and see sun. In the book, Opening the Hand of Thought by Uchiyama Roshi. Uchiyama Roshi talks about the baseline of zazen, the baseline of zazen, awareness of just this right now, and how we continuously deviate from that baseline when we sit zazen. How we either float above, thinking our thoughts, or dip below, getting drowsy or foggy or vague.

[01:03]

And we space out or we think thoughts. So this is going above or below the baseline. I find his description of zazen extremely articulate to see it this way. And so... So we float above or dip below of the actual awareness of our immediate reality. So Uchiyama Roshi, bless his heart, actually applauds this floating above and dipping below as developing our flexibility, developing our wholeheartedness, because we have something to grapple with, right?

[02:20]

So he doesn't at all advocate, you know, forcing yourself, you know, using Zazen as a time when you're going to force yourself back to that baseline of immediate reality. Never wavering from total awareness. Start to bring it right back. So he doesn't at all advocate that kind of rigidity. So it seems to me that developing the coming back muscle, the experience of delusion and confusion, and then folding delusion and confusion back into immediate awareness is the most interesting thing to Uchiyama Roshi about zazen. And from this point of view, the effort that we make to stay in zazen, immediate reality, becomes very subtle. The effort becomes very subtle.

[03:24]

Not at all the will-driven, goal-oriented, gaining mind effort that we're used to making in our life. So effort becomes about developing a willingness, a permission to let be, to permit, to let our preferences come and go at their own pace, not to manipulate the mind. And this is also the most interesting part of zazen to me, is the naked consciousness of it. Without manipulating it, without bringing yourself back to some preferred state of mind or preferred object of mind, You just are stuck in your own consciousness, whatever it is that moment. It's naked. It's raw. You're not controlling it and making it better.

[04:27]

I've often admired my own ability to stay with that stuff, to be completely delusional, complete compulsive mind. What am I going to do after zazen? First this, that, the other. It's not easy to stay with that, but we must. That's what's happening. And then it changes. It changes immediately to a fantasy or something like that. Or you get sleepy after a while. So this baseline and its deviations also apply to our consciousness during our everyday life, which is no less interesting, of course. And we create a focus for our everyday life based on whatever our samadhi is, making money, gaining the esteem of our colleagues, practicing loving kindness, whatever we think is the most important thing for that day or that five-year period or whatever.

[05:34]

And yet, even though we create a focus for our activities, probably every day, maybe some of us every hour, every half day, and yet we constantly drift away to an immediate desire. We're hungry, or we see something in a store window, or an attractive person. So we're drifting away in the same way that we do in Zazen, or we get foggy and dull. You know, if we're overwhelmed emotionally, then we just kind of zone out. It's spaced out and foggy. But if we practice, if we're practitioners, we return to being aware of our immediate reality over and over again. At first, it's will-driven. You know, you've practiced mindfulness during your everyday life. Oh, oh, come back.

[06:37]

your immediate reality of your breath, your environment, the people around you. You come back to that again and again. And at first it is will-driven. But then after a while it's just a simple widening experience, including everything. And you don't have to drive it anymore. It just happens. Something about your consciousness knows you're going down a hole and it just widens. So this whole process, including the deviations, not just the being aware part, is the self solving the self. As the Uchiyama Roshi's teacher, Sawaki Roshi, used to put it. This is also Dogen's Jijuyu Zanmai, the self being the self by the self. Our consciousness can't be other than what it is. And my own feeling is that practice, to a large extent, is about noticing what our consciousness is really at any particular moment, and then giving up our desperate wish to make it different.

[07:58]

So, with all this faintly esoteric talk about consciousness that I've been doing since I sat down, I've actually been laying out a context for the very personal story that I want to tell you today. The major events of my life for the past half year or so, the story of my diagnosis with ovarian cancer, the subsequent chemo treatments, and the personal meaning of these experiences for me. I was diagnosed in late September after I went to my doctor with a distended belly, distended as it turns out from a tumor in my abdomen. And I actually tolerated this tumor for about two months after noticing it because it fits so handily into another schema of mine, which is worry about gaining weight. So like many women of my generation, I've starved for decades.

