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. Well, welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. We hope you have a good time today. I'll try and be interesting somehow. My name is Marcia Angus. interesting. And I'm... My Buddhist name is Dainin Genyaku, Great Patience, Inconceivable Leap. And we're about in midway in what we call a practice period, which we do several times a year. And they're concentrated...

[01:01]

roughly 10 week times where we focus more acutely on some particular aspect of practice. And this practice period we're focusing on aligning all activity with the heart of Buddha. Aligning all activity with the heart of Buddha. And We've been considering this for quite a while in a lot of different ways. And because I'm a lay teacher, and one of the things that we're also doing in this practice period is we're focusing in particular on lay practice as well as lay teachers and cultivating that as well. So part of what we've been doing is looking at how to walk these various aspects of our practice into our daily, householder, everyday, have a job kind of life that most of you who come on Saturdays have.

[02:11]

And so we had so many practices loaded up for the Saturday practice class that we finally had to remove them. They were laden down. And so we brought them down to just a couple. This practice is about embodiment, embodying the heart of Buddha into your activities. And so how do we do that? Well, one of our big methods is repetition. So before I even get into repetition, I want to read you a poem because one of our... very beloved Zen students, is also a wonderful poet named Jane Hirshfield, and she wrote a poem just about this called Habit. And I want to read that to you as a way of differentiating that from repetition.

[03:15]

So, Habit. The shoes put on each time, left first, then right. The morning's potion's teaspoon of sweetness stirred always for seven circlings, no fewer, no more, into the cracked blue cup, touching the pocket for wallet, keys, before closing the door. How did we come to believe these small rituals promise that we are today the selves we yesterday knew, tomorrow will be? How intimate and unthinking the way the toothbrush is shaken dry after use, the part we wash first in the bath. Which habits we learn from others and which are ours alone we may never know. Unbearable to acknowledge how much they are themselves our fated life.

[04:19]

Open the traveling suitcase. There, the beloved red sweater, bright tangle of necklace, earrings of amber, each confirming, I chose these. I. But habit is different. It chooses. And we, its good horse, open our mouths at even the sight of the bit. So this is the... insidious nature of practice. Every time we turn around, as I said last time I was here, it's another practice opportunity to wake up and do you know, as an old boyfriend of mine used to say, he used to say, Marcia, you've got to know what you're doing. And how many times do we actually know, are we aware of what we're doing? So this practice, we do a lot of repetition over and over.

[05:28]

We have very specific ways in which we try to repeat things. We have a specific way. We enter the meditation hall, the zendo. And we enter with a particular foot stepping over the threshold, bowing. bowing to our cushion, turning to the right, bowing to the middle of the room, sitting on our cushion, turning to the right, putting our hands in a particular mudra, putting our tongues on the roof of our mouths. I mean, we get very, very specific about what to repeat. And that repetition, when we do something every single day, we develop a mastery. And in doing that, we're creating these forms, and they're a little bit like a pillar in a way, because then those forms are something we bump into that allows us to see ourselves and to see how we've changed or to see how we went to sleep or how we stayed awake.

[06:40]

Did you remember to step over the threshold? Did you bow to your cushion? Did you put your tongue on the roof of your mouth? Did you notice? So in this way we also can learn about impermanence because we're trying to do the same thing every day. We're trying to do the same thing and yet we really can't and yet we do. So practicing with an external form is a way of aligning ourselves with the heart of Buddha. These forms... remind us that mind and body are one. So when we bow, we're doing something with our bodies that allows us to remember appreciation and gratitude. And sometimes it doesn't even matter what we're bowing to, just the act of having appreciation and gratitude, even for this breath.

[07:52]

So, okay, so that's the repetition part, or part of the repetition part. We could probably talk all day about repetition and not repeat ourselves. Oh, dear. Okay, so the other piece I wanted to talk about next had to do with intention. Intention and repetition put together helps us stay focused in one of the things that we did, I'll put it this way, when we started the practice period, one of the things that we did was everybody in the practice period stated their particular intention that they wanted something about practice that they wanted to cultivate during the practice period. And people would state that. So having intention is a way of remembering, okay, what am I doing here in this practice period?

