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. Good morning, everyone. Wonderful to see you all here on this bright, sunny, slightly cool day. For those of you who don't know me, my name is David Zimmerman, and I am... The Tanto, or head of practice here at City Center, it's a fairly new role for me, so I'm still finding my way. So thank you to the Sangha for their support, and all of you for your encouragement. Abedal as well, thank you. And just because I'm always curious about this, and we ask this often, but I'd like to acknowledge those who are here for the first time. So I'm curious, who is here for the first time today? Welcome, welcome everyone. It takes a lot of courage, actually, to step inside these doors and discover what's in this brick building, what's going on here, what's going on in this life, and what's going on here.

[01:11]

That's the most courage we need to gather is to discover inside of this one. So thank you for taking those steps inside this door and inside your heart-mind. Before I proceed with this morning's talk, I feel it's important to acknowledge a terrible event that happened last night in Paris. I can feel myself already impacted by it. So I'm not sure all of you have read the newspapers or heard this on the news or social media, but apparently there had been a synchronized series of events alleged terrorist attacks at multiple locations in Paris, basically, at the same time, at a concert hall, at a stadium, restaurants, and nightclub. Over 100, it seems like 127 people were killed, and 200 people had been hospitalized. And, apparently, the perpetrators of this violence, at one point, were shooting at people and taking some hostage, and then, eventually,

[02:21]

blew themselves up with suicide bombs and in the process killed many others. So obviously this is a heartbreaking and very sad event and something that happens way too often here in our lives. There is just so much suffering in this samsara world. So much suffering. And, you know, a lot of it is human-made. We're responsible for so much of it. And therefore, it's abordable. It really is. At some deep level, it's abordable. War, violence, racism, systemic oppression, rape, domestic violence, homophobia, social injustice, poverty, climate devastation, so much pain and grief that we cause ourselves. My wish is that for all those who were killed, wounded, were otherwise affected by last night's violence, indeed by all forms of greed, hate, and delusion.

[03:29]

May they find ease and comfort in this time of great difficulty and pain and sorrow. And may those who contributed to this tragedy and suffering, I wish for them to also be truly free of whatever conditions that contributed to their own pain, anger, ignorance, sense of disconnection. I can only imagine that they experienced some deep sense of distress for which, for whatever reasons, led them to mistaken believe that these acts of violence were the only way to express, address, and perhaps resolve their pain unhappiness, deep satisfaction, and that they were experiencing in their own life. I met a prayer for all.

[04:33]

May all beings be safe, free from harm and oppression. May all beings be happy and peaceful. May all beings awaken to the light of their true nature. May all beings know joy and dwell in ease. So as many of you know who may have been coming here for the last couple of months, we have been studying the Genja Koan this practice period. Abated has been generously offering us many talks and insights into this particular seminal Zen text or poem, if you will. And so to start us off this morning, I just want to share the beginning lines of this particular text in order to lead us into another more contemporary poem.

[05:40]

These lines, the following which have been translated by Shihako Okamura. When all dharmas are the Buddha Dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, life and death, Buddhas and living beings. When the 10,000 dharmas are without a fixed self, there is no delusion and no realization, no Buddhas and no living beings, no birth and no death. Since the Buddha way by nature goes beyond the dichotomy, of abundance and deficiency. There is no arising and perishing, delusion and realization, living beings and Buddhas. Therefore, flowers fall even though we love them. Weeds grow even though we dislike them. When we study the Buddha Dharma, we are studying

[06:47]

the impermanent nature of our experience. And more importantly, we are studying how we relate to this impermanent nature. If, as Dogen and other Dharma teachers remind us often, all things are without a fixed, inherently abiding, or separate self, then there is nothing we can grasp as essentially us or other. or even something we can call delusion and realization. What the Buddha taught is that if we want to be truly free from the suffering that arises in the face of impermanence, and particularly the fear of our own death, then we need to discover how to drop the concepts, the interpretations, and the stories that we constantly overlay on our experience.