[09:04]

to try to, if you don't have a naturally thin body, this is your option. If you're trying to adhere to the ideal female image of our culture. So I've binged and starved for decades, just a way of life. And so, except when I first came to Zen Center, for the first several years at Zen Center, the wish to became enlightened actually overcame the wish to be thin. And that was a tremendous but short-lived relief. It's much easier to be enlightened than to be thin. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, then please go see the best current film on the subject, The Devil Wears Prada. Anyway, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and scheduled for surgery, then chemotherapy, and an interesting process started.

[10:10]

So first of all, the word cancer carries a lot of baggage. It's scary baggage, like death and the removal of body parts you were very fond of, and debilitating illness, life-changing, devastating, those words come to mind. And this was very true, mostly of the people around me. People started telling me cancer survival stories when I, in my ignorance, didn't even know that my life was threatened. It did not occur to me for a long time that I would die. I mean, I didn't feel like I was dying. And then people told students of mine, just face it. Your teacher is dying. So I learned how much baggage the word cancer has. Quite a bit. But for me, this kind of disturbance was actually minimized by a couple of factors.

[11:18]

And one, I'd already been acquainted with devastation. because I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at age 35. Now, I'm old now, in my 60s. Death sits on my shoulder as a kind of advisor. But when I was 35 years old, vigorous, self-sufficient, independent-minded, it was a very big deal to have my health wrenched from my grasp. So after hearing I had cancer and an aggressive form of it at that, I waited for a while to be emotionally devastated, as I thought that I would be. But then I just got too busy and lost track of it. Or as my acupuncturist said to me, he said, most people when they get cancer have some life-altering experience.

[12:19]

They look, they become aware of their of the meaning of their lives for the first time. They make different priorities. And one priority that comes up is a spiritual life. He said, but isn't that kind of your job? So what I got too busy with to wait around for emotional devastation, or maybe my substitute for emotional devastation, was chemotherapy. Six treatments was what I... was I had four already. I have two more to go. And that first one challenged the pain of arthritis for being the big event in my life so far. My arthritis is used to being the biggest guy in the room. RA is a hyperimmune system, which means that for decades I...

[13:19]

been very little troubled by any other kind of illness. My husband gets the flu for 10 days. I get it for a couple of hours. I had a bladder infection for half a day once. I have never had indigestion before chemotherapy. So I didn't even recognize it when it first happened to me, and it turns out to be a pretty big deal. So rheumatoid arthritis, the bully, cowered in the corner when chemo came along. They put me in the hospital for, well, thank you, Suki, would you get that for me? Well, I hadn't for a couple of years. And I do shave it now so that it looks more intentional instead of scruffy.

[14:23]

Quite okay, a mistake anyone would make. So they put me in the hospital for two days, and they shot my belly full of toxic drugs. And I couldn't lie down because my belly was so big, and I couldn't sit, so I walked. I walked up and down the hospital corridors for hours, pushing my IV. And sometimes I would get so exhausted that I would stumble against the wall or the IV, and it would wake me up, and I would just continue to walk. And the nurses monitored me. In fact, they walked with me at first, but of course, they had other patients. They can't continue walking for hours with someone, but I noticed they'd peek around a corner and check on me. And finally, in the middle of the night, after hours of walking, a nurse with tears in her eyes came up and cut me loose from the IV so I could walk free.

[15:33]

And then the next morning I thought, what do you have to do to bring tears to the eyes of an oncology nurse. They've seen everything. And I wondered, what was I doing wrong? I didn't see other patients wandering around. And I just wondered, what about me? You know, it was so odd, so difficult for me to handle this. Well, I went home, but it continued for 12 days. And I finally ended up in the ER from dehydration because I was so big with the drugs, which I absorbed very slowly, that I couldn't get anything in. I couldn't get the water that I needed in. And nothing was coming out. And during those 12 days, I lived in a primal animal realm where I was just a body, hardly any thoughts.

