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, everyone. And can you hear okay? So when I was given, I asked to give a talk here. I remembered immediately how many times I've sat zazen here in this room. I came here first time in 1980, the winter of 1980, and I spent about three years total at Tassara. So I've spent a lot of time in this room, and a lot of that time was sitting zazen. And, you know, days, months, years of zazen here. And before being here, I was at Green Gulch and City Center.

[01:02]

And after here, I was in Japan for a while. And I've spent a lot of my life sitting Zazen. And it has been a formative experience for me, kind of foundation of, I think, for my life to do all the meditation I've done here at Zen Center in Zen. And I wanted to say a little bit in remembering what it was like to sit here, to share that little bit with you, how that changed me, or transformed me, or why it was so meaningful to Siddhasan. It was probably, I think it's been meaningful in many ways. But what stands out today, after all these years, as being something that still stays with me and is very important, has to do with the constancy of showing up and sitting in a relatively still, unmoving posture, hopefully somewhat alert, somewhat dignified, perhaps you could sit up straight.

[02:18]

And doing that for 40 minutes, and then 40 minutes again, and then 40 minutes again, day after day after day. And the posture, the presence, the being here in this upright way became kind of like the constant through which so many different currents and winds of my life flowed through. And so it was kind of like the weather comes through. You know, the weather comes and Or like, you know, like you have like Flag Mountain. This mountain here appears, something's called Flag Mountain. And, you know, there's been all kinds of weather that comes through Tassajara. In the wintertime, there can be storms and winds and summer, there's a heat. And that mountain, you know, seemingly hasn't changed much over the years. The people here have changed. They come and go, mostly. And... But the mountain, more or less, stayed the same.

[03:19]

And the mountain hasn't been changed so much. If you don't push the analogy too far, too much. So the same way, sitting in Zazen, all those winds and the weather of my life passes through. And one of the aspects of relating to the weather of my life... is to take each particular storm or each particular weather pattern as being really significant as being really important as being representing the most important drama and story and issue of my life sometimes and but then you know the bell rings you get up and you go to work and you come back and you take the posture again and maybe the same weather pattern is there but sooner or later it changes And it changes, and then another weather pattern comes in, and then another, and another. And after a while, the regularity, the constancy of taking this posture, for me, started to change my relationship to the weather patterns, to all the thoughts I could have, all the stories I told myself, all the concerns that were so important for me, all the feelings that I had, all the emotions.

[04:41]

You know, before sitting zazen, I think I was... I kind of got absorbed or kind of caught up in so many of the things that goes on in my life. And it became... Zazen started to loosen up the way that I was caught by these things because I started to see them as just weather. You know, I was sitting there in this posture... And one day it was this way, and the next day it was another way, and the next day it was another way. And after a while, it kind of dawned on me, you know, it's changing all the time. And that lightened my relationship to it. But more important than seeing how it changes all the time, I started to feel or experience that there's something else going on here in this life, in this experience of being alive. than the weather. There's something else going on besides the thoughts that I have, the stories I tell myself, the concerns that I was living by, the emotions that I was having, and even the physical experiences I was having.

[05:55]

One of the very important parts of this whole zazen training that for me was to sit with a lot of physical pain. In my early years here at Zen Center, I had a lot of pain, mostly in my knees. And there were sometimes, I was sitting here, I remember sitting over in that corner there. I remember, my memories are so strong still. And I had these two little mantras I would tell myself that would get me through to the end of the sitting, because the pain was so strong. One mantra, one little saying was, moment after moment. If I can just get to the next moment, that's all I was hoping for, and then I'd do it again. And the other one, which was kind of like the opposite, was I would say to myself, what if this was forever? And that kind of like, for me, maybe I'm kind of crazy, but for me that lightened it up a little bit.

[07:03]

Like, oh, if it's forever, well then I just have to accept this. And so there were times that pain lightened up, but sometimes the pain would come back. And Greg reminded me of these long, earlier today, of long Dharma talks. And that was one of the times they would come back. I promise I won't make this a long Dharma talk. Because the kind of understanding was you don't move during the talks. And so, you know, the talk goes on and on and on, and those poor knees. And so, but at some point, there was a shift. for me from being preoccupied and caught in the grip of the pain, towards freeing my mind from the pain, not having my attention so fixated and focused on it, and having a different relationship to the pain.

