And welcome everyone to this Labor Day weekend, Sunday morning. I wanted to talk about the gift of giving attention. So to help with that, I have something. So first of all, I want to thank you for giving me your attention. And I'd like to do an experiment, invite you to do an experiment to listen to the sound of the bell and see how long you can hear it.

[01:11]

Okay, after the bell, after I hit the bell to see... So when I invite... Maybe I won't hit the bell. Maybe I'll invite the bell. And the... And let's see. Maybe when you hear the bell, you can raise your hand. And then as long as you hear it, keep your hand up. And then when you hear... When you can't hear it anymore, you're sure you can't hear it anymore, you can put your hand down. Okay? You're willing to try that? Okay. What was that? People didn't put their hands up, so that may not have been the bell. So we have something here we call a bell. And you all know, you're all very paying attention.

[02:14]

So you knew that that was something else. Let's try it again. Closer to the bell. So that was wonderful. So I could tell people were really paying. You want me to hit the other thing? This is a little, and how, you're holding up your hand? Okay, see how long you can hear it? Those hands went right down. That's good.

[03:14]

So this is sometimes called a mokugyo or a wooden, like a wooden fish drum. Sometimes it's shaped like a kind of a fish. But now I'd like you to try again, but this time when you hold your hand up, see how many times your breath comes in and out while you're holding your hand up with the bell. So that means paying attention to both things, paying attention to the bell sound, and then paying attention to your breath coming in and out. But just to, before we do that with the bell, try for a moment just to put your hand on your tummy and just feel it. Can you feel your tummy move when your breath comes in and your breath goes out? Everybody feel that?

[04:18]

Yeah, you can find that? Okay. So now we'll do two together with the bell and the breath. See? And so you hold your hand up and then, see, to make it even more of a challenge, each time your breath goes out, if you start with your hand like this, you put up a finger. One. Next time your breath goes out, two. time your breath goes out three and it doesn't matter how many times it is for you you can it's good if it goes out one time it's good if it goes out five times okay so we'll just see how the how that goes okay are you ready So I just forgot to pay attention to the bell.

[05:27]

I got involved in paying attention to my breath, and then when the bell stopped, I wasn't quite paying attention to exactly when the bell stopped. But it shows you that you can't pay attention to two things if you're kind of moving your attention back and forth, but it's actually pretty difficult. So when you begin to get busy, sometimes it's helpful to have a bell to ring just to remind you that you can tune into your breath. So I'd like to try this one more time without doing anything. Hear the sound, okay? I don't know if the microphone picks it up when it's still fading out.

[06:51]

So is the bell still ringing, do you think? Because you can hear it, and you can hear it, and you can't hear it. What do you think? Do you have your hand up? You can still hear it. So some people say that The bell is always ringing, but it's usually ringing so quietly we can't hear it, and then we have to remind it to be louder again so we can't hear it. Now I have another... So that was one experiment. I have another experiment, which is to see whether people can help me sing a song. I keep changing this song. It's a song that says... There's old Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree.

[07:53]

But today I want to change it, so I hope you forgive me for changing it too. Here, here's young Buddha sitting under the wake-up tree. Here's young Buddha sitting under the wake-up tree. So there's a Buddha like... We have all kinds of Buddha images, pictures of Buddha. Sometimes they're old, sometimes they're young, but today I'd like to emphasize a young Buddha. And you can imagine this young Buddha is a girl. This young Buddha is a girl and she's sitting under the tree and she wakes up with the tree. It's an interesting thing that you can't wake up without something. You have to wake up with a tree or a friend or a star, or a bug. There's all kinds of things you can wake up to. Now, when the Buddha sits under the tree and wakes up at the tree, various things happen.

[09:00]

And I want you to think of things that when you're sitting quietly, what might disturb you? What might bother you? Anyone have any suggestion? Yeah, what bird might bother you? Because it would make a lot of noise. Okay, so a noisy bird. I'm going to write some of these down. Okay, so a noisy bird. What else? One back there, yeah? The wind might bother you, huh? And how would that bother you? Wow, you think the whole tree is moving then? The tree is rocking. So I'm trying to understand how that bothers you.

