Good morning. Welcome to Green Gulch Farm. When I was thinking about speaking here this morning, I was realizing that it's been just over 30 years since I first lived here at Green Gulch. So I imagine you're all thinking that I was about 10 years old when I came here, but actually I was slightly older. I had just been asked to come from Tassajara and come to Green Gulch and help develop a draft horse farming project. And I had no experience with farming or with horses, so I was clearly just the right person for the job. But I really loved Zen practice, and I was very enthusiastic. I had lots of energy. I was actually thrilled that anyone would ask me to be in charge of anything.

[01:25]

And it was really wonderful to be here at Green Gulch during those early times. I didn't realize it at the time, that it was an early time, just in looking back. And to explore what it meant to work with animals, to care for the land, and to spend a good deal of time here in the meditation hall and studying and practicing with some wonderful Zen teachers. And after about three years of farming, it became clear that this was no small commitment, that this was perhaps not only a lifetime commitment, but maybe a three-generational commitment, this sense of farming with horses. And somehow I... I was tapped on the shoulder and asked to go back to Tassajara and go work in the kitchen where I was the assistant cook and then I became the head cook for a year.

[02:30]

Some wonderful things happened here at Tassajara, including planting the seeds for things in my own life, like meeting my wife and starting a family. That happened shortly after I went to Tassajara. And I'm happy to report that these days I'm a Zen priest, businessman, executive coach. I'm also the chairman of the Zen Center board, which I feel about as qualified as I did for the horse program when I first came here. Very steep learning curve. But I continue to be really enthusiastic and have great love for Zen practice and also I have a great love for Green Gulch and for the San Francisco Zen Center. What I want to talk about this morning is a Zen story, a Zen koan that I'm guessing that some of you have heard and many of you have probably not heard.

[03:41]

It's a story called Everyday Mind is the Way and this is a dialogue between two very well-known Zen teachers from China in about the sixth century. And it goes like this. Zhao Zhao asked the teacher, Nanchuan, what is the way? And Nanchuan said, everyday mind is the way. Zhao Zhao asked, how should I try to direct myself toward it? Nanchuan answered, if you direct yourself toward it, you will go in the wrong direction. Jajaz said, but if I don't direct myself toward it, how will I know it? Nanshwan answered, the way has nothing to do with knowing and not knowing. Knowing is an exaggeration, and not knowing is stupidity. When you find the genuine way, you'll see it as vast and boundless. What does this have to do with yes and no thinking?

[04:44]

So this is the story which I... want to address and unpack some. And this particular translation is by Norman Fisher, a very good friend and Zen priest teacher. As I was looking further into this cone, this idea, in a way it's pretty startling, this sense that what is the way that the answer is everyday mind. So in a way, the story turns on this question, what does this mean? What is this about? What does this mean everyday mind is the way? How could that be? The Chinese characters that are translated as everyday mind actually mean ordinary, usual, or normal. And there's a sense of eternal or constancy that everyday mind

[05:48]

looked at this way is where what is ordinary, normal, constant, and extraordinary all kind of come together. I was thinking of a story about Suzuki Roshi, who was the founding priest of these temples of the San Francisco Zen Center. Suzuki Roshi often used to make a distinction over and over again. In his talks, he would talk about the distinction between big mind and small mind. So he would describe small mind as basically the mind of me, the mind of the ego, the mind that's very involved in making distinctions, usually centered around me. Big mind is the mind that doesn't do that. Big mind is the mind that can see from a much, much wider perspective and where the world is not about ego and not so much about me.

[06:53]

And in one of his talks, as he was explaining this, he started laughing and said, you know, just forget about big mind and small mind and just be normal. And he laughed as he said that. And you could see, apparently, as the story's told, you could see that what he was describing as normal was something that he didn't quite feel the confidence that people were ready to do yet. So he said, in the meantime, just keep practicing, just keep sitting. I also wanted to bring in, I was really struck, I was struck by an article that I saw just a few weeks ago. It was an editorial in the New York Times by a a writer who I generally don't like, but I've suddenly started paying attention to. His name is David Brooks, and he's a regular editorial writer for the New York Times. He tends to be quite conservative in his views, and I've noticed that I've tended to not pay so much attention to him because of that.

