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. So yesterday I read this piece from Dugan Zenji's Did You Use Am I? But even for a moment you sit upright in samadhi expressing the Buddha Mudra.

[01:01]

In the three activities the whole phenomenal world becomes Buddha Mudra and the entire sky turns into enlightenment. And then it continues. Practice increases the Dharma joy of the original state of the Buddha Tathagatas and renews the adornment of the way of awakening. A while ago, sitting in the Abbot's cabin, I was always thinking about, okay, what am I going to do with that? I thought, well, probably what I usually do, I'll turn it into something like a cheese sandwich. It seems like the nature of my mind is, yeah, yeah, yeah, but, you know, really all he's talking about is a cheese sandwich.

[02:08]

in some ways I want to apologize because there is something worthy of our veneration in awakenedness, in the awakened mind, in the heritage, in the tradition of the great sages throughout the times that have awakened of the traditions around the globe. You know, there was a wonderful anthropologist, Angelice Aryan, and she traveled the globe looking at all the wisdom traditions, looking for the overlaps, you know, looking for the commonalities. And then very interestingly, very creatively, she created her own Not exactly tradition.

[03:23]

Well, I mean, maybe she was the initiator of the tradition, but her own way of practice. And it makes very interesting reading. Angelis Ariane. So I don't mean in my own tea sandwich way to diminish the magnificence of the way. What I'm trying to do is bring it here, you know, in this body in mind, with its rambling thoughts and preoccupations, there is also this process. And as Dogen says, even for a moment, even a glimpse reveals the nature of awakened mind.

[04:23]

Not to say that a cheese sandwich isn't amazing. It is. Just watch yourself during bag lunch and you'll see how devoted you are to that endeavor. How important it is to you. Or most of us, not everyone. To follow that thought a little bit, you know, most of us have rejected, stepped back from cosmology of reverence in a theistic way maybe not all of us but most of us I think have found it suspect liking or whatever or uninteresting and have come to the reverence of agnosticism but even there

[05:50]

not, you know, not become too casual. Okay, now, I was going to say back to Joshu, that great Zen teacher, Mr. Ordinary. Have you had lunch? Wash your bowl. Have you eaten your cheese sandwich? Okay, recycle the paper bag. Increase the Dharma joy of the original state of the Buddha Thakka. When we start to pay attention, you know, when we're deep in Sashin, somehow there's glimpses of ease, there's moments of ease.

[07:24]

Not because we've achieved something terrific. Just this world as it is, it has loosened up, lightened up, doesn't seem to represent such a problematic proposition of being alive. now and here seems to have more space more availability and in a way seems more habitable it's shifting from being a furtive shadow on the edge of our field of vision there's something that's just

[08:34]

casually unfolding in front of us. Aureoke, eating Aureoke has more space. We're more able to notice how starting to eat influences our mental activity. Are we eating the thoughts or are we eating the food? Are the thoughts eating us while we eat the food? In conventional world, in conventional mind,

[09:36]

these are both ridiculous and irrelevant questions. But as we settle into awareness and we're watching the play of consciousness, it's like, hmm, yeah, what is happening? Not because we need to find the great remedy that we will impose upon it. But it has its own curiosity. This ease, this spaciousness, this availability, this curiosity There's a language, there's a word in Sanskrit, and it translates as adornment.

[10:45]

These are like adornments. You know, adornments enhance, you know, the state of being. enhance the state of being, these adornments. And they also make available the process of awakening. And today I'm going to read the poem early. because I think it's terrible. The kitchen has to go back without having had the edification and the exhilaration of hearing the poem.

[11:48]

I imagine them weeping as they chop the carrots. Thinking, ah, what would that Seamus Heaney poem have been? Had I not been awake, Had I not been awake, I would have missed it. A wind that rose in the world until the roof pattered with the quick leaves off the sycamore. We've got our own sycamores. We're all set. It got me up. The whole of me, a patter. The whole of me, a patter, alive and ticking like an electric fence. Had I not been awake, I would have missed it. It came and it went so unexpected and almost it seemed dangerously. Returning like an animal to the house. A courier blast from there and then lapsed ordinary.

[12:59]

But not ever after. And not now. Had I not been awake, had I not been receptive, available, adorned with the attributes that helped create that availability, I would have missed it. Talk about a cheese sandwich. He made a whole poem up out of some leaves landing on the roof. What's such a big deal?

[14:04]

Alive and ticking like an electric fence. Yesterday I was talking about two aspects of energy. The directed attention, the directed effort, the directed engagement, and that quality of energy that stimulates. And then the reception. By the way, in some Zen traditions, those two guardian deities that at City Center we have, one is considered to be directing, the other one is receiving. If you look at the body shapes.

