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 was thinking about what I was going to talk about this evening I was reviewing in my own mind what my notion of the progression that I'm going through in this practice period is it's kind of Dharma engineering you know I trained as a civil engineer that's when I studied at college and then I worked at it for a while and I was thinking maybe I'm applying the same principles. In engineering, you assess the situation, you come up with your plan, you lay the foundation, you build the structure, and then you fill it in, one way or another.

[01:17]

So the structure is the seven factors of awakening. Here's what I think I've said. Of course, everybody hears whatever they hear. That's the marble and the mystery of communicating or trying to communicate with each other. Seven factors of awakening. In the middle, energy and energy flow. It's like a transformative influence. We bring to it a kind of a stuckness, a strong sense of self and other as separate beings in a solid world. We bring to it the habit and embodiment of our way of being mentally and physically and psychologically. And then in the alchemy of

[02:25]

experiencing the experience of the moment, something loosens up, lightens up, becomes less solid, becomes more capable of flowing. And then in the seven factors of awakening, after energy and energy flow, you have ease, samadhi, continuous contact, English translation I like to use, and then equanimity. And then you're ready to go and live and be lived for the benefit of all beings. So in my notion of of where we are in that, we're ready to live and be lived for the benefit of all beings. But before we do that, or to prepare us, or express that in stillness, we'll sit for a couple of minutes.

[03:36]

So if you could align your body, stability, you feel that solid contact And you feel rising up out of the solid contact of your sitting, that upright spine. Lengthening up the back, opening up the front. The stomach, the solar plexus, the heart, the throat, the face open. Bow or back lengthening. Back of the neck lengthening. And all of that softening from doing into being.

[04:46]

Softening from doing posture to being posture. maybe even some finer adjustments of the posture. There's more attention to them. And then with the breath, as I mentioned last week, extending the exhale. Yes, there's a deliberate effort, but it's not strenuous. As much as possible, it's a soft effort. And then it sets the stage for the inhale, the contrast

[06:06]

makes both more evident. And the body softens and opens, the nostrils soften and open, the heart, the abdomen. And then the whole process begins again. And in the softness and opening

[07:07]

Everything's included. The ambient sounds. Any thoughts, physical sensations. in a helpful way we can say that in our zazen we are inviting an experience of the formless.

[08:22]

It's just this flowing expression of existence in whatever shape it takes, whatever sense door it connects to at any particular moment. And then the complement to that is the shape and the particulars of our human life. There's a story about Hui Ning, the sixth ancestor in Zen, and considered to be one of the notable figures in the development of Zen. And the story is this. When he's about eight years old, he's with his teacher, and they're outside the Buddha hall, and inside they're chanting the Heart Sutra. No eyes, no ears, no nose.

[09:23]

And Huay Neng says, but I have eyes. I have ears. There is both this formlessness that arises when we... start to experience the sensation, the phenomena, feel the palpable presence of just now. This moment is just itself, beyond comparison, beyond any need to be better or compete with anything else than just itself. And out of that, we create a life. We create a sense of time. We create a sense of space.

[10:25]

We create a purpose for the life. And a lot of it's stimulated by what we want and what we don't want. What we desire and what we fear. and what we're confused about and what makes us anxious. So in the sitting, it's like going beyond the constructs, going beyond even the thoughts and opinions we have about the constructs. And then particularly in the flavor of Zen, when we enter that world, Can we use the mind as an ally? That we attend to the thinking, we attend to the constructs. So this is what I think. This is how my mind hears sound and identifies a male, a female voice, walking up page street, probably in their mid-twenties.

[11:40]

Not quite sure where they're going or where they've come from. Give me a moment. No, I'll go up with something. So this column. Yanmen. Every day is a good day. Yanmen, another famous then teacher in China, addresses his sangha, his monks in training, and he says, I'm not asking about before the 15th day. I'm asking about after the 15th day. What can you say about that? And the monks say nothing. As I think we're all inclined to do when we feel like, I'm not putting myself right there. Yeah. get myself in trouble.

[12:42]

So he answered his own question. And he said, every day is a good day. You know, in the monastic system, on the full moon, you have the full moon ceremony, which is a renewal of vows or intention to practice. And then also, on the 15th day, you know, full moons being about 30 days apart, in the middle of that, you have another renewal. So in the middle of your practice, I'm not asking about what happened before, I'm asking about going forward. In the middle of your life, in the middle of what you're doing right now, what can you say? can we not say something?