[08:01]

But I noticed he wrote an article a couple weeks ago that was titled... the neural Buddhists, the neural Buddhists, in which he clearly reads a lot. And in this article, he was citing four or five brain scientists who he's been studying, who what he's found in reading brain science is that brain science is now saying exactly what Buddhism has been saying for the last 25 years, right? Big surprise. But now... there's a way that he feels like science is proving basic Buddhist tenets. And here are some of the things that he says. He says the self, this is what brain scientists have come to the conclusion, that the self is not a fixed entity, but a dynamic process of relationships. Under the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions.

[09:04]

The third is that people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. And the fourth finding from brain science is that God can be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is. I was blown away seeing this conservative writer in the New York Times who I had written off writing this article comparing brain science to Buddhism. And in some way, I think these statements, I thought, were a pretty good explanation of this, what seems like this impossible koan, this story of what is the way? Everyday mind is the way. How should you direct yourself toward it? Well, you can't. And that this practice is beyond yes and no thinking. So in this article, David Brooks goes on to say, after he outlines these findings, that he has no idea what implication brain scientists having these findings will have, but he feels like there's something huge happening.

[10:22]

So I think there is something huge happening in the world and in the consciousness of the world. So back to this koan. question from what is the way? You know, I think one of the things that I love about these Zen stories is just how wonderful just to be able to ask such a question. I mean, imagine in your own life turning to someone and asking, you know, what is the way? Or what is my life? Or what is this empty, what is this pain and suffering I feel in my life. What is this emptiness? Or asking someone, what is real freedom? And how could I find real freedom in my life? Generally, we're usually being too busy, too productive, too something or other to ask these kinds of very open, simple, but profound questions.

[11:30]

And usually, I think, I've noticed, just as these words came out of my mouth earlier about my writing off David Brooks, that in a way, this is what this koan is saying not to do. Or even hearing the question, or hearing these words, what is the way? Everyday mind is the way. We all come to conclusions, or either we think, like, oh, this is one of those enigmatic Zen stories. This is so, I can't understand this. This is so difficult. Or perhaps when he's asking the question, what is the way, he's really putting out a challenge, really challenging the other person. But what if he's just completely, sincerely, open-heartedly asking the question, what is the way? What is the way? And then the answer, I think, is so unexpected that the answer to what is the way is that everyday mind or ordinary mind is the way.

[12:42]

And then the follow-up question, I think, is so beautiful. So everyday mind is the way. Well, tell me how. Tell me how I can direct, how I can find the way. So this koan is like an outline of how to... how to practice Zen. If we step back and look, it's asking these questions, like being able to ask very open, sincere questions and to be able to have this kind of a dialogue without making, without kind of judging it or without turning away. So upon hearing this answer, everyday mind is the way, so the next question is, well, how? How can I... how can I find the way? How can I practice with the way? And again, the answer is a little bit startling and unexpected, which is that if you try to find the way, it's not what you think it is.

[13:44]

Again, it's a little bit like my looking at a David Brooks article. It was not what I thought it was. And to see how often we do this in our lives. After reading a little bit about David Brooks' research in brain science, I became a little curious and started doing some research myself and found a really interesting article by a psychiatrist and neuroscientist called The Predicting Brain. This article was called The Predicting Brain. And it outlines how much our bodies, our brains, our psyches, are so great at predicting the future. We're always predicting the future. We do it in small ways that serve us. If we're walking down the stairs, our bodies know where the next stairs are, where the next steps are.

[14:45]

Or if we're trying to catch a ball, our minds are brilliant at knowing where the ball will go. And in human relationships, our brains are just brilliant in that when we look at another person, we If we pay attention, we're almost always predicting what the other person is going to do or say. We're focused on the subtlest hints. Our antennas, for most of us, our antennas are so powerfully strong and powerfully tuned that we can read the energy of other people. And there's another wonderful book called The General Theory of Love, which talks all about how brilliant our limbic brains are and our ability to read the energy of other people. But it also, as brilliant as our predictive brains are, they get us into big trouble because they can make us not be quite so open to what it is that's actually happening.

[15:53]

That the predictive brain does all these studies to show how we're very susceptible to repetition and we're very susceptible to what happens in the past. Whatever happens in the past, we think is going to happen in the future. So from very little things to how people in our lives respond and how we can make other people very narrow and small by... our own predicting brains and lose sight of who they are. And sometimes we can feel that people do that with us. Or we can, in a big way, we can forget about basic Buddhist principles like impermanence, like the fact that life is short and that we are all changing, that we're changing in every moment, and that we are that we are all subject to birth and death.

