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 evening, everyone. Can you hear me well? Good. I always... I like speaking on Wednesday night because it's kind of family night around Zen Center. I see all my old friends here on screen. So nice to see you this evening. If there's anyone that's new to our Zoom meeting, welcome. And I hope you enjoy your evening with us tonight and come back some other time. So I thought before we get... going, we should maybe just take a moment to hold Dante Wright's family and all those who have suffered from injustice and violence in our heart.

[01:04]

It has been such a difficult time for my Black friends, and I think it's good for us to just pause a second in the midst of this violence and injustice. Thank you. Even in the midst of a very difficult year that has produced so much suffering, we did celebrate Buddha's birthday this weekend at City Center. It is good to take some time to celebrate renewal, springtime, and our human capacity to manifest kindness, insight, and joy. In times of increased stress and anxiety, the Buddha's teachings on the importance of calming body and mind and practicing mindful attention to every aspect of our daily lives are ever more precious. So I'm going to talk a little bit about something I've been thinking about recently.

[02:10]

It's impermanence. And I'll start with this story. During the question and answer after a lecture that Suzuki Roshi gave, David Chadwick asked, Suzuki Roshi, I've been listening to your lectures for years, but I just don't understand. Could you just please put it in a nutshell? Can you reduce Buddhism to one phrase? Everyone laughed. Suzuki laughed. And then he said, everything changes. And then asked for another question. What a great answer. Buddhism reduced to... One phrase, everything changes. Impermanence. Practitioners have always understood impermanence as the cornerstone of Buddhist teaching and practice. All that exists is impermanent. Nothing lasts. Therefore, nothing can be grasped or held onto. When we don't fully appreciate this simple but profound truth, we suffer.

[03:10]

This is one of the most fundamental teachings of Buddhism. The Buddha taught that the source of human suffering and discontent is that we crave and cling to the things of this world under the mistaken view that they will last forever, but nothing does. It is one of the three marks of existence. Impermanence, not self, and suffering. To understand impermanence at the deepest possible level, I mean, we all do understand it at a superficial level, and merge with it fully is the whole of the Buddhist path. The Buddha's final words express this, impermanence is inescapable. Everything vanishes. Therefore, there is nothing more important than continuing the path with diligence.

[04:15]

I'm not a historian, but in my lifetime, this current time seems to be a time of violent and dramatic change, unprecedented. It does remind me of the rise of the 1960s counterculture in my college years with a nation divided by the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, the civil rights movement, women's rights, the emergence of the environmental movement. But now with the pandemic, with its resulting sickness and death and the worldwide economic disruption, with George Floyd's murder, which shined a light on the systemic racial injustice towards BIPOC people of color, the recent emergence of Asian hate crime, the brutal killing of innocents in Myanmar, the clear threat of our very existence from climate change. All of this in the context of a nation so divided, it seems impossible for the government to do what would be necessary to be helpful.

[05:20]

So it does feel like one of those times where we need to deal with much that has been neglected. In this context, I'm reminded of a very good poem by Kay Ryan titled Home to Roost. The chickens are circling and blotting out the day. The sun is bright, but the chickens are in the way. Yes, the sky is dark with chickens, dense with them. They turn, then they turn again. These are the chickens you let loose, one at a time, and small, various breeds. Now they have come home to roost. All the same kind at the same speed. Of course, this is a poem about bad deeds coming back to haunt us. And she uses the marvelous saying, chickens coming home to roost.

[06:22]

Meaning of bad things that you've done will come back and it's inevitable. Metaphorically speaking, the bad deeds are the chickens. And when you release them, they will eventually come back to their roost or home. So I'm going to read it again because she has such a talent, Kay Ryan, for these turns of phrases saying such a serious thing, but in a way that sort of sneaks up on you. The chickens are circling and blotting out the day. Bad news, bad deeds are getting dark. The sun is bright, but the chickens are in the way. Yes, the sky is dark with chickens, dense with them. They turn and then they turn again. These are the chickens you let loose one at a time and small, various breeds. Now they have come home to roost, all the same kind at the same speed. So a good Buddhist poem about karma. We are suffering the results of our bad karma, both personally and as a society.

[07:28]

So what do we do? I like this quote from Gary Schneider, you know. He said, I like the Buddhist approach that advises us to live openly and be willing to fight where you feel it is necessary and to give in where there is no choice and to keep your balance in the midst of the fray. Very good Gary Schneider Buddhist approach, but a wonderful saying, but how do we do it? not so easy. So I was thinking back when I was 25 in grad school studying mathematics in the midst of the counterculture revolution. I didn't know what to do, how to make a difference. So much violence and social injustice. I was pretty sure math and science, which had been my North Star until then, was no longer going to satisfy me. So the summer of 1970, I went to California to find some direction.