[08:08]

The pain didn't go away, but I learned how to be free of it at the same time. I had a lot of emotional storms in my early years here at Zen Center. and a lot of things would come through. And naturally, I think, for a while, my attempt was to try to fix them, solve them, understand them, repress them, all kinds of strategies with them. And one of the things I learned was that through the constancy of sitting still and sitting upright in the midst of all these emotions that came through, was that I didn't have to relate to them. I could allow them to be there and I didn't have to do anything about them. They could just be there. I didn't have to make a story about them. I didn't have to see them as a problem. I didn't have to consider myself as being wrong for having anger. I could just let this emotion be and I could continue to sit upright and still.

[09:14]

One of the things this taught me was that, like I said earlier, there's more going on here than what I'm thinking about. More is going on than what I think is happening. And one of the things that's going on and what slowly developed by sitting in this posture, sitting still in the midst of all these different weather patterns, was I started to feel or sense a strong sense of presence, a strong sense of just a beingness, of being present and here. that I hadn't experienced earlier in my life, a sense of aliveness and vitality that was different than the stories and the concerns I had and the problems I had with my relationships with other people and I was trying to negotiate. The sense of presence and aliveness became very meaningful for me. And perhaps it's a little bit akin to to, you know, if you do some really vigorous exercise, then after the exercise, there's often a sense of vitality and the blood is flowing and that sense of being alive and embodied, it can be quite strong.

[10:29]

And it might be strong enough that it drowns, I don't know if drowns out is the right word, but it's strong enough that it changes your relationship to some of the other things you were concerned about before. Because if your concerns before were all mental ideas and stories about the past and the future and planning and whatever it might be. And now there's this very strong energy moving through the body that feels very good. It kind of lessens the attractiveness of the thoughts and stories and concerns that I would have. So as I sat in this way, I sat, I tried to sit and just be, be present for whatever it was, just to be, be, be here, be present. And certainly my mind often wandered away and I had to come back to be here, be present. But I didn't, I wasn't, either I wasn't listening or they didn't do it much in my time as Zen Center, but I wasn't taught very much here.

[11:35]

About meditation, about the mind, how to work with all these things. And I'm so glad I didn't learn much here. It was really helpful for me because if I'd learned, they told me what to do a lot. It would have been more doing. It would have been another weather pattern going through. But because I wasn't told about what you can do in meditation, I was freed from this kind of being concerned that I had to fix anything or makes anything different than how it was. I just had to be present. And one of the ways I understood being present was to practice unconditional acceptance of what was here. And I didn't have the idea that anything of what was happening here should be different, except I had to sit still. I wasn't supposed to move. And for me, that not moving in the middle of it translated to learning to have this constancy or this freedom from...

[12:38]

being caught up in what does move, all the changing aspects of my experience as it happens. So then what happened for me is a strong sense of presence or aliveness or vitality or beingness started to appear. And partly it appeared because my mind started to, if you're not so concerned or caught up in the usual stories and ideas and emotions, they begin to either recede in importance or drop off or fall away. And so some of the problems that I had in my life at the time, I never solved them, but they dissolved in this sitting in this way. They kind of just kind of like, or they shed like a snake that grows and sheds its skin. Maybe in a way that kind of you grow through zazen and certain things which were problems and issues just kind of fall off because they're not so relevant anymore. You're bigger than them perhaps in some way. not from doing anything particular except for this being committed to being still and present and for whatever it was and let the weather go through and experience it all.

[13:50]

So as I did this sitting still, one of the things I learned a lot about was how I didn't do it very well. That was part of seeing the weather patterns. I got to see that... my mind would wander off into the future. It would go back into the past. It would go into the dramas of the day here at Tassahara. I worked in the kitchen for a year. The kitchen turned out... I was the kitchen fukuten for a long time, which is kind of like the kitchen manager, I guess. And I'd never experienced so much conflict in my life until then. I'd come to the Zen monastery for peace and quiet and I got conflict. And that's a good thing, actually. It's a good thing because coming to a monastery to practice, you want to practice with the difficult stuff of life.