[16:54]

I was also thinking, when thinking about this talk and how it applied to my own life, I kind of laughed at myself and thought, well, maybe at times I've taken this kind of koan a little too literally in my own life, in that when I, you know, After I had lived here at Sense Center for about 10 years, the question that I was asking myself is, what is the way? How can I practice outside of living here at Sense Center? For some reason, this was the question I found myself asking. And there were many, many things. When I looked at what were my choices, many things... made sense that seemed like they were in alignment with the way, like, you know, I thought of being a therapist or going to social work school or becoming a doctor, all of those things.

[18:02]

But, you know, it says in here, if you want to find the way, you know, don't do what's most obvious. Don't necessarily turn towards what you think you should do. So, of course, I ended up doing exactly the opposite of what I thought I should do, is that I went to business school. I went right from living here at Zen Center and somehow, in some way, it looked like the opposite of the way, but there was another part of me that I also thought this kind of koan, this kind of teaching is saying, don't be fooled by such ideas. Don't be fooled by these kinds of outward appearances. In some way, there was some part of me, although I'm still trying to access it in my own life, that knew that working in the world and business practice is no different than being a teacher or therapist or psychiatrist or all those things, that there are many, many ways to express practice.

[19:13]

I love the line, not only should you not direct yourself toward it, but that the way has nothing to do with knowing or not knowing. And the way has nothing to do with yes and no thinking. This sense of knowing and not knowing, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't know your past. It doesn't mean that that part of what's tricky about this kind of predicting brain is that there's so much going on in us that is predicting the future that we are unaware of and that drives our life and that drives our own, over and over again, our own egocentric lives. And we need to become completely familiar with and embrace all of our own patterns and history, and at the same time to be able to find a strategy for letting go of them and dropping them and moving forward.

[20:30]

So this is the way this everyday mind is beyond knowing and not knowing, beyond yes and no thinking. This is that same finding from that David Brooks says that self is not a fixed entity. It's so easy and tempting to make the self fixed. If we start to pay attention to all of the subtle and not so subtle ways that we do that, if we are in a relationship that's working or if we're in a job that's working and we're getting... We're getting really good feedback from things in our life. We say, oh, I'm a good person. I'm a successful person. The moment things start to go wrong and things aren't working out, it's so easy to label ourselves, oh, I'm not good at this, or I'm not smart enough at this, or I'm not worthy enough at this.

[21:35]

All of these labels that so get in the way of a kind of openness and freshness to seeing this real sense of everyday mind, this mind that is beyond knowing and not knowing. Being a human being is very humbling. I often think how much more intelligent, powerful, and magical we are than we can comprehend or imagine. And at the same time, we're also so much more fragile, exposed, and dumber than anything that we could imagine. This, I think, is where the practice of zazen. So zazen is the name that we use for meditation practice.

[22:42]

And what I like What I like about zazen is that the moment we say meditation practice, I think we all have an idea or an image of what that means. Zazen is much harder to get a hold of. Meditation practice, I think we usually think, is for something, to get something, maybe to get less stress or more enlightenment or more something. Zazen has this feeling of that it's harder to have any gaining idea about Zazen. And then to be able to take this experience of Zazen, this sense of no gaining idea, but just sitting completely in the middle of our lives, this is the practice of everyday mind, is the way. So there's a way that zazen practice can give us sitting and having this can break up some of these predictiveness of our brains.

[24:01]

It's interesting, if you sit long enough, you start to get in touch with the tapes in our own minds that are repeating, and you reach a point where where you get sick of them. You just get sick of your own, you're sick of your own tapes, your own self. And then this, in a way, is that sense, I think, of what everyday mind is the mind that can operate and live and breathe now and then, outside of our own veils, our own limitations, our own assumptions about who we are and about who others are. And so one way to talk about everyday mind or Zen practice is to be able to let go of what gets in the way of transcending boundaries, letting go of our protections, our trusted hearts, our false or veiled expectations, and having the experience of how much love rises to the surface when we let go of those kinds of expectations.

[25:16]

I was also thinking, I read an interesting paper. This was, again, bringing in, this is some, how work practice or business practice is related to this sense of everyday mind and Zen practice. There's an interesting article called Integrative Thinking. And it was a study that someone did of the top business leaders in the country. and what was it that they did that stood out from other business leaders. And what this researcher found is that most people weren't aware of what they did differently. But in studying it, what they found was that the best business leaders were not caught in making either or decisions, that they were able to look forward at choices that confronted them and not feel boxed in by having to choose one or the other, but found some way to often to not only integrate the best of the two, but to find some third direction that was unique and different, that there was some innovative process here.

