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 morning, everybody. And especially good morning to this front and side section. Welcome. Let's see what I wrote. Today we are praying for technology to come through. It almost always does. And when it doesn't, it's really bad. So I used to live at Green Gulch.

[01:22]

I lived at Green Gulch with my husband and my twin sons for like, I don't know, 16 years. We moved here when they were four years old. And now they're 40. They left here to go to college. So we were here for a long time. And that was a long time ago. But I can't tell you how happy I am to see all the children here. It's really a pleasure. Twins? We got twins? How's it going? Yeah. Getting some sleep? Right. Well... More recently, I've been teaching school. I retired about a year ago from 28 years of teaching school in Mill Valley. And I taught second grade for a couple of years, and I taught fifth grade for a bunch of years. And most of all, I taught seventh grade science.

[02:26]

I love science. Do you guys like science? Do you like worms? Me too. How about you guys? Do you like worms and turtles? You like turtles? I have four turtles. How about you? Do you like turtles? She's thinking. Well, when I taught second grade, I have a story from when I taught second grade. My first year of teaching, I used to ask my students every day to write in journals. Every day we would have their journals and they would just write. Sometimes they would choose the topic and sometimes I would choose the topic. Sometimes we would all do the same topic and sometimes different topics. And I would collect their journals every day and write back to them.

[03:30]

I can't quite believe I did that, but I did. That's what happens when you're a new teacher. When I taught seventh grade, I had 140 students, so that wouldn't have worked. So I collected their journals each day and wrote to them and then would give them back and we would have this personal conversation in writing for second graders. So one day, I gave them a homework assignment and the homework assignment was to go outside and look at the full moon. And then the next day we were going to come back together and write about the full moon. So I had one little girl, Rachel. Rachel is probably about 36 years old now. So Rachel wrote in her journal something about she and her mother, how she and her mother went outside to look at the

[04:33]

I don't remember what else she said, but what I do remember is that she spelled full, F-O-O-L. That means fool. She said, the fool moon. And I thought, oh, interesting. That's interesting. Well, Rachel was a really good student. and she was also a really good reader. So I thought I would just be able to say to her, Rachel, it's the other fool. It sort of sounds like fool, but it's more like fool, and they're really similar. So I went and had that conversation with her, and Rachel was really surprised. And here's what she said. She said, I thought it was the full moon, because it's the time when you can see the whole face of the man and the moon who must be a fool because he eats green cheese. So, I love that story.

[05:41]

I love to think about Rachel and how she put together this story that made sense to her. And this story really illustrates how our human brain works. This is how our brain works. We make stories. That's what we do. We make stories to make sense of the world that we see and feel and think about. We put together what we experience with what we already know, with what we hope and what we remember. Hi, come on in. There's room right here. so that the whole thing can make sense to us. And then we might tell other people what we found, what we're thinking, and see if that makes sense to them. Or we might not want to tell other people because we are so sure that we're right.

[06:45]

We don't want to be messed with. Sometimes we get it right. Sometimes, you know, it's a variation on right. And this reminds me of another story. This is a story I bet many of you have heard. It's a story about six blind people and an elephant. Does that sound familiar? So the story is that there is a village and in the village, six blind people live and a lot of other people too. And this village had never had an elephant come to visit the village. So these blind people, for the first time, were going to encounter an elephant. And so someone brought the blind people out, and they surrounded the elephant, and they were going to describe the elephant from their own experience.

[07:50]

But since they were blind... They are using their sense of touch and feeling to experience wherever they were standing next to the elephant. So one blind person feeling the trunk says, the elephant is like a snake. Is that what you were going to say? It's kind of like a snake. Yeah, could be a snake. Another blind person feeling the leg of the elephant says, the elephant is like a... stump? Could be a stump. Log? Could be a log. In the story, it's a tree, but a stump or a log could be that. Another blind person

[08:53]

feeling the tail of the elephant, says, the elephant is like a... A flower? Could be a flower. Could be a cloud. Could be a rope. Another, feeling the side of the elephant, the big side of the elephant, says... The elephant is like a... It's like a rock. What else do you... Rough. It's rough. Like a boulder. Yes. It's smooth. The elephant, I wonder if it's rough or smooth or both. You get back to me on that. So another one, I think we still have another.

