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. So, welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. And I know a lot of people, but I don't know everybody. A lot of old friends. My name is Mark Lancaster. And I work for Zen Center and I'm a priest. And I sort of describe myself sometimes as priest administrator. So, you know, it's a fusion of pseudo priesthood and working in administration. So I work in sentient resources, human resources. But it's just a little bit bigger. Just a little bit bigger. And I lived here... next door now for seven years eight years and I've been practicing here maybe 22 years and I'm married and my wife and I just celebrated 33 years together September 1st so we've been together a while and I'm happy to be here today I thought I would talk or offer some some remarks about the

[01:26]

the topic of this study period, which is living in harmony with everyone, practicing with Sangha. And we've had several really good lectures I would recommend. I listen to them again on the podcasting, our service. We have an excellent service now. And they get up right away, in fact, within two days now, a day and a half. When I was Eno, sometimes it took weeks. I told someone, I refer to my enodom as the dark period, when things took longer, but now it's pretty fast. So I listened to the different talks and the different poems, the Derek Walcott poem I looked up in Maya Angelou's poem. Really good. Louder? Oh, I'll do my best. Oh, yeah, yeah. Can you hear me now? Okay.

[02:26]

Slowly and louder. Okay. So I looked through the different poems, and then I also asked a number of people. I asked a number of people. Can I take this off if it's not working? Oh, all right. I see. Oh, you should all go to the dining room. He's clear. It's pretty clear what the solution is. So I spent time, I asked about, oh, there we go, eight or nine people to what they did to live in harmony with everyone. And it was useful for me and I think maybe useful for people. Sometimes they came up with something and then as they thought about it, they reflected a little bit more deeply that maybe that wouldn't produce harmony. it actually caused some confusion. So I think this is a good exercise and maybe as some of us will meet later in the dining room, that could be something we could talk about to share our different approaches to harmony or a balance or I'll talk more about different interpretations with that.

[03:47]

But I think you all have some sense of harmony. As Christina said, there's probably no one here that would vote for disharmony, consciously. Although unconsciously, sometimes we drift into that place out of fear or need, and we'll talk more about that or I'll talk more about that. Just as we all want to be happy and we don't want to suffer, this is our common rallying cry, the dialogue that we can have together, not only as Buddhists, but with everybody. This is our common need. Shakyamuni said something like, seeing that I desired my happiness, in a sense before all beings, it was innate, this need, I realized all sentient life feels this. How could I be cruel to anybody? So out of that awareness of this deep need not to suffer, to be happy, even if we're not quite sure how to be happy,

[04:53]

And this is a big question for us, how to secure our happiness and harmony. We're not maybe sure how to do that. We have lots of ideas we're testing. This is what we have in common. So one person said, it's really important to find something to empathize with, to feel, when I want to be in harmony with someone or at least work with them. And that feeling tone is part of the instrument or the music we make together. Valerie used an instrumentation in her lecture. Harmony is not a metaphor. So it's not a metaphor, and it's an experience. This life is an experience. So Buddhism is about you having the experience, not about someone else doing it or about... the seeming harmonization between two separate entities.

[05:56]

It's about what works. It's a very pragmatic school that Shakyamuni talked about. Even his epistemology or theories of knowledge were all based on experimentation. Does it work? And does it work for you? And there's some testing we have to do. We test with meditation. with structures to stabilize ourselves we want to test but sometimes we have to have some technique to do this testing so I like Valerie's approach of using an instrument I think she said you know We could try to tune into everybody, and often we see everybody as this seven billion entities separate from us in some way. This is kind of linear or flatland thinking, like two-dimensional thinking, that there's this separation.

[07:01]

One of the descriptions of harmony was a pleasing combination of elements in a whole, a color harmony, the order and harmony of the universe. It was a bigger scale. So color harmony is interesting. We live in a psychological emotive realm. In context, sensation arises. What we sense, we perceive, which is very interesting. We don't perceive absolutely. What we sense and feel, we perceive. And what we perceive, we begin to think about, reason. And then what we reason and think about, Shakyamuni notes, we obsess about linking seeming past, present, and future together. And we become uneasy. We become uneasy in that flow. So today I think I'll talk more about this process of maybe the emotive psychological process of harmony or bringing harmony.

