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 morning. could say today's the sixth day of Sushin. A certain kind of constancy that we've agreed upon. Although what we make of that, each one of us has our own creation.

[01:01]

Uji, a classical by Dogen, he says, the way the self arrays itself in the form of the entire world is the form of the entire world. See each thing in the entire world as a moment of time. Things don't hinder each other just as moments don't hinder each other. The way-seeking mind arises in the moment the moment arises the way-seeking mind. So there. Here's what that brought up for me. I thought, in the notion the way-seeking mind brings forth the moment, I thought, Does our diligent mindfulness efforts in mindfulness, does that wear down our restlessness?

[02:17]

Or does our restlessness wear down the mind that's attempting to do something? Maybe it's both together. Maybe they're the our restlessness and our diligent efforts. We can think the sixth day is the day between the fifth day and the seventh day. Or we can think where each of us is in this yogic process, each in our own way. whatever the relationship between our restlessness the constant motion of our being and the expression of our diligence to be mindful to be in the moment to notice acknowledge experience

[03:30]

And in this yogic journey, I would suggest to you one day, one way or another, this day is an opportunity. I thought somewhere in the Heart Sutra there was agreement that at the beginning, avalokitesvara, by practicing deeply the prajnaparamita. And then it goes through all the negations in the usual translation. Or it goes through all the, what should we say, acknowledgments of the endless expressions of interbeing. And then it says, therefore bodhisattvas dwell. in Prajnaparamita and the mind is no hindrance.

[04:46]

I looked up the three source translations that I was using and not one of them says that. Musang says Bodhisattvas depend on Prajnaparamita. Red Pine says Bodhisattvas take refuge in Prajnaparamita. Thich Nhat Hanh simply says, practice insight. Bodhisattvas practice insight. Maybe exactly what happens between the conditioned self and the expression of practice is something each of us is obliged to figure out through our experience. Maybe figure out is a clumsy term. Realize. As Yongshan said to the monk, you get one mystery.

[05:56]

Maybe the sixth day is an opportunity to go deeper, more intimately into that mystery as you watch what you notice moment by moment. But I'd suggest this to you today, this noble sixth day. is a capacity for dwelling. Maybe just momentarily savoring or maybe dwelling in the moment. Not because our mind is becalmed and each

[07:09]

And in that space, each moment pops up, arises, utterly clear. But more in the back and forth, noticing, getting caught up, noticing, letting go. That steady heartbeat of your diligence, however that is expressed by you. What is the steady heartbeat of your effort? How does it express itself? I've been suggesting awareness of body and breath. Noticing, acknowledging thought patterns, mental states.

[08:13]

And today I suggest to you checking out the capacity to savor the experience. moisture, how that influences your state of mind. Has the pattern, the rhythm of the schedule of Shashin, has it penetrated in a way where it's more real than any other pattern of your life? of your behavior as we continue to practice picking up when it's time to pick something up and do the next thing putting down when it's time to stop doing it and end that activity as we keep practicing that something in us that

[09:46]

under usual circumstances, more determinedly wants to take charge and assert, I want this. I don't want that. And how that conjures up the theater of our desires and aversions. And usually there's a lot of clamor around all that. Usually that's a crowded activity. And then we practice in this simple basic way. Even though our mind and our body have a lot to say. Even though our feelings in psychology are asserting Many dramas.

[10:48]

One way or another. An opening. A sense of space. Maybe it's like this. This poet, Seamus Heaney, he starts one of his poems and he says, sometime Make time. And then he goes on and he's talking about visiting a particular place. Sometime make time. In that moment of awareness, can that be the time to make time? In that moment of awareness, Can that be the time to attend to, in an open way, what's being experienced?

[11:56]

And can we, in that experience, See more deeply how this constant process of constructing life goes on. The self arrays itself in the form of the entire world. See each thing in the entire world as a moment of time. Maybe you can just simplify it and say, see each thing as its own world. You know, yesterday I was talking about trying to continuously

[13:19]

tend to what's rising as it changes. Trying to sustain that continuous attention. What it helps us do, usually our psychological disposition wants to affirm psychologically significant experiences and then push away other ones. And when we can develop some kind of continuity of awareness, when we can keep attending those biases built into our psychological makeup or quieted, we're seeing it more as it is and less according to our biases. And as we do that, see it more as it is, unless according to our bias, it becomes more itself rather than the affirmation of the world according to me.