[15:26]

They balance each other. Directed attention by itself tends towards striving and the contraction of striving. The mind contracts. This goal has to happen. The effort needs to manufacture and then receptive attention by itself slips into spaciness we go from here to there without ever having been present for the journey.

[16:29]

And as such, it tends to dissipate. loses the immediacy, the energy of suchness, just this. Just the sound of the leaves hitting the roof. Left me alive and ticking like an electric fence. perceptions stimulates the mind.

[17:38]

And in its particularity, it stimulates the mind and it brightens the mind. It adorns the mind with brightness. a clarity that sustains the electors. And without the balancing factor of receptivity, that has its own kind of contraction. the mind can contract into reification. This is something. Experience. A sound. Just part of the flow of causes and conditions.

[19:00]

adornment of brightness, that adornment of engaging the particular of what is. It's a significant factor. And it can be a useful tool. Like in a more common mind where it conjures up a whole story and then tends to sink in its own creation until there is a kind of unclarity and confusion. To reach in and contact, make contact with some particularity. is it in the body what's the state of mind what's the particularity of content even on a cognitive level and then this has a more subtle version as we're sitting you know and the mind can tend to interweave perceptions and thoughts

[20:33]

And again, created unclearably. And then we return to awareness. In that moment of returning, noting. If the mind's not so settled, with words. If the mind's more settled, experience. Remembering the rediscovery, the reestablishing of body and breath in the body and the particulars. So this way, the particulars, the details, the noticing, it helps lift up, out, over. Hmm. I was going to say the word swamp, but then I thought there must be a nicer word.

[21:35]

Steve White told me once the Yiddish word was mishikas. So especially when the mind, when you're sitting and the mind is feeling And when the mind dips into unawareness, that opaqueness has that quality. And coming back to particular. So this kind of directed attention. And you know, the one thing I haven't mentioned yet is, other than khanzeon, chanting khanzeon, is... energized directed attention.

[22:39]

In the Rinzai school, it's... Those Rinzai people are... They're reckless. They're just like... There's no stopping them. Just to be clear, I don't in any way mean to demean or disrespect a marvelous tradition. Marvelous. Directed attention with energy. Extending the exhale. But I would say to know what you're doing.

[23:49]

And I would say this as a word of caution. Discovering, letting the body breathe before bringing intentional breath. It's like establishing the non-dual principle. as the foundation of engaging practice. Nothing to attain and no one to attain it. Okay, good. Now we've established that. Let's make our diligent effort. delight our day, sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly, more deliberately, weaving in this directed attention.

[24:59]

The monk asks Master Bao Che, why do you offend yourself? Everything is suchness that every moment, even leaves falling on the roof. As the spark of awakening. Why directed attention? It enables. engages consciousness in a way that allows the factors of awakeness in consciousness to come into presence, to be engaged, to adorn the mind. near enemy control it's near enemy attempting to achieve the desired goal but I would say our practice is about we relate to these factors skillfully we don't say this and not that

[26:47]

trying to walk with one leg, you know? They move, like the front and back foot in walking. They move together. It's about balance. And when we're thoroughly settled in Jashin like this, we can explore that. You can explore this relational way of being so I would say as you find that breath in the body as you find that breath breathing the body then if it seems helpful what is it to extend the exhale And then in that breathing technique, you pause and you allow the inhale.

[28:14]

Directed receptive. Joriki Wu Wei. a balancing engagement. And the adornments, the great generosity of our human existence is, they just happen. The great generosity of our human existence is that when we engage these energies purposefully they harmonize body and mind it's like a digestive system when we stop when it's functioning well

[29:24]

When we stop the agitation of mind, it just works. There it is. And then the receptive, It has occurred to me at times. Why didn't Dogen Zanji call this the directed and receptive samadhi? But I would say it's in there. You know, the word employ. There's engagement. There is that in there implied in the terms he used.

[30:29]

Gigi used M.I. It has both employ and enjoy. Join in with joy. Enjoy. So the receptive samadhi has this quality of non-struggling. It has this quality of Everything returns to the source. The energized, adamant narrative in our head, as we open to it, acknowledging its particularity, what it is that harmed you, hurt you, betrayed you,

[31:33]

whatever terrible thing. And then feeling the mind of that, feeling the emotion of that, feeling the body of that, feeling the sensation of that, feeling the energy of that. Form, returning to emptiness, and then comes forward with the suchness of form. Even that unrelenting story is adorned with its own Buddha virtue. appropriateness of compassion for the human condition, the practicality of patience, you know, of acceptance, of forgiveness, the non-grasping that allows

[33:07]

the now sensation of it to have its own authority and validity. And the rippling energy through the body, breath, mind of being, the Buddha mudra, is revealed. All thing, all form returns to the source, returns to interbeing. And that which seemed to be taking us far away from our Dharma seat brings us back. Receptive attention.