[10:03]

Okay, it's again too loud a sound, okay. So noisy wind. We got two noisy ones. Noisy bird, noisy wind. Anything else? Yeah, how about you? A ladybug? A ladybug, okay. So a bug, let's just say a bug, okay? If a bug is crawling on you, So there's some people here who like ladybugs to call on them, and maybe some don't, right? But that's okay. So, but this is just good to know, okay, we got noise, and we got a bug, and we've got another hand up there, yeah? My little brother. My little brother? Oh, that's a good one. I know just what you mean.

[11:21]

My little brother used to do that too. The big green dragon, okay. Okay, now we have enough, I think. Because the way the song goes is that The song goes that the Buddha is not bothered by these things. But it's really that the Buddha is not bothered by thinking about these things. So I'm going to say she doesn't mind thoughts of bugs. She doesn't mind thoughts of noise. And she doesn't mind thoughts of... of Bothersome Brothers. That may be enough.

[12:25]

If we do it, three verses here. So I think some of you know this song already. And everyone can join in. So it goes, Here's young Buddha sitting under the wake-up tree. So please... Let's see if you can listen and then you can sing along with me, okay? She's so peaceful, mind as quiet as it can be. Sitting like a bump on a log. Sitting like a bright green frog. Sitting with a smile on her face. Sitting like empty space. She doesn't mind rain, she doesn't mind thunder. What could bother young Buddha, I wonder? She doesn't mind thoughts of, and then we'll fill in. Noisy wind, right?

[13:26]

She doesn't mind thoughts of, and we'll do it. I'll add that in when we do each verse. We'll do these three. We'll do noise, we'll do bugs, and we'll do bothersome brothers. Now there's one other part of this song, which is that you can echo. the last part of each line, except for one line. So when it says, wake up tree, then we go, here's young Buddha sitting under the wake up tree, and then people can echo, wake up tree, she's so peaceful, mind as quiet as it can be, it can be, sitting like a bump on a log, log, sitting like a bright green frog, Frog sitting with a smile on her face. Face. Mind like empty space. No, you don't say that one. Mind like empty space is just quiet, okay?

[14:33]

So you have to pay attention. So maybe that's enough. Well, let's do it, okay? Are you ready? Ready? Here's young Buddha sitting under the wake-up tree. She's so peaceful, mind as quiet as it can be. Sitting like a bump on a log. Sitting like a bright green frog. Sitting with a smile on her face. Mind like empty space. Doesn't mind rain, doesn't mind thunder. What could bother young Buddha, I wonder? She doesn't mind thoughts of noise, doesn't mind thoughts of noise. She lets that noise just float on by. Here's young Buddha sitting under the wake-up tree.

[15:36]

She's so peaceful, mind as quiet as it can be. Sitting like a bump on a log. Sitting like a bright green frog. Sitting with a smile on her face. Sitting like empty space. Doesn't mind rain, doesn't mind thunder. What could bother young Buddha, I wonder. She doesn't mind thinking about bugs. She doesn't mind thinking about bugs. She lets those bugs just float on by. Here's young Buddha sitting under the wake up tree. She's so peaceful, mind as quiet as it can be. Sitting like a bump on a log. Sitting like a bright green frog.

[16:36]

Sitting with a smile on her face. sitting like empty space. Pretty good. Doesn't mind rain, doesn't mind thunder. What could bother all Buddha, I wonder? Doesn't mind bothersome brothers. Doesn't mind bothersome brothers. She lets those thoughts about bothersome brothers just float on by. So thank you, all the young ones here. Thank you for giving me your attention for the last few minutes. I know it's not easy to do. So now it's time for the young ones to get up and go. Amy's gonna lead you outside, okay. Yes.

[17:45]

Good idea. OK. So there are some seats opening up here in the front now, so people can come up and fill in some spaces here, particularly if you are way in the back or sitting on the tom. So thanks to those of you who are staying.

[19:34]

Because I regard your attention as a gift, your willingness to be present as a gift to the whole assembly. You're offering yourself, your own presence, being here as a gift to the whole assembly. So the word attention comes from ad, which means to, and tender in the Latin, and has a similar root in Greek, which means to stretch. So the root actually comes to, it has that feeling of stretching, of reaching toward. So interesting in our practice of sitting that we are actually extending ourselves to what is right now.

