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 morning. My name is Paul Ruchin Paul Heller. and I'm one of the teachers here at City Center, and welcome this morning, especially to those of you who are here for the first time, but to everybody. Recently, someone sent me a little video clip, and maybe some of you have seen it. I'd be interested to see if you have. It's a little video clip of... a young man in Thailand, I think it was probably Bangkok, but he's walking through the streets and then he coincidentally performs several acts of kindness.

[01:13]

There's a plant, he moves it in to where it can get watered, there's a street vendor trying to push her cart up the curb, he helps her, there's a dog who wants food, He gives it half its lunch. And then there's a mother and child panhandling for money for the girl to go to school. And he gives them the contents of his wallet. How many people have seen that? It's interesting. I find it quite touching. Because then it lays like this, and then he comes back, presumably in a day or two, and does the same thing all over again. And there's some growing connection.

[02:14]

The street vendor now looks at him like, come on, give me a hand. And even the dog looks like, yeah, you're the guy that feeds me. And then it says something like, and what do you get, what does a person get from being kind? Oh, I missed one piece. He goes home and he hangs a bunch of bananas on the doorknob of his neighbor. And then he goes inside his very modest little apartment and he looks like he's sitting on his bed Bowing. Then the narrative says, well, what do you get from being kind? And then not so much trying to answer it in words, but more going back through each of those segments and showing the growing connectedness and intimacy and warmth.

[03:28]

And then it ends up strangely, wonderfully by saying, Thai Insurance Company. And I thought, well, is that insurance, you know? The best insurance policy is kindness. Interesting message. But here's where my mind went with it. Something about that disposition. I lived in Thailand for a while, and for those of you who've spent some time in Thailand, you know there's a phrase called maipenlai, often translated as, it doesn't matter, but actually, I think more subtle than that, it's more like, this is okay.

[04:33]

Even though, there may be some aspects of it that are not what you want. Like once I was in Thailand and I was going on a long journey, and I got on the bus early and put my stuff on a seat, much to my relief. And then when I came back, a woman had lifted them and put them in the aisle and taken my seat. And I sort of... I looked at my stuff, I looked at her, and I noticed, like one seat across, there was this guy sitting there watching. And I was just like, okay, let's see what to do with this. And of course, my Thai wasn't abysmal, so I couldn't exactly articulate my position so well. I think she knew it anyway.

[05:34]

But then she started to get very animated and aggressive. And I was quite conscious of the person watching me. And then I just bowed, picked up my seat and went and stood in the back in the aisle. And he and I exchanged glances. To me, it was quintessential of a certain... Thailand's an interesting place. In some ways, it's very Buddhist. It's permeated into the culture. And this sensibility... Okay, this is how it is. Don't... Don't get agitated, aggressive. It is how it is.

[06:37]

Just keep a certain disposition. And I think part of the challenge for us when we come to meditation, to practicing awareness, to doing zazen, is how do we bring that kind of attitude, that kind of disposition, that kind of involvement into this delicate process of meeting who we are, how we are, as we sit. If you think psychologically for a moment, we have... mostly unconsciously, accumulated our psychological defenses and mechanisms. And then we take up a practice of radical honesty, continuous awareness, and it calls forth all that we've been

[07:57]

trying to rationalize, suppress, justify, avoid. It just returned from being at Kassahara, our monastery, where quite 50 Zen students devoting three months to this radical awareness. 17-hour days. And as a teacher in that environment, there's an extraordinary opportunity to bear witness, not only to your own process, but to the process of these other folks doing the same thing you're doing. And you really get to see the delicate balance of Zen practice, of awareness practice.

[09:07]

In some ways, when we meet the moment, and we open. Like just in watching that little video clip. And of course, we could all be cynical and say, well, that's just some... notion, something, some ad agency direct up. Maybe. But it also, I think, carries something of what we're all capable of. And not only what we're capable of, but what happens to us when we bring that forth. That kind of simple kindness and connection and inclusion. something about the world opens. And when you're in an intensive meditation environment, there's both opening and resisting.

[10:15]

And they dance together. And sometimes inside your own being, you're not sure whether you're having the most profound, wonderful time of your life, or whether this is the most horrible, awful time of your life. And on a given day, it can go up in time, several times. Because there is this delicate balance between going beyond some self-constructed definition of what is, and experiencing an intimacy, a liberation, and then on the other hand, the conditions of our existence drawing us more adamantly into what we might call our own stuff, our fears, our desires.

[11:30]

our hesitations, our sense of separation. And as a question, you know, one of the questions of practice is, being such a person, how do we approach that involvement that quite likely will have both of those come up for us? How do we approach that involvement And how do we sustain a constancy, a disposition? Both can be a teaching. That when we open, we're informed and instructed about opening. And when we contract, when we pull back, we're informed about conditioned existence that we are inextricably part of.

