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. So I thought I'd begin. I'm sure I definitely want to have questions and answers until the end. So I hope we will have time for that. I want to begin with the question, what is it? What is it? And I've asked myself that question over and over, and I don't think there's one answer to it. I believe it's one of those questions. You then have the root out your life every day, some of those questions you did. And if you answer it, I think you're kind of cheating yourself on what you might discover. So I'm constantly asking myself what is waking up.

[01:01]

And so how many people I knew this evening to this? When I say thank you for coming, thank you for showing up for your life. And of course for us. So what is waking up? And I thought, let's begin with the simple activity of waking up every day. You know, it's something in our minds about that. That's kind of the first wake-up we learned. Our parents waking us up to go to school. And we were holding someone still with hands up, maybe, to go to work. Keeps going, I don't know, but waking up. You know, wake up. I remember as a child waking up to go to school and one year I said, this is going to go on all my life, you know. There's a part of me that just read, stay asleep and say it like that. So when we wake up in the morning, it can either happen in the dark or in the light, you know, when we wake up.

[02:11]

And when we do, we become aware of the morning or aware of the new day after day. And perhaps there's a feeling of a new start when you wake up in the morning or something that says, oh, I can begin again. Or maybe, ugh, I can begin again. And there's an inability to go back to what is behind you before you wake up. You have that feeling like, oh, I can't go and redo yesterday. the fluid or the bad, the joyful, the not so enjoyable, the pleasant or the unpleasant, we don't get to go back and do that. Well, we may have a sense of that when we wake up just naturally. So you become aware also of lingering emotions maybe from the day before. You know, you may wake up and wonder why you feel a certain way. It doesn't take long before the mind filters back to where that emotion came from.

[03:14]

also may be part of your waking up in the morning or whenever you wake up from the afternoon to be waking up. And then there may be wondering or curiosity of what the day will bring. Or you may think of knowing what the day will bring. You have a schedule, you have some appointments. But you know, you live long enough to know that those things probably change throughout the day. So you wonder what's going to happen. into what's going to take you in what direction, which way you're going to go. And then the routine begins. All of your habits, you roll out of bed and you do those things you do. And then you might move to what your habits are. I've had a teacher when I first started practicing in an instrument tradition that said, when you wake up in the morning, You do all of your daily routines for your body. But then with the next thing you move to, say it's coffee, or whatever that next thing is, they say usually that is the thing that is your religion.

[04:26]

That's the thing that stands out most high in your life. And so when the teacher told me that, I was like, wow, Tom Rokoff, the Today Show? That's what my worries were about. You know, I think everything, get there and watch today's show and see the guests and listen, watch the days, get dressed, get ready for work. But he definitely wants someone I watched every day. I see every morning. And so I decided, well, I'd want to change that. That habit and that routine. Little did I know that it would be Dharma or Buddhism that were replaced at that time. So when we wake up in the morning, there's a keen experience of attention and awareness to something. And we can choose to be in the awareness or attention or not. And so we can be unconscious. And so, or like I said, go watch the news.

[05:32]

A lot of phone calls, copy, upon us, upgrade, meditation for something. But there's another kind of waking up. And that waking up, which occurs, doesn't occur physically. It's a waking up that occurs in other words, other than my physical bodies. Although it's not physical, but it comes through our bodies. other kind of waking up or waking up that occurs while we are physically awake, usually. It has to be experienced through our senses and through our bodies. It is awakening that is experienced through our eyes, what we hear, what we touch, you know. But this so-called awakening, we still don't know where it is.

[06:36]

even though we sense it. We sense this awakening. And so, so far, I talked about two beginnings. What is awakening? The one that we physically wake up. And then there's a waking up that I'm talking about now that comes to the body, but yet it is not physical. And yet we can sense it and possibly perceive it, maybe not describe it, maybe not name it. And we don't know where it is. So it's a pretty ambiguous thing to even sit up here and talk about it. So don't talk over it. I got this wave joking from my mother. I learned it later when she got older. I didn't know I was like her child. This waking, the other waking I'm talking about that we don't know where it is, but it comes through our bodies.