[20:40]

And what is right here. So as a kind of a stretching, which may be imagined more as a kind of expansion. But still having some focus. and how to find that focus, it is helpful to come back to the breath in the present moment to find how to attend to this present moment. So I'm interested in the whole matter of attention. It seems when we think of what we can do as human beings, the most elemental matter of choice I think has to do with what we give attention to. There's some ways in which we can choose to give our attention to one thing or another.

[21:55]

So some people have chosen to come here and give attention to being present in this space Last week there was a symposium where we invited some Buddhist scholars and Buddhist teachers, Zen teachers, to meet for a couple of days. I know some of you were there for at least parts of that. We met at City Center on Page Street. last Friday, and then we met at Cal Berkeley, University of California at Berkeley, on Saturday. One of the speakers named Wendy Adamek, actually she spoke pretty fast, and I don't think I heard a lot of what she had to say.

[23:03]

but she caught my attention with one statement where she was talking about in Chinese Buddhist temples the practices of devotion, devotional practices, redistributed the power in the temple or in the Sangha, in the life in the Sangha. So I asked her about that afterwards And she said, well, she works with something called network theory, and a network theory looking at how all different elements are interacting with each other, which I think is maybe a refinement of basic systems theory, that the different elements interact in a way. And she was, in her study of Chinese Buddhist temples, was looking at how devotional practices actually have energetic focus and power and shifts the dynamics of the whole expression of practice at that temple.

[24:14]

But what does she mean by devotional practices? And she began speaking about everything that people do. People offer incense. People come and take care of the temple. People clean the temple. So then I was thinking about the story of Yunyan sweeping the floor. So there's a story of Yunyan sweeping. This is a Chinese, old Chinese Zen story, right? And his brother, Dao Wu, comes up and says, too busy. So Yunyan's sweeping. Dao Wu says, too busy. Or at least he says, busy. And Yunnan says, you should know there is one who is not busy. So I think this is a familiar dialogue to many of you. And then hearing that, Dawu says, does that mean there's a second moon?

[25:22]

Does that mean there's a second moon? Does that mean there's a second moon? And Yunnan responded by holding up the broom and saying, which moon is this? So it's wonderful. And we have these kind of dialogues with each other. What is the understanding of what we're doing? And when I first heard this story, I imagined that when Dawu came up and said, too busy, that Yunnan stopped sweeping. But now I'm thinking, I think he keeps sweeping. He just keeps sweeping. He says, you should know there's one who's not busy. And he keeps sweeping. To me, that shifts the whole story. And sweeping, then, I see, then, is a devotional practice.

[26:26]

Attending to the floor. Attending to the floor is a devotional practice. So all activity then, you can say, particularly in the context of Sangha, or in the context of people who have some intention to cultivate wisdom and cultivate compassion together, all this activity is devotional practice. Making donations, of course, one of the things that Wendy Adamek said was people who are benefactors and supporters of the temple are expressing their devotion through their contributions to And so that, you know, is significant, of course, has a significant effect in supporting the temple that way. So that's also a way in which power and energy is expressed in the practice at the temple. So if Yunyang keeps sweeping, keeps sweeping, saying, you should know there's one who's not busy.

[27:35]

So where is the one who's not busy? Dawu questions him about that, saying, is there a second moon? The moon may be a reference to consciousness or awareness. We could say that the moon is enlightenment. Sometimes in Zen we say, oh, the moon represents enlightenment. And we say, but don't mistake words about the moon. or pointing at the moon for enlightenment. But about all I can do in giving a talk is offer words. Pointing to, okay, this matter. Is there a second moon? Dawud takes a moment and raises up his room and says, this, what's this? So this is pointing to his

[28:39]

his relationship, his complete devoted relationship with broom and sweeping as enlightenment itself. That there isn't any other place to be and the quiet, open mind of attention is right there in the activity of sweeping. So it's not that he needs to go someplace else or do something else to fully express this true mind. So there were many other presentations at the symposium. And I don't want to just make today's talk a report on the symposium, but you can buy it. $25. You can order copies of it if you want to listen to all the presentations.

