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. As you probably noticed by now, Christina is not giving a talk. She woke up this morning, actually. She has been... Doing each Wednesday morning, she went to the soup kitchen this morning to help make breakfast and afterwards realized she didn't feel so good. And so she asked me if I would give the talk this evening. And apparently I said yes. I'd like to give you this evening a version of embodying. But I'd like to start with an embodying experience.

[01:04]

So if you will indulge me, we will start with about six or seven minutes of a guided meditation. If you could just close your eyes. maybe on this lovely warm evening, while you'll maintain your uprightness, your balance, your openness, let that be engaged with the softness. Let that be embodied with being rather than doing. maybe just for yourself, translating those ideas into a felt experience.

[02:10]

A softness that engages in bodies with more sense of being than doing. And then bring awareness to the sounds, the ambient sounds. The sounds that are happening in a sort of 360 amphitheater. The sounds that are happening right here. as they arrive right here. And as the sounds are heard, experience the sound as if you're being

[03:36]

was soaking it up. Pause.

[04:42]

And let this being, that's just being, just breathe. Tapping into its own rhythm of being. Its own rhythm of breathing. pushing away the sound. It may be more like breathing it along with breathing the body. and now quite deliberately direct attention to this physical sensations of the body.

[06:16]

letting the body be just a global field of sensation, rather than a sensation in my knee, a sensation in that area of global being. with that global attention, the receptive quality of receiving any physical sensation that arises. As you attend to body sensation, noticing that that receptive attention also receives the sounds, also receives the breath.

[08:33]

receives the thoughts. The tapestry of existence is woven from all these threads of experiencing. And then quite slowly and deliberately open your eyes and let seeing join the other senses in weaving the tapestry of existence.

[09:56]

Maybe it's all downhill from there. A few sprinklings of Dharma, a few odd quotes, a poem, and then the closing chant. Or maybe something in you, as we chant, and unsurpanitrating in perfect Dharma, something in you, thoroughly enjoying those threads of experience, can watch how curious and wonderful it is to think and have ideas. And they just weave in there with the sounds. This sense of engaging the functioning of the self as the vehicle of being, the vehicle of experiencing what is.

[12:00]

Dugan Zenji called this I don't know if he made that term up or whether in his ferocious studies it was something that was taught to him. Engaging the self and then the Jijiu also has a sense of ease or just being or spaciousness. can we give that to ourselves? Can we allow that as a state of being? I hope for us on this warm evening, somehow we can allow that. We can be generous with ourselves and with each other in that way. And the zammai is the Japanese way of pronouncing the word samadhi, which means a continuing contact.

[13:15]

So even as it flows from sound to sensation of breathing, to physical sensation in other parts of the body, to sight, to thinking. almost a kind of deep appreciation. We're coming up to the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's birth. And I was looking at a photograph of one of his famous paintings. I think it's called La Belle Frommiere. Do you know?

[14:21]

And I was looking at it and in one way I noticed looking at it in a certain way It's a young woman, 20, 30, somewhere in there. The painting has an aliveness to it. It's almost like you can't help but be fooled into a... You're looking at the person. You're seeing the way she's gazing at you. There's some palpable aliveness. And then, but having been painted 450 years ago, the oil of the painting is drying and creating, I think the words are crackling, where there's these little patterns of cracks.

[15:34]

And you can see, oh, And the oil paint dried and shrunk back and created this kind of textured surface of crackling. And then watching that the aliveness of the beauty of the painting of the young woman a version of reality. Something in the personhood meets the image through seeing and then feeling and co-creates. And then maybe notices, oh, but there's this crackling surface.

[16:37]

In a way, when we allow being in that elemental way, the sound is just the sound. You can play with that, and you can let the sound be so thoroughly just the sound that the usual accompaniment, oh, that's an ambulance, siren, going down a street, one or two streets over. I don't know if you noticed, but when you were sitting, and I said, pay attention to the sound, and you can notice how each sound has its own kind of auditory texture or quality. The roar of a loud car

[17:43]

is different from the murmur of distant car. And this way, that our usual state of consciousness is to weave together these elements of experience into a tapestry that enlivens us and we enliven it. Codependent origination. We create the exquisite work of art and the exquisite work of art creates us. And Dogen Zenji says, this kind of embodying

[18:44]

In Buddhist psychology, there's a term called rupa. And rupa means that which is apprehended translates. That which is apprehended through the senses. And the mind is one of the senses that apprehends experience. And then the Buddhist teaching is We just take those and they spark a moment of existence. And then in a marvelous, mysterious way, we take those moments and we weave them into a life, a day. a version of reality.

[19:49]

And Dogen Zenji says, in Bendawa, and this Jiju Zamai, this resting, this allowing, this simple engagement of being, carries the teachings of all the Buddhas and ancestors. This is how they transmitted one to another. This is how awareness transmits to us the essence of our practice. Immersion in experience. I was looking at that picture of Leonardo da Vinci. And then I started reading an article that was with it. And apparently there's this exhibition that's about to be put on.

[21:04]

It's 10 years in the making. And it will be held in France. And certain parts of the Italian government don't like it that it's in France. and they've been struggling with collaboration. In fact, they reached a point where they refused to collaborate with each other. Even in the face of beauty, even in the face of this constant creation of existence, we struggle to get along with each other. Leonardo spent his final years as a guest of the King of France.

