This podcast is offered by San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. All I can do, all I wish to do, is to encourage you to open up to your experience. to experience your experience fully. I want to encourage you to sink deeply into your experience as if it was a vast ocean. When it was suggested to me to give this talk, I asked a few people and said, what should I talk about?

[01:06]

And John Thorne, the head of practice here at City Center, suggested I talk about what inspires and encourages us. When I asked my dear teacher, Michael Wenger, he said, when you talk about the patient acceptance of dharmas which fail to be produced, that's a line from one of our teaching texts, Diamond Sutra. patient acceptance of dharmas that fail to be produced.

[02:08]

And I talked to a friend who doesn't live at Zen Center, hasn't even been here, and he said, why don't you talk about gratitude and appreciation? So, inspiration, encouragement, dharmas that fail to be produced, gratitude, appreciation, I try and I guess I will fail. So, to come back to what I said in the beginning, I think for many of us, it's not so easy to open up to our experience completely.

[03:15]

Maybe there is something painful in our life, something painful that we are not ready yet to fully feel and face. Or maybe I thought we'd just like to continue daydreaming that the grass is actually greener on the other side of the fence of this current moment of experience. However, I would like to suggest to you tonight that opening up to what is happening right now is what deeply inspires and encourages us. For example, if we are not inspired by the sound of the car driving by the meditation hall in the early morning hours, I actually think we will not be inspired

[04:37]

by anything else, at least not at that time. However, if we allow our experience of the sound of the car just meeting our ear without seeking anything in addition to that, then I think We train ourselves in patient acceptance. Patient acceptance of the present moment because there is no alternative to what's happening right now. And then, if we allow ourselves to sink deeply into this present moment, we will see more and more that the present moment is a Dharma.

[05:48]

The present moment is an experience that fails to be produced. And this dawning of insight This deep intimacy with what is happening right now will in turn inspire us and allow our acceptance and patience to grow. Then I think we actually become grateful and appreciative of our life. whatever happens at that moment, because we sense the deep, we sense the deep. We sense the deep mysteriousness of a car driving by the window.

[06:53]

We sense that it's actually a mystery when our neighbor in the meditation hall clears her throat. And these apparently insignificant moments of our lives are mysteries because, as Dogen puts it, whole worlds are there. Whole worlds are there. But I want to suggest that we have to discover them. We have to enter the present moment and see for ourselves that whole worlds are there. So, the Dharma gate of the present moment is always open. However, as we tend to linger around in the front yard of our experience,

[08:09]

and not really stepped through the gate, we have been given the practice of zazen. Zazen, as I see it, is an entering practice. It's an initiation practice. Zazen allows us to enter our lives, lives which at times feel so insignificant or maybe meaningless, or anxiety-ridden, small. And yet, upon entering, we can see that whole worlds are there. We begin to see how the seemingly insignificant

[09:10]

perhaps even painful moment of our present life is, in truth, as, for example, Dogen puts it in the Genjo Koan, is an ocean of infinite variety. If we start to, I would say, sense that, I think real gratitude grows. So lately, I've been inspired by what we could call the preliminaries of zazen. That which we might overlook or that which some of us at least, for example me, might do in a way mechanically in the morning.

[10:21]

But I want to extend this perspective and I want to talk about now to maybe anything in our lives that we tend to overlook or that we think is a chore or that we start to see as doing something that we do mechanically. Again, the theme for me here is how the insignificant, the marginal, that which we maybe overlook, is maybe nothing other but the whole work. This is it. So Dogen Zenji, the mother-father of our practice in Japan in the 13th century, Dogen Zenji, in his meditation manuals, in his instructions on meditation, he spends a lot of time describing how we should prepare the space for meditation.

[11:45]

not too hot, not too cold, spreading thick matting on the ground, arranging our clothes loosely, etc. He describes how we, or he gives suggestions about sitting down. Not leaning to the right, he says, not leaning to the left. not leaning forward, not leaning backward. So I want to say again, as I see this, all this could be seen as the preliminaries of meditation. We might think, all these instructions only prepare me for meditation, and only then does the actual work begin. But those of you who are familiar with his instructions, have you noticed how Dogen doesn't say much about the actual work of meditation?

[12:59]

I find this very interesting. He does not recommend following or counting our breath. He does not talk about developing calm, abiding, or studying the four foundations of mindfulness, for example. He does not teach us how to enter meditative absorptions. He doesn't do all this. But also, of course, he doesn't say not to do all this. He's just strangely silent about this. He just says, do not lean right or left. Do not lean forward or backward.