[12:37]

So here's a little poem. hard not to love the world, but possible. When I'm like this, even the swallows are not God. Even the yellow school bus. Even the children inside wanting out are not God. The poignant interplay between two worlds. If we were to try to take apart over the lore of Buddhism, much has been written, presented in the Pali Canon and later

[13:58]

How do you do this? How do you walk what's sometimes called in Zen the razor's edge between opening and contracting? How do you keep an open mind and an open heart to both? And then as we walk that edge, how do these two worlds inform and balance each other? Can there be compassion for our own contraction, our own hesitation, our own resistance, and for everybody else's? And can there be this kind of courageous embrace of those moments of opening? And to my mind, this little poem

[14:58]

It's hard not to love the world, but it's possible. When I'm like this, even the swallows are not God. Even the yellow school bus, even the children inside wanting out are not God. This way in which the particulars of the world, the particulars of our life, rather than drawing us into some sense of struggle, some sense of needing to get it right, needing to succeed, needing to radically change how things are.

[16:05]

Can we, rather than be immersed in it and the world and the sense of self it creates, can we see it playing itself out? Like school kids sitting on the bus and not wanting to go to school. So this tender disposition in a way expresses part of the attitude with which we come to zazen, to mindfulness practice. Part of the challenge for us is not to say, okay, well, here's a tool that can remedy my life. according to my version of what a remedy is.

[17:17]

That can bring into my life that which I want brought in. Can there be this almost sense of wonder? What is going on? So in early Buddhism, in the Pali Canon, there'd be a number of factors. And interestingly, generosity is one of them. Generosity, diligence, setting up the ethical conduct that supports that, the open awareness, the directed attentiveness. And then this kind of receptivity.

[18:21]

We're not simply caught up in the particulars, but we see the particulars as illustrative of something larger. There's a Zen story where a monk asks the teacher, Shaosan, what is Buddha? What is the way of being that realizes and expresses being awake? And Shaosan says, the new bride rides the donkey. and the mother-in-law leads it. In our life, what arises in the normal course of our life, it has a relevance, it has a story, it has a context.

[19:41]

That's what makes it so enticing. not to deny all that, not to try to insist that our life is just some pristine, moment-by-moment phenomena, which, of course, it can be when the mind is deeply settled. But the point of practice, from a Zen perspective, is not that that's the goal. It's not that we exist in this deeply concentrated, pristine, pristine phenomena. It's more that it illustrates an aspect of life that then sheds light, makes evident, gives us a way to access the stuff of life. The stuff of life being that our life is contextual.

[20:47]

Different events have different relevance. I remember once saying to someone who I know very well, I said, what time is it? And they said, I'm not hungry. You know, what they heard was, I think it's time for lunch. And I'm not hungry, you know. It just seemed like this wonderful shorthand way we relate to each other. Sometimes making incorrect presumptions. Sometimes the way we relate to ourselves, that something appears and we draw a conclusion. We presume. This means this, and this is my response. And this is the nature of of our emotional life.

[21:50]

It's associative. We associate this experience with other experiences, with other aspects of our own psychological makeup. We conclude. We give it context and meaning. And then how does this... On one hand you could say, just to put it in simple terms, you have realization and integration of the realization. You see something clearly, and then how does that inform the person you are, the nature of existence, and the path of liberation? throw it all right in there. And when you're involved in this practice, and as I say, it becomes more notable when you're immersed in it, like for three months or six months, you see it's anything but a straight line.

[23:08]

And I would say for almost all of us who've tried to do zazen, we see it's anything but A straight line. One moment you're concentrated, the next moment you're buying lunch at your favorite cafe. And then you come back to your breath and renew your dedication, your openness, your settledness, and then something else pops up. And how easy it is to be perplexed, to find it as something to struggle with. And as I say, this disposition of kindliness, this disposition of somewhere in the territory of Mike Penly, okay?

[24:16]

It is what it is. It's not exactly what I was hoping for. Or maybe it is. Or maybe it's the exact opposite of what you're hoping for. But it is what it is. And how can you, right there, sitting on your cushion, call forth an open awareness? How can you When you enter your world, with all the context, with all the relevance, with all the rehearsed and replayed narratives you have about it, how can you enter that world with a kind of beginner's mind? Let me look at this now. Let me see just what's coming up now. There's another Zen story.

[25:24]

There was a famous Zen teacher, Dongshan. And the monk asked Dongshan, of the three realms of being, which one teaches the path of practice? Which one teaches the Dharma? The three realms of being would be the nirmanakaya, that which arises, this conditioned, contextual world, just as it is. And then another realm of being is going beyond all the stories, all the judgments, all the concepts. And then very interestingly, the third realm of being is the interplay between the two of those.