[14:58]

If you came to a monastery and it was just really easy and serene, everyone here floated on clouds and just kind of just, you know, smile at everyone nicely and everyone got along, you probably shouldn't stay. You probably wouldn't get a very good training. But to experience, so, you know, in the kitchen, I had these conflicts and issues, and I would sit in the zendo here. And then those weather patterns would go through, and I would sit still. And I learned that they're important, some of these comments. I didn't want to ignore them exactly, but I learned how not to be preoccupied by them or caught in them or keep focusing on them as if they're the important thing. I learned slowly that there was something more wonderful and satisfying to experience than to solve the problems of my life. And that was more wonderful was a sense of aliveness and beingness, presence, subtleness, that came from sitting upright and still this way.

[16:04]

I saw that my mind would wander off into thought. And I learned slowly over time that it was more satisfying to sit present in my body, embodied, still, awake, alert, than it was or is to chase after my thoughts. And that was kind of like a revolutionary change in my in my life because before that I thought, you know, what else is there besides my thinking for a person like me who thinks a lot. And so I learned that actually there's something more satisfying than going after my thoughts. No matter what the thoughts were, no matter how beautiful and profound the thoughts might be, as long as my mind started wandering off into thinking, my life was actually becoming diminished. Like there was a darkening happening or narrowing of the mind or of the self.

[17:05]

And if I would not go in there into the thoughts and get involved, there was an expansive feeling. It was an enhancement, a growth of self in a kind of way. It's kind of a hard lesson to learn for some people because so many people negotiate their life through their thinking or they negotiate their life through their emotions. And so that's where in order to have a good life, successful life, you'd negotiate it through thinking and emotions and these things. But to learn there's something more satisfying than that, and that it doesn't involve a diminishing of yourself, but an enhancement of freedom of self when the mind is not preoccupied and caught in that kind of world. So sitting, for me, sitting day after day, upright, still, I started getting a sense of not just only the weather patterns coming through, And I could just not take them so seriously anymore. But also that behind them or beneath them or around them or, you know, was this increasing sense of just the vitality or presence or beingness that was so important for being valuable.

[18:13]

And related to kind of this was I slowly, over time, I also learned how my self-concepts interfered with the ability to sit upright in the sense of beingness and aliveness. And there was a lot of self-concept, a lot of conceit, a lot of comparative thinking that went on for me. I remember sometimes sitting here in this room, sitting zazen, or thinking I was sitting zazen. It's very possible to spend a lot of time thinking you're sitting zazen. And that's not zazen, I don't think. And so one of the ways I would So occasionally I'm sitting here, I remember sitting on this platform, here in the middle someplace, and kind of looking sideways, ever so secretly, covertly, you know, people to the left, people to the right, and they're not sitting zazen.

[19:22]

You know, I'm sitting Zazen. Look at me. I'm the one who's, you know, doing it right. Well, that's just ridiculous. You know, to be having those thoughts, you're not sitting Zazen. Because then I was caught up in those thoughts. So this comparative thinking, I had a lot of guilt. You know, in my early years of Zen practice, guilt was short for guilt. Because I had so much, you know, I could feel guilty just the way I closed the Zen door. I did it the wrong way. Or the way I walked across the floor, I was doing it wrong. And so there's so much, you know, and conceit in Buddhism is, maybe you know, there's three kinds of conceit. It's thinking you're better than others, thinking you're worse than others, and thinking you're equal to others. So what's left? Don't think about it. Don't play the game of comparison. There's no need for it. And so this sitting upright and still and just being fully present for what to hear and seeing the pattern, seeing what's going on, seeing how the mind wanders off and gets lost, I got to see how it got caught up in conceit in various ways and self-concept and ideas of who I am and who I have to be.

[20:42]

And I could see with time that when my mind went in those directions, there was a diminishing of myself, a narrowing. It was a loss of something of a deeper satisfaction. It was unsatisfactory to have my mind caught in those kinds of thoughts. Generally, people think when there's a problem, they see something like this, they have to fix it. Oh, I have conceit. I suppose I should go, or I have guilt, or I have shame, or I have all kinds of issues. I should go to therapy. I have to do something about it. But maybe that's a good thing to do. But what I learned through zazen was to sit upright and still and learn slowly not to be caught by it. Just let it be. But not by trying to do anything, but just trying to be fully present, fully be with what was going on. And that being with what was there, being with something, was where I started to feel some freedom from it. So luckily I did a lot of meditation, a lot of zazen.