[22:14]

And I think the French think, we're special. And the Italians think, wait a minute, Where did he come from? What country did he live in for most of his life? But there's a very interesting potential within Jijiu Zamai. And that is, we can start to see our own creations. Dogen called it taking a backward step. We can return to residing, embodying that basic reality. We can take a little vacation from the great dramas of our life.

[23:24]

And then we can return and we can offer them some spaciousness. We can see the play within our own mind. This is an alive, vibrant young woman. This is the crackling of drying textured oil on a flat surface. We can do that. Our consciousness is capable of that. We can read an article and the French and the Italians are struggling with negotiating Don't worry, relax. They came to some considerations and now they're collaborating again.

[24:37]

And it'll be all in the Louvre soon. We can hold the stuff of human life And when the spaciousness is there, I would suggest to you, rather than that inkling to kind of find fault, those terrible French and Italians, why can't they be wonderful Zen people like us? Rather than the need to compete or to judge or to criticize or to take side, something in us can savor isn't this the nature of life? Who hasn't judged? Who hasn't taken sides? Who hasn't gauged superior and inferior?

[25:48]

But to see it and to see through it. To let it be a teaching rather than to be enmeshed in it and caught up in living it out as if it was the definition of reality. So this immersion And this arising, immersion in the elements and arising into the interbeing it gives birth to. Got it? Okay. And so I'd like to use a, believe it or not, a poem to illustrate this point. And it's by Pablo Neruda.

[26:56]

And Dylan is going to read it in Spanish and then I'll read it in English for those of us who regretfully don't know Spanish. No sé cuándo llegamos a Temuco. Fue impreciso nacer y fue tardío nacer de veras Lento y palpar, conocer, odiar, amar. Todo esto tiene flor y tiene espinas. Del pecho, orgullendo de mi patria, me llevaron sin hablar. Hasta la lluvia de la abracanía. Las tablas de la casa odian a bosque, a ser va cura. Desde entonces mi amor fue madrero. Y lo que toco se convierte en bosque. Se me confunden los ojos y las hojas.

[27:58]

Ciertas mujeres por la primavera, del avellano, el hombre con el árbol. Amo el mundo del viento y del follado. No distinguo entre rayos y raíces. I don't know if we need to understand it in one way. Maybe the rhythm of the signs speaks to our heart. And we should stop there. But for now, I'll continue. The first journey. And when is it not the first journey? Has this evening ever existed before?

[28:59]

Will it ever exist again? I don't know. When we came to Temuco, it was vague, being born, and a slow business, being truly born, and slowly feeling, knowing, hating, loving. All of that has both flowers, and thorns. From the dusty bosom of my country they took me, still an infant, into the rain Ararchana. The boards of the house smelled of the woods, of the deep forest. From that time on my love had wood in it, and everything I touched turned into wood. They became one in me, lives and leaves. Certain women and the hazelnut, spring, man, and trees. I love the world of wind and foliage. I can't tell lips from roots.

[30:13]

In that embodiment of existence, Not only does it literally give life, but it gives life to life. It gives appreciation. When we appreciate, it's like it fills us up. and judging right and wrong and creating us and them and competition don't seem so necessary. Don't seem so compelling or even so convincing.

[31:26]

I love the woods and from then on Everything I loved had wood in it. We carry within us some message, some way of engaging from what has touched us deeply. And our practice, the practice of Zazen, both in sitting and activity, is the embodiment of this elemental freedom. that when we simply embody being becomes apparent to us. And when we can't tell lips from roots, what a wonderful not knowing.

[32:28]

What an exquisite way let the world teach us what it is. And Dogen Zenji says, and this is the teaching and the transmission of all the Buddhas and all the ancestors without deviation. Each of us, the teachings tell us, has been given this gift. Each of us has the opportunity and maybe the challenge of nurturing this gift and keeping it alive in our own being.

[33:41]

One of the amazing, I find, amazing things about Leonardo da Vinci, he had a passion and a hunger for engaging and learning. Near where he lived, there was a stream. And from looking at that stream, he deduced the laws of fluid mechanics hundreds of years before the rest of Western science discovered indeed that was so. He created machines that could fly, knowing aerodynamics, from watching bats and birds. He sought out experts, those who were proficient and skilled in different fields, so he could go and study with them.

[34:59]

His beginner's mind was blazingly bright. inquiry. And his appreciation created extraordinary inventions, understandings, and art. And then recently we've been arguing over who can host the 500-year celebration. How curious life is. We can look around and think, okay, that's magnificent, but I don't like that.

[36:09]

I would change the color on it. how couldn't we have a nice carpet instead of this weird tatami? But even that, when we let it sparkle with its own odd extravagance, has a teaching. Can we open up to what we are and how we are and who we are, not as some exercise in self-criticism, but more with Leonardo's avid inquiry

[37:13]

And what is it to let life blossom? No? What is it to enter into being so thoroughly that it nourishes the thirsts of desire? What is it to enter into being so thoroughly that the impulse, the aggressive impulses seem irrelevant in appreciation. The first journey. I don't know when we came to Tampoco. It was vague being born and a slow business.

[38:14]

being truly born, and truly feeling, knowing, hating, loving. All that has built flowers and thorns. From the dusty bosom of my country, they took me, still an infant, into the rains of Arakana. The boards of the house smelled the woods of the deep forest. From that time on, my love had wood in it, and everything I touched turned into wood. They became one in me, lives and leaves, certain women and the hazelnut, spring, man, and trees. I love the world of wind and foliage. I can't tell lips from roots. Dugan Sanji says, without deviation, all the Buddhas, all the ancestors transmitted this way.

[39:28]

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, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:57]

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