This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Here it is morning and I want to begin my talk telling you a story that starts in the evening. Excuse me. One night at Tassahara after evening zazen, Suzuki Rishi said, life is basically impossible. And then he bowed and said good night. About, I don't remember when it was, probably the 60s, we were having Sashin here at City Center with Roshi, and I think it was the morning of the third day.

[01:22]

If you've done Sashin, you know it's quite painful. Zen, you know, the best Zen teachers apparently like to say, you know, the more painful the better. I don't know. and make sure that the students don't have enough sleep and have an inadequate diet. Then you're sure to have problems and meet your limit, get to the edge of what you're capable of doing. And what happens when you get to the edge of what you're capable of? What kind of show do you put on for everybody? We came to a lecture that morning here, and the lecture was here in the Zendo Roshi set over here.

[02:22]

I was about out there, or maybe back over there. You know, the more you sit in the back, the less that other people get to watch you. The closer you sit, then everybody behind you gets to look at you, even though it's from the back. So if you don't want to be seen, you sit in the back. And I think he may have said a few words of good morning, and then he said, the difficulties that you are now experiencing will continue for the rest of your life. And we all laughed. Because we thought he was gonna say they would continue until we gained some wisdom or enlightenment or, you know. So we thought that was pretty funny.

[03:26]

But it's a different day, isn't it? You haven't been doing sushin. difficulties you are now experiencing will continue for the rest of your life. Life is basically impossible. And, you know, part of this impossible is it has to do with what are you setting out to do? I mean, you know, life goes on, you just breathe. So usually, you know, what's impossible is not that your life is literally threatened. What's impossible is, you know, things like you'd like everybody to love you. And you'd like to be able to behave impeccably so that everybody in all times throughout history would love and admire you.

[04:36]

Have you managed that yet? Or is that one of those things that are impossible? It stayed with me all these years, you know, when I was cooking at Tassajara, when the oatmeal was, when we made the oatmeal thick, a group of people would come into the kitchen. In those days, we hadn't set up a lot of rules saying, you know, don't disturb the cooks. In those days, you could just walk in. After the meal, you walked into the kitchen and told the cooks what you thought of things. So as a cook, you'd like to please people. You know that's what you're doing, right? And food is so... when you offer food, it's like you.

[05:43]

So what food is very much associated with, what do they think of me? Do they like, and then, you know, and whether they like the food is do they like me? And wouldn't it be good if people liked you? Or is that another impossibility? another problem you'll have for the rest of your life. What people think of you. Do they like you? Do they not like you? So a group of people would come in the kitchen and say, don't you know that in the morning your digestive system is not that energetic and you need to have some easy to digest food, so you need to have a lot of liquid and cook the oatmeal a long time so it's very easy to digest.

[06:44]

Didn't you know that? Didn't your mother teach you that? How come you don't understand these things? What's wrong with you? And, of course, people with their preferences, they want to make it about, not just about the food, but about you. They help you make it about you by telling you it's about you. I didn't realize I had a temperament at all until I became a cook. Then I found I was very calm and mellow and then start serving food and then you realize, you know, I have a temperament, I care about these things. So I made the oatmeal thinner and well cooked. Then another group of people come into the kitchen. Ed, we're digging a septic tank by hand It's very hard work. We're hauling stones from the creek. We're building a wall, a stone wall, 18 inches thick for the new kitchen.

[07:50]

This is very difficult work and the least you could do is have the oatmeal thick enough to chew because we don't get any meat or very much protein here, so at least let's be able to chew the oatmeal so we'll feel like we're getting some nourishment. We're working really hard. That was the last septic tank, by the way, we dug by hand. After that, we understood to bring in a backhoe, hire some people. But that septic tank is right outside the kitchen and the public bathrooms there. There was a stone down in the bottom, so at the bottom of that septic tank is not square. It goes over that big stone in one corner, as I recall. So I made the oatmeal thicker. then the other people come in. So what will you do? So that people approve, so that people appreciate your effort, appreciate you, appreciate your life, your love, your goodness.

[09:01]

What will you do? So I thought, well, I'll put raisins in the oatmeal. Then, whether it's thick or thin, anyway, people will like it. Then a third group of people came into the kitchen. In those days, you know, nowadays, the big thing is vegan. In those days, it was Zen Macrobiotics. And the Zen Macrobiotics said, if you follow their diet plan, you will be calm and peaceful. So apparently raisins were not on the diet plan. and they were outraged. Why are you poisoning us? Because anything sweet with sugar, even in the form of raisins, was poison. We need to follow the plan.