[07:48]

Instead, we need to find a way to do our best to simply rest in a state of just being, just being with direct experience itself. In this way, and over time, we come to realize what it means to be fully human, fully awake. And this recognition comes about by virtue of our courageously opening ourselves up to all the complexities that life offers us, to all the, if you will, vicissitude of our experience, fully receiving the 10,000 things as life, as our life. with no sense of separation, no idea or wish for things to be any other way.

[08:58]

They are just being with, just like this. Essentially, the Genjo Koan and Zen teachers are pointing us again and again to the importance of seeing things clearly, as they really are. and then doing our best to engage our life in all it has to offer us from a place of embodied wisdom and compassion, embodied felt sense. And what this practice asks of us is that we reconcile ourselves to reality, a reality in which, as Dogen tells us, Flowers fall even though we love them. And weeds grow even though we dislike them.

[10:01]

Can we learn to accept that? That which we love dies. And that which we dislike seemingly persists. What a beautiful, uncertain, demanding, and poignant life. we have. So for the benefit of those who have not heard this before, I'm just going to say that Chahako Gamora, in his book, Realizing Genjo Koan, translates the Japanese characters for the words Genjo Koan as essentially meaning to answer the question from true reality through the practice of our everyday activity. Another way to say this is that as a personal koan, what is the question that true reality is asking of me in this moment?

[11:02]

And still yet another way to frame this is simply, what is happening now and how am I relating to it? The question of life asks us is not only what is happening now and how can I relate to it, but how can I relate to it in a way that doesn't perpetuate a sense of unhappiness, dissatisfaction, perhaps even despair? I don't know about you, but I can say for myself that the reason that I am here and doing this practice is in large part because I want to discover how to meet the innumerable vicissitudes that come with being human, including the reality of death, my own and that of those I love, with some sense of equanimity, calm, spacious awareness, and presence.

[12:12]

Perhaps even eventually, tasting and appreciating the unfathomable perfection of it all. So while I am feeling with great sadness the events of last night, and they are weighing on my heart and mind, there's another situation closer at home that is also impacting me. I have a dear friend who is currently undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer, And my friend Lee and I met 15 years ago, shortly after I moved here into the city center. And we've been good friends ever since. She's been both a friend and a mentor, a teacher, someone who challenges me, encourages me really to be my best and show up constantly. So I know maybe a lot of you already know her, know of her.

[13:17]

Lee and I have been recently teaching workshops together the last several years, most of them on transforming depression and anxiety, which is an area that she particularly focuses on. So Lee is in her late 70s and had the first series of chemo treatments over the last couple of months, which have been pretty harsh on her body. She's had an immune system challenge for many years, so this is just one more thing challenging her. And she's mentioned to me that she goes through these bouts of intense frustration and anxiety about the treatment that she is receiving and the kind of treatment that our medical system gives people. A lot of it often is not very good. And it's particularly challenging for someone who is elderly and living on their own. And yet there is joy and gratitude in her life

[14:18]

which she points out often. There's the recent birth of a great-grandson, and there are the visits by friends who bring her groceries and run errands for her and visit and just stay in contact. So Lee told me she isn't so much afraid of dying, but she'd really prefer to be without the physical pain. She also has this sense, this attitude of being a survivor. to the point that she's already expecting that she'll recover enough that she is planning to do some workshops in the spring. So Lee seems to have no conflict between recognizing her impermanence and also living as long as she can. So when she first announced her health status, she sent out an email to a number of friends and colleagues, and I want to read two paragraphs from this email. The diagnosis of cancer has opened up the gate for me to a richer and deeper understanding of there being no separation between living and dying.