[13:47]

We're always in the middle of responding. We're always in the middle of some descriptor of what existence is. Some descriptor of should or shouldn't, or approving or disapproving, or judging or blaming. How within that can there be liberation? How can we not just be caught in repeating the same patterns and strategies, assumptions that we're inclined to do?

[14:48]

So maybe we can admire the monks for saying, I can't answer that. We gentlemen says, every day is a good day. Maybe we can say, every day, every moment, every situation, every encounter, in its constructed being teaches us, challenges us to express the heart of practice. So it's a good moment, it's a good day. But we can also say when the mind

[15:53]

is settled, when the mind is flowing, when the mind is attentive, when there's no grasping, when there's openness, when all the seven factors are abundant, then quite naturally, as simply as moving your hand, appropriate response. In other words, when you're Buddha. When you're Buddha, every day is a good day. What about those rare moments when you're not Buddha? Then what? See, this is the kind of the intrigue. Can the proposition, can they, when we see that the apparent simplicity of Yon Man's comment is actually really reaching into or attempt to practice and challenging us to discover how the heck does a human being, being a human being,

[17:26]

discover how to practice. How does a human being engage and express practice? And even that intrigue has its positive effect. You know, where I grew up, there's this thing, catch yourself on, which... I think is pretty self-explanatory. Usually it comes out with a little bit of attitude. Ah, catch yourself on. When you're considering that the other person is getting carried away by their own ideas and attitudes. So last week I was talking about a Buddhist term, Zen term, Kano Doko.

[18:32]

Kano means experiencing what's arising, the perception of the moment. And then Doko is way realized, realizing the way and experiencing the moment. And then what kind of involvement is that? And then interestingly, sometimes the phrase is translated as something like the mystical union with Buddha. And then sometimes it's translated as experience what's perceived and realizing the way that shift in involvement in what we are and how we are and how we are in our life, in the middle of it, that the particulars of it shift from being some kind of quest

[20:01]

to resolve our problems. About 2000 or 1999, I was having lunch with a friend of mine, and they, at that time there was an internet boom, and they were doing very well. Their nominal wealth was about 40 million. And they were explaining to me how they were going to take the whole thing and double God. They were going to invest the whole 40 million in startups, which, you know, it's a risky proposition. Even in that boom time, everybody knew, well, one out of three or something. And I said to them, why? Isn't like 40 million a good amount of money?

[21:05]

And they said, I want 100. And then they thought about it in the moment. This is literally what they said, stuck in my mind. They said, I want to be richer than God. I want to be so rich, when I go into the room, people nudge each other and say, look, there's that rich person. So they doubled down and then they lost it all. And then a dispute came up between them and they had two partners running a 50 person company they ran. And they had a long protracted legal battle and essentially gave what any money they had left to lawyers. I remember at the time being intrigued at how each of us generates an agenda for our life.

[22:17]

And then we live it. I knew that person had grown up in a very impoverished environment. My mind was saying, If you grow up in an impoverished environment, the solution is to be richer than God. What else would solve it? So that way, any one of us can allow our karmic conditioning to take hold of our life and determine its trajectory. That person started up another company and did quite well, had more interpersonal troubles, lost that company, and then essentially they seemed to have relaxed.

[23:23]

So I say all that in the service of, okay, maybe you're not trying to get richer than God. They went about it with great energy. That was the impressive thing. It wasn't a casual endeavor. But we're all in the throes of something. What is it we're in the throes of? How does it influence how we think, our attitude towards others? How does it influence our notion of success and failure? How does it influence how we set our priorities? And it's interesting because then it doesn't emphasize so much in saying, okay, well, here's the priorities you should have.

[24:53]

Here's the definition for your future. It isn't so much prescriptive of outcome as it is in offering clues about how we engage. That's what kanodoko is. It's the process of engaging it is what's precious. In our meal chant we say, giver, receiver, and gift. Realizing that they're all interbeing. They're all shunyata. They're all empty. This is the nature of life. It's fluid. Even though our mind and our attitudes are creating these determined definitions. the life we're living is fluid. And how do we stay in touch with that?

[25:55]

How do we come back to that? How do we, in our zazen, how do we taste it, be it? Let something loosen up so that when we enter back into the particulars, they're not so without awareness, the assumptions and attitudes and definitions are not so adamant. And when we have this notion, we start to realize one of the best ways to study this is to get yourself into trouble. to notice where do they become adamant? Where do they become blatantly apparent?

