This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. I just start with a few minutes of meditation. hopefully illustrative of what it is I want to talk about. So if you could sit upright, your body in a balanced position, your spine long, front of your body open, shoulders wide. Now let me describe the details of breath I'd like to offer, and then you can engage them.

[01:05]

Both the exhale and the inhale are attended to in a deliberate way. The exhale, that's the start of the cycle. The exhale is somewhat deliberately extended. but with the softness of a sigh, with the release of a sigh, but extended. And then there's a pause, and then our body is deliberately softened, allowed to release, so that the inhale is invited in, and then attending as closely as possible to the sensations of breathing in, however it might happen in the body. And we'll do that about five times.

[02:09]

Each one, each part, very deliberate. And after the exhale, after the inhale, there's a pause. And then the next deliberate exhale. Okay. long or soft release. In the pause, in allowing, receiving, opening, and careful attention to that, the sensations of breathing in. and the whole cycle starts again.

[03:15]

In the rhythm of your body. You know, maybe the common ingredient of the different emphasis that we can put in zazen.

[05:52]

Common ingredient is giving fully to the experience. And then as we engage that, Often, usually, we experience what it is to give fully and what it is to not give fully. They're kind of woven together. I was attending to the inhale and then a car went over that metal plate right there. And somehow it registered as a pleasant sound. And in that second, my body disappeared and the sound was the whole story.

[07:04]

And then pause and the next exhale. giving attention. So here's supposedly an Irish prayer that I came across recently. I never heard it when I lived in Ireland, but Here it is, an Irish prayer. Give time to meditation. It's the source of power. Give time to work. It's the price of accomplishment. Give time to play.

[08:10]

It's the secret of youthfulness. Give time to study. It's the way of knowledge. Give time... to friendship. It's the road to happiness. Give time to laughter. It's the music of the soul. Give time to love and be loved. Actually, the version I read, it said, take time. something in me, changed it to give. And then I mused on the notions, you know, take. Take time. Give time. Give attention.

[09:12]

In our meal chant we say, the emptiness of the three wheels, giver, receiver, and gift, you know. The interplay, you know, that something is, and I think giving and receiving, you know, as you've heard me say many times, giving attention and receptive attention, you know. You give attention to the inhale and the sound of the car rattling over the metal plate. captivates, gives something. And if you can remember, long ago when I was mentioning a piece from Bendawa, where it says, when we give attention, the experience is experienced.

[10:19]

And when it's experienced, something's realized. It's not quite what it says, but that's close enough. This giving attention and something is realized. And of course, something is kind of a clumsy word there because It's about experiencing. It's about activity. It's not about something solid. Our practice is about realizing. It's not about accomplishing something you can then own called realization or enlightenment or awakening. It's an activity.

[11:21]

And we engage the activity, and in the activity, something is expressed. And the term kanodoko is about this activity. So I had fun this afternoon looking up all the different ways, or many of the different ways, not all of them, that this term has been related to. One says, this is what Buddha gives to human beings. One says, resonating with the way. Suzuki Roshi called it responsive communication. Kan means that which arises, like perception.

[12:28]

And O means something like experiencing. And then Do is the way, and Ko is realizing. So apprehending the perception, and realizing the way. Engaging what is in a way that transmits the nature of what is. So it's inactivity. And that prayer or that saying. We can read it as if it's a prescription. You do this and you get this. You meditate and you get power, you work, you get accomplishment, you play, you get youthfulness, you study, you get knowledge, you get friendship, you get happiness, laughter, you get the music, love, you get to be loved.

[13:49]

And of course, we're enticed. We come to practice. Because something's out of balance, something's stuck, something's missing. And we come to resolve it. And then as we engage the practice, Interestingly, we engage it from the impetus, from the intention that arises from our experience of being alive. Something's realized, but it's not what we were expecting. When we give time to meditation, something happens. but we neither own it nor do we manufacture it.

[14:57]

And usually it's not what we were expecting. And this is the delicate balance of giving attention and receiving experience. I was not expecting to be entranced by the momentary sound of a car driving over a metal plate. I was not expecting that sound to resonate in some way or reverberate or to be followed by a moment of simple noticing. that was neither judgmental, is neither experienced as a moment of failure or something to grasp.