[14:01]

I'm asking, could just this be it? To just wholeheartedly sit without leaning? Sitting in this present moment, Like right now, are we seeking anything, where is it, on the right, on the left? Are we seeking anything in front of us or behind us? Now what I think, and this is just me, I think Dogen says something like, just wholeheartedly sit. And I think that also means just wholeheartedly stand, or walk, or lie down, or ride your bike, or talk, or listen.

[15:09]

Just wholeheartedly sit and enter your experience Enter by not leaning to the right, nor to the left, by not leaning forward, and by not leaning backward. Be in this way of not leaning and become thoroughly intimate with present moment. Be inspired by not leaning. Have the patience, I think Dogen says, to not lean. And thus, by having the patience to not lean, more and more understand that all dharmas failed to be produced. Practice

[16:17]

Actually, practice, not line. And appreciate and be grateful for being precisely. Be grateful for being precisely in this unproduced middle of your life. Actually being in the unproduced middle of all of life. So, every time I sit down now, I sit in meditation. But I do want to say, from my perspective, this is true also if you sit on a chair in meditation, if you walk in meditation, or if you lie down in meditation, or if you do the meditation of your work.

[17:19]

but they might be tricky. When I say every time I sit down now, I actually go through these motions. I really deeply lean over, which I can't do now because of the microphone, my left leg, my right leg. I do this in smaller and smaller movements and try to find the middle. I do the same by bending forward and backward and do these pendulum movements and try to find the middle. And I find out that more and more just doing this, this very simple practice inspires me and I actually find deep significance in it. And I want to go all the way and say that I think that the vital teachings of Buddhism are actually expressed in this very simple practice.

[18:45]

So I want to take a few minutes to really look at them in detail. So Dogen says, do not lean to the left. I don't know why it's the left for me, but in other words, do not wander off into the past. Do not wander off into the past, but come back. Come back to this very moment. Do not lean to the right. In other words, do not get lost into thoughts and imaginations about the future, but come back into the immediate present. When I think about this, the opening words of an essay by Dogen, which is called The Mountain and River Sutra, come to my mind.

[20:02]

Dogen says, the mountains and rivers of the immediate present are the path of the ancient Buddhas. The mountains and rivers of the immediate present are the path of the ancient Buddhas. I actually hear this as a meditation instruction. So we built this mountain of Zaze, no matter, again, this is important for me, no matter how we sit, or walk, or lie down. We built this mountain of zazen by not leaning to the right, not leaning to the left, not leaning forward, and not leaning backward.

[21:05]

In other words, once again, We do not lean into the past. We do not lean into the future. And sitting in this immediate present, we allow the rivers, the rivers of experience, to run through and over this mountain. Now, this is interesting for me. This is as Dogen says, the path of the ancient Buddhas. So I want to suggest to you that thinking about this, what came up for me was to say that just sitting in the middle of our life, just sitting, just being in the middle of our life is without anything

[22:19]

without adding anything to it, in itself, the middle way. Just being in our life, in the middle of our life, without adding anything, is in itself the middle way. So, that was left and right. The same holds true, I think, for leaning forward and backward. Once we enter the full experience of our life, I think we start to sense how complex, how complex actually every moment of our experience is. For example, we might find out that moment after moment, we add grasping to our experience.

[23:23]

Or, moment for moment, we add aversion to our experience. It's one layer. As I see it, that's one layer of our experience. This is just how we are, I think. We try to hold on to certain experiences We try to prolong them because we like them. It's very simple. And we try to get away from certain experiences because they're painful or we dislike them. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's how we are. There's nothing wrong with that. However, as you all know, It simply doesn't work. Each moment of experience has its time.

[24:28]

There is nothing we can do to make it longer or shorter or go away altogether. And I think for this reason, actually the Buddha identified grasping as source of suffering. So, once again, I would suggest by really taking on this very simple, and I call it a meditation instruction, so by not leaning forward, we literally embody and in act, non-grasping. By not leaning backward, we directly, literally, practice letting go of our aversions. At times in the morning, when I actually do these pendulum movements,

[25:45]

passage from one of our teaching texts, Jewel Mirror Samadhi, comes to my mind where it says, it is like, oh, that's an old translation, one I know, it is like a mass of fire both touching and turning away is wrong. It is like a mass of fire What is this it? Reality? The present moment? Your experience right now? In any case, it is vast. It is like a wall of fire. And if we lean too much into it, If we put our hand into the fire because we want to hold on to it, we burn.