[08:59]

What's my intention here? My intention was to cultivate my ability to encourage people's practice because that is what my teacher told me when he gave me lay entrustment and said, okay, it's time to teach. Your job, Marsha, is to encourage people's practice more than anything else at all. more than trying to teach them anything. Just encourage people to make this effort. So having that intention then helps me simplify, what am I doing? What am I doing? Is what I'm doing right now, am I doing that in a way that would encourage your practice? So if I filter everything I'm doing through that fundamental intention, then it sort of simplifies how I make decisions. And it helps me, helps me focus.

[10:02]

So this is a kind of mental alignment. Intention is a mental alignment or a mental posture. Just like we have in Zazen, we take a physical posture, we try to have a physical posture of stillness and a mental posture. of stillness. And they help each other. If I can't quiet my mind, I can try and sit still. If I'm able to sit still, that helps me quiet my mind. So with intention and repetition, they help each other. So our consciousness has the capacity to be present with intention. And everybody has that capacity to be present with intention and show up for it. So in Dogen Sandokai, one of the things I love that he says, which encourages me, is he talks about people's faculties may be keen or dull.

[11:09]

Progress is not a matter of far or near. I find this very encouraging, personally. I have come to find out. I found out that I was in the slow learner group. But then I realized there's only one group. We're all in it. And so this takes us to the understanding that this isn't really a linear endeavor here that we're in. And as I said before, it's an embodiment practice. And by that, I mean it's much more about... absorption, and percolation. And there's Suzuki Roshi in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, talks about walking in the fog. He uses this metaphor. And it's a wonderful metaphor for practice, because if you keep walking in the fog, eventually, slowly,

[12:15]

eventually, you will get soaked. You will be soaked through. And the other thing I like about it is, you'll be the last to know. Because by the time you're soaked completely through, by the time it gets to your skin, you're already soaked. And you wouldn't have known that. And there's something about this repetition, sitting, sitting, counting our breaths, making the effort to stay with our breath, training our concentration, that we end up finding as an enormous resource that we didn't even know we had. But somewhere down the line, something critical happens and we find ourselves able to just settle in the midst of everything and just be present. and make better choices, and make choices that include everybody, include the whole Megillah, not just what we think we want.

[13:31]

So this also takes what we've also been practicing with is courage. So in these practices, We're kind of deconstructing our usual way of seeing ourselves in others. Because when you sit down and you start paying attention to what's arising, sometimes it's not so pleasant what comes up. It may be a sad memory or a worry, some fear that comes up. And that takes some courage to... Stay present. Stay awake. Not get entangled in it and at the same time not abandon yourself. Not leave the building. And by that I mean figuratively. We know how sometimes something happens and you've left the building but your body is right here.

[14:36]

So our effort, when we're talking about alignment, we try and stay where we are. whether it's our favorite place to be or not. As if we can become aligned with ourselves, then it's, first of all, the thing we find out is it's much less work than trying to get yourself to be some other place that you're not because you decided it was better or nicer or had more status or something. But really being able to embrace yourself unconditionally is really one of the first steps. And we usually have some part of ourselves we're not thrilled with, and so that's usually the first part we have to start to learn how to make friends with whatever, whoever it is that shows up, knowing that however they got there, they got there out of causes and conditions. And can you embrace those?

[15:41]

We don't get to pick them. They just happen. We don't get to pick our parents. We don't get to pick if we're rich or poor. We're born into circumstances. And can we embrace those the way they are? So essentially, we have lots of lists of things that help us practice. We have Brahma Viharas. We have Four Noble Truths. But one of the things we've been practicing with during this practice period is the six paramitas. And one of the reasons we are using the six paramitas, which I'll describe to you in a minute, is that our mascot, we've decided our mascot was Samanta Bhadra, Bodhisattva. And we have an example of Samanta Bhadra here on the altar who rides an elephant and who is our shining practice, great activity. And one of the things that Samantabhadra does is protect all of us that are trying to practice, first of all.