[08:06]

But just because I'm going inward doesn't mean that the externals are not valuable. Again, we follow precepts and forms. We make some change in order to go inward in this way, to explore inwardly. It's both the inside and the outside. So Shakyamuni said not caused by externals, not caused quite in that way, and then not caused internally. What is it, this thing that arises right before our eyes, and how are we connected? You know, I was thinking, as I see you, you know, you're there, but you're also electromagnetic particles here, just here, coming through the air in waves, going up nerve endings into a brain, actually flipped upside down, I think. so I can see correctly and interpreted based on all of the work I've done in the past 63 years.

[09:16]

Some of the work was maybe pretty useful and some was a little confused, wasn't so clear. So I'll talk a little bit about ways to work with what I'll describe as dispositional energy or how we're connected, the color tones. of reality. But again, this doesn't minimize it. Don't be excessive, Buddha said. He really meant it. When we go inwards, we think only that matters. This is the way. He said something late to the words of, I have directly experienced what is subtle Difficult to see, difficult to comprehend, difficult to express. And I'm sharing this experience with you. It's an experience. It's very important to realize this. It's an experience, and it's a surround. Sometimes imagine we try to measure reality, which is four-dimensional, because time is involved, which we play with, actually, oddly.

[10:29]

We make odd demonstrations of time in our own mind. And we put a little ruler, which we call reality, on things, a two-dimensional ruler to try to measure things, to get control of the situation, to project into it, to secure some sense of separation. And it breaks down. The measuring breaks down at some point. And we feel uneasy. People don't buy our ruler. They don't buy how we measure the universe and them. They won't stay put. So something else is called for, some other technique, this direct experiencing. So I'll end with this, but it's also important to find your own way. This really is the important part of the practice. It really is an activity. It's an experienced activity that you need to do.

[11:30]

The words can be helpful. So we don't deny the words, but it's you doing it. And you have to have some belief you can do this work. That you can actually be happy. That you can live in harmony. It's very important to not sell yourself short. So, harmony. And I like the musical structure of it, and as Valerie said, we can try to attune with everything, or we can look at the instrument. So we're going to look at the instrument a little bit today. Sukha is the opposite of dukkha. I love using words like that. I'm from Cleveland, Ohio. I feel really proud when I can say sukkah.

[12:33]

So it means something like not agitated, smooth. I think it literally means the wheel that turns on the axle without friction, ceaseless, without agitation, grinding. So we strive for this kind of ease. in our life. We work to achieve it, and we take on a practice of helping others to achieve it. And there are limits to this. We, as bodhisattvas, have already said that we will remain here. And by remaining here, there are difficulties. This is not an easy life. It really is not an easy life. There are difficulties. People we love die. Terrible dilemmas happen. Seeming disharmony reigns. So it's difficult to work with these changes.

[13:34]

But we decided to stay here, we say. This is the place I'll be. Which means there'll be some unease, I really think. I don't know if we can get away from that. And in fact, actually, I think getting away from this fundamental unease is part of the problem. actually. I think that's what Katagiri, he's quoted as saying, you all want your own enlightenment experience, but when you have it, it may taste like ashes. So, what do you say that for? It seems so wonderful, I'm going to be enlightened. But maybe it's a little bit more real than that. A little bit more edgy than that. We want it, but... Maybe there's some difficulty here, some edge in this sense of happiness that we're looking for. You know, we want to be free, and this actually can produce some anxiety.

[14:37]

You know, when you go to Tassajara, when I went to Tassajara, Michael said, He said, what will you miss the most? And I said, I love movies. I said, movies. And he said, oh, you'll take a million of them with you. You won't miss them. But you've got to watch them alone. This is a very interesting thing to do, to watch the movie with a quiet mind. To do this requires kindness and courage. One won't do. One is too objective. causes agitation. I've got to get down to brass tacks. We bring kindness to bear, even humor, some curiosity about this process, to have sukha or smoothness now in this inquiry. And yet there's some difficulty, some difficulty in being free.

[15:40]

It is for me. I have my stories. I have my tales. So, I wanted to talk about it, maybe the main, the tofu on the plate today is dispositions, the fourth of the skandhas. It's called the sankhara in Sanskrit. disposition. And the other skandhas are form, which means contact with resistance, form. The remaining four are mind, which is contact with concepts, are born by mind, sensation, perception, formation or disposition and consciousness.

[16:46]

this is what Shakyamuni describes as sentient life that we experience this flow ceaselessly changing and out of contact and sensation and perception something comes into being something is expressed so disposition how are we disposed to act and This is an endless process we see. All our ancient twisted karma. What is this ancient twisted karma? Where does it lie at? Is it out there? Sometimes we think it's someone else. Oh, it's my karma. If this were a nicer person, you know, I'd be a better person. So we start out there. Now, preliminarily, again, we need some guiding rules. So we say, be upright. Don't lie, don't steal, don't cheat.