[26:29]

And the going beyond is called the dharmakaya, going beyond concepts, judgments, ideas. And then the interplay is called the sambhogakaya, sometimes called the realm of intimacy. sometimes called the realm of bliss. When I watched that little ad, I thought, in its own way, this image it conjured up in response to the question, well, what did this person get out of this? And in each one of those locations, the plant has grown. The street vendor who he helped push her cart is now kidding around with him, taking her hat and putting it on his head.

[27:49]

The dog is now following him home. The next door neighbor sees him putting the bananas out and gives him a hug. This way, that connectedness arises. And of course, the Dharma teaches Well, everything's always interconnected. If we didn't have air, water and food, we'd be dead in moments. And beyond that, just the way we interact with each other. If you ever watch your mind for a moment, who is it you're talking to and what are you talking about? And what makes it all so compelling? We want to interact. We've got something to say.

[28:53]

We want someone to hear it. It's enormously important. And yet, within the constructs of a self, they're contracting. They're separating. And then we look carefully. I think we can say compassionately, It has almost an element of survival. I need to separate so I can survive. And this great paradox that this interbeing is how we flourish. When you study it all sorts of ways, I remember reading recently saying, from a sociological perspective, that people thrive when they have community.

[29:59]

When they don't have community, when they're isolated, they don't thrive, to a large extent, not in the absolute. So this is, in one way, the realm of the sambhogakaya, this interplay. So we have the nirmanakaya, the Dharmakaya, the Sambhogakaya. And the monk says to Dungshan, wonderful question, which one of these three teaches the path of practice? And you might think, especially from the way I'm talking about it, that Dungshan would say the Sambhogakaya. But actually, he says, I always stay close. to this. I stay close to this question. What's happening now? Which of these realms, which of these attributes of existence is most prevalent?

[31:07]

And what about it? What's it manifesting? If we make this aspect of our humanness to contract into the singularity of self. If we make it the enemy, how on earth can we ever cultivate kindliness towards it? Given its tenacious way of coming forth, if it's held in a negative regard, how can we possibly have that ease, content, willingness to be. It becomes elusive. If we set up our awareness as a way to overcome that, then we've created this odd way that we're pushing away a significant element of awareness, which is opening, which is accepting.

[32:21]

This is what's happening. And in many ways, our practices, just as Dung Chan says, we continually return to looking at this process. In the practice period, I was offering notice, acknowledge, contact, experience. Notice, acknowledge, contact, experience. when you're in the throes of some passionate narrative, positive or negative, you know, filled with desire, filled with resentment. Either way, can you notice, oh, this is the mental state, this is the narrative. Something in

[33:26]

The acknowledging. The capacity for awareness is innate. And it's always close at hand. As Deng Shan says, I always stay close to this. I stay close to this innate capacity for awareness. Just noticing. Now it's like this. Now I'm like the school children on the yellow bus, not wanting to go to school, go to work. It's very interesting, when you visit Tassajara, our monastery, often you're struck by

[34:26]

the presence, the concentration, the openness of the practitioners there. But they're very aware of how that morning when the wake-up bell rang, the first thought was, oh no. They're very aware of the workings of their own thoughts and feelings that accompany them through the day. This interesting way that when we enter into practice, it's not so easy to see the shining virtue of our own effort. Practice will open us, make evident to us the karmic workings of our life.

[35:39]

And in some way we could say, well, that's terrific not to see the virtue of your own practice. It eliminates the temptation of arrogance or self-importance. But there's a shadow. You know, something around sustaining our dedication, sustaining our courage, our wholeheartedness. So, finding a balance. So Dong Shan says, however it appears, that's what I pay attention to. And this is very much the disposition of zazen, the disposition of awareness.

[36:51]

What's happening now? It's not what should be happening, what could be happening, what would I rather was not happening. What's happening now? And if we become too tight, too harsh, too demanding in our own effort, we miss something. We create a difficulty for ourselves. Of course, if we become too loose, just sit there and daydream, lost in the stories, then we're just perpetuating, we're sort of not subconscious in furtherance of our own narratives that are mysterious to us because they haven't been brought into awareness.

[37:58]

So especially in Zazen, especially in the school of Soto Zen which we are, this open awareness. Not so purposeful in terms of what it's going to accomplish, but more intentional in how it opens to each moment. Let me read that little poem again. It's hard not to love the world, but possible. When I'm like this, even the swallows are not God. Even the yellow school bus, even the children inside wanting out are not God. Thank you very much.

[39:07]

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. 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.

[39:36]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_96.71