[16:49]

And Samantabhadra rides this elephant, which usually, not in this case, but usually has six tusks, three on each side, which symbolize the six paramitas, the six perfections. So we've also been looking in this practice period at the six paramitas, which are very, very helpful in cultivating, aligning all activity with the heart of Buddha. Because we start out with generosity. And generosity is really a great antidote in my mind, to greed. And to my favorite thing, taking credit. I really like to take credit. Generosity. One of the practices we've had is to dedicate the merit of our practice to all sentient beings.

[17:50]

So we don't even get to get credit for all this hard work we're doing. And that's a wonderful, wonderful... It's a relief, really. You don't store up a lot of merit. You have to drag it around. You can just... put it back into the system. And then the second paramita is patience, which is not that kind of, you know, that's not exactly what. It's more about kind of a compassionate abiding with how it is, being able to just embrace and see how it is. And your ability to see how it is, of course, is cultivated by sitting a lot of zazen. So a lot of these things kind of, they fold in on each other. And it's like if we could, we would say the whole thing all at once because they're all, all the practices, all the sutras, all the things that we study, all really fold in on each other and are part of each other. They're not, so even though I'm reading this in a list, it isn't like you go, okay, first I'll be generous and then I'll be patient.

[19:00]

It's, that you start to find out that your generosity is part of your patience and that your patience is part of your generosity and your courage. And then the other thing is ethics, which has to do with, of course, aligning our values and our intention with our conduct. So again, we're about aligning, having everything go in the same direction, folding it all in. And perseverance, which that's sort of part of courage. Don't give up. Fall down, get up again, fall down, get up again. Then you learn that you can fall down and get up again. It's really important to learn. It's not that we don't want to fall down. It's that we want to learn how to get up again. Because we're going to fall down. We're human. We can't help it. We don't try to fall down, but mostly what we really want to learn is how to get up again, how to have that kind of resilience that is born from cultivating these practices that really engender confidence that you wouldn't have imagined.

[20:18]

But when you can sit still for yourself, no matter what arises, that you can actually... be interested and care with your open heart for just yourself, whatever it is that's coming up, that will make you feel very confident. Because if you can show up and be present and embrace yourself, no matter what you're feeling or how intensely you're feeling, you can be with yourself, then that's really liberation. Because if I can do that, then nobody can really intimidate me because I can feel anything I can feel. I'm not afraid to feel the full brunt of who I am. However frail or scared or pissed off,

[21:26]

or bad-feeling thoughts I have, I can stay here and just kind of go, wow, Angus, that's intense. And say thank you. So developing this is really digging deep tap roots for yourself, which then, of course, helps everybody around you. You know those friends that you have that are calmer. Those are the ones you want to be around when something bad happens. The person that's not so agitated. So it's true for you with yourself. And, of course, one of the big favorites here at Zen Center is concentration, which we cultivate, of course, with Zazen. When we start just... being able to stay for a whole half hour just noticing our breath.

[22:30]

And of course, initially, I was taught, count your breaths in groups of 10 on the exhale. And if you start thinking of something, go back to one. Well, you can imagine what happened. I'd sit there, and I'd go, OK. All right. One. So I realized then I was just doing one. Which was fine, because my intention, my perseverance, did allow me at some point I got to three. And then I stopped counting them. I just noticed my breath. I could just notice how my breath... felt going into my nostrils, coming out, how it expanded, and I could find that still point that we all have at the end of each exhale that lets us for a moment reside in that stillness that's always there and that is endless.

