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. Good evening. It's really wonderful to be gathered here with all of you on this late summer evening. It feels actually kind of like fall. I was noticing it's dark now in the morning when we come to the zendo and it's dark in the evening. The stars are out when we come in the evening. And it's cool. It feels like fall. This evening I was remembering a poem that I read many years ago and that arose again for me recently that is one way of thinking about the path of practice.

[01:03]

I think many of you have heard it before. It's called Autobiography in Five Short Chapters. It's by Portia Nelson. Chapter one. I walk down the street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost. I'm hopeless. It isn't my fault. It takes me forever to find a way out. Chapter 2. I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I'm in this same place. But it isn't my fault. Still takes a long time to get out. Chapter 3. I walk down the same street. And there's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it there. I still fall in. It's a habit. But my eyes are opened. I know where I am.

[02:04]

And it is my fault. I get out immediately. Chapter 4. I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it. Chapter 5. I walk down another street. LAUGHTER So this poem has been popular in self-help groups and therapy and recovery groups. It also appeared, I think, in the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. Linda? Yes? You don't seem to be able to make a sign of voice. It seems fine, but don't talk by it. All right. No worries. So I think this is one way that I have found helpful to think about practice. Because this is a... Obviously, if so many people have resonated with this, this must be a fairly common pattern or a common experience.

[03:14]

It's certainly one that I resonated with. And it's not a one-time experience. It's something that comes up... repeatedly or in different ways at different aspects of practice or life. And it sometimes feels like peeling the onion. You know, there's always another layer, but there's no core or center there. It just keeps going, which is, again, like practice. So this evening I wanted to talk about chapters two and three in particular, that place in our practice where we're somewhat or painfully aware of what's going on, of the holes and the habits that we fall into, and we haven't yet figured out a way to not fall into the hole. This can be an absolutely excruciating time in practice, or it can just be discouraging, because we think that we have all we need.

[04:18]

We have some vision, some understanding of what's going on. We now see it. We may even understand what happened in the past or in our childhoods or yesterday that contributed to how we are now and what's going on. And somehow still, we do it again and again. And it can feel so weirdly out of control. And whether the again and the... again, is getting irritated and blowing up with someone or shutting down and going away or overeating or whatever it is. We watch ourselves do it, and we can go through periods of real despair. And sometimes we go through periods of really vowing to do something different, and we do, and then it doesn't quite maintain in the way that we'd hoped.

[05:19]

So this is not only an extremely common occurrence, it's just part of the natural cycle of how we learn and how we grow. But the first phase of being with that and being with that place differently is to really tune into what it's like. Because mostly we want to, I don't know about you, I want to get away from that. When that state of mind and body comes up, I mostly just want to make it go away. I want to fix it. I want to control it. I want to turn into a better person right now. I want to look good because I sure don't want to be that person again, that person that I used to be and didn't like and thought I was over, or this new person that I seem to be turning into who's doing different things that I don't like either. You know, and there's a repertoire of things that we all have to choose from to deal with that when it comes up.

[06:25]

You know, there's anger and blame and there's hopelessness and despair and depression. And there's a physical contraction, often a difficulty breathing. Sometimes there's a complete mental haze or fuzz. You know, people might say, are you okay? And you're like, I'm fine. And you're not, but you don't even want to know you're not. So the first step in actually working with that is being able to see that that's actually what's arising. And to be able to turn toward, to recognize it, to turn toward it. There's a line that has resonated with me by Antonio Gramsci, who wrote The Prison Notebooks, and he says, the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born.

[07:31]

In this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum, or this space between, this kind of bardo space, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. You can't run the old stories and you can't stop doing the old habits. What a terrible place to be. There's nowhere to turn and yet we have to keep on going. One day follows the next, and we keep doing something. So this quote was the epigraph to the most important book for me in my early 20s. And I must have, of course, you'll want to know.

[08:35]

It's called Daniel Martin. It's by John Fowles. No one else likes it. So I can't recommend that you read it. I used to recommend it to a lot of people. No one ever got through it. But it spoke to me at that particular time in my life, which is odd because one way of describing it is a middle-aged love story, a story about middle-aged people kind of reconnecting and falling in love. But I think now, and I couldn't have said what was so resonant for me. about that book, but I know that I think I must have read it in total about 50 times. Just picking it up occasionally and reading a passage and putting it down again, there was something about the language, about the characters, that just really resonated. This was before I'd encountered Buddhism. there was something searching in me that this was speaking to somehow. I think I read it cover to cover maybe a dozen times, but as just something that I dipped in and out of for maybe five or six years in my early 20s.