[15:29]

Everything is in the process, in permanent, coming and going. I am grateful to have the practice of just being, of being with just this, just this, just this each moment as everything comes and goes. Staying close to taking care of this moment, this conversation with a loved one, this grief, this painful sensation, fault, feeling, this laughter, this canceling activities activity. I have to learn how to create an environment that doesn't feed cancer. Continuing to enjoy and stay close to life in this form for as long as the body allows. Part of what I express when I teach is that we can notice that every element of our life, our experience of it, rises, reaches a peak, and falls away. This reality is so for apple trees, rivers, snails, even cookies, a somewhat inside joke for those who know Lee.

[16:37]

Everything is in process, in permanent, coming and going. This bunch of stuff coming together, arising in this form, becoming the name we call our small individual self, and this small individual self, bunch of stuff falling away, going. This bunch of stuff entering the every changing process with all life returns to formlessness, no separation with all life. Li has expressed to me again and again her deep appreciation for her practice, and particularly for zazen. It's a particular refuge for her. And she often mentions what a gift it is to have a practice that supports our life in times of deep uncertainty. To be able to know that we can simply sit down, become still and quiet, and clearly observe the way things are.

[17:40]

without trying to fix it or change it or make it different in any other way, just for a moment. To simply acknowledge also how it is for this one. How it is to be in relationship with everything that comes our way. And then to explore whether we might be able to open to and soften just a little bit further into our experience. regardless of how painful it is and how much it unnerves us. Just witnessing what is happening now. Just this direct, immediate experience. Just simply being with it. Simply being presence itself. And staying close to this Dharma, truth, reality, body, life.

[18:43]

that is ours without turning away. So I want to offer us a brief meditation. Will you please join me? So let's take a few minutes now to simply sit and be with just this. You can close your eyes as it's helpful or just keep them focused down softly, turning inward. Turning inward to just this very life. Another way to describe this, just this, is is-ness or thus-ness. Simply being fully just this. So giving yourself a few moments to arrive in this place where you are. Taking the opportunity now for returning to the body and to the breath.

[19:44]

Relaxing your mind. It seems there'll always be something stirring, carrying us away from the present. Just notice this in the body. For a few moments, the mind can be still. Resting with breathing. being aware of the in-breath when breathing in, being aware of the out-breath when exhaling. When you exhale, perhaps say in your mind, just this, just this, repeating again a few times. Not mechanically, But when you say it, notice there's just this.

[20:49]

This is it, just this. This is the whole of life, all of it, nothing more. And whenever the mind wanders, train yourself to come back to just this, without blame or self-talk. just this now, this moment. Only resting as awareness. Clearly observing our present experience without clinging to it or pushing it away. Noticing perhaps reality is always only expounding just this. training our mind to stay with this. We can do this throughout our day, noticing whenever the mind wanders, without judgment, returning to just this, just this.

[22:06]

Seeing what it's like to live this day, this week, with continually opening to This. Now bringing our meditation to a close and coming back together in our usual way when you're ready. So what is happening now in your life? What are the myriad winds of impermanence, apparent comings and goings, joys and sorrows that you are experiencing today? Did you notice it just now when you were sitting? What was coming forward? Were you able to recognize the various streams of thoughts, emotions, body sensations, how they

[23:16]

came, abided briefly, then passed away. How is it that you are meeting the vicissitudes of your life? From what place? To be sure that I was actually using the word vicissitudes correctly, I looked it up in the dictionary. I like the sound. I like the way it plays on the tongue. So the dictionary says, Is a change or variation occurring in the course of something? And also successive, alternating, or changing phases or conditions as of life or fortune, ups and downs. So the obvious substitute that my friend Lee is now encountering in her life and her intentional practice of just being with this brings forward for me a particular poem. one of my most favorite poems, and it's been revisiting me now for the last several months.

[24:21]

And maybe some of you have heard me mention it before. This poem is titled, It Was Like This, You Were Happy. And it's written by Jane Hirshfield. Jane Hirshfield is a Zen student who actually lived at Tassahara and Zen Center for a number of years. She's a well-known, well-regarded poet. She's also a dear friend, and I greatly appreciate her presence. During the time of the 2008 fire, when I was director of Tassajara, she was there for the first few days of the fire, and she was greatly encouraging and supportive of me, giving me insights and suggestions of what to do during that time, because she herself had been there for a number of days during the 1977 fire that also threatened Tassajara. So she holds a dear place in my heart. So this poem reflects on vicissitude by looking back from the point of view of when one's life is beginning to draw to a close.