[16:04]

That it had within it some fluidity, some kano doko. something spoke of itself, of the nature of being. And this is the challenge for us as we engage practice. The formidable part of it, the ferocious part of it, the ferocious part of being alive, it asks for everything you've got. And this is the helpfulness of the formulation that says, give time to meditation, give time to work.

[17:06]

You know, on Saturday I offered that phrase, give time, take the time, give time to do what you're doing. Give each thing the time it needs. And maybe we could say, and you'll do it better, and you'll be more successful, and you'll whatever. But really, the heart of our practice is not so much the favorable result, because actually, if you think about it a little, what happens next, there are many factors that contribute to it. most of which are beyond our control. But as we engage with attention, directed and receptive, we're making available awareness for what is.

[18:27]

The giver, the receiver, and the gift interplay. And it's this mind. It's this mind that I was quoting last week, this phrase of Suzuki Roshi's soft mind. It's soft mind, it's fluid mind, but it's attentive, it's engaged, and it's available. And when we engage it, when we engage purposefully,

[19:34]

evoke, then what becomes apparent is our humanness. When you intend to follow your breath, what becomes apparent is the experience of not following your breath, as well as the experience of following your breath. And in a way, this is a very important part of our practice, that we hold them both. In the seven factors of awakening, there's the initiation of noticing and investigating. And then there's energy. The homework, or the examination we were doing in this evening's tea before dinner was... What experiences have you had recently that either drained your energy or boosted your energy?

[20:44]

So readily our mind gets captivated by the content of our experience, by the description of our experience. Well, it was like this. this person said that, or I did this, or something. And when we attend to something as elemental, as essential as our energy, we're coming closer to what you might call the pivot point of the human response. Some factors came into being to which we contributed, to make this moment what it is. And then it impacted us. And out of that impact, then we had the thoughts, the feelings, the judgments, the physical responses. So can we, in attending to something like the energy of it, can we get in touch with something of what was sparked

[22:00]

in the pivot point. Or as Kanno Doko says, that statement is saying, that point of engagement. Sometimes it's said in our tradition that offering incense is that resonance with Buddha being. or bowing. Someone said at the tea we had that Suzuki Roshi wrote his thesis in his studies on bowing. That bowing can be that point of connection that makes evident what's happening in the moment. And then, as I say, when we give over, like in the seven factors, when there's energy and there's giving over the energy, the energy flows through our being and it has a pleasant, enjoyable consequence.

[23:33]

the mind experiences joy, the body experiences joy. And then as that is connected to, there is a sense of rapture and ease. And often there is, it allows for a sense of release. And in that ease for release, the last two factors, continuous contact, samadhi, and equanimity. So the giving over and letting the... Letting the energy of practice flow through us and have these healing, beneficial, awakening qualities.

[24:49]

And then also giving over and having it illustrate the karmic consequences of our being. that despite the intention to feel, I've been doing this practice for quite a while, this sensation of the inhale. And as you continue it and as you sense more of your body, it's quite amazing what happens in the body. There's endless varieties of experience. I've discovered my body can have a painful twinge that comes and goes in a matter of seconds. It can have a murky sensation that I'm not sure whether it's pleasant or unpleasant, or both.

[26:01]

we give over and our being, our karmic being manifests. And if we can stay aligned with just as it is, and this is where sensation and energy are so instructive, when we can stay with such as it is, it's not that the mind doesn't create its concepts or its judgments or its associated emotions. It's that they're not the whole story. And that those arisings can also be engaged with the sense of flow.

[27:13]

That those writings can also be sensation. They are really just an aggregate of sensations. Or emotions. the physical component. They have a mental component. They are some Vedana brought into motion, in becoming an emotion. And so we have this balance. we can read a list like this. When I read this list, I was charmed by its, you know, a sort of sequence of it.

[28:24]

Meditation, work, play, study, friendship, laughter, love. And something in me thought, all of those have their place. Something in me thought of the notion of give time. Take time. Make time. Give time. Something, all of them addressing something about what it is cultivate deliberate attention. Give each thing the time it needs.

[29:25]

And in some ways, this notion is the pivot between stillness and action. No? that in our sitting with its emphasis on attending and receiving, and in a way, the non-doing of that. And then how do we carry that into doing? So sometimes we talk about finding the stillness in the activity. Sometimes we say effortless effort. But we can also say it's this interplay. It's this interplay of the sensibility

[30:41]

of being open to experiencing as we're in the midst of doing. It's the sensibility, it's the giving of attention to the doing that enriches it. And we can notice in the doing when we're following a prescription to accomplish the desired goal. We can notice in the doing where we're not quite involved and we're doing and we're not doing. But as we persist that aspect of Vedana, of Vriya.