[09:44]

And the whole book was really about that the old is dying and the new cannot be born. These two people, a man and a woman, who knew each other in college at Oxford in the 50s, And then had a parting of the ways and didn't see each other for 20, 30 years. And then through circumstances arising, came back together. And, you know, the repressed Englishness of it, I think, was a big part of the draw for me. Because on my father's side of the family, it's very wasp. You know, there's a lot that's just... not said, not indicated, you know, a tiny inaudible sigh would be all that would express the enormous betrayal and disappointment of years. So I think there was something in all of this effort to express, to be born, something, you know, to move in that.

[10:50]

And at the end of the book, you know, it kind of comes to a point and then you know, it picks up again some months later. And it's a very simple domestic scene, and you see that these two people are getting together in a very sort of quiet way and starting to work things out. So there was no big transformation, there was no fanfare, it was not heroic. And I think maybe that was something that I resonated with also. and later I recognized that our practice is often not very heroic, or it is intermittently. But the day-to-dayness of it often doesn't feel heroic when we're in the middle of it. We can look back, and then it can be quite amazing what we've managed to do. But in the moment, it's just... It's not just holding on, but it's... It's finding our way in the dark, you know, towards something that we don't yet know what it is.

[11:56]

You know, something about the old doesn't fit anymore, and it's kind of dying. We can't get out of the skin yet. And it's wanting to be born. And you could also call that way-seeking mind, you know, that something that wants to be born. So one of the things that I found extremely helpful in meeting this place when it happens to arise is right view. And Greg shared with me the very interesting thing because Jody Green and I are co-leading Zen and Yoga Retreat. And he mentioned it, well, right view, the Sanskrit is samyak drishti. And the drishti is the same drishti as in yoga for gaze or your focal point.

[13:05]

And in yoga, it's a way to develop concentrated attention, focus. In Buddhism, it's more about changing the way we see things. Maybe that's true in yoga, too. But in Buddhism, certainly, it's changing how we literally see things. Suzuki Roshi talked about seeing things as it is, not our usual way of seeing things as all separate objects, subject and object, all kind of bumping up against each other, but as one great interdependent field of reality. So this different way of seeing is right view. And the traditional way of talking about right view is as the correct understanding of the four noble truths.

[14:06]

So this was the first thing that the Buddha taught. He had his awakening experience and decided that he would share it with whoever could hear it. And he shared... Four truths. The truth of suffering, that there is suffering. The truth of the cause of suffering as being clinging or grasping. The truth that there is freedom from suffering. And the truth of the path to freedom from suffering, which is the Eightfold Path. And there are considered to be three turnings of this wheel of Dharma. The first one is understanding. So first, we hear the teachings. Okay, there's four noble truths. There's the truth of suffering, of the cause of suffering being attachment or clinging, of freedom from suffering, and the eightfold path to the freedom from suffering.

[15:11]

So that's, you can understand that and you can hear more about it. But that's just the first turning. The second turning is putting it in, practice, is engaging with it, is seeing what does that mean in my life? What does that mean for me? It's not something out there. It's something for us to take in and work with. It's definitely not something to believe in. Please do not believe that the truth is suffering. See how that is for you. See what that means for you specifically. Also, part of the practice is that each of the Four Noble Truths, there's a particular request for practice of how we meet that truth. In the first truth, the truth of suffering, we're asked to deepen our understanding of suffering, to really go into it for ourselves, to understand the truth of our own suffering.

[16:21]

our experience of suffering, to be intimate with our own experience. And I should say the usual translation of dukkha, which is the Sanskrit word, is suffering in English. But it could also, and probably more accurately, be stress or unsatisfactoriness. And the root comes from a wheel being out of balance. So it doesn't have to be as extreme as what we think of as suffering. But it's this kind of off feeling. The not quite right feeling. The feeling that leads us to grab for this or that. Or push away this or that. Or be irritable. As opposed to those moments when everything is absolutely perfect exactly the way it is. And we've also had those moments. So we can recognize the difference. We may not have had so many of those moments in our life when it's really just whatever it is, okay. And maybe we've had a lot of them.

[17:22]

Maybe we've been fortunate to taste that a lot. But I think we all have some sense of that release of struggle. And with the second truth, it's not just to be intimate with it, but if the cause of suffering is really clinging, it's not the thing. It's not the experience. It's not that other person. It's how we're relating with it. It's the clinging. So the request of practice is to let go, is to release. Fear and hate and aversion and ignorance are also included in this sense of clinging because it's wanting things to be other than they are. So this wanting things to be other than they are manifests in all these different ways.