[25:25]

And in a certain sense, you can just a while appreciate this poem from the perspective that the end of your life is actually in every moment. Just this very moment. So regardless of what stage of life you're in or your well-being, or whatever is happening now, only this moment is your life. It's the only life you will ever have just now. Can you feel that in the body and mind? Can you know that? Can you recognize that? Just this life right here. And so when you reflect in this way, what stays with you? Were it to end in the next moment, what experience of your life would be the most prominent? And what does it mean, your life?

[26:28]

So here's the poem. It was like this, you were happy. It was like this, you were happy. Then you were sad. Then happy again. Then not. It went on. You were innocent or you were guilty. Actions were taken or not. At times you spoke. At other times you were silent. Mostly it seems you were silent. What could you say? Now it is almost over. Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life. It does this not in forgiveness. Between you, there is nothing to forgive. But with the simple nod of a baker, at the moment he sees the bread is finished with transformation. Eating too is now only, is a thing only for others.

[27:37]

It doesn't matter what they will make of you or your days. They will be wrong. They will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man. All the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention. Your story was this. You were happy. Then you were sad. You slept. You awakened. Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts. Sometimes persimmons. I appreciate the way in which this poem strips away the dramas and the interpretations that embellish our experience, just leaving the raw material itself, leaving just this, if you will. Thusness, reality as it is, unadorned.

[28:42]

It seems we often tell stories about both the living and the dead as a way to measure our own life, to be able in some way to gauge the depth, width, shape, color, texture, value, etc. of our own life. And by measuring and analyzing our life or the life of another, we imagine we can hold on to it, make it more real in some way by capturing it, as we often do by trying to take photos, collecting important moments in our life. But Buddhism tells us that our life is fundamentally ungraspable and immeasurable. It was like this. You were happy, then you were sad, then happy again, then not.

[29:46]

So take a moment now and identify examples in your life when you were happy and then sad and then happy again and then not. Is this familiar? This flapping back and forth? It seems to be a common experience for most of us human beings. Now we might ask ourselves, what is the this we are constantly encountering and experiencing? What is the raw material of our lives? The teaching of Buddhism helps us to recognize the cognitive processes that we go through and which lead to our typical emotional vicissitude. In her wonderful Dharma talk last time, Thursday of this week, the vulnerable, Verbena Korten, reminded us that the Buddha spoke of five aggregates, or constituent parts, my tongue is beginning not to work so well, that comprise our human experience.

[31:03]

And these are physical forms, feelings, not emotion, but in the sense of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. Perceptions, mental formations, what we typically understand as emotions, and consciousness. And our mental formations or emotional reactions arise as a consequence of the constant stream of vedana or feeling tones. If pleasant, you're happy. If unpleasant, you're most likely unhappy. or sad, and then happy again when it becomes pleasant, and then unhappy or bored if it's not. And there always seems to be something that's to our liking or disliking, particularly something that doesn't suit our preferences or ideas about how things should be. I should have more money, less fat, less wrinkles.

[32:07]

There shouldn't be cancer or war or racial oppression or global warming, etc. So rather than then live, it is like this, we usually live, it shouldn't be like this. Or it should be different, meaning the way that I want it to be. And so our typical reaction to what is, is to resist and manipulate circumstances. We grab onto it, We try to freeze it in place and time or in some way to hinder change itself. It went on. You were innocent or you were guilty. Actions were taken or not. So vicissitude seems endless. As does the depth of our karmic culpability. You were innocent or you were guilty.