[10:04]

Our plan. Everybody should follow our plan and then we could live in peace and harmony. So a little while later to get back at them, it was April Fools. So in April Fools, we served sugar smacks. in the first bowl, milk in the second bowl, and bananas, sliced bananas in the third bowl. Of course, in those days, we weren't allowed to mix anything in with the first bowl. Nowadays, sometimes the Tenzo or someone will come to the Zendo and say, you're allowed to mix the food today. But for that, you would have to put the sugar smacks in with the milk and mix it all in the second bowl, because the first bowl is Buddha's head, it needs to stay pure.

[11:08]

So there was a riot of emotions that morning in the Zendo because some people were... And, you know, we were rather obliged to take some of everything offered, even if it was just a little bit. We did serve some cereal for seconds, and without raisins. So they had some cereal or rice for seconds. April fools. So though it's, we're starting apparently the new year already to kick off, we're kicking off the new year already. But it's the end of the year and it's all rather arbitrary, didn't you think? Don't you think? Somebody was joking recently, you know, So what do you mean the Christians didn't win?

[12:12]

Look at the calendar. So I was thinking about, you know, past year and I'm thinking about the year to come. I just got an email or a year-end letter from someone who said, we lost Leonard Cohen and found Donald Trump. How about that? So in thinking about, you know, past, present, future, I was recalling, given our heritage, the story about the Zen master who was... He became quite well known, Jishan.

[13:13]

And he at one point had become an expert on the Diamond Sutra. And he had a whole backpack full of commentaries on the Diamond Sutra, big pack of books. And somehow he took it upon himself to go to China, the south of China where the Zen teachers lived and straighten them out. bad plan. You can try. It's hard enough to straighten yourself out, so let alone other people. And, you know, the story is that one day he was getting tired and there was a woman by the side of the road and a tea lady, a granny, and she was selling tea by the side of the road and little tea cakes, which in Chinese apparently are called mind refreshers.

[14:23]

Little tea cake is literally in Chinese mind refresher, also tea cake. So he said he would like some tea and a mind refresher, please. And she said, Hmm, what's that on your back there? You've got a pretty big pack there. And he said, those are my commentaries on the Diamond Sutra. And she said, oh really? And you know what, I have a question for you and if you can answer my question, tease on me. Otherwise, keep going. So, She said, and he said, oh, okay. And she said, in the Diamond Sutra, it says that past mind is already gone. Future mind is not yet here. Present mind cannot be grasped.

[15:28]

What mind will you have this tea and refresh? What mind will you refresh? And Dishan said, Couldn't answer. And after some hesitation and pause, he said, do you know any Zen teachers near here? Nowadays, of course, we joke. He didn't say, oh, can I study with you? No, is there a guy around that I could... So she directed him to a Zen teacher nearby. Oh, and there's many more stories about him getting to the...

[16:36]

you know, the monastery, and he met the Zen master whose name was something about dragon pond or dragon pool, and he said, I don't see any dragon around here. And the Zen teacher says, I guess you don't know how to see very well, do you? Something like this. But anyway, later he actually came out with one of my favorite Zen expressions. And he said, realizing the mystery is nothing but breaking through to grasp an ordinary person's life. Breaking through to grasp an ordinary person's life. You know, someone who has problems and is always going to have them. And you could be that person. You could be the person who that life is impossible. So I wanna talk a little bit more about a past mind, present mind, future mind.

[17:54]

It's pretty important because as you know, Buddhism emphasizes, see if you can be in the present. Aim to be in the present. So, you know, if you study psychology at all, or various, you know, even mindfulness now, mindfulness people talk about these kind of things. But it's pretty well recognized that our emotional mind is in the past. That most of the time when we become emotional, it's as though the two-year-old in us was re-constellated. And we feel angry or disappointed or outraged, helpless, scared,

[19:01]

fragile, but what we forget is, and it all seems to be about today, but it's so intense. When I was living across the street, my girlfriend said to me one day, Ed, you have a lot of intense feelings. You've only known me a couple months. I don't think that you could have feelings this intense about somebody you've just known for a couple months. I would guess these are pretty old. That was one of my first clues. I was about 40. And until then, I'd been thinking that how zen I am. And I could have another life. You know, I wouldn't be breaking through to grasp an ordinary person's life. I'd be surpassing an ordinary person's life and being well above and beyond that. So that everybody bowed and the traffic stopped.