[31:47]

As we persist with this open doing, this doing that stays connected, all the many manifestations of our being, our own habitual way of engaging, start to make themselves evident. And as they make themselves evident, and that's attended to with experience, just the same way the sound generated by the car going over the metal plate. It's not failure to attend to the inhale. It's not a distraction from the inhale. It's completely itself. And it's this open willingness to let the next thing be the next thing that allows it to be so.

[33:05]

And so the awareness becomes Inclusive. And so in the Zen school, this notion of attending to perception in accordance with the way, this is the, we can say this is the link between stillness and action, and we can say this is the pivot point that brings zazen into activity. But not just activity, it also brings what we might say, the thoughtless, the inconceivable of the formless, it connects it to the form, the stuff of our life.

[34:07]

When we do, we do within a construct. This is what's happening and this is how it's intentionally being related to. When we stay connected to the sensation, when we stay connected to the energy, when we stay connected to the physicality, that which arises is both itself, it is the construct it is, and it's just the construct it is. And this is what enables that fluidity. Just the way we can say, it's my opinion.

[35:10]

And we can say it with a sense of non-attachment. Well, it's my opinion. Tomorrow the sun will shine. Or whatever. Or we can say, it's my opinion. And any other one is incorrect. Or any other one is an offense. That the assertion of the self, intrinsically, inevitably conditioned, can be grasped and create struggle, or it can be allowed to flow. And the Zen contribution. to the cultivation of awakening is that we're completely in accordance with all the early teachings.

[36:16]

And then we enter the world to both put them into action, but also to discover how they resonate through everything. How is kanodoko maybe the intrinsic nature of offering incense, or bowing, or chanting, or eating in the zendo. But it's also the intrinsic nature of every activity. It's how every moment of consciousness is apprehended and engaged. And there's both when that happens, when that flows, when that's illuminated in this sense of intrinsic freedom.

[37:24]

And there's this struggle, the missing the point, the one continuous mistake of karmic conditioning. How can the mind, how can the attitude, how can the engagement, how can the expectation be fluid enough, receptive enough? That has nothing to do with success or failure. It's to do about engagement. It's a great story about Hakuin. you know, where he's meditating on the edge of a village, the village girl gets pregnant, she doesn't want to tell her parents that it was a young lad in the village, so she says it was heckling.

[38:34]

So the baby's born and they go furious to this terrible monk who lives in the edge of the village and accuse him and abuse him and insist he takes care of the baby. And he says, is that so? He takes care of the baby. This is a true story. And as he tried to beg for food for the baby, people abused him and criticized him. And he just silently took it. And then after about six months, the village girl relents and says, I made the whole story up. I didn't want to tell the truth. And people went to Hakuin and said, you are a saint. You know, you just like... You took all our abuse. You didn't resist a single thing. You didn't try to argue your innocence. You didn't accuse the girl. You just took everything and accepted it.

[39:36]

You are the most amazing human being." And he said, is that so? Can the unfolding of our lives be a marvel? Is that so? How can we see that liberation and conditioned existence have an energetic, dynamic relationship. Robert Bly, the poet, he said, to be a lover in two worlds. This way that

[40:48]

when we touch, when we connect, when it resonates through our body with pleasure and joy, when we feel the ease and the relief of letting the emotions and the contractions soften and flow. When our mind discovers and revels in its intrinsic adaptability and creativity, with gratitude and playfulness. And also to love, you know, the heritage of our conditioned nature. Is that so? The sign of a metal plate is captivating.

[41:54]

Is that so? But the stuff that arises in our being, often challenging, often difficult. I had a long, intense conversation with someone last night who in many ways the structure of their life has fallen apart and they're at this pivot point. Now what? Do we say that with desperation, despair, bitterness, resentment? Or do we say it some sense of this is what it is to be alive.

[43:00]

This fierce, conditioned, ever-changing existence will indeed ever change. Whether we take heart or Irish prayers or whatever formulas we're taking for our life. They don't guarantee success. They offer us a way to give. They offer us a way to engage. A way to discover. That's beyond success. 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.

[44:07]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[44:22]

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