[18:25]

And can we let go of wanting it to be otherwise? The practice request of the third truth, the truth that there is freedom from suffering, is to experience that, is to actually take that up for yourself, to taste freedom for yourself. And the fourth truth, the path of practice, the Eightfold Noble Path, the request is to put it into practice, to actually live from that. And then the third turning, so there's understanding, and then there's putting it into practice, and the third is realizing it, actually living from that place, manifesting it, embodying it. It's no longer something separate from you. It is a part of you. You're not living from the usual place of wanting and not wanting, craving and aversion, blame, anger, struggle.

[19:35]

You're actually living from the place of integrity, uprightness, interdependence, compassion, kindness. because you're putting all of this into practice and living from that place. And that is the request, that is the third turning, is to live from that place, to embody it fully. Another meaning of right view is to see as a Buddha does. could also say that, you know, this was what the Buddha saw after his awakening. But I think maybe even more that when he was first teaching to the five ascetics that he'd used to practice with, that this was what he saw in their relationship to suffering and how he could connect with them.

[20:36]

So he was expressing his vision with his Buddha eye in a skillful way. So today I think it's fairly easy for us to understand interdependence and non-duality because it's out there in the culture quite a bit. We talk about it in terms of ecology and physics and relational psychotherapy and there's many, many, many aspects of the culture where we talk about that a lot. You know, kind of the cutting edge of everything out there, mindfulness. You know, that's all happening. And that's wonderful because that helps us understand it and helps us see it in a practical way. But that's still not quite the same as living from that place of putting it into practice. We can understand it in our minds.

[21:38]

It's like, I can understand, you know, that there's no away when I throw something away. But do I live from that place and make my choices and are my behaviors and is my speech in alignment with my values when I recognize there's no away when I throw something away, for example? So this is to take it deeper. And this is the request of practice. Not just to hear the teachings, even though they're very encouraging, but actually to put them into practice and to taste them for ourselves. That's the invitation. So this process is not so easy. You know, practice is very simple, but it's not necessarily so easy. So I'd like to offer you some encouragement in continuing with your practice, particularly through the difficult and the sticky times.

[22:40]

One is around encouraging words. And we can find those through reading Dharma books or talking to spiritual friends or just good friends. But hearing others' words at this time can be very encouraging. Because when we're having a hard time, the voices in our own head are often not very helpful. They're playing a lot of old records. But it can also be very helpful, if you're not finding the encouraging words that you wish that you could hear, to give them to yourself. And I really like this quote from J.D. Salinger. It's an elder brother giving writing advice to his younger brother, also a writer. And he says, remember that before you were ever a writer, you were a reader. Just fix in your mind the one thing in all the world that you most want to read right now.

[23:51]

The next step is terrible, but it's so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. Oh, dare to do it. Trust your heart. So when you're having a hard time in your practice or in your life and you need a bit of encouragement, you can fix in your mind what you'd most like to hear. What would your dearest friend say to you, the one who loves you beyond all reason? Or what would you read in the book that spoke to you so perfectly? or the teacher that you wish you had, right there, right now, what would they say to you? And if you listen, you can often hear something that will help.

[25:00]

My teacher, Sojin Roshi, Mel Weitzman, was once asked in a lecture, what do you think about during zazen? He said, I give myself zazen instruction. So it can also help just to refresh the instructions that we already know but somehow aren't following in our life or on the cushion or both. Patience and tolerance is often very helpful. When these difficult, stuck times come up in our practice, There's no way of knowing how long they'll last. Sometimes they're very brief, and sometimes they can be quite long-lasting, kind of dry spells that go on for a while.

[26:01]

You know, like anything else, there are things that you can do to support yourself and to enliven and refresh your practice. But it's also important just to be patient. It's kind of like a fallow field. You don't really know what's developing during this time that seems so strange and uncomfortable and awkward and uncertain that you just wish would be gone because, again, this isn't how you want to be or the person you want to be. But if you can just let it be there, and not have to push it away. It will change in its own time and there may be something important to learn from that whole process. Maybe consciously, maybe not even consciously. Maybe things will change at a level that you never really knew what happened and it doesn't matter because you just get to watch it change.

