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. I wonder what is it I want to say to you tonight. I've been thinking lately that one way of describing our human life is kind of there are two layers or two modes. And one of them is this world that we're living in, this place where there's air, a little bit of air is touching us now.

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and there's sometimes the ground under our feet or a cushion or a chair under our butt, and we're here in this actual room with each other. Here we are. That's one realm. And then there's this other realm where we spend a lot of time, which is everything we think about that or everything we think about whatever we think about It's this whole other realm that we kind of live in a lot of the time. When we're in that realm, we're still living in this realm, but we sometimes forget about this realm and we're just in this realm where we're trying to cut it up into little pieces and decide whether they're good or bad or whether they're for us or against us or find the right words to describe it. we're doing a lot of different things in our mind.

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Not always bad things, but often distracting things, things where we tend to forget that we're living in this other world that's very alive and happy. Of course, if anything happens in this world that is big or threatens us in some way or... surprises us even, we pop right back here. By we, I mean our attention comes back here. Something in us knows this is the real world. But a lot of the time we forget and we think this other world that we're dreaming up, excuse me for saying so, in a kind of incestuous way. It's like me with me. I'm just here dreaming up my world that I put all of you in. Or sometimes I try to get some of you out of it or, you know, trying to build it in a way that supports me and my idea of me and my idea of what my life, what I would like my life to be or what I think my life is.

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It's endless. It's so complicated. We can do so many things there. Wonderful, beautiful, wonderful things come out of it. But in this other world where we actually live with each other, it needs some attention too. I think it especially needs attention. And it's kind of what in some ways Zazen is about, I think. I'll get to what especially needs attention. If I forget to come back to that, somebody remind me. But I think it's what... Zazen and the schedule here and the life here and also suffering, really big suffering, teaches us is that there are certain times when our body and our life here is calling to us and at those times it's really important to be able to find yourself and also to be able to

[04:22]

stand to be there when these sometimes painful, sometimes just unpleasant things are happening. So I think the schedule here, the life here, the zazen, various kinds of meditation, also suffering in our life kind of show us this is possible. You can get to this place, and if it's suffering that we actually can't get away from, It shows us, just like life at Tassajara does, you can do that. You can stay there. You don't have to run away. We have a lot of habit going toward running away in various ways. We're so clever. We can run away in various ways. But to actually be there allows us to... respond to the situation in a more accurate way.

[05:25]

So to get through or to even forget about all that other layer of world that's happening where I might be trying to figure out, do they like me? Do they not like me? Do they like what I did or they don't like what I did? all of that at some point can be forgotten, and we're still in this world where like or dislike or breathing together, sometimes doing not nice things to each other, are happening. They're happening in this world. And if we can be there, if we can be stable enough and open enough to see... or feel, am I having a response? And especially if we're having a grasping response.

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Like if we're starting to tighten up, for me it's usually in my gut, stomach, below or stomach hara. If that starts to tighten, it's really good to notice it because sometimes I can just take a deep breath and it will relax. And I can be back, ready, not on guard and ready to fight, flight, fight, fight, flight, freeze, fawn. Yes. Anyway, that's the responses that this Titan's stomach can take us to. But if we can notice that it's happening, sometimes we can take a deep breath and actually be there and respond. Respond. This is the trick. We don't know how we'll respond because we've got a plan. If we get off plan, what's going to happen? We don't know. But respond more accurately to what's happening.

[07:31]

Sometimes we can take a deep breath and get back. Sometimes that doesn't work. It's still there, still clenched. But then you can be with that. It's actually possible. You can be clenched for a while and still not have to do... your habitual thing, which if you've been studying the self for a while, so there's a, maybe all of you know this, maybe you don't, the founder of this particular school of Buddhism, Dogen Zenji, says, and we read it this morning for those of you who are in service, we chanted it, says, to study Buddhism is to study the self. It's kind of a surprise, right? I mean, you're... Maybe you come to Tassajara to study Buddhism. And then he says, no, it's what's been with you all along. This is where we study Buddhism, study the self. And then he goes on to say, if you're really studying the self, you forget all about the self because you start to notice the impact of myriad things on this self.

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So it's kind of like the... the self and the myriad things, whatever's making you right now, especially if it's a new one, like in this moment, might not be brand new, but different from the last moment, then you're a new self. So you start to notice, like, who are you moment by moment? And it has to do with not just what's happening in here, but what's happening everywhere. It's really about the connection. of everything, really. So to study the self is to forget the self. So when we're doing this study of the self, we start to notice things like, oh, I respond in a certain way to certain whatever, sometimes triggers, anyway, various things that might come at us. And some of those we start to notice... are not very beneficial, really.