[08:35]

I met and practiced with Suzuki Roshi at Tassara and decided his path would give me the composure needed to find my way. And today, I believe more than ever that it is a good path. It is a good path to bring forward into the world, developing the capacity to have some composure and ability to stay present in the midst of difficult situations allows us to be most helpful. So tonight, I will talk about a favorite phrase of mine about change. I've always enjoyed this paragraph from Suzuki Roshi's book, Not Always So. It goes, that things change is the reason why you suffer in this world and become discouraged. When you change your understanding and your way of living, then you can completely enjoy your new life in each moment.

[09:43]

The evanescence of things is the reason why you enjoy your life. When you practice in this way, your life becomes stable and meaningful. So I love this. It's pretty clear. The first part, that things change, is the reason why you suffer in this world and become discouraged. We're pretty familiar with its fundamental teaching of Buddhism. You know, we lose people we love. We get sick. We don't like it. We work with a new boss who doesn't appreciate us. The endless changes that occur that cause us suffering, we don't like it. and we get discouraged about life. And certainly we've got plenty of examples of that going on right now. But also change can be good. We can meet somebody new we like. We can get over an illness. We can get a new boss who's great. And so change is both good and bad.

[10:49]

But even when things are going great, Deep down, there is some anxiety that we will lose it. Maybe this anxiety comes because in the end, we know we will die and lose everything. But that is later, so we ignore it. But right now, in each moment, we are losing what we had the previous moment. And that creates a fundamental loss and suffering. We might think, well, I have heard about not being attached. If I'm not attached to anything or anywhere, then I'll be okay, which, of course, is true. We are attached to all kinds of stupid things and ideas, and letting go of them would certainly be very helpful. But at the same time, when we lose someone we love, we suffer. That is the way of humans.

[11:51]

We suffer because we love. And hopefully as much as we suffer at the loss of a loved one, we hope it makes us more capable of love. So suffering is inescapable for us who love. And this fundamental anxiety that things aren't quite right is suffering that comes from impermanence. Suzuki Roshi says, with right understanding, you can completely enjoy your life. Well, what does he mean by that? Right understanding, you change your understanding and your way of living, not just your understanding, but your way of living, then you can completely enjoy your new life in each moment. So it's not just your understanding, it's not some philosophic thing, it's your changing your entire way of living. When you change your understanding and your way of living, then you can completely enjoy your new life in each moment.

[12:58]

And I love this next sense. The evanescence of things is the reason why you enjoy your life. The evanescence of things, the vanishing of things. I mean, evanescence, it's a synonym for impermanence, but I thought evanescence has that sort of nice sense of... and also as a sort of sense of life itself, the feeling of life. I was thinking, you know, the evanescence of a rainbow. There's this famous quote, the evanescence of a rainbow detracts not a whit from its beauty. You look at a rainbow and it just sort of seems to disappear on you. I'm fortunate sometimes in the late afternoon, I sit for a few minutes on my deck and I watch the clouds over Mount Tam and they're, Amazing. First of all, it seems like every night they're different and they're always sort of moving.

[14:01]

And then they sort of, you're looking at them and they disappear, they're gone. And then they reappear again. This vanishing effervescent aspect of life. And of course, it's easy enough to appreciate it when it's a beautiful, uh, cloud-filled sunset or a rainbow somewhere in a rainy afternoon. But is this constantly changing, fleeting, transitory nature of our own life, of our emotional state, of our life as it passes by? Is this something that we can... Is this the reason why we enjoy our life? Because we can... Enjoy the passing pain and joy and suffering. And no, there's parts of it we don't like so much. But Suzuki Roshi says, yes, that is why you enjoy your life.

[15:07]

If you can focus on the evanescence of things, the impermanence as it's happening, then your practice becomes stable and meaningful. Sometimes in sashins, you can have that feeling of just being alive and the visceral sense of impermanence. I think I was in a... So I remember Suzuki Roshi in this way. He is such an inspiration because he seemed so flexible and present in the moment. Once we were, I think it was, I was in City Center and I was a new student and... We were doing, I think I was on the work crew and we were cleaning something and all of a sudden everybody rang a bell. It was like in the middle of the afternoon or middle of the morning. And they said, Sukuroshi wants to say something. So we, you know, maybe there was only 15 of us went into the Buddha hall, sat down. There was some eminent Zen teacher from Japan that had arrived and was saying something in Japanese that Sukuroshi was translating and he was saying how...