[20:08]

Well, she was right. I have to admit. I had to admit. I still do. Mm-hmm. So it's very interesting, you know, to have present moment, you know, what some people call hijacked. Your mind, body is hijacked by this past mind. It was so painful. And, you know, and that floods. And that sometimes, and the thing about emotions is they often feel like they're flood. It's a flood. And then we often are feeling so helpless. So we don't want to go there. to the past. Even if we wanted to, we don't want to. And of course, it's well known, you know, if somebody says, oh, but I had a happy childhood, then you know they haven't done any therapy yet.

[21:14]

I'm speaking from experience, excuse me, I'm not gonna name names, but. So anyway, so the future mind, on the other hand, is, you know, this past mind tends to be emotional mind. The future mind is mental, mental body. So what thinking tries to do is to figure out, you know, how you can get a future that's the way you want it to be. And of course, the way you want it to be is impossible, because that's not the way things are, but still you'd like them to be that way. You'd like to have fewer difficulties, fewer problems, more ease, more joy, more happiness. What will you do? So the way that the mental body works is, if that happened then,

[22:28]

It could happen in the future and I'm gonna figure out how to make sure that it doesn't happen again. So how tough do you need to be to make sure that nobody ever insults you again, nobody ever shames you again, nobody ever disappoints you? What do you need to do so that those others and the world doesn't misbehave? How are you gonna manage that? Well, maybe you could become a spiritual person. That should do it. We've seen how other people try to do it, you know. If I'm elected, she goes to prison. Mental body, strong one. So, you know, of course we're advised, in Buddhism and in other areas, is it true?

[23:32]

The future that we can imagine, is it true? And one time in a completely other context, you know, which had to do with, I'll tell you this story just briefly. See if I can keep it brief. I met a man in Toronto and one year he was very interested in Buddhist meditation and how to have unsurpassed, supreme, perfect samadhis. really quiet still. And then he went to Jack Kornfield and Stan Groff's holotropic breath workshop in Southern California, I think Joshua Tree or somewhere. And apparently people who go there are not just doing holotropic breathing to get high and stoned, and Stan Groff found, who was one of the original experimenters with LSD, found that holotropic breathing was the closest substitute you can get to LSD. So he started teaching holy trophic breathing. This is where you work with a partner and you have one turn and then in the afternoon the other person or the next day.

[24:38]

But you practice hyperventilating, breathing as fast and as deeply as you can. And your partner says to you, faster, faster, keep going, don't stop. And then you get quite extraordinary states of mind. Some people do. I wasn't very good at it. Stan Grof says, either you should have a story that's big enough to include all stories or you should have a story that's no story at all. So I'm more in the no story at all school. I don't know, a bunch of stuff happened, I don't know. There were sensations and pictures and different things and I don't know what to tell you about it. And other people go on like, yes, I was in this ceremony and this procession and they were you know, somebody was being disemboweled and, you know, they go on and it's like, wow, and my legs were bleeding and, you know, and then this happened and that happened and like, okay.

[25:43]

So a story that includes all these stories or, you know, no story. But anyway, this person I had met went to Joshua Tree and then the next year when I saw him again in Toronto, he'd been taking ayahuasca. A lot of ayahuasca. And he'd been down to Brazil, or is it Brazil where they do ayahuasca? And he'd gone on, huh? Peru? But I think that, but Peru, but I think also Brazil, but maybe, maybe Peru. Anyway, he'd gone on this, there's a traditional pilgrimage you can go on and take certain dosages of ayahuasca at certain places on the pilgrimage, and it lasts for three days or a week or something. Instead of zazen, you know, some people are tripping. But anyway, he said, ayahuasca has given me a vision of the end of the northern hemisphere. Ayahuasca has flown me all over the world. The northern hemisphere is toast.

[26:46]

It's just destruction everywhere. You know, North America, Europe, you know, Russia, Japan, it's all just toast. It's all going to be destroyed. What are we going to do? So I said, Well, you know, it's same choice as usual. You can... You can sit in the middle of it and you can go inside. What do I want to do with my life? What do I have to share? What do I have to offer? What is the gift of who I am? The gift of what I have to share? What did I come here to bring to the world? And you can set about doing that in small ways. Or you could believe that story and move you and your family to South America.

[27:58]

And then after a while, he was so insistent about this, I got nervous. So I was in Toronto and I thought, suppose that he's right and that ayahuasca is right. So then I called up my neighbors, who at that time had been studying with a marine county, with a shaman. who, Wren County actually has a church in Fairfax where the ayahuasca is legal. You become a member and you can take ayahuasca and they bring it in legally. It's, you know, constitutionally protected that you can use ayahuasca as part of your religious service. So I wouldn't know, but I have a friend who's a member of the church. So I called up my neighbors and I asked the wife, said, what about this ayahuasca?