[16:35]

no judging, just a sensory world. I lay on my couch for hours and days as my belly went down and my body absorbed the drugs. I breathed in and out, and I was enveloped in a gestalt of pain and fear. But simultaneous with that misery was the most beautiful autumn I've ever seen in my life. did we have a beautiful autumn this year. It was right outside my window in a grove of naples and redwoods. And the slanting light that we have in the Bay Area in the fall dramatically showcased all the golds and reds, apricots and the browns. And as the sun came up every morning, The beams came in the bank of windows in the room where I was lying and highlighted in turn as the sun moved around the wood of the table and chair, the covering that I had, the throw that I had over my body.

[17:51]

The hues of the rug, the couch, everything was just bright for a few moments and then the sun moved on to highlight something else. And so during such ecstatic times, I felt as if I were being lifted and carried right through the window on a heavy linen sheet borne by archangels of the kind that they used to paint on old music sheets of spirituals and hymns. If you've ever seen those old time music sheets, my life was very full during that time. And another very important factor in my being able to integrate all this suffering and delight has been the well-being ceremonies that people all over the country have been doing for me. I have wonderful friends and students, co-practitioners at Tassajara.

[19:02]

They did well-being ceremonies for me here at Green Gulch. in the city every morning. In New York, there's a sangha there I visit every year. In Chicago, an old friend who used to live here. And Sacramento, a sangha there that I visit. And so people in sangha, individual people and some sanghas have been doing well-being chanting for me, many of them ever since my diagnosis. In fact, many of you have wished me well with all the psychic vitality at your command. I even have a witty friend who said, I must admire the pluck of cancer to take you on. I believe that these well-being ceremonies that people have done for me have actually activated my practice.

[20:05]

that my willingness to sink into pain and fear and ecstasy as they interweave themselves into a tapestry of experience with no judgment is the way that these ceremonies have manifested for me, the palpable way that they have sustained me and borne me. So the benefits of these ceremonies began immediately. before the chemo, when I woke up from surgery, as I was becoming conscious, I was aware just before I opened my eyes of it looked like there was a road of stepping stones and I felt hands putting my feet on successive stepping stones as I was waking up. So I wasn't afraid. I felt my hands being placed on stepping stones.

[21:09]

That seems clear to be a product to me of the well-being ceremonies. And then, when I woke up, there were people that I love, my husband, Tony Patchell, and Keith Wiley, a member of the Crystal Springs Sangha, who's been my medical advocate throughout. And there seemed to be, when I first woke up in the hospital, no rent in the fabric of my life. No disruption. Many years ago, when I had a hip replacement, that was very much a disturbance in the fabric of my life. It was like before the joint replacement. And then afterwards, my life, I couldn't see any continuity. It just was... you know, pain and inability to move around. And, you know, that went on for a couple of months.

[22:10]

And it wasn't until I could do yoga and my full exercises and go swimming again that I really felt connected to the life before because I was putting my eggs in the physical movement basket, putting my, this is the meaning of my life, that I can move. So I wasn't alive until I could move again in the same way. But in this case, there was no rent in the fabric. The days before surgery and after continued to have a holistic quality. Today I see students. Today I write a lecture. Today I get cut open. Today I eat Jell-O. Today I receive visitors. today I go home, and so on. It just continued. So Uchiyama Roshi talks about everything we experience in this book, Opening the Hand of Thought.