[26:57]

It's painful. If we turn away from it, the way I would say it is we miss our life and it becomes cold in us. But if we begin to actually find the middle, literally the middle of our life, if we find the middle of our life in this gesture of balance called zaze, our life will warm us and nourish us And we will appreciate it and be grateful. I think what I tried to say, maybe a theme I had, was that the preliminaries are the whole thing, right?

[28:35]

So in my thinking about this lecture, what I said up to now are the preliminaries. I think there's something else I want to express. And maybe I made the mistake to think that what I want to express now is a more important thing. So I let it go. But just say a few words about this, just to maybe allude to something. Opening up to the present moment is to sink deep. if we sink deep, as if into an ocean. As you know, the depth of the ocean is completely dark.

[29:42]

And I can only speak from my experience. I think what, let's say, conventional life doesn't prepare us for is that actually in sinking, we encounter darkness. I mean this figuratively and literally. We encounter darkness. And I wanted to bring this up because I don't hear so much talk about this. I want to bring this up because at this point, I think for many of us, it becomes tricky. Because anxiety might arise. From the perspective of the wave we usually identify with, from the perspective of the small self, darkness signifies voidness, nothingness, annihilation, death.

[30:50]

But I do want to say that if we allow ourselves to even sink deeper at that moment and open up to the experience of darkness, we will see that it is so much filled with life that we cannot see it. Because what we usually call life or light, what we experience, is only reflected out of this darkness, prevails for a moment, and is laid down in this darkness again. I think this is actually meant by the dharmas that fail to be produced. because our single little lives are not separate from the vast ocean of darkness.

[32:10]

And I wanted to say this because lately beloved members of this community passed away. This afternoon I had a phone conversation with Nadia woman who used to be the head cook here, who went to France and buried her mother three weeks ago. And a friend of mine is here, whose mother passed away three weeks ago. So please, I hope I don't scare anybody, but I do want to say, from the perspective of our small self, Yes, we are a sinking ship. We set out on the voyage of our life, we go out into the ocean, and eventually we sink. We will enter darkness.

[33:17]

From the perspective of Dharma, however, Perspective of Dharma opening up to completely This small ship is not separate from the ocean of infinite variety So why wait Why not sink right now Because Death will force us to So why not practice sitting a way of living that does not lean to the left, does not lean to the right, does not lean forward, does not lean backward, and thus enter great peace. Do we have a few minutes?

[34:28]

The time is 8.25. Well, so please, if you have feedback, if you want to express something, if you have questions, please. I'll get out there. I didn't get it. At this present moment, I think there is no other Dharma gate but the present moment.

[35:31]

So, present moment comes up, I don't even think we can say it prevails. It's gone. While I'm saying the present moment comes up, it's gone. Countless Dharma gates. No present moment is the same. So, once again, I would say there's only one Dharma gate. It's present moment. And yet, Dharma gates are infinite because Present moments are infinite in variety. What were you thinking of? Yeah, thank you for bringing this up because yes, as long as we think there is anything anywhere else

[36:35]

We do not enter yet. So maybe if you can open up to the book and you arising together as present moment, that's the Dharma Gate. Yes, please. Opening up to the present moment is opening up to whatever arises. And there's the experience of the body, to put it simply.

[37:36]

But I also want to say we can sink deeper and deeper into this body and also find out that what this body is is also infinite in variety. It's not a fixed thing. That's it. How many German speakers are here tonight? Would you say more? It's an old saying that just came up, wondering whether you have any comment.

[38:40]

if I had any comment. I just appreciated you expressing yourself, Anna. Well, yeah, I would say in this German saying, middle way is compromise. Middle way is holding back. Middle way is not completely expressing yourself. Buddhist middle way, when I, for example, said Could it be that this simple instruction, not leaning, is in itself the middle way? This is no compromise. This is expressing yourself fully, completely. It brings life. What do you think? I sometimes wonder about being so liberal. Yes, I wanted to do that tonight.

[39:48]

I want to suggest, playfully, to try this on literally, literally, consciously, bring great awareness, those of us who sit formally, to do it literally, to not lean, to not lean. to not lean, to not lean, and see what that does. Yes. Why don't you do that? I confess. Anything else? Well, I hope you can enter the darkness of the night and rest deeply and have sweet dreams. Good night. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[41:03]

May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:06]

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