just be there, not interpreting for a little while. Let it just be like, I mean, you might have words, it's okay, but you're not like shifting over to the words as the major part of the experience. You're letting the feeling stay the experience. And the same thing happens, though it's a little more complicated, like in an interaction. You can just be there and have this interaction. But of course, in an interaction, usually we're also saying things and trying to communicate. So then we're already a little bit in the interpretive realm. But we can also, at the same time, we can be mostly there. Or... If we don't notice that we're mostly there, we can at least know that actually that's what's happening.

[63:00]

Mostly we're just, we're there. We're pulsing with various kinds of energy, and wardens might be part of that. Does that make any more sense? So... One of the great things about Tassajara is it doesn't really matter whether you understand the way that I just put it, which might or might not be accurate. It's like coming here and sitting as much as we do. I think one of the main things that happens is we kind of like settle in to our body being. And it's not like we do it. Like we have to know how to be close. We actually... I mean, we've always been close to ourselves, of course, but we go off on our mind. We can go places and we put our attention, but somehow that settles in with this kind of schedule, whether we know how to describe it or know how to understand it.

[64:06]

No, you're closing. Successfully. Yeah, so forget that. Don't pay any attention to that part of that. Yes, Nate. Thank you very much for this talk. I felt like many of the things that you spoke about were very central for me, very forefront. I have... I was crying three or four times and now I don't really remember what it was about. I guess I'm okay with that. One of the... One of the things that was very central is that closeness part. And for me that... A large part of that is about posture.

[65:16]

I find that whenever I encounter something that's really unpleasant, that my body posture reflects how I react to it emotionally and mentally. And that if I find a way to sort of open my chest to it, which feels really, really scary, that that's how I enter that closeness outside my understanding of it. And that sort of reminds me of what someone was sharing. I think they'll probably know who they are and they can say whether I can mention their name or not. But that their exosin, it doesn't really matter what they do with their head. It's that if they're sitting in the right posture, that it happens for them. And I've been feeling very strongly about that.

[66:27]

Yeah, so thank you very much for the talk, and that feeling of safety also, which has been very, I've been very curious about, and that feeling of freedom, which does seem to get more settled. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, just a couple more and then we'll stop. Kristin, Tolva, and Julie. I won't stop. Yes. I was going to phrase what I had to say as a question. How? It occurs to me to just say that I, as an admission, I keep trying to improve myself. This is what? Not helping. feel so conditioned for a prior task to be becoming something other than, rather than, I guess what you're calling really getting close and recognizing

[68:32]

what's actually here more and more fully more and more fully fully in some ways all this I mean you are becoming right we're all we are becoming and so the the crux I think is what you said earlier is like we have this sometimes vague sometimes very clear sense of who we should be who we should be becoming. And in some ways, that's the most important thing is to notice that, that we're doing that. You know, like when I feel dissatisfied, it's like I have this thing I can almost see of what would be better. And to just like come back from that to this, in some ways, we don't have to get more intimate with it That will already be more intimate with it because we won't be doing this constant coulda-shoulda thing.

[69:40]

As I notice that more and more, I feel it's foreign. It's something foreign in me that it's come in from the outside. It ought to be this idea and the compulsion that it ought to be otherwise. Yes. Yes. More acceptable. And that idea is foreign? Is that what you're saying? I do. I feel more when I notice the feeling that it's something learned. Something learned. That I've learned this. Yeah. It's foreign to... It's not native. Yeah, except we learned it so deeply and, you know, started. I mean, you know, if you watch little kids, yeah, they're not doing that for a while, but then they start.

[70:49]

Then they start thinking, oh, I'm not quite right. How do I get right? So, yeah, we learned it, but we learned it well. And now to notice that we've... learned that we have this impulse and this belief that that's my job, you know, is to make myself acceptable somehow. That's a huge step, you know, instead of just believing it to notice that we have this impulse. And in some ways, as I say, that's all we need to do is notice that. Because it never worked. We did things, but, you know, we were still us. question is somewhat related to what you were saying, Kristen. I woke up, I didn't, well, this morning I was thinking of that poem, that Mary Oliver poem, You Do Not Have to Be Good.

[71:49]

My name means good or goodness in Hebrew, and I feel I can never live up to it. And last night I was unexpectedly invited to meet with Linda Ruth for Doka-san, and my first thought was, what did I do wrong? I was really surprised by the thought because I don't feel criticized by Linda, but that was the thought, and I think I'm still trying to figure out how to be good, and does it ever end? It doesn't matter really if it never ends. If that old habit, what did I do wrong, never ends. If you can see it like you did, if you can be familiar with that old habit, it's yours.

[72:54]

We each have our version, but we each have a unique version, so we need to actually get to know ours so that when it comes up, you don't think, You know, you don't, like, go with the thought. You know, it's like, oh, interesting. I wonder what she does want to talk to me about, and not going there like, I didn't do it, I didn't do it. Like, you know, we've sometimes done, right? Thank you. Julie. created by and creating each other, constantly. Through our ideas and thoughts, which we can't stop. There's there. And if you're trying to look for what's true, it's also an idea.

[74:01]

how to know what's really true I don't know if I mean true is a tricky word things are form is emptiness emptiness is form things are there and they're not there thoughts and feelings are there but they're not stuck you're there I'm here but we're not stuck. So it's true, and it's true that we have some thought or we have some feeling, and there's a whole lot of unknowing around that. So I think that feeling of, I wouldn't be safe if I got what was true, is another way of protecting ourselves that doesn't work so well. So the question is, can we live? Is it okay to live?

[75:06]

Is it even beneficial to live in not knowing with lots of, you know, lots of information, lots of, no non-action, acting all the time, interacting with each other, with this drop of water? But what is it, you know, it's like, it's this drop of water, right? Yes. So, looking at... It is all of those things, all that discomfort. That's all it is, constantly. Yes. I mean, many things, not just discomfort. Little many, many things, right? Or discomfort, and I associate that with unknowing, right? The non-knowing is a place of discomfort. Yes. But it's many things, right? Like this drop of water is sitting here in this room. you know, actually feeling a fair amount of gratitude for people around us, not wanting to hurt people, you know, knees starting to hurt, and many things, many things are going on, right?

[76:13]

Yeah. That's our situation. Can we live it? Can we live it for the benefit of all beings? Is that possible? That's what we're exploring. I... I think the answer is yes. I don't always have total confidence in that at various moments, but I have a lot of confidence in it. But, you know, benefit doesn't mean there won't be any pain. You know, we live, we have bodies, we have lungs, we're going to have some pain. We're going to die. you all very much. It's a wonderful to be here with you. 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.

[77:15]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[77:25]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_91.01