[27:12]

We don't have to understand things the way we often think we do. with our heads, if we can understand them with our hearts and our bodies, that's where we live. And perhaps even more than just patience and tolerance, which kind of sounds like we're staying in the same place, we need a bigger container to hold all of this. a wider perspective than just your own stuckness or suffering. So we can attend to others. We can really listen to another person. Kind of helps if they're having a hard time. Because then it gets us out of our own heads, our own struggles. It's like, oh... other people in the world are hurting too.

[28:16]

We're all part of this hurting world together. And some compassion can arise for us. Because sometimes we can become very, just terribly self-centered in this struggling place. I'm not talking about when the hurt or the grief or the pain is very active. That's often a time when compassion is also alive. And our practice is very alive. Speaking particularly about those dead, dull, agitated, confusing times. So widening our perspective, having a bigger container, reading the teachings can be very helpful, Buddhist teachings, whatever ones resonate for you. Continuing with whatever practice you have can be extraordinarily helpful just to keep doing it, not to say it doesn't work.

[29:20]

I was supposed to get more out of this by now. I thought I had a contract. I thought I had a guarantee. I mean, I know there's no gaining idea, but still. If I don't have a gaining idea, I'm supposed to get something, right? We have so many tricks in our minds. And finally is faith and trust, which helps us to keep going in our practice, to keep showing up, to show up for ourselves and to show up for others, to just keep doing it, to come to our cushion Every day. Show up for our own experience. Show up for other people. And by practicing that, maintaining that, we develop a confidence in our ability to do so.

[30:29]

We're less afraid of whatever life may present us with. And in Buddhism, faith is really this confidence, this trust. It's not faith in something or someone else. It's faith in your own ability to meet what arises with an open heart, kindness, compassion, and some sense of groundedness, regardless of how shaky that might feel in the moment. We can take refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. This is when we really need those refuges, even if we've forgotten what it means to just keep coming back. And we need all of this encouragement, all of this support in order to let go.

[31:41]

Because really letting go on a deep level That's the true renunciation. Letting go of our stories, our ideas about ourself, our ideas about the world, who we should be, how things are, what it will mean if I'm not the person I think I should be or you're not the person I think you should be. It's hard to let go of those places that when we even think about letting go of those places, we get kind of queasy and sick and scared. And that's when you know it's really close, that practice is really working, is intimate. So it's a...

[32:43]

keeps going back and forth between the two, trusting, letting go, trusting, letting go. The more we trust, the more we can let go. The more we let go, the more we develop trust and confidence. Gil Fransdahl tells a lovely story in which someone was very, a monk, was very stuck in his practice, and he finally said, you know, I've tried everything, all these techniques, and I can't let go. This is This is just killing me. Do you have anything else? And the abbot said, well, there is the one thing. You know that room in the basement? And the monk just blanched. Because he knew exactly what he was talking about. It was a room in the basement that no one went near. It was locked. And from within it, you could hear these terrible, terrible noises. Gnawing and clanging and groaning. And he said, so, the abbot said, so here's the deal.

[33:47]

I open the door, you go in, you walk across the room and come out the other side. That's it. The guy said, that's it? That's all I have to do? And he said, yep, that's it. But the thing is, if you go in, I'm locking the door after you. There's no coming in. Nobody's going to come release you. The only way out is through the door on the other side. I said, okay. I'm desperate. I'll do it. So they went down. They opened the door. The abbot pushed him in and slammed the door and locked it. And the light was very dim in there. And he almost fell because the ledge was extremely narrow. Right inside the door there was a ledge. And then there was a cavernous pit. that just went straight down. It was so low you couldn't see the bottom. It just disappeared in blackness, and that's where all the sounds were coming from. And directly across, probably just as far as it is across the Zendo, was a door.

[34:57]

But there was nothing between the ledge and the door on the other side. So he sat there for a very long time, At one point he took off one of his shoes and threw it down just to see how far it was. It was really far. And there were terrible noises when it hit them. He pounded on the door. He yelled to be let out. Nobody came. Nobody ever went down to that part of the basement. He finally said, well, I'm just going to die down here anyway. And he reviewed the instructions from the abbot. He said, walk across the room to the other side, open the door and walk out. He said, okay, that's what he told me. So he took a deep breath and shut his eyes and he took one step and the ledge extended out in front of him and his foot met the ledge.

[36:03]

And he sat there for about another day. Thought that was good, okay, but that was probably just a one-time thing. But the next day, he tried it again, and he stepped out one more step, and again, the ledge came out to meet his foot. And bit by bit, he went across the entire space and opened the door and left. So please continue in your practice. And thank you very much. 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, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[37:10]

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