[16:19]

wonderful what Sikurshi had created and Sikurshi was saying this and that. And then all of a sudden I was looking at him and all of a sudden he just became kindness. His whole being was just emanated this kindness and it just lasted maybe 30 seconds and then passed away. But it was such a pure expression of it. And of course, another time, you know, he was irritated at me and it was like a flash of lightning. His anger came and then went. So someone mentioned to me that, you know, strong emotions only last about 90 seconds. And they just seem to hang around with us for a long time because we just keep running the storyline behind them to keep them living. But if you're actually living in the changing transitory moment, your life is always fresh. is always new it may not always be happy it may be painful it may be sad it may be many things but it's always changing because that's a fundamental truth i think we have a pretty primitive idea of impermanence i think of uh

[17:35]

The impermanence is kind of the movement of reality. You know, it's a mystery. It's a marvel. I mean, what do we actually mean when we say impermanence? Everything changes. I mean, yes, we say, well, later things will be different than they are and later I'll die. But what does it mean to just talk about in this very moment? This moment things are changing. This moment... What happened a moment ago has vanished, disappeared, and something new is here. And how do we live a life that allows us to appreciate that changing? So, of course, Dogen has a lot to say on a subject like this, because impermanence and time are two of his favorite subjects. And in one of his wonderful, important essays, the one on Buddha nature, he says, impermanence is Buddha nature.

[18:38]

Impermanence is Buddha nature. Oh, what? I thought Buddha nature was my capacity for kindness and wisdom. What does that have to do with impermanence? And we mostly think of a permanence with a sort of an emphasis on we're losing something. But he's saying, Impermanence is Buddha nature. I'm letting you sit with that for a second while I take a sip of water. Norman Fisher's comment on it in an essay he wrote was, for Dogen, impermanence isn't a problem to be overcome with diligent effort on the path. Impermanence is the path. Practice isn't the way to cope with or overcome impermanence. It is the way to fully appreciate and live with it. I think I'm going to say that again, because I think if there's kind of like the one sentence takeaway for this talk tonight about impermanence is, practice is the way to fully appreciate impermanence and live it.

[19:56]

Live impermanence. I thought I would just take a moment and look around and see how you guys are changing right in front of me as I'm sitting here and noticing how I'm changing right in front of you as I'm sitting here. Anyway, Dogen continues in this essay by quoting Buddha. If you want to understand Buddha nature, you should intimately observe cause and effect over time. When time is right, Buddha nature manifests. When time is right doesn't mean we practice and eventually our practice will ripen and manifest Buddha nature.

[20:58]

He means Buddha nature always manifests in time because time is impermanence. Kind of makes sense that time is impermanence, how intimately connected time is to change. There's a little complex and involves Dogen's, a lot of Dogen's writing on time and being time. But I, without getting into all that, I grabbed this paragraph from a wonderful book that Stephen Hines wrote, The Existential and Ontological Dimensions of Time and Heidegger and Dogen. And in that book, Stephen Hines writes, The human predicament is not generated by impermanence, but by an unwillingness to authentically accept and confront it. Dogen and Heidegger insist that time, impermanence, can neither be denied, the conventional attitude, nor transcended, the more philosophical yet equally misguided view.

[22:11]

Rather, they accentuate and illuminate the singular significance of impermanence and its inseparability with human existence as the basis of freedom. The inseparability of human existence with impermanence is the basis of our freedom. That makes sense. If nothing changed, we'd be caught like in a prison. But since everything changes, we're free to live a new moment, moment by moment. So to repeat that phrase that I've been singing lately, impermanence isn't a problem to be overcome with diligent effort on the path. Impermanence is the path. Practice isn't the way to cope with or overcome in permanence. It is the way to fully appreciate and live it.

[23:14]

So one final comment. At the beginning of Dogen's essay, Buddha Nature, he states, Shakyamuni Buddha said, living beings are all Buddha nature. The phrase, all are, is telling. Are, the verb are, existence. being, time, impermanence, and change. All our existence, being, time, impermanence, and change is not alone. All are. It is always all-inclusive. We are always in this together. We share this impossible-to-understand, yet are living impermanence. And that is why we are kind with each other. We are all in this together. We're all in the same boat of impermanence. So back to the original paragraph I've been talking about, that things change is the reason why you suffer in this world and become discouraged.

[24:36]

When you change your understanding and your way of living, then you can completely enjoy your new life in each moment. The evanescence of things is the reason why you enjoy your life, or the impermanence of things is the reason why you enjoy your life. When you practice in this way, your life becomes stable and meaningful. The joy he refers to is not some endless bliss or soaring transcendence. Who would want that in a world with so much tragedy, social injustice, sickness, and death? To feel the loss of impermanence and appreciate it is the meaning of being alive and connected to all. This is the way our life becomes stable and meaningful. 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.

[25:41]

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.

[25:57]

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