[33:11]

Actions were taken or not. Things happened, actions were taken, but all that is past now. In many ways, these designations of innocent and guilty are just more elaborations. The reality is that we are conditioned beings living out our conditioning. And as such, we are all culpable at some level for the state of our world and its innumerable problems due to our interdependency. Our lives are a tangled expression of individual and collective karma, intentional actions, including the action of not taking action, whether consciously or unconsciously. And these actions have endless repercussions that we may never be aware of.

[34:18]

At times you spoke, at other times you were silent. Mostly it seems you were silent. What could you say? At the end of the day, what really is there to say? Often we are reminded in Zen that words do not reach it. Our words and stories cannot sum up or express the fullness and the complexity of our life. And yet, of course, speaking needs to happen. As Katagiri Roshi reminds us, you have to say something. But when we speak, are we speaking from a mind that is full of dis-ease and chatter and anger? or for one that is grounded in right speech and silence? Is our speech true, kind, timely, and necessary?

[35:24]

And in our times of silence, are we deeply enlistening and present? Or are we simply lost in internal mutterings of self-glorification and self-defensiveness? There's an old wisdom saying that true silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of self. True silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of self. Now it is almost over. Our life seems to be over too soon, doesn't it? Hence the constant reminder in Zen that we see on the Han, Downstairs, the wooden instrument that calls us to meditation. Great is the matter of birth and death. Life is passing swiftly. Awake, awake. Do not waste your life. Friends who do hospice work tell me that those who are close to death, there can be a way in which they've lost interest in the typical habit that we have of selfing.

[36:40]

creating a self with our usual busyness of gathering and consuming more experience, more things, more memories, more, more, to fill the sense of lack that we have inside of us that we just can't some way make sense of. And so at the end of life, many are inclined to simply step back and reconnect to some part of their being that is not so outwardly involved, that doesn't need the external world to confirm it. So many of you know former San Francisco Zen Center abbess Blanche Hartman. Blanche is living these days at Age Song, which is down the street. It's a senior living facility. And as her life energy wanes, she has chosen to lessen her outreach and her engagement. including limiting the number of people that she sees.

[37:42]

What energy that she has is going towards instead investigating her current experiences in her inner world. And this, again, is typical of many who are nearing the end of their lives. There is just this existence turning back on itself in an act of tenderness and intimacy. Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life. And we can have a similar experience of this in zazen, turning away from external involvements and allowing our conceptual mind to turn back to the boundless mind, to see and experience the life within our life. And this is how we come to know and experience a love that is unconditional. Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

[38:51]

It does this not in forgiveness. Between you, there is nothing to forgive. But with the simple nod of a baker, at the moment he sees the bread is finished with transformation. So what is it for life, to kiss our life? And not in forgiveness, but in acknowledgement. You have done nothing wrong by simply being alive, by simply doing the best you could as a human being, making, as Dogen says, one continuous mistake. You were only human and now the fruits of your life is ripe and coming to fruition. To forgive is to say that something was missing, something was incomplete, some target not reached.

[39:54]

But the simple nod, this simple kiss of accepting this life as it is, is itself an act of transformation. an act of release and liberation. Just this is enough. Just being alive is enough. I think that what we want most is to be acknowledged, to be seen, to receive a nod that says, you're complete just as you are in this moment. To receive this nod would in some way release us of this constant need to strive, to seek some idea of approval or verification of our being, of our okayness, that we are okay.

[41:01]

And some of us wait a whole lifetime for this, never receiving it from others. Offering an acknowledgement of another's completeness is a great gift, but one that we solemn give each other. We all want to be recognized for our humanity and our interconnectedness. We all want to be regarded, respected, and seen and accepted for who we are. And I think this is at the root of of the ongoing conversations and activism around systemic racism, social injustice, marriage inequality, environmental devastation, political and religious terrorism, and so on. At the root is a request to acknowledge and seriously address that some part of our wholeness is not being included.