[09:57]

Oh, two more. Another feeling the ear of the elephant says, the elephant must be like a, yes. A smooth thing, yes. What? Pizza crust. Absolutely, pizza crust. In the story, it's a fan. But, you know, we don't have fans, but we do have pizza crusts. That makes more sense. And another blind person feels the tusk of the elephant and says, the elephant is like a... Like something hard, like a rock. Anything else? Anything else? A tusk? Yes. A what? A trumpet.

[11:01]

I like that. In the story, it's a sword. I'm going to take trumpet. Well, all these six people felt a different part of the elephant, and so they all had a different description of the elephant. And these six people... started to get into an argument. Because each one was so sure that she was right, and only she was right, that none of them could agree. So, because as we know, a snake is not like a boulder or a tree, and a tree is not like, what did we say, a flower. rope or what was the other thing that was the fan a rope is not like a wall a wall is not like a pizza or a fan and a fan is not like a trumpet

[12:16]

So a wise person came along, hearing all the commotion, all the arguing. Hi, sweetie. Would you like to see this? Nope. The wise person came along and heard all the commotion and asked the blind people what they were arguing about. And when the wise person heard their explanation, she said, that actually each one of them was correct. Each one was correct in describing the elephant, that the elephant is actually like all of those things, not just one of those things. But since each person had her own experience and not that of the others, Each one thought only they were correct, only they were right. So they didn't know that each person's truth may be different from everyone else's, but at the same time equally true.

[13:30]

And this story seems to tell us at least, at least there's two big lessons from this story. And one of them is that while each of us has unique experience, valid and true. We should not mistake our own unique experience as the one and only truth. And the other thing this story teaches us is that when we put our truths together, we might get a greater truth. We might get a bigger and more beautiful truth. We might get the whole elephant. So that's the story of the full moon and the elephant. Now, is this the time for the children to... Okay.

[14:31]

They're going to go out that door. Bye, everybody. Bye-bye. closer. Bye. [...] Bye-bye. Bye, Daddy. Did that one say, bye, Daddy? You know, I don't exactly miss teaching school. Because it's, you know, it's this grind. But I really miss the kids.

[15:33]

Even the seventh graders. I mean, missing seventh graders, that's an extreme statement. So, going on with this theme, this story, of the elephants and the full moon, in addition to the lessons it holds for us, describes our human predicament and strongly points to how sangha works in our lives. That is, through our commitment to inclusion of others, of others' truths, along with our own, we can have a fuller view. We might see the whole elephant. And one interesting thing about this story, by the way, is the sound okay? Can you hear back there? Everybody's good? Wave your arm like that if I fade away. One interesting thing to me about this story is that the blind people really are blind.

[16:43]

There's no thought of their getting over their blindness. There's no thought that there's anything that should be corrected about their perception. So in this story, the opening for Buddhist practice is in their belief that they are right, that they and only they are right, and the consequent disharmony that that belief brings them. That's the entry for Buddhist practice in this story. I want to go back to the idea of constructed reality, as illustrated by my wonderful student, Rachel, in her full moon idea, and also in the blind men and their ideas of what an elephant is. Constructing reality is our nature. It's not something that we can get over through practice or exercise or better nutrition or anything.

[17:53]

It really is our nature. And I can give you what I think is a wonderful example of this, a science-y example. I used to teach light and color to kids, to students. I taught actually all the grades that I taught light and color. And here's what I taught. There are seven colors that we have evolved to see. Seven colors. Does anybody know what they are and how, what's that trick for remembering them? Yeah. Roy G. Biv, right. Roy G. Biv. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Seven colors. And that's it. Those are the seven colors that correspond to particular wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation coming from the sun. And we have evolved to just see that little narrow band of electromagnetic radiation.

[19:01]

And we call it light. there's a lot of electromagnetic radiation. There's X-rays and gamma rays, and there's ultraviolet rays, and there's infrared rays, and there's microwaves, and there's a lot of electromagnetic radiation coming off the sun and elsewhere. But our eyes, our human eyes, can see these seven colors, period. So notice that the seven colors do not include white. Turns out there is no white. There is no white light coming from the sun. There's no light that corresponds to a wavelength which is white. White is an averaging of the seven wavelengths done in our brain. Our brain does white. Basically, our brain doesn't like too much disorder.