[21:47]

And one of the wonderful things for me about that was that over time, the understanding, the sensitivity to how my mind works became more and more acute. And I got to see more and more subtleties of ways in which I was non-accepting, ways in which I was running away from things or trying to hold on to things or trying to fix things or trying to do something or trying to, you know, subtle forms of conceit or... self-concept that was operating for me. And my experience was the more subtle it became, the more foundational it was, and the more useful it was at the very foundation of who I was, who I am. And so I got to see this and see how my mind, in these subtle ways, could not accept things as they were. could not just be there fully, be present for things. I can kind of be there for things, kind of accept things, but it wasn't in the cracks of my mind.

[22:50]

There was still a lot of negotiation and fixing and clinging going on. So then slowly, by doing this over and over and over again, it's kind of like a person who does a craft or a sport or a musical instrument. If you do something over and over and over again, you start becoming aware of the subtlety of what... going on. So by doing zazen over and over and over again, you'll learn about yourself in ways that you won't if you just do it every once in a while. And so then what I discovered was that this beautiful feeling of being present, this aliveness, this embodied presence of being upright and here and alive, that was just one more thing that I was caught up in. That was just one more thing which my mind was focused on. And I could feel and sense that even that, having the mind focused and concerned and trying to live by that and be it in this way, even that was too much.

[23:53]

Even that was kind of a diminishment, a kind of a loss of freedom, a kind of a loss of... And so I had to then shed that or be willing to let go of that as well in the favor of freedom. And then I saw... to letting go of that, that there was still me doing all this. It was me having the experience. It was me being present. It was me doing the practice. And I saw, by just being present, at some point in this subtlety, I started seeing, you know, this is kind of uncomfortable. This is not so good. This is not comfortable for me. to be the one at the center of all this. I'm not comfortable to have a self, a self-identity, a locus, a center for my attention, for my awareness, for my mind.

[24:56]

And I think most people, it's kind of pretty natural, I think maybe the mind is made this way, is that we often think about ourselves. And we negotiate the world with ourselves as a locus in the center. And so as I kept doing this work of sitting here and being present, I could see at some point that any kind of self-referencing going on made me uncomfortable. Or any kind of self-referencing going on diminished my freedom or diminished my awakeness or presence. And that was a bit of a challenge then to see through that or to have that dissolve. But then, you know, it wasn't something I could do, but there were, from time to time, the sense of self in the center of it all would dissolve or fall away. And it was, for me, that was quite a remarkable thing, to experience, I don't know what they call it, experience life. I don't want to say experience myself, because that was no longer relevant, but to experience a beautiful, wonderful, profoundly satisfying, very meaningful experience

[26:07]

way of being, where I was no longer the center, no longer the locus for the experience. I attribute this a lot to this path of sitting zazen, of sitting here, being still, and the constant, the regularity of doing it over and over and over again, and seeing what sheds, what lets go, what's left, what's left. It's a kind of... What is it called? Anyway, not a cornucopia. That's wonderful. The guy here came up with the idea that the Earth is not the center. Copernicus. Copernicus is a revolution in the mind. To realize that the mind, or the attention, or the awareness, or the presence that we have... It doesn't need first to be fixated, concerned, and focused on all the issues and problems of our life.

[27:16]

It doesn't have to fix anything. And then even more radically, to have this turning around, the backward step Dogen talks about, turn around and look and realize that even the one who's experiencing all this stuff, the locus of all the experience, is also not needed. You can be very happy without it. Isn't that good news? I suppose that one of the things that I wanted to convey in this talk is certainly the value of zazen, but also the value of doing it a lot.

[28:33]

Just again and again and again and again. And it's in the regularity, the frequency and the repetition of it. that something very meaningful can happen. And I say that to free you a little bit, some of you, from being too concerned about doing your zazen too well. Because a lot of it comes from just doing it. Doing it the way you can. But showing up for it, showing up for it, showing up for zazen, sitting there, and then letting the weather pass through. So I hope that was understandable enough. And thank you for listening and being here. It's a pleasure to be back sitting here in a room that's full of memories that are very meaningful for me.

[29:35]

So thank you all. 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.

[29:56]

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