[27:01]

Okay, I am insisting the world is like this, or I'm like this, or somebody else is like this. But the energy goes into reifying definition of the self or other, or how to relate. or what success is. So we can watch for that. So that's some of the suggestions I've been offering. Oh, what gets charged with your energy? How is your energy nourished? How is your energy drained? And then to not just... move from form to formlessness, but also to move back from formlessness to form. So here was one of the suggestions I made on the class on Monday.

[28:04]

I said, one of the great forms of our modern world is money. I once met a minister in the Church of Christ's Scientist, who was also a financial advisor for the Rothschilds, which, if you don't know, is old money, as the saying goes, centuries old, and is extremely wealthy. And this surprised me a lot. So I asked him, does these two work together? And he said, oh yeah, they work together. Because money is is the energy of God's activity. I thought, hmm, I'd never thought of it like that. But anyway, maybe that prompted me to come up with this.

[29:10]

So I said, here's the homework for this week. Usually it's an awareness exercise. The homework is give away a dollar, a couple of dollars, or five dollars to a total stranger. Okay? Not so hard to do, right? Especially if you can afford the money. But try to persuade them to give it away to somebody else. Because the three wheels of giver receiver and gift are part of inter-being. And the challenge for us in this life is to inter-be. Can something as powerful in our world as money, can it be an agent of awakening?

[30:18]

There's some part of us that says, well, if I'm going to be richer than God, I have to keep it right here. But what if money is considered to be an agent of interbeing? What would that look like? And how would we manifest it? So that was the homework. And we'll see. In the past I offered that homework, and I offered this kind of elaboration, was take the money and wash it, and iron it, and offer it over incense, and then give it away. There's some way that, you know, we can say, oh, the material world is the enemy of the spiritual world.

[31:36]

But we could also say that, you know, and this is what comes up in tea ceremony and things like that, you know, each thing, lift each thing, as if it's precious. List each thing as if it's a marvel and marvelous creation. You know that the material world it is this extraordinary creation of being. We look at some things and we're moved by their beauty. we look at other things and we're repulsed or disgusted by how we're perceiving ugliness. And then we have this, we've created this amazing thing called money that's apparently able to buy and sell the material world.

[32:51]

And if you think about it, it's an extraordinary notion. If you think about it a little bit more, now that we're doing all our transactions, you hold up a piece of plastic and the person says, okay, take it. It's amazing. Now we're just willing to share concepts. that these concepts would register somewhere electronically through this transaction of giver, receiver, and gift. So the coin, the foundation of the coin, is Shunyata, interbeing. How could it not be?

[33:56]

That's the nature of existence. It's dynamic. It's interactive. Nothing exists independent and permanent. And within that interbeing, we construct singularly, individually, and we construct collaboratively. who say, if you want that, give me money, and then it's yours. That's what he's saying. I'm sure you could go out and buy a tree that's still in the grind growing, if you have the right amount of money, whatever that is, or a beach, which has ocean and waves and wind and So the foundation of interbeing giving rise to a particular form, individual, consensual, in our shared agreement, our notion of money and value, and that's the world we live in.

[35:25]

Are we trapped in it? Or do we turn it and let it teach us about liberation, awakening? And what if you enter into it, confining convention, and say, here, I want to give this to you. I don't simply want to give it to you. I want to give it to everybody. So could you help me with that and give it to somebody else? Could you help this be an agent of interviewing? I don't mean to trivialize poverty.

[36:30]

I mean, certainly people need to keep that money to support their own existence. But what if just even making the suggestion, offering up the idea? gave them something more than what was conventionally held as precious? What if the idea of interbeing is more precious than the dollar bill or the five dollar bill? What if in the interaction, in the giving and receiving, And by the way, the giving and receiving is mutual. When we give, we receive. It opens, you know, when we give, it initiates a well-being within us.

[37:39]

Maybe we're the one who comes off with the greater value out of the exchange. But what if in that interbeing that money has enabled, we've facilitated our shared awakening. I would say to you, this is the mind of God. It doesn't have as many, so much that it has answers, it has lots of questions. It has this way of saying, What about that? I forget, I asked a question once. I forget what the question was, but I remember the answer.

[38:43]

And he said, 90% zazen, 10% koan. I would end with that notion, you know, rather than imagining. We can think our way through the proposition of being alive. The Zazen enables us to enter the world, you know, with not just a distracted, rigid mind, but a mind that's curious, a mind that thinks. More money than God.

[39:46]

Maybe that's really easy. Because, you know, in that big white robe, maybe God doesn't have any pockets to put money in. Money is the energy of God's activity. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[40:50]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[40:53]

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