[42:08]

welcomed and honored, and that this is deeply hurtful and disempowering. And even if we feel we have the capacity to forgive those who have hurt us, both individuals and institutions, that doesn't make the need for our humanity to be recognized any less insistent or valid. In the end, only we can give this to ourselves. I saw my birth mother earlier this summer when I went back to the East Coast for several months. And when I was five, my parents separated. My mother fled at a moment in which my father tried to kill her. And I didn't see my mother again until I was 35 years old. And after that meeting and other intimate connections,

[43:14]

The following 17 years, it's been less than satisfying. So my mother, for the last few years, has been having health issues, and she recently had a series of strokes that hospitalized her. And so this time when I saw her, I told her that I forgave her for abandoning my brother and I. knowing that it would perhaps be the last chance that I would ever have to offer her this reprieve, even though she had never actually asked for it. And I did it not for her, but I did it for myself, remembering still the probable regret that I had for the last time in which I spoke with my father before he died, to also say a similar thing. I forgive you for the way in which you weren't present in my life.

[44:19]

I know intuitively that my birth mother does not have the capacity to acknowledge my experience and to accept the man that I've become, regardless of her renewed presence in my life. Nor does she have the capacity to really turn inward and reflect and acknowledge what's in her own heart and mind. Sometimes it's like this with those we care about and are connected to. So how do I stay engaged with her, knowing that what I want most deeply from her would never be for the giving? That it's only now I who can give myself that which I most deeply yearn for, to be an unconditional, unwavering, awake, and loving presence. Eating too is now only a thing for others.

[45:27]

The nourishment we seek in the face of undeniable impermanence is just something much deeper. And now, my favorite lines of the poem. It doesn't matter what they will make of you. or your days. They will be wrong. They will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man. All the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention. These lines always hit me with the truth and release. Our true freedom lies in recognizing that all our stories and narratives of self and others must be seen through and renunciated. Others will miss me and never truly see me. I can't do anything really about that, but I can do something about not missing and not seeing this one.

[46:38]

What would it be to allow all the stories that we've told repeatedly about ourselves to be discarded? so that we can settle into, instead, our mere being, a mere being in which Wallace Stevens wrote on about on his deathbed. He wrote, you know then, that is not the reason that makes us happy or unhappy. The bird sings, its feathers shine. I recall a story when Suzuki Roshi was on his own deathbed, a student of his came to him very sad and grieving and weeping, seeing his teacher's apparent pending death. So Zuki Roshi said to this grieving student, don't worry about me. I know who I am. Do you know who you are?

[47:38]

can you come to the reality of who you are rather than who you think you are? You know, we choose our freedom moment by moment. We choose our freedom by pausing and noticing what are our thoughts, how are we relating to what's going on now? Do I want to believe these thoughts or do I want to set them aside and actually connect and relate to what it actually is? That is the place of freedom. And we do that again and again and again and again, a lifetime of practice. And so finally, at the end of our life, when death shades us from the worldly winds, there is just the thing itself. There is simply what happened and what happened next.

[48:43]

Your story was this. You were happy. Then you were sad. You slept. You awakened. Sometimes you ate both the chestnuts, sometimes persimmons. What is the taste of your life before you season it with duality? What is it simply to savor your life just as it is. So in closing, I want to offer two things. One is a poem by Uchiyama Roshi, who was the teacher of Shahako Gamora. And this poem is titled, Just Live, Just Die. The reality prior to the division into two, thinking it to be so or not thinking it to be so, believing it to be so, or not believing it to be so. Existence, non-existence, life, death, truth, falsehood, delusion, enlightenment, self, others, happiness, unhappiness.

[49:53]

We live and die within the profundity of reality. Whatever we encounter is Buddha life. This present reality is Buddha life. Just living. just dying within no life or death. And so finally, I want to share a common phrase that's often offered in Japanese to those who are leaving. Or daijini. Or daijini. Please take care of the great matter. As you meet, as all of you meet the vicissitudes, of living and dying. Please take good care of yourselves. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[50:56]

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 sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

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