[20:06]

and all those different wavelengths jumbled together coming at us all the time really doesn't work for us. It makes us really uncomfortable. So we make a story out of it. We average the colors together and call it white. Other animals that do see color don't necessarily do this. It might just be us. And because we humans need to see, we need some orderliness in our perception to even be able to see. We also need some familiarity to see something new. We need the new to be embedded in the familiar. Otherwise, we can't see it. And this is not a flaw in our perception that we can get over. It really is how we're wired and how we function.

[21:10]

We can think of all kinds of examples. When you were younger, you probably had the experience of learning a new word and then finding the word was everywhere. Every page of a book you picked up, there was that word and it was here and it was there and it was all over the place and you had never noticed it before. So the fact of it is our experience is like that all the time. So this is our nature to construct reality. Now, Buddhism teaches that the self is such a construction. A story made of connecting, of our connecting over our whole lifetime of physical experiences and memories and mental experiences and habits of mind and all kinds of things, everything that happens to us, connecting them together and making a story, which is me.

[22:16]

And the construction of self really is who we are, that is, we can't function without this construction. After all, it is through this construction that we can learn and remember, that we can make decisions, and that we can take care of our lives. And with children, we help them to develop a strong sense of self. We want them to feel that they are independent, that they have strength, that we want them to learn what they're good at and what they could use help with. We want them to learn how to offer to others what they have to offer and what that is. So we want, I mean, we raise children to have a strong sense of self. It helps them to function in the world. But we suffer when we believe that our constructed self is real.

[23:29]

That is, that it endures over time in a manner that we can predict and control. And we especially suffer when we place ourselves in the middle of the universe and expect the universe to comply, when we feel that this self, me, myself, and I, deserves more protection, more attention, more privilege than all the other selves around me. And even though we might not think that thought, because that thought, when it's stated in language, it kind of doesn't even make sense, we live it, you know, we act upon it. So our human experience is really limited. Our reality and our own our self is really constructed of sensory input, memory, and prior experience, and all patched together in a kind of odd and unique way.

[24:37]

there's even a bit of randomness to it. And if we think we can somehow get around or behind or beyond, if that is our effort in practice, we might run aground with that effort. But if we allow and accept, and I mean radically allow, practice radical tolerance of each moment as it arises for ourselves and others by turning our effort around like flipping a pancake. I mean, like flipping our effort from getting something done, trying to get something done, whether it's getting the errands done, or getting done trying to be a better person.

[25:40]

That getting something done. You know, it's interesting how our mind works. Like, if we're in getting things done mode, everything is something to get done. Everything kind of is all getting done. Buying toothpaste, dropping off the dry cleaning, getting that person to stop doing that, getting that other person to see that I'm right, getting to be a better person myself, looking at the butterfly. Everything is a getting-done activity because when our mind is in the realm of getting things done, that is the mind through which we experience the whole world. So by flipping our effort, from getting things done to allowing reality to unfold as it does, this changes the world as well as our effort in practice.

[26:47]

And it doesn't mean that we stop having crummy moments of boredom and irritation and restlessness and anger and defeat or joy, over-the-top excitement, all of that. It doesn't change our human life. It's just that we make an effort not to pile on analysis and excuses and explanations. We bear witness. I'd like to share a Zen story with you that expresses this sense to me. But first I would like some water. This is a well-known and well-loved Zen story, a conversation between two ancestors, giants, rock stars in Zen literature, Nanchuan and Jiaojou.

[27:55]

In Japanese, that's Nansen and Joshu. So Nanchuan is Jiaojou's teacher. Zhaozhou, here's the story. Zhaozhou asked Nanquan, what is the way? Nanquan said, normal mind is the way. Zhaozhou said, should I direct myself toward it or not? Nanquan said, if you try to turn toward it, you go against it. Zhaozhou said, If I do not try to turn toward it, how can I know that it is the way? Nanquan said, the way does not belong to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is delusion. Not knowing is indifference. When you have really reached the true way beyond all doubt, you will find it as vast and boundless as space.

[29:03]

How can we impose? affirmation or denial. I'd like to read it again. There's a lot, there's a bazillion different translations of this, and I chose these words. These words are somewhat not, somewhat typical, but somewhat not typical. Anyway, I could explain that later. So the conversation is, Zhao Zhou asked Nanquan, what is the way? Nanquan said, Normal mind is the way. Zhaozhou said, Should I direct myself toward it or not? Nanquan said, If you try to turn toward it, you go against it. Zhaozhou said, If I do not try to turn toward it, how can I know that it is the way? Nanquan said, The way does not belong to knowing or not knowing.