[07:46]

It comes through our senses. It's spiritual awakening at that. So spiritual awakening is not physical, but we can only experience it through our lives. The interesting thing, it's not physical, but we only can experience it through our lives. Most people may try to seek the waking path. They try to grab onto it. thinking you come into them from somewhere or up through them from somewhere. But it's experience through life. It's simple. In many ways, it's similar to waking up from our everyday acts of sleep. So you can wake up in the dark or in the light. Wake up in your suffering or in your wisdom. You can become aware of a new beginning and the spiritual working. So it's very similar to our physical weight now. You're aware that you cannot go back to the past. the spiritual awakening that is not physical. And there perhaps is a curiosity as to what will happen next now that there is an experience of awakening.

[08:50]

But the difference between physical awakening from sleep or a spiritual awakening is that the latter in your inner world and your consciousness, your heart comes into knowing. into a remembered connection to the earth, the sun, and all of life. So it's not just waking up and then reconnecting to your copy, or waking up and reconnecting to your routines. It's waking up and finding this inner world connected to your heart, your consciousness, a knowing of connecting to the earth, the sun, and all of life. there is a visceral feeling that you once experienced, that you once experienced as life, is no longer true. So I want to give you an experience of that, that I felt where there was some awakening for me that happened in my life.

[09:59]

And so I'm going to say that last part again because it's important that What you experience as life is no longer true. You should become awakening. So you're not going back to what you knew, how you walked in the world, how you thought, sent, touched. All of that is time. And that is the awakening. And I don't know if some of you may chat, So when you're a baby again, when you have to chant, we have, I don't know which one it is, but it says, . You kind of go back to, I don't even have a language. I don't even know where you get to tell you what has happened. And so you may not understand the spiritual way.

[11:02]

And some of us come to practice, I've come to center center, Zen center, seeking this awakening. And then we're not sure if it happens or not, you know. So anyway, I went to experience, I went to Zen center six months, for six months in 2006, when I was seven. And it was a long six months. And it passed off, it passed off our Zen center. where many of us go to this focus practice. I often go to sleep for many hours at work. When I came home from that six months, I found myself not really feeling my house as my house, my home as my home. I made a little space for myself on the sofa.

[12:04]

felt a lot of anger coming up for me and hungry all the time. I felt alone, although my partner was right there with me. I stayed in my pajamas. In essence, I was lost. I felt lost. So what was this loss? What was this... knew at that time, first of all, what was the Karen McDonough family's issue at the time. So I wondered, what was this new loss? I had gone away on this big mission for something. And then I came back and I had absolutely no aspiration for anything. And I had no guarantee to do anything. And in essence, I felt blissful. I couldn't even go out world to see what it was all about and what had changed.

[13:06]

So some may say that you were, that was clinical depression. Maybe it was, I don't know. I have no idea. I didn't know if that goes through. But in hindsight, I felt experienced as a spiritual emergence, that a more authentic life of how I wanted to live was coming through. So the way I was living was not the There was nothing for me to hold on to. And having no aspirations actually was a change for me, because I always had them. Of course, I wanted to constantly hold on with the aspiration. You know, thinking that's a good thing. But it was also a real intention, a real clinging for me to find something better than what I had to hold on to. So when I came home and I had nothing, and I didn't recognize myself, I recognize my own name, where I was developed in my life.

[14:07]

I knew this to be a place where I could only stay. There was no action I could take. And there was no even calling someone, because I could not explain to them what goes on in the city. And so in this state of awakening, sometimes we are lost. And in that loss, there's grief. So it doesn't always feel good. Spiritual awakening doesn't always feel good. It's sometimes image as blissful. But it doesn't always feel good. And for me, in my life, most times it happens. during some suffering, some loss, or some grief. Because in those places, I cannot take action.