[26:43]

And again, this feels very much to me like this story of that everyday mind is not about yes and no thinking. And that so much of our lives, so much about our own sense of being free in the world is to somehow find ways to drop that being caught by yes or no thinking. I also found when I got here Here this morning I went to visit Michael Sawyer. He's a Zen priest who's been living here for many years, who died a few days ago. Very powerful, profound experience of being with death. What a powerful way to cut through.

[27:48]

this sense of yes and no thinking. I was with Michael the day after he died, and I was sitting, and his five-year-old grandson came kind of bursting into the room, and he went right up to Michael's body and put his head right next to Michael's head, and he turned to the people in the room and said, is Grandpa still dead? And we all laughed, and it was just so wonderful. What a beautiful question. In some way, I felt like this was the question. I mean, talk about everyday mind.

[28:50]

And not making predictions. This is the mind of a child. Not making predictions. Is my grandpa still dead? Yeah, and powerful to see the just the pain, being around death and being around Michael, there was this great, completely unpredictable mixture of emotions and pain. And also, I found myself celebrating, really celebrating Michael's life. And... I also wanted to mention Grace Damon, who, as many of you know, is a long-term person who lived here who's been in a terrible car accident and is kind of fighting for her life.

[30:01]

So there's much more poignant, powerful life and death happening here at Green Gulch Farm, which, I mean, it's poignant when I... palpable when I walk in here. In the story that I read, this everyday mind is the way, there's a little verse that the collector of these stories wrote, and the verse goes like this. Spring comes with flowers, autumn with the moon, Summer with breeze, winter with snow. When idle concerns don't hang in your mind, that is your best season. Spring comes with flowers, autumn with the moon, summer with breeze, winter with snow.

[31:04]

When idle concerns don't hang in your mind, that is your best season. I'd like to try something this morning. I want to get all of you to speak for a few minutes. And I think we can do it. So if everyone can find a partner, if you can't just turn towards someone, if you're sitting next to someone, if you're not, if you could... We need to do this part without talking. So can we, without talking, quietly, gently, find a partner? Just find someone. Does everyone have a partner who would like a partner?

[32:24]

And thank you for doing it so quietly. I'm impressed. So what I want to suggest is that each person, just for a minute or two each, just describe... what you think your everyday mind is. How would you describe your everyday mind? Or another way to say this is, how would you describe your big mind? How would you describe your true nature? But I say this in a way as everyday mind, because it doesn't have to be all highfalutin. It can be, how would you describe You don't need to impress your partner. You can perhaps say something that seems unfinished, dumb.

[33:32]

You might even surprise yourself in what comes out of your... See if you can ask yourself this question in a fresh way. I'm sure you ask yourself this question all the time, but ask it in a fresh way of... how would you describe your own everyday mind, your own big mind? And just have a conversation with the person in front of you for a few minutes, and then we'll ring a bell and we'll come back. So please. Well, I... I could tell people had hardly anything to say. Were there anything anyone wants to say that came up that surprised them?

[34:39]

Someone in the back. You have to speak really loudly. Thank you. Someone else was saying something? Yes. Yeah, Mike. Can you talk really loudly so people in the back can hear? We got to be next to you. We're both sharing stories and made a really good point that I think fits in with the code on it. He said, just to let go and go with the flow could be to follow our big line. And that was really good. Thanks. Yes? Edda and I had an interesting point in our conversation about how we used, we came to a common point that we used commit free to to come to the present moment is that if we didn't enjoy the present moment, it would go by.

[35:48]

And so we were both using breathe to kind of positively to enjoy the big mind, enjoy the current situation rather than think about the future or the past. Any one more comment? on being respectful and courteous. And I guess it surprised me, because I know it's like my own stuff, and I forget about Soda. That's great. Thank you. I often think that it's almost like we each live on our own planet. And we're And we assume that everybody lives on our planet.

[36:49]

And it's almost never true. It gets us in a lot of trouble. And I speak from firsthand experience. Well, I'd love to just hang out with all of you all day. But I think I saw the kitchen crew. I think that was the kitchen crew. Or maybe it was a protest. I'm not sure. But a group just got up and left. I will be back for question and answer after we have tea and announcements and muffins. Are there muffins this morning? Yes. So please please express and enjoy appreciate your everyday minds. Thank you.

[37:43]

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