[23:44]

The more we sit, the more we stay with that, the more we expand that capacity to enter the stillness completely, become the stillness. But I digress. Let's see. Where were we? Okay. So this zazen is... developing this capacity to concentrate, and it really does help you calm a busy mind. So what you end up doing, which is really a great, to me, I just think it's one of the great skills, is your ability to think your thoughts instead of having your thoughts think you. You actually decide what you're going to run through your head instead of just noticing there's a whole bunch of stuff going on in there.

[24:46]

And it's just firing off at will. So this capacity to direct your intention, because what we also know out of brain science that's coming out is what you run in your head is your environment. So if you're running kindness and compassion and generosity towards yourself and everybody else, that is going to cultivate that environment in your life. And if you're running, you dummy, you cruddy person, or that cruddy person, then that's what you're going to... The mind-body goes for matches. So if I'm thinking about generosity, I'm thinking about kindness, I'm looking for matches for kindness and generosity. If I'm thinking, that wasn't fair, they owe me... then I'm going to look for matches, and that's what I'm going to cultivate.

[25:48]

So we're cultivating, we're on the generous, kind side over here. So all of this stuff we're trying to do in a relaxed manner. Because I got very enthusiastic the first time I sat a one-day sitting... And I was a little anxious about it, but I really wanted to do a good job. I wanted to be a very good student. And I sat there, and I concentrated so hard on every breath that by lunch, by breakfast, I was crying because I had exhausted myself, and I still had the rest of the day to sit. And tears started streaming down my eyes, and the head of the practice at that time, Reb, pulled up. pulled me out of the meditation hall and just was very, very sweet. And I said, I don't know how to take care of myself. It was an enormous piece of teaching for me.

[26:52]

And he said, this is just your understanding coming out your eyes. It'll percolate down. And it was very, very sweet. And I felt very encouraged. And I felt watched over. And there's a That's the other thing I like about Zen Center. There's that quality. When people are getting in the soup, in the zendo, in the meditation hall, there's always someone watching over you. And there's something about that kind of kindness where I feel you're not all alone in your whatever's rising up in you. There's somebody there that's going to... hold space for you and encourage you and make you feel safe and taken care of. Because this takes courage. Face yourself. Face what is so. So we're trying to do this in a relaxed manner and yet in a disciplined way.

[27:56]

Standing or walking, sitting or lying down, we're making this effort. And we try and do this with appreciation, gratitude, that we got to be human beings, that we got to bump into this opportunity called Buddhist practice that allows us to actually cultivate what I like to call a decent state of mind, which ultimately I feel is Really, at the end of the day, that's all you've got. I mean, when you think, after the tsunami, what do I have my state of mind? After the fiscal cliff, what do I have? I have my state of mind. And how I cultivate my state of mind is how I affect the rest of the world.

[28:58]

And we know how true that is. I mean, if you... are in a room and you're hanging out with friends and somebody comes in and they're in a foul mood and they're kind of cranky and they start cranking all over the room. It kind of changes everybody. Everybody's affected by it. It's not that we shouldn't be cranky. It's that we start to walk around realizing how connected we really are at the subtlest level. And when we realize that, to me anyway, it's encouraging. It helps me realize that I can make a difference. I can make a difference in my life. I can make a difference in your life, and you can make a difference in my life. And if we share some similar intention, it's amazing what can happen. And it all starts in my mind today, anyway, the way I'm saying it.

[30:01]

I think of repetition and how powerful repetition is. That if I keep doing something every day, and with like meditation, even if I just sat down, even I just interrupted that habitual chatter in my mind, and I just sat down with the intention of being still, Whether I sat for 30 seconds or 30 minutes would be fine. Because I think the most important thing is to stop. Just interrupt your usual blah-de-blah-de-blah in your head. And then the next is to sit down. And the next is to sit still. To actually have that posture. body posture and mind posture of stillness. And then the last thing we cultivate is sitting long.