[15:10]

Because I don't even know what to do. There's just a sense of what I do, of what's that thing. So in essence, what one is losing is the sense of one step, at least the false step. And as I was moving more authentically into where I wanted to be and how I wanted to live, that's why my house did not look like my house. But what was inside of me was completely different than where I lived, where I wanted to be, and how I wanted to live. I want to read this quote to you from Aida Shanti. Just one moment of awakening begins the dissolution of one's false sense of self. And subsequently, the dissolution of one's whole perception of the world. Spiritual awakening reveals that which is unspeakable and unexplainable, it's actually walking off. So I was right where I should be.

[16:14]

Unspeakable and unexplainable. So we do not have to wake up to Buddha's teachings and try to wake up to that. I'm trying to get Buddha set. Get it in my head. Wake up to awakening. We don't have to wake up to that. We're not waking up to something about ourselves, either, from some level of wisdom trying to, you know, bring what's up and kind of knock it out of ourselves. And what we are awakening to, I feel, is already inside us. What I awakened to was already inside me. But I didn't recognize it. So I was still, you know, because I didn't recognize it. So we are awakening through the challenges of our environment. We are awakening through the physical, through the body. We awaken through our struggles and our environment in terms of race, gender, class, and so forth. We are awakening through these things. So after that experience, I realized that in order for spiritual waking, I think the primary condition is that if you're not willing to live, then your experience of spiritual waking may not be failed.

[17:44]

It may not be a big secret. Most of us aren't, too. People are very tired. And so that was what I learned, Ruth, of that experience after coming home. And then I had any more experience like that, don't think I understand, that I was losing something. And that losing something, I was working out. And that waking up, That's the only way I could attend to the things that I suffer, the things that come into my life that are challenges. So if I can't keep meeting them in the same way that I am all the time, just keep meeting them this way, I'm going to only meet them one way. So that was my experience. So I want to definitely have time for questions.

[18:51]

We can talk about more of what I said. anything that may have come up for you, but I wanted to read this poem because there's a part of this poem that I wanted you to hear, and I wrote this because I wrote it from that place of loss, and that place of being drowned up, having who I am and myself burned up, and so, and then wanting to grab those chart pieces and make myself again. you know, bring them back again. And so I offered this poem to you to help your own experience of awakening that's inherent. Awakening exists. It's about to go on after it. It's here. It's like awareness is here. We have to just learn to experience it. And then learn to experience it. We may come to some waking up in the midst of our life. So this poem is called Wild Breathing.

[19:52]

The path is life. And the purpose of life is to live it. To be soothed by its waters still flowing and warmed by the sun that reaches those who stand boldly and behold them. But I like that part. And the purpose of life is to live it. You don't have to go off and find the purpose. You just live. Live this moment. and life stretches into eternity, revealing the stars blown in the vastness of your heart. Hold open what it means to be alive and still breathing, despite all that has burned away and your living through fire. Dare you sweep up the ashes, whittle and sand the charred pieces, and make a smooth mound of yourself, a mound that is breathed upon would float you back to the silence of your beginning.

[20:55]

Your arrival is now, landing from the new shore, a lifeline cast beyond anything imposed by the shadows of what appears to be mountains. Beyond the distorted reflection in puddles that seem to be waterfalls, past the fuel of desire mistaken for the sun. Might your fear be the onset of freedom from your beliefs, causing tremors, or the fear that you are still breathing after having spent your generous years, after having spent your generous years at wishing well? Might your fear be that breathing in and breathing out is too simple of a contribution to the great unsurpassed journey? No need to gather your breath and store it in your belly. Your breath is to be heard.

[21:56]

In the wild nature of all things, like a birdsong, like the pall of bison, your breath is to be discharged into the world. Ascend up from the earth of ancestors, out into the atmosphere of a milking ground. This is life. Any questions? I was curious to talk about loss and letting go. I'm curious how you balance that with what then is intention, what is vow, how that relationship works out. Yeah, yeah. I think the relationship works itself out if you are willing to, and I think that's what practice is about when we're sitting, is allowing those things to unfold, you know, not as they are unfolding, rather than trying to say, I have this intention.