[14:41]

And as that happens, there is an inclination, a movement towards equanimity. This is what it is. This memory, this judgment, this experience, this hearing, timing between the Ekohan and the Densho got a little bit off just as we were waiting to do the lecture. And I thought, oh, it's because it's a cloudy day. Interesting causality. then there is that sort of equanimity in each thing's allowed to be itself.

[16:05]

It's like a curious proposition. It's like Shakyamuni holding up a flower. And what about this? Emak Hashabha smiles. Yeah. raise one finger. It's like each moment starts to present itself for us as a thoughtless, beyond knowing teaching. when we just hear the sound. And it speaks, not in concepts, but just as experience.

[17:22]

That kind of savoring. And sometimes it's about Availability. We're just engaging diligently in our practice. Which by this point often it's hard for us to tell whether it's going well or not going well, whether we're attaining or not attaining. is what it is. And something comes through a particular sound or sight. And then sometimes it's deliberately making ourselves available. Like maybe on the break

[18:30]

sitting in an easy chair. Letting your sore knees and back relax with the feeling of sukha, pleasant physical experience. And the mind softens. And what the eyes are seeing becomes more seen. And just letting the seen be seen. Like Seamus Heaney saying, sometime make time. to just see what's being seen.

[19:36]

And then he goes on in the poem and he says, it's useless to think you'll park and capture it more thoroughly. can now grasp this and be more thoroughly awakened, realized, whatever. No, it's a giving over. But in the process there's a discovery. We discover for ourselves The practice of Prajnaparamita. Is it a giving over?

[20:45]

Is it a taking refuge? Is it a practice? Is it a non-practice? And then the Heart Sutra says, and the mind is no hindrance. Red Pine translates that as, and there's no walls on the mind. Every moment allows that. Every moment is an opportunity for that turning.

[21:52]

The turning from recreating a version of reality, recreating a self, living in that reality, recreating a sense of time, What helps make that available? What helps create that opportunity? The karmic constructs. The very things that we thought were the problem. The very things that seem to get in the way that seem to distract us, obscure the luminosity of just this very form, the very is-ness that comes forward and is struggled with, is the opportunity

[23:13]

for intervening, is the opportunity for awareness, is the opportunity to let this arising be the time of now. Because time and being are the same thing. Uji, being time. And we can see this in a general way. You can watch, especially... I remember once, a long time ago, a couple of us rented horses and from the stable as we were trying to get them to go away from the stable they were very reluctant very slow very hard to control but the moment we turned back towards the stable they were eager maybe

[24:42]

We're reluctant horses, reluctant to leave the world according to me, you know. And then we do some arithmetic and we think six comes before seven. And seven is the last. And then you can gallop forward, energize. So if that mind comes up, just another opportunity. Sometimes it's a marvelous teaching because in that energy, not only the mind starts to shift, it's almost like it changes its core structure.

[25:43]

awareness is always pointing us towards a kind of mystery of being. It's always challenging like the Diamond Sutra. It's always challenging the structure of reality we're taking for granted. And that something to our mind it does something to our consciousness it even does something to how we engage our body and so you can watch yourself resume that world where six is the number before seven and watch what it does to mind and body an amazing example of the yogic power of attention, of engagement.

[26:54]

Usually we just think, well, my body is the way it is. But over these days of just following what's arising, just following the schedule, just attending to it and letting go of the hand of thought something's loosening up and then as we grasp it and tighten it back up it changes later in the Heart Sutra it says what we translate as miraculous the miraculous mantra transformative mantra is how some of the other translators translate it. The way of engaging that has a transformative potency.

[28:04]

And as the poet says, it's useless to think. You can just grasp it, hold it still. and make it comply with what you want feel it as thoroughly as possible feel the effects of the mantra sixth day comes before seventh day and all that floods with it He says, the self arrays itself in the form of the entire world. See each thing in the entire world as a moment of time. This is the world of now.