[23:13]

He talks about everything we experience as scenery, as the scenery of life. You don't prefer anything. It's all just presenting itself one minute after another like a road trip, like if you drive on a road. But don't understand this as removed. Don't understand this as you're in a car and the scenery is outside. It's actually engaging the opposite, allowing everything to be your whole world, moment after moment. Rinzai said, even if all the Buddhas in the Ten Directions were to appear before me, I would not rejoice. Even if the three hells were to appear before me, I would have no fear. Why is this so? Because there is nothing to dislike. It's all here for me too, sick as a barfing dog, golden apricot colors, crystal breaking up the colors into patterns on the wall, helpless and frightened, born on a sheet carried by

[24:30]

Archangels. Next to this kind of unbidden adventure, a life of preference becomes not only self-indulgent, but dead, repetitive, always chocolate. A life fully lived includes pain and heartbreak, absurd action movies that your grandchild wants to see. In fact, when my son, who grew up here, or spent his early life here. He's now in his 30s. When he was a child, I refused to go to Disneyland. I refused to see Muffet movies. I refused to color Easter eggs. And I let my aesthetic tastes win over the opportunity of spending exuberant time with him. I regret that to this day. So this is, you know, what kind of narrow-minded twit doesn't take their kid to a Muppet movie if they want to see a Muppet movie?

[25:42]

Anyway, if you don't dictate what the experiences of your life are going to be, then you are open to everything. You have a feeling of being universally approachable. Anything can touch you. So after the recommendation of friends, I started taking Chinese herbs and having acupuncture. And so that original 12 days of chemo health has been shortened and softened quite a bit. It's now about four days of dyspepsia. Not too bad. Chemotherapy is followed by 10 days of quarantine. And during those days, I slow down so much that I'm not even bored. I go back to the sensual world, doing everything very deliberately, the sensual world of form and shape and color.

[26:49]

So being diagnosed with ovarian cancer and blasted with rounds of toxic chemicals have pretty much come off as Uchiyama Roshi would say, is the scenery of my life. So for years before this, actually, I've been practicing breaking down the statistical weight of always choosing what I prefer. Breaking down the statistical weight. Do you understand if you always make your decisions based on what you prefer, that builds up tremendous statistical weight, which determine your next So the first time it ever occurred to me to do this was many years ago in an ice cream store. And I did my usual thing. I started out, which is to have the most intense chocolate experience possible. So I read all the flavors that had chocolate in them and was, hmm.

[27:58]

And then I thought, well, why don't you practice non-preference here? So I covered my eyes and did that. And much to my horror, it was orange sherbet. So I thought, should I go through with this? And I decided I would. So I took the orange sherbet. It's not that I went to an ice cream store that often. So I was quite depressed about blowing this opportunity. But then I tasted the orange sherbet, and, well, you know, it wasn't bad. Sherbert's a lot lighter than ice cream, and it melts faster on your tongue, looking at the bright side. And then that...

[28:59]

orange flavor. I'm not a big fruit person, you know, but that orange flavor was so sweet and so orange, you know, and I thought, well, this is a good practice. I never would have ever in my life tasted orange sherbet. I would not willingly have done that. And yet, a full-bodied experience by anybody's standards. So I started doing it doing that practice in various situations, not too consequential, like just reaching into my underwear drawer and getting whatever pair of underpants come out, even though I have several pair of underpants that I really like. And then when I go to a restaurant, you know, just choosing the third thing on the menu, that kind of thing. And certainly going most wholeheartedly. to any movie that my grandson wants to see, and I limit my mental criticism of it to one minute.

[30:08]

So most of our preferences don't make any difference, like the ones I'm mentioning are not really consequential. But if you always go with your preference in every matter, getting that statistical weight going, then when it does matter, like preferring health over cancer, then it's much harder. The statistical weight of your always choosing what you prefer becomes enormous, and your flexibility sags under it. It doesn't have much of a chance. It's much harder to see everything, to see everything. the scenery of your life as really intimate with you. You wait to be well or you wait till you can move again or you wait till everybody around you is happy or you wait till you're happy or whatever. You don't live during that other time when other things, other scenery is presenting itself.

[31:19]

So the support I've enjoyed during this couple of months has been enormous, life-saving, crucial, crucial in my sustenance. So the whole issue of bodhisattva activity has come to fascinate me. And we're always so ready to open up and help each other. In fact, it's very interesting to ask what What prevents this from happening when it doesn't happen? What prevents people from doing for other people? And what allows it to flow when it flows unhindered? And I was already particularly interested in Dana Paramita. I think that that's the way the world works, you know, that we give. And the energy just flows through us and other people. And now this seems like a corollary, this bodhisattva activity, noticing bodhisattva activity all around me.