[23:10]

And then you go working at it, and then it doesn't quite go the way you want it to do. I mean, this is my experience. Then you might miss books already unfolding in your life. vow and attention. And you can just hold the vow and hold the attention. And like I said, the whole question of what is waking up just as a good experience, not as an activity that you yourself go about. Because I know we do feel we're brilliant. But there is this unsurpassed journey You know, I understand that the greatness of that journey of life that we can't even touch. And I have experienced the brilliance of that by just letting go. Just using the practice to help me do that. Using the practice to sit and breathe and just let life unfold as it is.

[24:13]

Whether I'm afraid or whether I'm sad or scared, all the emotions come up. All the whole continuum of emotions will come and allowing those to come as well. So I think to not concern, you know, stuff with balance as much as allow me to go to my position. But then what about complacency? What about laziness or like, yeah, that aspect? And I feel that complacency When you're feeling like you are not making an effort, I feel that it's not necessarily effort in the way our society sees it.

[25:14]

Like, you know, I was one of those workers who people wonder what the hell was doing. sitting at my desk because I was a deep thinker and then I would get up and do the work. But a lot of times I was already down with my work because I was pretty fast with it. But they would think I wasn't making an effort because I wasn't rushing around. And I wasn't, you know, hearing about my work turn nervous. I wasn't that way at work. I was pretty comfortable, you know, relaxed. And I even had one thing, one boss that, because they were really, they were doing an event, and I was pretty relaxed. I had health, I was helping with the event. And they said, well, when are you going to get all crazy, you know? And I said, probably not, never, you know, about this event, because I feel very comfortable about what's going on. So I feel like effort is in this practice.

[26:16]

It's different than that. It's different than... You know, having that agenda, meeting, having these goals, meeting those goals, meeting something outside. I think this practice is meeting ourselves. That's the effort to meet yourself. Meet yourself where you're at. We're always looking for someone to meet us. Can you meet me? They don't meet me. My partner doesn't meet me. Well, meet yourself. Can you meet yourself? And I think that's the effort that this practice calls. How did you ever reorientate yourself? Well, after I realized I wasn't going back to where I was,

[27:18]

It was when I was back at the house in the chapter. I began to try to take action, and I could tell if I took some wrong action decisions. I made some decisions that needed to wait on them. I needed to sit longer, but I was trying to get back in the game of life. I even took on a job that I probably should have been working, because I was still in the vortex. And I had met someone who had been in lots of art And she said, it takes three years to get back. And I was like, what? But I think what I did is just allow my life to unfold. It wasn't easy. It was very challenging. I had changed, and I had learned so much about myself. And I wasn't used to knowing myself as that person I learned about. And it actually, it was So wonderful things, and I came home with a lot of weight off of my shoulder about who I was and how I related to people.

[28:28]

And so I was used to the weight, you know, and so without the weight, I was flying all over here. You know, the place, you know, just really not grounded, you know, and in the way that I had thought I was. So, but I understand even, you know, children teaches that the groundlessness is exactly the liberation. And so I did feel liberated. And I just back to that, that I was liberated in the sense of not being grounded to what had been in my life. And that opened up new ways of being. I knew I'm a writer. My writing exploded. That just allowed the wind to take me. Yes, I moved up into a few cheeks. But I survived and continued.

[29:30]

Just trying not to create the old. And not even trying to create the new. Just allowing it to show up. Whatever is right there before me is what Thank you so much. I love how you bring things into our practical every day. I have a question that's one about your personal practice that is why didn't even then go back to Papara. So that's one part of it. But that's related to this larger thing that goes through the contours of my own life, which is about the possibility of waves of awakening. So it's not just, you know, one event, but how we transition through the cycle of life. And I really appreciate what you said about loss, because I'm in one of those transition moments in my own life.