[29:42]

At the end of the second day, Dr. Robert Scharf at Cal Berkeley challenged the Zen people in the room to be better students of the traditional literature of Buddhism. He said that if the Zen students don't really study the traditional literature of Buddhism, then He couldn't see how there would be a future for Zen in America. I don't think he knows how much we actually study. Some of us anyway. And we have a dynamic interplay, I'd say, in our practice of sitting Zazen where you don't add anything. So you're not studying a text. You're actually sitting zazen, meaning you're willing to be open to whatever happens. And then going back at other times and digging into the deep, both technical, descriptive literature about how to practice and the more philosophical understandings and concepts of Buddhist teaching.

[30:56]

So I think he's right that we need to do that. And so one of the reasons that we had the symposium and set it up the way we did was so that we had a dialogue between academicians and practitioners. I also wanted to mention I've been reading a book maybe many of you are familiar with. It's a bestseller, I think. Proust was a neuroscientist. How many people are familiar with that? I see a couple of hands up. Maybe it's not a bestseller. Proust was a neuroscientist, written by Jonah Lehrer. And so in this effort, he's working with a conversation between the culture of artists and the culture of scientists.

[31:58]

to say that Proust is a neuroscientist, or was a neuroscientist, is to kind of challenge an investigation into how these worlds meet in the sense of our understanding in the West. And he never refers to Buddhism at all in this book. I've almost finished it, so I don't think so. But he takes various artists, beginning with Walt Whitman, Gertrude Stein, Igor Stravinsky, Virginia Woolf, and of course Proust, Cezanne, and looks at what they discovered by their own sense of experiment and discovery in their artistic pursuit and their commitment to their art and their commitment to understanding their own consciousness and working with art what they learned and then bringing that into say kind of an engagement with current research in neurology and the neurosciences brain research so there's a lot of interest in that currently he has a more recent book called How We Decide which

[33:25]

is also interesting for those of you. These are books that are, I'd say, quite readable. They're not technical scientific books, but it's very interesting to me to look at this in terms of how we also practice. And it was fun to read the part about Igor Stravinsky It reminded me of when Bob Dylan changed from acoustic to electric. The kind of reaction, right? But Igor Stravinsky in 1913, in one of the premier, I think the premier performance, it was in France, of the Rite of Spring. Many of you are familiar with the Rite of Spring. Actually started a riot. in the concert hall because people were so upset when the music starts out kind of peacefully.

[34:31]

With the bassoon, right? And then this percussion starts hammering away at an irregular rhythm that you can't quite follow if you were just used to, say, Bach or Beethoven. or Chopin. And this became so distressing to people that they actually attacked the stage and each other. Fights broke out among people in the audience. But what has happened since 1913, almost 100 years later, is that people have learned, at least many of us, have learned to appreciate the beauty of Stravinsky's composition. And so now it doesn't sound, now it's not upsetting or distressing, at least to many people who have adapted to this kind of music. So, anyway, that's just one little bit from the book. So, I have a couple of notes in, let's see, what time do I, oh, well, the children took more time then.

[35:50]

So let me see here. So looking at art and science I think is a valuable part of our study as those of us who are experimenting with the mind and developing attention and looking at how that influences how we live So I'd say that our Zen Buddhist practice is already inclusive of art, already inclusive of science. It's helpful to be somewhat more informed. But essentially, our intention has to go towards how we attend to all of ourselves and our environment.

[36:55]

So we're bringing attention to ourselves and to our environment in a very direct way with a question about how to live an enlightened life, how to live a life that's awake and paying attention to the exact precise experience internally and the exact precise experience externally around us or with our environment. Using everything that we know and not being caught by anything that we know. Not necessarily believing or reifying anything that we know because we also know that that itself is tentative, a tentative construction. That things are not quite what we make them out to be And we're always willing to live with the question, OK, what's next? And where do I put my attention next? What do I honor with my attention?

[37:59]

I want to read just a little bit, one paragraph from the book I was citing, which has to do with what happens to the brain with giving attention. He says, this is quoting then from Jonah Lehrer, Take the act of looking at a bowl of fruit. Whenever we pay attention to a specific stimulus, like the pear on the dinner table, we increase the sensitivity of our own neurons. These cells can now see what they would otherwise ignore. Sensations that were invisible suddenly become visible. as attention selectively increases the firing rate of the neurons it illuminates. Once these neurons become excited, they bind themselves together into a temporary kind of coalition which enters the stream of consciousness.