[09:49]

They seem to be causing suffering for myself and or for other people, other beings, other things. So when we notice that, this very useful moment, you know, to notice this... is not a healthy response. This is not a beneficial response. The trick is it's pretty deeply ingrained probably by that time. Most of us, except for the baby that just left, we've got a lot of our habits are pretty stacked up by now. So we don't do very many new things really. We mostly do the same old thing over and over again. So if you notice that you're having a response that's not beneficial, then can come a whole lot of frustration. It's like, I see it, I don't want to do it anymore, and I do it again.

[10:53]

And I see it, and I vow not to do it again, and I do it again. The thing about habits, if you want to break a habit, I think the only way to break a habit is to don't do it. Just one time, don't do it, and then another time, Don't do it. I used to bite my fingernails. Yuck. Yuck. Why was I doing that? And I tried and tried and tried to not do it for a long time. And finally, somehow I managed to not do it once. And then it wasn't like I was never going to do it again, but every time, whenever I caught myself doing it, you know, in the middle, stop. Just stop. So if you're... You know, if you have a partner, this is a perfect way because we really work out our habits with our partners. Anyway, any of you are in partnerships or have been in partnerships, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, that the various ways that we, I mean, some of the habits are good ones, fine, keep those up.

[12:08]

But if you have a habit with a partner that you don't like, and you see yourself going there again, saying that thing, or it doesn't have to be a partner. It can be an intimate partner. It can be your work partner or any old habit you have. Just don't do it. Just do something else. If your habit is to close down, or your habit is to start talking, try to talk them into something, Do something else. If you close down, it may be hard to start talking because that's pretty, that takes a lot of impetus, right, to figure out what to say. But maybe you could say something. You know, maybe you could, if you usually close down by going reading a book, I'm just, I'm reading here. Go away and leave me alone. Maybe you could, you know, close the book and get up and say, I'm just going to do the dishes for now.

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Or you can even say, I'm going to leave the room for now. But you actually say something this time instead of just leaving. It's like, I'm leaving for now. Something to change that habit, to leave some space for something new. And this may sound like pop psychology or something, but it's actually Buddhist practice too. It may be both. So to notice... And it's not something you can make yourself do. How are you going to make yourself notice if you've got a clenching in your stomach? You might remember at that point to take a deep breath because it doesn't feel good. And you might start saying, what should I do? What should I do? Oh, take a deep breath. Or do something different than I usually do. But you can't really remember it. when you're not remembering it, right? You can't go around all day, every day saying, remember, is my stomach clenched yet?

[14:12]

Is it clenched yet? Is it clenched yet? So, you know, we do something like come to Tassajara and sit there with our stomachs for hours and hours and hours, and you start to get used to actually noticing, actually noticing, is anything strange going on now? But a lucky thing about this stuff is it's a little bit uncomfortable. It's a little bit painful. So our attention gets called back to it. Like, oh, there it is again. Now, sometimes we get going too fast as we're in the middle of it before we recognized it. But that's why I say, wherever you are in it, do something different. Try to break that habit. But mainly... come back to study the self. Study the self. Notice, is the self cramped?

[15:14]

Is it grasping? Is it holding on to? Because that's what's happening, I think. Whether we know it or not, whether we're thinking about it or not, we all have in this other realm some pretty, important to us ideas mainly about me, about myself, like who I want to be and who I don't want to be. They're there. They're not out there in a way. They're deep inside here, and when those get threatened, that's when that cramping starts, when somehow an idea of me that's important to me gets threatened, crunch. That's not an easy thing to let go of, you know, to have this. And in fact, I don't even know what let go exactly means.

[16:17]

We could loosen up on it, but it's deeply in there. So this is what's called practice, really. You walk around, you know, do some kind of meditation is very helpful if you can. Some people, you know, do... different kinds of meditation for some art is meditation or something. So something that lets you be in a settled way with yourself. And then you walk around and you try to notice when does that clenching happen? It's a clue. It's like, oh, here's a clue to an idea of myself that's being threatened. And can I... basically be stable enough to be there with this whole event that's happening. The idea of self, the threatening of the idea of self in whatever myriad, myriad forms that can come in, and the fact that I'm responding to that.

[17:27]

And not to slip back into the... the other layer where I have to decide what my response is because that will almost always take us back to, that's how we got to the habit in the first place. This would be a safe thing to do for me. I'm big so I can get angry and people respond, they back off. Anyway, various things. This is in a little bit different direction. Not really, but it could sound in a little bit different direction. It's a poem that is in the Soto Zen Book of Koans.