[30:35]

And I feel like I walk around my home. I kind of feel like a ghost between myself. And I go, oh, because maybe my old self died. Yeah. I'm just dramatic. I'm going to work with the last question about your life and the loss. And so not even deciding what the loss is. I think this piece I shared with you is a reflection. of something that happened seven years ago. So now I have something going on now, but because I haven't reflected on that, I feel that it would be shared too soon enough to bring that forward because then I would be making meaning of it and defining it and trapping it to something and then trying to live it and make it work.

[31:43]

So then I will try to make your death work for you. just feel it, experience it in life as something different, that something let go and up. And of always, something's coming, always. So when I was at Plaza of Hara, I went to the Olympics for the rest of my life, because I liked the forest, I liked the land, I liked the truth. I had some physical abilities that kept me from it. So they kept me from staying there. But also, they were making plans for me to work it out at the summer session, and they gave us a captain from my partner, and they were really forced to go, and I was ready to do it. And I said, you know, I said, well, what is it I'm doing for myself? And I realized that, you know,

[32:46]

This voice was always telling me, and it said, you know, one day you will have to leave us. If one day you will have to leave it, whether it's walking out or you'll die here. So you're not going to stay here forever. You might go, that's what you want to do like that. And then I was like, oh, yeah, because I kind of had the feeling I would like to be her friend. It made me realize that there was an inside of me, some kind of imagination that was way out ahead of me. And so I decided that it was best for me to return at least back to the city and just see what had happened. To me, not what happened in the city, because I still don't know what happened even today.

[33:47]

I don't know what happened in all six months. Completely. I did come back, and that I did not follow my strategy, because it could lead me to places that I would never come to if I had stayed. I love it. But keep going. Tell us what you were about, Senator, and what sparked it. OK. So I'm starting Zeno and Oakland. And that's right in the midst of your box on Mark Park Boulevard. And it's very interesting because I always did not want to accept it.

[34:49]

I would probably say, I can't do it. It's going to be too much work. And I saw this. I was driving down the street. I already had a sauna. And it was growing. It was in my house, and the house was open. So it was the public space. And I saw this woman go exercise. And she had one student. And I said, she needs some help. You know, my idea. She needs help, and maybe I could run a few hours from her space, because it looked real nice. So I went, and I called her, and she told me she was giving up the lease. And I said, OK. She said, you might want to talk to the landlord. And I said, well, I really don't want a lease. I just want two hours, so a week. And they talked me to the landlord. I went into the building. There was a dojo for teachers. So when I already had a slide in Japanese, it was like, it was like, I just walked into it.

[35:51]

Okay. And I told my students, I said, I'm going to rent this place for a center. And they were like, well, yeah. You know, like that was obvious step. But it wasn't an obvious step for me. You know, and now that it's open, I'm understanding more. that this space is not about me or Xan being a priest in the world. It's a space that I'm creating for peace in the middle of gunfire. There's nothing but gunfire around there. And really hard living. And sometimes I'm standing in the space, and I see people walk by and go, oh my god, this is really, really interesting. You know, and people are coming to the center already. It's like, it's not open yet. They want to sit. It's just that it's in the midst of a lot of hair salons. You know, when people go in nail salons, people go to feel good about themselves and feel good at the center right in the middle of it.

[37:01]

And so I am looking forward to creating something different. We do have dropping. Most of the hours are dropping. you come during the drop-in hours and you sit whenever you feel the need to come out of the chaos and I got that feeling from being in India and the ashram and I love that you know just being able to walk by and drop off at the ashram and sit and so I wanted to do that to have that place of peace in which people can come and sit there will be some formal hours two days after the week and periodic talks and periodic She said, big potlucks of music, big family. We're about to party. We're about to party. Drama. You said something that really resonated with me, like was the whole, I guess, awakening when things are hard.

