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. Does this have a light that comes with it? Yes, it happens. Press the top. I actually don't know when I'm supposed to stop anyway. When am I supposed to stop? 8.30. 8.30? Mm-hmm. OK. Yeah, I'll do it. OK. Hello, everybody. My name is Tia. Can you really hear me?

[01:04]

So I would like to thank Lauren and Linda to start with, to let me come practice with you. I appreciate it a lot. And everyone has been subcontinent. I feel very welcome when we're done. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. I was sitting out on the bench, on the bridge, sitting on the bench on the bridge, and that was gazing at the hill across. I bet a number of you did that. It's kind of gazing practice.

[02:10]

Do you think I sit on the bench and I sit on the bench and I look across the hill and I just sort of gaze at the other side of the hill and I let my mind just... It's so quiet here. So my mind is really quiet. And yesterday, there was a thought that came to my mind as I was tasing. And the thought was, it was a sentence, a last sentence of a letter that congenial wolf sent to her, wrote by hand. to her husband. It was a goodbye letter. It was the last thing she wrote, actually, before she moved suicide.

[03:12]

It's a beautiful letter of love and appreciation and sad because she said goodbye again. But the last few lines say that popped into my head was to know life. To know life and to put it down. I remembered it said. I looked it up. I thought I'd share it with you. It actually says, To look life in the face. Always. To look life in the face. And to know it for what it is. At last. To love it for what it is.

[04:16]

And then to pull it away. To know life. What do you think it means To know what? To know this. Say it. To know this. To know this. One part. What else might it be? It's a koan. We are alive. It's a gift. What does it mean to really know light, deeply, thoroughly? Does it mean to get the right job, have the right partner, keep on with the right things?

[05:26]

fail miserably, reject it, fight with it, ignore it? What does it mean? To me, it doesn't mean any of those things. It's a gift, given freely. No one's person's life is more or less than another. No one. No one has more life than anyone else. No one's life is better or less good than anyone else's life. But it's not so simple, is it?

[06:58]

Don't we make it complicated, don't we? We do. It's like it's in the background. We ignore it. We never think about life. We think about what we need to do next, what we don't like, what we want, what we resist. We never actually stop long enough to really taste the gift. In my very humble opinion, this is what I think we're doing here. I think we're here because something in us knows I'm missing something.

[08:04]

And we can hear that call. Hey, just a second. I'm here. I'm you. Can we say hello a little bit before you rush off to do something better? Underneath, if you look deeply enough if you really sit still and look deeply. The only thing that's down there is a wisp. I like to say, like a gossamer veil. It's almost not even there.

[09:08]

It's like a vague sort of perfume. It's so not there. It's the smallest, timest little... It's a miracle that we're here at all, that anything is here at all. It comes out of vast nothingness, all potential arising. That's all we are. And on top of that, on top of that effervescent, ungraspable mystery, I am.

[10:27]

This beingness that we get to notice, enjoy maybe a little bit, to know it. ideas concepts conditions and conditioning we receive family karma social karma national karma and on top of that we build our own karma until this little teeny, really sense of being is so covered over, is so made into a solid object that we, again, try and maintain in every way we can think of.

[11:34]

Me, me, me, me, me. until it's sickening. It's in this natural development. It's nobody's fault. Nobody's fault. We hurt ourselves and other people. Pain comes with life. And I avoid it. Suffering, optional. And that's why we're here. Suffering is optional.

[12:36]

Optional. There's a story about the Buddha. He was talking with his disciples and explaining to them the practice, the practice of looking at our suffering. That is the practice, I'm sorry to say. We have to go into the fire. You want to look at what is causing your suffering. You want to look at how you build separation and unpack it. Separation is painful. It's built on painful thoughts and activity and emotional reactivity.

[13:48]

So you have to, we have to, we have to go there and become that pain, and know it for what it is, all of its machinations, all of its shape-shifting, all of its strategies. And not just once, but many times, in each particular identity, until you see all of it, all of the different, each one clearly, until it dissipates. Because there's nothing there. It doesn't exist. It can only exist if we continue to build

[14:52]

and maintain it. Which you do. Apple. Sometimes suffering is the most familiar me that we have. We're comfortable there. Yeah, not be so comfortable. of his disciples when he told them the idea was to go look at your suffering. He said to him, we can't do that. That's too hard. I'm not going to get there. Maybe tomorrow, right now, I have to go to a party. Tell me the week from tomorrow. They didn't believe him that it would even work.

[15:53]

But they could do it. Because it's not easy. It takes everything we have. All of our courage. All of our effort. All of our devotion and tenacity. All of our relaxing. All of our humor. Everything we have got. it takes to do this. So they said, it's too hard. Can't do it. And the Buddha said, I'm not going to get it quite right because I couldn't find it. But he said something like, yes, he said, I know it's hard. I know. But if you couldn't do it, I wouldn't ask you.

[17:01]

But I know you can do it. I do. And so I'm asking you, please, keep going. Keep going. Rest when you have to, and then get back to jump back in. This was that story. And then, as I was thinking about practice, there's also a lot of joy in practice, because as we continue and as things drop away, there are times of real pleasure and peace and vastness and joy.