[29:05]

And she said, oh, ayahuasca is such a trickster. You can't believe ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is just out to trick you and to take you on excursions. For a while he was giving my husband stock tips. None of them worked. So then I called up Jack Kornfield. And I happened to get him on the phone, very exciting. Usually you get phone message, you know. I got him on the phone and he said, I told him about this and he said, Ed, nobody can predict the future. That's why it's called the future. Nobody can say what's going to happen. And there's no way to impossible to structure your life, your persona, so that people always talk to you the way you want them to and to, you know, are kind and friendly and supportive and, you know, they don't get mad at you and they don't criticize you and they don't blame you for what's going on with them.

[30:26]

You make me so mad. You make me so sad. You make me so disappointed. You, it's all your fault. And if you would just change your behavior, I wouldn't have to have all these feelings. Okay. Good to know. I think you might have just had your, been hijacked by your two-year-old. Oh, excuse me. We don't talk about those things. Anyway, past. Emotional body, future mental body. Our thinking tends to go, this happened, how do we prevent it? So we can be very busy with the past and with the future. What about the present? And how is it to come back to the present? So I think I'd like to share another Suzuki Rishi story.

[31:39]

At Tassar one time during Sashin, he said, Zen is to feel your way along in the dark. And he would sit up in front of us. Zen is like feeling your way along in the dark. You might think it'd be good to have some light Light is like having a really active mental body. You know where you're going and you know how to get there. So you want other people to get out of my way. I know where I'm going and I know how to get there and I know the way to be and you're in my way. You're slowing me down. And I want to arrive successfully at my destination. This is to have plenty of light strong mental body. And Suzuki Rishi said, when you're in the dark, you need to go very slowly and feel your way along.

[32:53]

And you need to be very careful because it's dark. Otherwise you bump into things, you trip. Whenever I get in a hurry, I, you know, Stuff falls over, things get in my, you know, they get knocked around. This morning I got in a hurry and the coffee ended up back in the tea kettle and I had to use the diluted water in the tea kettle, the coffee diluted, diluted coffee to make my tea. And that was all we had time for. I got in a hurry. So in the dark, these things don't happen. You know, you're going slowly, carefully. And he said, you might think it'd be better to know where you're going, how to get there, and just go, but it doesn't happen like this.

[33:55]

And he said, when you feel your way along, you don't know where you're going, When you get there, you'll find it's a pretty nice place. Excuse me. Okay, well, I want to throw in two Carlos Castaneda stories, if I may. I don't want to go on too long, but see if we can finish this up here. One of my favorite writers for a while was a man named Michael Ventura. He once wrote a book with James Hillman called A Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World's Getting Worse. One of their points was, you know, like you want to process everything, why not leave some things wild? Why not have your own inner wilderness rather than you need to straighten out everything inside? Ahem.

[35:02]

This is like, you know, in Dogen he says, when its heart is grasped, you are like a dragon entering the water like a tiger at home in the forest. You know, you sport a bat in the water, and the water's not like a swimming pool. There's a lot of, but you have some sovereignty or some feeling of being okay with all the, with this, Or in the forest, you know. There's a lot of bugs and, you know, it's a mess. You can't, you know, why would you want to tame it? And we can live in that. So, Anyway, Michael Ventura once wrote an article about Carlos Castaneda.

[36:09]

And one of the stories he told was, one day a woman asked Carlos Castaneda, you know, I have a wonderful life, and I have beautiful children, you know, good work, I have a fine place to live, you know, but I don't seem to have as much of a spiritual life. What should I do so I could have a spiritual life? I'm sorry, I'm chuckling, I have all these, you know, things keep popping in my mind. But, you know, Leonard Cohen, of course, passed away this year, and he studied at Mount Baldy with Suzuki Roshi and other people, and it's very intense there. And he said, in two or three paragraphs, he says, no one comes to a Zen monastery for a vacation. Nobody here is a tourist. Some tourists get here, they leave in 10 minutes. The life is very challenging. We're getting up at three in the morning.

[37:11]

It's cold. It's freezing. We go and light fires in the Zendo. We have to shovel snow. It's a rigorous schedule. Some people used to tell me like, oh yeah, we had three minutes to shower in the afternoon. And then somebody comes in like, get out. That's your three minutes. It's over. Anyway, he said, the spiritual value of this is dubious. You learn to endure. And you discover that whining is the least appropriate response to reality. You learn to endure and you learn that whining is inappropriate. Leonard Kahn for you. Maybe that wasn't your experience. And then he goes on to say that, you know, being at a Zen monastery is like being at a hospital.