[31:02]

So Paul Reps used to talk about this, who's an old Zen teacher who wrote some books about Zen. But one of the things he said is just sit down. If you just sit down for one minute with the intention of being present and still, that will change your life over time. So everybody's got a minute. One minute. Everybody has one. At least out of every day. So the other thing I wanted to talk about, this issue of repetition, let me go ahead. Oh, I'm in good shape. Is to... this issue of repetition and right effort, because everything and everything requires practice, but also practice beyond the easy part. And by that, I mean, even if we're talking about sports, there's a place where it's all easy, and then all of a sudden you have to really do all kinds of repetitive practices to develop whatever that sport is.

[32:17]

You have to do 9,000 backhands or 47 overheads. You have to just do tons. And the same is true like with a jazz musician. They have to do the scales, all the scales, over and over and over on the instrument that they're playing until those scales are in their hands. And it isn't until then that they can improvise or blow. And that means surrender to the basic theme of the music. And that means getting out of the way. getting their own idea out of the way, and there's a kind of surrender to something that can move through you. Whether you want to call it your Buddha nature or you want to call it your big mind, it doesn't matter. It's actually your capacity because of your stability and because of the confidence you built through repetition to just let go

[33:21]

And allow yourself to meet all the conditions as they're arising. Not rehearsed in advance. To actually allow for a fresh moment. Not one that you've preconceived. And it's not so easy when you think about it. Think about how you're going to somebody's house and you think about what you're going to wear and what you're going to say and how you're going to be. And maybe you don't, but a lot of people do. We do a lot of little mini rehearsals and the capacity to just meet a moment, to have a fresh moment without our ideas about it requires this kind of discipline and repetition. So that, getting into that mastery door from practicing and practicing and developing our capacity to surrender, I guess surrender our preferences, whatever we think is really important, our ideas about our own personal lives, to surrender that and begin to experience being really alive in the world the way it is and being able to meet it without knowing what it's going to be like.

[34:48]

to realize that we actually don't know what the next moment is going to bring and have that be okay. So, I think there's a faith born of all these practices because these practices do develop our confidence and they develop our capacity to have faith in this manifestation of Buddha to embrace and meet this moment. Because you may not have known this, but you're all Buddhas. All of you. And Kategori Rishi used to say, you're already Buddha. You just have to realize it. So you do. You just have to realize that that's true. And allow your Buddha nature to come shining through. So the last thing I want to say to you is that repetition can become a habit. And it can become unconscious.

[35:52]

So we do something so many times, we stop thinking about it. Like putting the clutch in the car, turning the ignition, all different kinds of things. We're not actually paying attention. There's an automaticity that we develop. So we're constantly rebalancing on this tension arc between repetition and habit, between being awake and being asleep. It's a dynamic. So we want to do enough repetition to develop mastery, but not in a way that we fall asleep. But at the same time, like a jazz musician, you never stop doing the scales. You have to keep practicing them or you lose your facility. So how do we stay awake to those repetitions and not fall asleep into habit? That's one of our things that we're practicing. So this has been wonderful to talk with you.

[36:55]

You're all so attentive and present. It's really, really nice. I want to read this poem, Habit, again to close. And I want to thank you for coming. So Habit. The shoes put on each time, left first, then right. The morning potions, teaspoon of sweetness, stirred always for seven circlings, no fewer, no more, into the cracked blue cup, touching the pocket for wallet, for keys, before closing the door. How did we come to believe these small rituals promise that we are today the selves we yesterday knew and tomorrow will be? How intimate and unthinking the way the toothbrush is shaken dry after use. The part we wash first in the bath.

[37:58]

Which habits we learned from others and which are ours alone we may never know. Unbearable to acknowledge how much they are themselves our fated life. Opening the traveling suitcase, There, the beloved red sweater, bright tangle of necklace, earrings of amber, each confirming, I chose these, I. But habit is different. It chooses. And we, its good horse, opening our mouths at even the sight of the bit. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost, 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.

[39:02]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:05]

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