[18:14]

It's not all difficulty. Every time we really let go of a chunk, There's a real openness and joy. So then I found this is a favorite practice poem of mine. It's by a Tang Dynasty poet by the name of Wang Wei. For Tang Dynasty's classic Zen, most of the great koans were great teachers. This is the poem. I'm laughing because it says, in my middle years. When I heard this poem, I was in my middle years. I am now past my middle years, probably quite a bit.

[19:20]

In my middle years, I've become rather fond of the Way. I make my home in the footholds of Tassaharanongka. When the Spirit moves me, I go off by myself to see things that I alone must see. I follow the stream to the Source. following the mind stream to its source. And sitting there, I watched for the moment the clouds come up. Or I may meet someone, and talking and laughing, forget about going to the Zamba. This tune is Our work is to follow the mind stream back to the source, watching the thoughts, the emotions, the energy come up.

[20:49]

I'm studying for... I'm offering four-people transmission this September, 7th to the 17th of September. And so I'm reading some things that I need to read for that. So one of the things that we study You may be familiar with the five ranks of Poza. So I'm going to give you a kind of a very, very quick and probably inaccurate, but sort of accurate description of those ranks. They're laid out as ranks, but they're actually the same because they describe the relationship of form and emptiness.

[21:51]

And because, as we chanted just the other day, the Heart Sutra, form and emptiness are not separate, all of these ranks are within the understanding, the understanding of wholeness, of life, the nature of life, holding both the emptiness and the form. So the first We begin. We set forth on the past. Something in us has some kind of taste. Something in us learns to touch life in a deeper way. We know that somewhere in us

[22:54]

all of you, otherwise you wouldn't be here. So we follow that intuition and we end up in a practice place or we end up with a teacher on a mountain. Vows come forward, we take refuge. The personal is emphasized because we're looking inward now. I need you to understand what emptiness is intellectually. That form is empty of a solid, separate core in anything. And then sometimes there's some kind of what we call kensho, or some kind of an opening, or some kind of a taste. We make a shift from feeling like our body-mind, we identify with our body-mind, to identifying with basically our awareness.

[24:07]

But there's still a me in it. And the next part, as the mind wakes up to itself, Awareness comes to the fore, and it becomes more... We come from awareness, we act from awareness rather than self. We no longer identify with the thoughts at all, no longer identify with the body-mind. And usually, personal will drops away so that we're no longer pushing life, we're no longer manipulating life, we're not trying to control anything. The personal world just drops away. And anger also, hurtful anger, falls away.

[25:15]

It's a first thing that falls away. It's a big, chunky thing of the three boys. And then, the heart opens, and there's a sense of wholeness that form an emptiness out of that, what it means to you in that way. And the heart opens. Usually we walk around with, I did anyway, for years. I had a gigantic door, it was like an iron door in front of my heart. And I remember sometimes it would open, and literally I could hear it, Reaking open. Clearly. It took a little time to open. But all of that protection falls away and the heart rarely opens in this sense of wholeness that we understand, that we feel, that we feel.

[26:16]

And then rising is right there on your tongue. Taste. Taste. I'll just mention this because I love this guy. I say this teaching all the time because... just because. At this place, we always see both sides now. So, Category used to say that when someone does something, difficult, that is not paying attention to the three pure vows. For example, if somebody abuses a child, a good example, you take the person immediately away from that situation, usually the adult, but because almost always adults who abuse are themselves

[27:23]

abused, have been themselves abused, you do it with understanding. It's a dependently, codependently risen event. You don't have to blame someone with a wick. Dependently co-listened event. But you take the child away. Boundaries, clear. So Category says, in the relative world, the world that we live in that suffers, that's confused, that is massively greedy and hateful. In that world, everyone is responsible for whatever they do. Nobody is forgiven. We are absolutely responsible. And at the same time, we understand the kind of chorizo events that the entire universe literally had to come together for this particular event to happen.

[28:27]

Everyone's forgiven. Everything. There was no one there to do it. The universe was the active, is the active, even now. And finally, this oneness falls away, and life is extraordinarily simple. In that place, grasping goes, and itself, the anger in the mind falls away. It's the other mountain. You know, mountains are mountains, mountains are not mountains, mountains are mountains, mountains are mountains. The mountains are mountains again. It's the chalk, wood, carry water.

[29:31]

Except everything is... the mystery is understood, is holy. place we know nothing is lacking. That's the most, I think, interesting point. Finally, life is enough. And we can just be ourselves. We don't have to prove anything. We don't have to be better. is a gift. Life is a gift.

[30:38]

And when it was ready, hopefully, we are able to know it deeply and thoroughly and then put it down. We can do this. It is possible. We can do it together. It's not easy. It's not easy. But it is possible.

[31:38]

So, I wish you all, I wish you all everything. that you have everything you possibly need, and use, and find your way. So that one year, time for you to put down life, that it will have to be anything For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[32:45]

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