[38:15]

A lot of people here can't walk and they can't talk. So, you know, they're learning how to walk and learning how to talk, so that's pretty important. That's, you know, today, being alive today. So a woman says to Carlos Castaneda, I don't have a spiritual life, what shall I do? And he says, when you get home, you know, after work in the afternoon, you know, sit down in your comfortable chair, relax. Take it easy and remind yourself that you and everybody you know will die in no particular order. Think about that. And then she says, how do you do that?

[39:23]

How do you do that? You know, Zen people, we'd like to think that you could figure these things out, but, so we don't always tell you. How do you do that? But she asked, how do you do that? And Carlos Casaneda said, you give yourself a command. But it's interesting, who else is going to figure this out besides you? Who else will figure out your life, how to live your life, how to have a spiritual life, how to be present, alive today, experiencing the world, responding to the world?

[40:28]

At least from time to time, you know, free of your emotional body, free of your mental body, free of these past, I'm tempted to say whatever you call those attachments, mental, emotional, free of the projections into the future. Who's gonna figure this out? it's you know it's like a lot of things you know you can't do it just by following the instructions it's your life and you make it up on the spot so this is you know a sense of the present you know being on the spot

[41:36]

And then Michael Ventura continued, he said, Carlos Castaneda also talked then about discipline. And he said, discipline is the sorcerer's capacity to experience awe. Maybe that's a little bit like being in the dark. The sorcerer's capacity to experience awe, discipline. is the sorcerer's capacity to experience awe. Dogen says it slightly differently, Zen Master Dogen. He said, the Buddhas are not someplace else. They are continually practicing complete awesome presence right here. you yourself, we all have this complete awesome presence.

[42:48]

So I've been reading a book that I, I go to see Mel Weitzman every so often. He's my beloved teacher. I agree with Mitsu Suzuki who says, Mel is more like Suzuki Rishi than any of his other disciples. You know, I like Mitsu say, you know, we see Suzuki Rishi and Mel a lot. And, you know, it doesn't mean that, you know, if you're someone's disciple, it doesn't mean you need to be like them. You know, you should be yourself. But somehow Mel being Mel is a lot like Suzuki Roshi being Suzuki Roshi. So anyway, I take Mel out to lunch.

[44:08]

And then he had a book on his table, which was Zen Under the Gun. And he said, you can borrow that if you want. And before lunch I said no, and then after lunch I said, oh, this is interesting, so I borrowed it. It's not, you know, actually under the gun, that's a little, it's under the sword, but they call it under the gun for modern times. Because it's about the 13th century when the, 12th, 13th century when the Mongols took over China. And then what did you do at this time? And J.C. Cleary, who's the translator in his brother, is it Thomas Cleary? Tom Cleary is the other one. They're geniuses with the Chinese language. And I always appreciate the introductions. And one of the things he reminds us is that some Zen teachers went on being Zen teachers and some

[45:17]

became recluses, some were heads of monasteries, some were anti-intellectual, some, you know, sponsored translation projects and published books and had big libraries. Some, you know, had followers, some didn't. Some participated in politics, most didn't. You know, it doesn't, to be a Zen person doesn't make you mean there's some way to do it so that you become more Zen, you should be you. So a big piece of this, of being you, is to begin to have over time, you begin to have some sense inside. What is the most important point? What are you here to do? and to begin to align your daily activities with this, to have this daily life in alignment with your core.

[46:27]

Carlos Castaneda said, give yourself a command. In Buddhism we usually say, you know, make a vow. Find the vow that is implicit in your life. Find the wish that is in you. align with that. And then J.C. Cleary has this wonderful quote. He said, so one of the Zen masters said, the ocean of the reality limit has no shores. This is, you know, perhaps another way of talking about now. The ocean of now has no shores. The ocean, so reality limit, Buddha, ta-ta-ta, Dharmakaya, the ocean of reality limit, the ocean of now has no shores.

[47:38]

Mountains, rivers, the great earth are waves on this ocean. Sun, moon, and stars are waves on this ocean. It flows into the nostrils of all the Buddha's past, present, and future. All of you who wish to escape from your bubble of delusion and witness this ocean, Go slow and gently reawaken. Go slow and gently reawaken. Backward step. Go slow, reawaken. Go slow, you're in the dark. Go slow, life is impossible. Take some time to reflect and move ahead.

[48:49]

So the next day, you know, finally a student had a chance to say to Suzuki Roshi, last night, Roshi, you said, you know, life is basically impossible. What are we going to do? And he said, you do it every day. You do it every day. What's impossible? 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, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[49:58]

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