[38:04]

In bad times, one thing I deal with is depression. How do you navigate? How do you, what I'm going to say, not like in the big view, but I mean, you personally, how would you came back and, you know, it was pajama time on the couch, would that turn into this? The one thing that I continued to do was sit, rather of a depression. You know, even if I were laying down, I would allow my breath to just hold me, you know, and allow my breath to caress what was going on, caress my life, caress my life, until I figured it out. It wasn't easy for my partner, because that was my thing. Very strange, very hard thinking of a challenge.

[39:09]

I didn't go in for a diagnosis. And I don't know, really, if I was depressed or not. But I had had depression in my life. But I had hopefully no confidence to the point where I had depression where I would stay in my house for weeks to stay. And I think I've had many spiritual awakening. Like they're saying, they come and go. Sometimes you can't sustain that awakening. And I think because my life has been spiritual since I was born. So because I've had that, I started writing. So these kinds of things will come to my life. And my gateways will come. And so sitting in the gateways, exhausting, and meditation was illuminating. And I felt that I could use it in that fact. One of the reasons I started practicing, I remember, I started practicing in each time. And they would ask people, what are you? practicing what is it that you want in your life. And people were naming all kinds of things, you know, how this covers the heart.

[40:13]

And I was afraid to say that, you know, really I'm here because I'm paranoid. I was so paranoid, you know, people. But I stayed with the practice because the practice of chanting and rhythm and sitting and studying Buddhist teachings felt to be the truth that I needed to hear. about who I was because I felt the pressure was telling me something else about who I was. Or I was telling me something else about who I was. Or I had learned from my parents, our community, or I could be sure about who I was. So the practice began to break that down, you know, to the point it was like I was going down to nothing, you know. The building, I didn't build myself. I just stayed in the practice. I've been practicing for years now. I just stayed with it and I will. I'll stay with it because it holds me.

[41:14]

Not that my life is perfect now. I won't just write it all together. But I know when I don't, I know I have something to fall back on as a crucial moment. And I tell myself when I'm getting all crazy, when I fuck my life, I say, Zinji, what is the moment? This is the crucial moment. Now what do you do? This is what the practice is. This is the crucial moment. And I just thought you were at that moment. But that moment is actually more probably important and we have more depth in the entire six months at the Atosahara. That crucial moment. Because it's a moment. Just look for your coaching home. I think one more.

[42:17]

How do you languish the benefits? I don't want to say benefits, but the experience of practicing solving to a community that might not be able to live with it. All of my students are not familiar with philosophy, as per se. I teach an instruction. I ask them to sit. And when they come to talk to me about things going on, they're not going to say, are you sick? And sometimes they say yes. Sometimes I'm just praying and saying, no. I have one that, you know, she was trying to be the longest sitter and talk about something.

[43:22]

You know, she might be the best. And so when they come back to me, they tell me what the practice is. So all you could do, and when they come to talk to me, I say, all I can offer you is meditation. This is all I can offer you. And even if they come to me for things that I think they should take to other professionals, I always say, I can come to you about this part, and that this is all I can offer you. And then every time they go through that, I just bring them back to that. This is all I can offer you. It's been about two or three years with the students I have. They tell me what is going on in their life and what has changed for them. And for each one, something different that has changed them. Even if I do a talk, something in the talk, I don't even know the meaning of that will change them.

[44:28]

I think it has to come from the other people, rather than you offering something and saying, this is what you'll get out of it. Because they're very dangerous because they might not do it. So you want it. People ask me, what is it that you do? So you want that practice. And they will ask. And they will tell you. Some of my students, I was like, maybe, you know, Some of them seemed to, their lives seemed to be more together than mine. And the way their life was moving, it felt like that, you know, in some ways. And the things they were opening to. And I remember their beginner mind, their beginner mind, and I'm not. I've been here a while, so I haven't worked yet. Going back to beginner mind. And so, just after the practice of allowing them to share. Thank you.

[45:39]

Thank you. giving, may we fully enjoy the doymo.

[46:02]

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