[34:12]

And its adornments are the path of practice includes everything. There is no need to hold yourself in because you're on a razor's edge. What's happening now can't be exhausted. Nothing that can arise does not answer that question. The Buddha field is all-encompassing. sense of striving and scarcity are diminished.

[35:31]

A sense of abundance. The contractions of the body, the breath, the mind that hinder, you know, in One of the Ehrlich pieces, the literal translation says, the nodes on the bamboo and the knots in the wood. This great oriental penchant for referencing the natural world. The knots in the mind. constrictions where we get stuck. The receptive attention invites them to melt and something flows.

[36:47]

And the heritage of our tradition is We explore that flow with the body and the breath. With the uprightness and settledness of the body and the flow of the breath. And we discover there's nothing in the human experience that isn't body and breath receptive attention. So these two factors. Directed, receptive. And we could say, and I would say rightly so, that each of us, it's wonderful to think

[38:05]

that shikantazu, zazen, any kind of practice has its own sort of pristine and proper virtue. But in actuality, the human consciousness, the human mind, the human consciousness is fine, the human mind, it's a madhouse. We do all sorts of things. while we're attempting to shikantaza. There's a marvelous little poem about it by Hafiz, and he refers to the human mind as the 10,000 idiots. And then he refers to the poems about those moments where there's clarity and tranquility. He says, don't forget, the 10,000 idiots are just on vacation.

[39:11]

They'll be back. Receptive attention allows us to create a wide enough Buddha field that all 10,000 idiots can, you know, feel at home. And then directed attention, says hello to each one as it appears. this integration it is this this integration of discontinuous contact where we lapse into unawareness and become a mystery to ourselves become an unclarity to ourselves

[40:37]

And that tendency towards unclarity, it has its own fear. Its own tendency towards losing its dharma seat, losing its core confidence. its brightness and this is the great patience of our practice because this is what we're working with you know and it's a rare and precious gift that we have brought ourselves here But we brought ourselves here to the sixth day of Shashim.

[41:43]

We now, the contact is there. And I would suggest to you that it's there more than you realize. Maybe someday we should have a talk. Everybody gets up and leaves except the kitchen. Then what would we do? And who'd make lunch? I'll work on that part.

[42:47]

in which when we sit together and we bring awareness we become one body and then it's a different body when some of that body leaves receptive awareness heals. Because receptive awareness discovers and contacts what's happening now. And this is completely itself. Our mind may hold

[44:03]

And our feelings may hold there and then and compare with the adornment of receptive attention. This is completely itself. And that deep rooted sense that this you soul read last night not enough that we separate we experience not enough and then we yearn we thirst

[45:04]

what will make it enough. Whether we know what it is, we want that to be or not. So as we settle into this phase of Shashin, don't underestimate the awareness that has come into being. Even when, you know, there's an awareness that says, that's not a bull of fuel, that's just a cheese sandwich. You know, that's still awareness. When you see some persistent thought, oh God, there I go again. That's awareness. You might not like it. You might have a commentary about it. You can be aware of your commentary.

[46:08]

And in between, the accidents will happen. Enjoy. And they don't have to be fantastic and extravagant, like leaves falling off the citron tree. They might just be, you know, the feeling of the polished wood at the bathhouse. The cool air that suddenly arrived as the harbinger of what's to come. Please.

[47:23]

Yes. Some of us might roll our eyes and say, oh yeah, right. The practice thus increases the dharma joy that is the original state of the buddhata-tagatas and renews the adornment of the awakening of the way. that lofty to the point of irrelevance is that a far flung cosmology that bears no significance in this realm of existence or is he merely talking

[48:27]

about the thoughts and feelings and experiences that have gone on for you since breakfast. James Heaney's closing thought. A courier blast from there and then. Last ordinary. And not forever after. And then I've

[49:31]

take exception with his last statement, and not now. Well, what if now is everything? What if there's nothing outside of now? Van Morrison entitled a song he wrote recently as, The Only Time Is Now. Of course, the usual considerations, preoccupations, agitations, desires of your world are still rattling around. But don't be fooled.

[50:38]

They're not the whole story. These moments of loudest ordinary. Of awareness. The adornments are there too. Receptive awareness. He's like soaking them up so thoroughly that maybe there's more of them than there is of me. Maybe we'll forget how to be me.

[51:41]

Who was I again? What do I usually worry about? a thing that really annoys me. I know there's something. Just can't get there right now. And enjoy. Join with the joy. delicate proposition. It's not to diminish, suppress the stuff that bubbles up and troubles us. It's just not to let it be the whole story. It's not.

[52:44]

It's just the arising of conditioned existence. And that very same arising is the Buddha field. And very same arising gives rise to the adornments of awakening. Thank 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. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

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