[18:34]

Koans are Zen stories. In some ways, it's almost too beautiful for our world today, but in other ways, I think it fits right in. So I'm going to see if I can recite it to you. The unique breeze of reality. Can you see? Continuously, creation runs her loom and shuttle, weaving the ancient brocade, incorporating the forms of spring. As the wolf goes through the wharf, The weave is dense and fine. One continuous thread comes from the shuttle. How can this even be spoken of on the same day as false cause or no cause? I'll say it one more time. Then there's a couple things I want to say about it. The unique breeze of reality.

[19:36]

Can you see... Continuously, creation runs her loom and shuttle, weaving the ancient brocade, incorporating the forms of spring. As the woof goes through the warp, the weave is dense and fine. One continuous thread comes from the shuttle. How can this even be spoken of on the same day as false cause or no cause? So I think this, you know, it's really calling our attention to our place in this world that we live in. You know, how we are in place. We're in this world where we're all together. And we may have thoughts about it and we may have different thoughts than a lot of other people or the same. We may get some people together we think have the same thoughts and hope that that will make everything better.

[20:40]

But we're actually in this weave, this very close-knit weave where everything is affecting everything. But there are a lot of things. We're some little part of the things, but there are a lot of them. This densely woven. But there is cause. There's always cause. Everything we do, because we're so closely woven, has an impact. There's not no cause. Things didn't come out of nowhere. Things didn't come out of some false place. It actually came out of this weave that we're all in together, and it's a very alive ancient brocade. It's got the forms of spring in it, which doesn't just mean it's beautiful. It means it's alive. And alive includes winter, includes death with it.

[21:45]

So in that very alive brocade, everything we do has an impact. That's what I think this poem is talking about. How do we, and that's one of the really important things about studying the self and noticing the Am I clenching? Am I falling into my old habits? Can I actually meet the situation as it is now in an open and stable way so that if I can, I can do something that maybe just a tiny little thing, maybe just at this moment in this place, turn our brocade toward... less suffering for myself and for all beings instead of toward more suffering. So we don't always know what that is, and we certainly are not always able to do it, but if that's our fervent wish to have less suffering in our world, how can we do that moment by moment?

[22:53]

And one way is to see, oh, how do I cause suffering? And then is there any way for me to be in a way more open to the self that is appearing when I just, maybe just before or as I'm causing suffering, more open to that self so that I don't have to get away from it in my habitual way so quickly. I think I want to stop there for a minute and see if any of you have anything you want to... say or ask? Yes? It's not that there's no self in the Buddhist principle. It's that there's no graspable self or no self that you can get a hold of or no permanent self.

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So there's, you know, self, [...] but it's not one that we can control, and it's definitely not one that we can, like, this is it. This is who I am. And also no separate self. Yes. No, yeah, not, I mean, there is you, and there is me, and there is all the rest of them, but we aren't... actually separate. We think we can get up and walk away from here, and we can, but we don't go that far. And also that supposed self who got up and walked out or who stayed is totally in flux, totally reappearing, appearing differently. Thank you. Yes. Well, by accurate response, I don't mean a particular response.

[25:09]

I mean accurate in that moment. So that's one of the scary parts about it is there isn't like this is the accurate response. But in that moment, I think an accurate response would be something that takes into account not... by thinking about it, but by living it. This body, and as, you know, I mean, we are living with everything, but also some things are closer than other things at every moment, so it takes into account what's happening, and it is supporting that in a way that if there's if it's possible to go toward less suffering for me and for everything, to head in that direction.

[26:16]

So this is not something we usually have the time to sit down and count up. It's more of a... You know, I think when it's actually happening, it's mostly support. especially in our life, our blessed lives, you know, where we so far don't have bombs falling on us, so far have enough to eat. Now, if we were in a different situation, so mostly, and it certainly is easier to feel here at Tassajara than it might be like walking down a city street or something, but even there, I think mostly it's like, What kind of support, even just like positive feeling, can be shared with my world?

[27:18]

Now, if I'm in a war zone, what would that be like? Of course, I don't actually know, but we can't assume we won't be there. And something about... Really not. And in that situation, I think a lot of our problems would be gone. We would have a lot more problems, but a lot of our problems where we just kind of fight against in our head about the reality of things that are happening probably wouldn't be happening because what would be happening would be beyond arguing with. So then what do you do? What is an accurate response? I don't know. Maybe we'll have to see. Does that make any sense? Would you like to?