[30:05]

Knowing is delusion. Not knowing is indifference. When you have really reached the true way beyond all doubt, you will find it as vast and boundless as space. How can we impose affirmation and denial?" So, in the light of this story, How do we make effort? I have some words. I have three. At least when I wrote this talk, these to me were words that eroped the kind, the style of effort that we have in our practice. And they are engagement and restraint and a light touch. So by engagement, I mean we're all in, sincere and committed.

[31:10]

We don't really have a goal in practice. You know, that's one of the interesting things about Zen practice. It's like no goal. We don't really have a goal in practice, but not because there's no work happening here. And not because we live on autopilot. But rather, having a goal means our attention is likely to be divided between doing what we're doing and keeping an eye out for whether or not it's working. And that is not all in. Not quite sincere, not quite committed. Gauging our activity on the outcome according to our standard at that moment deprives us of a full human, deep and vivid experience. And I think it's a heartache for us, this state.

[32:18]

I think that it's a real heartache for us to feel divided from our human life, especially as we get older. You know, these precious moments. it would be like raising a child. You know, we don't think of raising a child and we're keeping an eye on whether the child's turning out okay, and if it's not, like, we're out of here. And if it is, we're gonna stick around, like, we're gonna stick around for a good outcome, but we're gonna bail if it's a bad outcome. I mean, that doesn't even make sense, right? If we take on our practice with that kind of commitment, the commitment of raising a child, that's what I mean by engagement. So meditation practice is the effort and the art of being all in, constantly surprised because we're fully engaged with each moment and person and experience.

[33:27]

And it's not the accomplishment of that, it's the effort. The second is restraint. For me, restraint almost describes that flipped over effort I referred to earlier. So rather than doing, it's an effort toward not doing. Especially restraint from judgment, from explanation, from wrapping and packaging up our experience, from deferring to habitual thinking, especially when our buttons have been pushed, those emotional buttons, for example. It's like when we remember to stop and take a breath rather than to snap back at someone, a colleague or a family member. Restraint is a strong practice. which doesn't sound fun.

[34:29]

But as we all know, when we do that deep breath, when we remember to take that deep breath, something is strengthened and restored in us. Maybe there's a moment of gratitude. Maybe there's a moment of compassion. So that's what I mean by restraint. And light touch. By light touch, I'm thinking about how complex our lives are, how varied the demands on us are. And in the midst of all this, Nan Chuan says, the way is vast and boundless. Like, when do I have time for that? Okay, I'll put it on my schedule, right? So, by light touch, I mean we can hold our constructed self.

[35:38]

That self that we have created and protected and which we need to live our lives, we can hold it lightly. Knowing the self is constructed allows us to pick it up, and put it down when the moment does not call for it. In the midst of vast and boundless space, our many different capacities are called on in their own time. And our effort in practice, at least as I'm talking about it today, is to learn how to step aside and allow it to unfold. And I have a last little story about when I taught seventh graders. And let me say that the story of Nanquan and Zhaozhou is more often... Nanquan, more often it's translated as ordinary mind is the way.

[36:51]

But I used one translation that says normal mind is the way for this reason. When I taught seventh grade, it became clear to me that most seventh graders, not all seventh graders, but most of them, want to be normal. They really want to be normal. Or at least they don't want to stand out. They don't want attention on them. I mean, there are exceptions, of course. but mostly they're very uneasy about being noticed. Everyone wants to be normal. So I used to tell them, I know how you can be normal. Just make your normal really big, really big, so that everybody is in, so that nobody is outside of normal. Make your normal so big that you can't even imagine someone who is not normal.

[37:54]

And then you'll be normal. So for us, you know, we can think that way about our practice in our lives. This vast and empty space, we don't have to find it. It's like... It's, you know, we live in it, whether we're angry or irritated or sleepy or whatever. It's all within this vast and empty space. We can even use the word enlightenment if that makes us happy. We can say, make your enlightenment really big so that even I and you and everyone is in. Thank you very much.

[38:56]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:18]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.1