[39:03]

Note that attention seems to be operating in a top-down manner, what some neuroscientists call executive control. The illusory self is causing very real changes in neuronal firing. So this is an interesting kind of scientific documentation, I think, of what many of us already know, that by bringing attention to something, we become more sensitive to it. And then this is pointing out that the actual, this is something that that is happening in the chemistry and in the cellular structure of the brain is changing because we're deciding to bring attention to something. It heightens the sensitivity of these particular cells in the brain. And they actually regroup in a way in order to more clearly perceive what you're bringing attention to.

[40:07]

Some things happen, right? Apparently intrude. And the Buddha sitting under the wake-up tree can make a choice about, okay, do I pay more attention to the siren or just enough? Do I engage in a whole reactivity to it? Do I resent it being there as an intrusion, an interruption? like the bug, you know, that may be crawling, or the noisy bird, that may be an interruption if you think of it as noise. That's kind of an additional judgment, right? So the wake-up Buddha is just hearing the sound as sound. But then deciding, okay, to tune into it, and then becoming more sensitive to it. Now what's interesting here, and he says this, says, this is...

[41:14]

tends to be operating in a top-down manner, which some neuroscientists are calling executive control. And so I just want to call attention to how in Zen practice, we use executive control, if we can say that, we use executive control to go beyond executive control. That we actually have an intention, if you will, to not be completely identified with executive control. That we, in sitting, open ourselves up to all possibilities. Suzuki Roshi said, Zen mind and beginner's mind have this quality of opening up to all possibilities. So executive control may be useful, right? tune in to something that you particularly need to pay attention to or that requests your attention.

[42:15]

And so we have the capacity to do that, and we also have the capacity to use just enough executive control to set aside executive control. In other words, to sit down and then, once having sat down, tune in to the breath, find the breath, let the breath be And then let everything be and then let go of control. Now, to let go of control and stay in the present moment means this practice of reminding yourself to come back to the present moment because there may be habitual things that take you away from the present moment. Habits of thought that you get involved in that take you away from being fully present. So then the executive control comes back in and says, oh, come back, come back, come back to the breath.

[43:17]

My wife, Lane, was reading the paper this week and discovered in Leah Garchick's column, she has this little thing about something that's overheard. In this case, it was something that was overseen. Somebody said they were spending some time with a 90-year-old woman, and they noticed this note on her telephone. And the note on the phone, it's a post-it note, and it said, remember to stay mad at Bill. So this is a kind of executive control, right, that you bring your attention back to. And so in this case, if you can't remember what you want to give your attention to and how you want to give your attention, then we do a post-it note, right?

[44:25]

So my wife, Lane, commented, what if someone would just change the note, right? Change the note, and it says, remember to forgive Bill. And if the person then said, remember to forgive Bill each time at the phone, they would actually be a different person. Their brain patterns would shift. The way they picked up the phone would be different. Remember to forgive Bill or remember to stay mad at Bill. So we actually, in our practice, have that kind of choice. And we do... uphold what we call wisdom and what we call compassion. There are lots of things that we could choose, but we find that it actually works better for our life and for our relations with each other to uphold wisdom and compassion. So to say, okay, remember to forgive Bill, in this case,

[45:36]

If you can do that, then after a while you actually forget. You're allowing yourself to forget staying mad at Bill. So we have that kind of choice at many points throughout the day. Now, if you don't bring in some kind of an intervention like practice, consciously orienting yourself towards what is wholesome, then you will tend to be in the pattern of old habits. Your brain will do what it's usually been doing. So we use this word practice, which means that we actually make an intention to change the way our habitual lives go. And in Zen practice, we want to make the change in the direction of opening the mind, being present in the present moment rather than living in the past or living in some fantasy of the future, rather than living based on fear, based on the confidence that already this moment is supporting me so I can trust that.

[46:55]

There's so many things already working that I can actually be present here. This is a kind of... intention that moves in the direction of being say completely at home in ourselves and with each other. So this kind of attention then is the same I'd say as devotional practice. You're devoting yourself to whatever you bring your attention to. So I think that's probably a little bit too long. Please forgive me and thank you for your attention.

[47:42]

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