[28:22]

It sounds kind of like an accurate response, sort of a response that isn't coming from ideas about what we're encountering, but from an intuitional, more of a wisdom, more of a whole awareness. Yeah, or maybe it's not coming from ideas about whether what we're encountering is good or bad, something like that. I think we pretty much do still have our ideas, or at least at some level we still have our ideas. But when we get into this shouldn't be happening or should be happening in a different way or... That's where I don't think we can be very accurate. We've just slipped into that other world where we're talking to ourself about what should and shouldn't be while life is going on. So to get back to where life is actually happening, yeah. Thank you.

[29:23]

Anything else? Yes. I think sometimes it can't help but create suffering because the weave is so dense. It's like if you move your elbow, something's going to... And we are alive. We're doing things. Passivity is not actually an option. Not doing anything is doing something. And that too can create suffering. So I think beyond a doubt, if you have children... you know that they suffer somewhat just from who you are. So you're right. It definitely includes suffering. Thank you. Yes. actually it's more like these days I can't seem to make a plan so I think it partly has to do with getting older so actually I do have some notes here

[31:17]

But I probably can't see them either, so... Plan B, right. Yeah. You know, some people are here who know Pat Phelan, whatever her Buddhist name is from North Carolina. Joshin. Josho. I love her as Pat. And when she was lecturing here, she would... write her lectures, and then recite them in her room. Maybe some of you have heard this story. And she had a daughter who was about six. Brilliant young woman who, when Pat was going to give a lecture one day, before the lecture happened, was found walking down the main path here, speaking Pat's lecture, who she had listened to. She'd listened to her say it enough that she had memorized at least part of it. So... I used to kind of envy Pat for doing, or at least appreciate her, you know, the lectures that she could give because they were quite worked out and, you know, they had a beginning and an end in it.

[32:32]

And I've just never been able to do it. It could be called laziness. You know, like sit down and write. But to me, it feels more like... you call it fourth. For me, it's like if there are people here, something comes out, and then you look a certain way, and then something else comes out. And so it really feels much more like a mutual event. And I pray that I don't say anything too harmful. In fact, that's part of why question and answers are a good thing, because sometimes I might say something that's really confusing or that I don't even mean. So somebody might say, what did you mean by that? And I might say, I meant not to say that. Thank you. Is that good? Yes? I don't remember which book, but I think in one of Rep's books, he was quoting Dogen, where he, that translation said, an appropriate response.

[33:37]

How would you draw a distinction between an accurate response and an appropriate response? Or are they kind of synonymized in this case? Yeah, I don't think I would draw in. I wouldn't want to argue with Dogen. It's trans questions, right? Yeah, I don't think that I see a difference there. Appropriate, accurate. Thank you. Yes. will come, that it's the appropriate response, and then also just this allowance. I'm curious if you'd be... I agree. I would say trust. Faith, I think, is good. I like the word faith, but it gets kind of mixed up for us with faith in a particular thing or something, whereas trust, for me anyway, is broader.

[34:51]

Maybe it's not faith in something in particular, it's trust in life or something. And I don't think that this kind of trust is something we can talk ourselves into. I think it's much more accurate or appropriate and useful to notice when we aren't trusting. Like if we feel ourselves not trusting something... to then try to be stable, put yourself in an actual physically stable posture and try to open to the situation and notice whether your lack of trust is habitual or actually warranted. And if it's warranted, how warranted is it? Is this an actually dangerous situation? So if it is, hopefully you can do this really fast and run or whatever you would do in that case. But if it isn't, which it often isn't, can we stay there with our lack of trust and see what's actually happening?

[36:01]

And if we can and we find out it wasn't really a dangerous situation, even though it may have felt it, then our trust grows. Then our trust is a little bit more like, oh, maybe it is okay to have that feeling, which is, for most of us, that's... in some ways our biggest problem, we have a feeling that we don't want to have. We have a feeling that people don't like us. We have a feeling that, I don't know, that soup is going to taste terrible. So if we can stay through that, it doesn't mean, again, it doesn't mean don't do anything. That's not really an option. Not doing something is doing something. And you can turn around and walk away. from something, and there are situations where that would be the most appropriate, most accurate response, or where you actually stop something from happening or do more direct actions than walk away.

[37:02]

But it is trying to not just go with the habits that we've built up of avoiding having an unpleasant feeling and trusting that or Eventually, learning to trust that. Really, I think the biggest thing we need to learn to trust is that it's okay for me to be in the world. It's okay for this being to be in the world as it is, when it is. Not a particular self, but all the selves. That one, it's hard because we know we've caused some suffering. We know that we've done that, and we think, that's not okay. It's time to stop. Okay? Thank you all very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

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