[29:12]

Then he goes on and he says, things don't hinder each other. hinder the world of Sashin. It's not in opposition to it. They're both momentary arisings. And the great gift of this as we move towards transition. It's like this transition is always in place, moment by moment. But this version of transition we take seriously.

[30:18]

Now this is an important one. with the freedom of Prajnaparamita. What about the freedom from the schedule? Eat your lunch sitting in a chair without your knees hurting. The way seeking mind arises in this moment. wayseeking moment arises in this mind. It is the same with practice and the same with realizing the way. Of course when we turn it into words it seems clumsy.

[31:22]

Maybe it seems like a complex way to think. The intention is more to be fascinated by just the nature and the way that consciousness works. And then remind ourselves, oh, and this is going on all the time. conjuring up a reality. That reality that's conjured up, recreating body, mind, time, before, after. Then the Heart Sutra says, when it's engaged with Prajnaparamita,

[32:28]

All this process of mind is not hindrance. So this is the great coin for us. How is the process of mind engaged that alleviates affliction? That somehow makes evident the nature of what is and somehow makes evident the path of liberation. not an abstract philosophical notion from ancient India or China. It's the very breath of life that's flowing in us right now. How do we do that? Seamus Heaney says, useless to think you'll park and capture it more thoroughly.

[33:47]

You're neither here nor there. If you set up a here and a there. A hurry through which known and strange things pass. A big soft buffering that comes at the car sideways. Catches the heart off guard and blows it open. Catches the heart off guard and blows it open. Is that taking refuge? practicing mindfulness is that depends upon Bodhisattva depends upon Prajnaparamita.

[34:54]

This is the stuff of being alive. This is what attracts us to the intimacy of relatedness. This is what attracts us to the appeal of satisfying desires. This is what attracts us to the appeal of pushing away what seems dangerous. And as it enacts and creates in its miraculous way a mind and a body and a world and a self and another. Then they entrance us. We become swept up in them and live inside the dictates of that drama.

[36:01]

And the whole thing becomes hindrance. even though it's a miraculous display of codependent arising. It's a miraculous display of interbeing. So on this so-called sixth day, which theory has it, comes after the fifth day and before the seventh. Under this gray sky. In this moist air. With the state of mind you have now.

[37:10]

this opportunity to look at what's fundamental in how consciousness works. To savor. To take time to make time. To take time let what's happening be itself. Both as a particular form and as a shimmering construct of reality. And for every moment of our lives we've been doing that. creating these shimmering constructs of reality.

[38:21]

Yangshan says, you get one mystery. It's called the unrelenting process of constructing momentary reality. Pick whatever technique you want. Follow your breath, however you follow your breath. Attend your body, however you attend your body. Whether it's noting, counting. Dugan says, this is the teachings. Buddha, pastor Buddha. Teacher, pastor teacher. And I would say to you, whether it's your restlessness has worn down your diligence or your diligence has worn down your restlessness, what an amazing opportunity to notice, okay, how does this one called me put together the world?

[39:57]

putting together a future, notice, in this moment, what particulars of that? Does the moment you're conjuring up have a moment of, ah, I've got to deal with that? Or is it, ah, I'll be able to do that? and just fold it back in through no great effort because everything is impermanent. Experience it fully. It's not complicated. Just experience it and watch as it flows. As the poet says, useless thinking You can pull over and park and own it.

[41:11]

It's just a hurry through. Dugan Zenji says in Kaza's translation, things don't hinder, things don't hinder one another just as moments don't hinder one another. The way seeking mind arises in this moment seeking mind arises in this mind thus the self setting out in array sees itself yes you create something and what do you see you see your own creation Today, as we do that, we're aided by not only a more astute awareness, but a steadiness, a kind of so be it.

[42:35]

In this moment, mind created this. So be it. There's more where that came from. And something about living life, something about Prajnaparamita, wisdom beyond wisdom is realized. And our conscious mind, our cognitive mind can't pull over and park and wrap it up inside some concepts.

[43:41]

It's a felt experience. It's a lived experience. And it can sink in. And it can be lived. That's the great intrigue of this mystery. 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, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[44:37]

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