[32:31]

So I started interviewing the nurses when I go into the hospital for my chemos because that's a job where it doesn't matter how you feel or how the patient before treated you or whether you're tired or whether you're having an off day. You just have to serve. You just have to give. There are a lot of jobs like that. But nurses happened to be what I was in contact with, so I started asking. And so nurses sat down on my bed and told me, for many of them, it's some sort of faith, religious faith, or desire to help. I mean... You know, this shouldn't surprise me, but I just was surprised anyway to hear that this is why a person had chosen this profession. And then a woman told me of another patient on the floor that she, a very abusive patient, that she was determined to touch and reach.

[33:40]

And she did. So this is... this is wonderful. And later on in that afternoon, two more nurses came in that heard that I was open for stories about going beyond tiredness, going beyond patience. So I've heard a lot of really interesting stories. And then in this past few months, there's also been the wildly unexpected fun stuff. Like in that first chemo, the only drug or the only anti-nausea pill that would affect my nausea was marijuana pills. And so they come in little pills and they're supposed to not have any THC in them. So they're supposed to not be psychogenically active. But, you know, I guess quality control is hard and in that particular product.

[34:47]

So I was in the first meditation retreat that I gave since I'd had that terrible 12 days. I was, you know, not even strong enough to drive. Someone drove me to the city to do this. And the reason I went at all is because this is my suffering and delight group, a group of people who are in chronic pain, who have chronic illnesses, and we have been meeting every month for about four hours a month for years, 10 years, or something like that. These are people very close to me, that if I was going to faint on the floor or something, these are the people I would choose to be with. So a friend drove me there, and we were almost finished. when I chose to take one of those pills. And I thought, just in case, just in case. So I took one and in about a half hour, I realized I was stoned out of my mind.

[35:53]

And the way this manifested was thoughts were rushing by so fast that I could hardly keep up with them. And then I remembered, yes, this is what it was like when I used to get stoned all the time. It was just, you know, thoughts one after another not even related to each other, and then paranoia that I was even having such thoughts, and then self-criticism, and then criticism of everybody else. But what was interesting about this was that I... was more interested in what was happening than paranoid, actually. It was like, this is fascinating. I really understand why I used to get paranoid on marijuana. I didn't like grass. You know, I preferred the heavier psychedelics because they would sweep me away totally, not leave me in this little paranoid space where I could actually criticize the thoughts.

[37:04]

So anyway, I was. And then I realized it now came time to summarize our day together. We talk about our mindfulness practices that we've practiced during the past month. And I couldn't remember what any of them were. So I thought, well, I'll just grab on to a couple of thoughts as they go by and try them out. So I did. And everyone looked like... And I thought, well, that didn't work, so I'll grab some others. And everybody, you know, looked really puzzled, so I had to confess. I said, I'm really sorry, but I'm very stoned, and I can't follow this conversation. Well, they thought that was the funniest thing in the world. They just started roaring. And one man said, well, honey, how was your meditation group today?

[38:12]

Oh, we talked about our pain, teacher got stoned, and then we came home. So since it was so close to our last period of Zazen, anyway, I just said, okay, let's do Zazen. And so I... settled down and the thoughts whizzed by. But, you know, my body came into the equation, which never used to happen. You know, years ago when I got stoned, I would stay up in my thoughts. But I guess I'm so used to the body coming into the equation. My consciousness, when I sit, it just did it automatically, and that really grounded me. And then the thoughts were just... I mean, they weren't presenting themselves to be judged or grabbed at. So, God, I made it through that. And then, usually at the end of our session together, I say...

[39:17]

are there any questions or remarks that anybody has about the time we spent together? And then people, you know, talk about their experience or ask questions. But this time I said, if there are any questions, please call each other up. Anyway, that was fun. And... I thank you very much for your support. Intention equally.

[39:56]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_98.47