[17:47]

Buddha in the Dhammapada said, if you practice in this way lying and stealing and cheating, you will extirpate your roots in this very existence. You will become rootless right here, and the karmic stream will just flow on. It's a rootless existence, so we have to do something. And then in the Theravada version of the Brahmanet Sutra, after saying, I practice uprightness, I practice not stealing, not lying, not cheating, he says. And this a worlding would call a tautographist way, and yet I say these are trivial matters. And then he lists 62 views, starting with eternalism he's explored. Now he's making a point, by the way. They're both true. In dualistic thinking, how can they both be true? But they're really both true because this is animation, it's alive. We have to do both. Discipline and insight. Kindness and looking.

[18:50]

They come up together. So that's why you have to do the work yourself because each one has a flavor to this. You have to find it yourself. You have to trust. Suzuki Roshi called it letters from emptiness. I like that. You get little letters from emptiness. They come to you. Let's see if I can find a quote on that. Although we have no actual written communications from the world of emptiness, which we call shunyata, or conditioned existence, or impermanence, or all things are connected, nothing can sustain itself, we have some hints or suggestions about what is going on in that world. That is, you might say, enlightenment. or luminous quality, or big screen. When you see plum blossoms or hear the sound of a small stone hitting bamboo, that is a letter from the world of emptiness.

[19:52]

This is your direct message coming to you. Now, you need to develop the sensibility to hear this message. So this is our practice, to practice in harmony. So, disposition. Do I experience you or do I experience my experience of you? Where are you guys? Very interesting question. Are there two realities? The real objective reality and my experience of it? Some questions come up we should think about. What am I experiencing? So Buddha says, All dispositionally conditioned phenomena are suffering, are dukkha. All dispositionally conditioned phenomena are dukkha. He doesn't say conditioned phenomena are dukkha. That's a different thing.

[20:53]

Conditioned phenomena are quite open, quite connected, both here and sort of not here. We have tables and chairs and people. We see them, but what's going on? Not always so sure. This is a little bit the letter from emptiness we get. But the dispositionally conditioned phenomena is something we can work with. This causes great disharmony. So I was imagining dispositions. I was thinking, how would a disposition look? So we would call it unconsciousness, memory. Sometimes I think it's like a series of plates, endless plates. Maybe computer chip plates. Computer chips are etched. They have patterns. Deposits are placed on a chip, and a pattern is created. And then you layer chips, and you have a program.

[21:56]

There's a run program. Some contact happens, and then something's expressed. So in a way, dispositions are like this. We have lots of experiences that we put away. We store up. I know what's going on here. A new experience. I really know what's going on here. And mixed in with that is our tendency to be uneasy, to try to secure ourselves, you could say our existence in meaningful ways, to avoid this uneasy inner place. This work for me is to watch, first of all. Maybe this is who this is, but it's also my experience of who this is and what's being brought to it. A Buddhist says there's a lot of work we can do here.

[22:58]

This is the realm we work in. We don't free ourselves from conditioned becoming things as they become. Things go on quite nicely. Once I was getting ready to give a talk and I was sitting there, I don't know what I was doing, worrying, is this good enough? And then I looked out the window and there was a dove in the rain just watching me. It was wet, you know? And I came back. It was very clear. Ah, here. Here. That's a letter from emptiness. Brought me back. But my wave of... Am I good enough? Will I make a mistake? How will this measure up? The stuff we do. It's okay. We do that. And the trick is, of course, this is what we do as sentient life. We form things. So dispositions are forming bodies or conscious formation.

[24:01]

We don't exist in just a stream of data. This would just be confusion. So we're kind of stuck here. While we're sentient, we have dispositional energy. We have to work with this place. We have to make distinguishing remarks in this realm together. And yet in the midst of doing this, we have to examine doing this. Just as, you know, the trick for us is not only do I have these exquisitely sensitive devices to get sensory data, and this brain, which... sorts it, conceptualizes it. Concepts are powerful. They take percepts and sensations and they reorganize them into some meaningful unit. But we add something to it. A little something is added to it. A little something is added that isn't really necessary in working with this situation as things become.

[25:04]

So we have to both distinguish, characterize, pick and choose... and give up distinguishing, characterizing, and picking and choosing. I was thinking it's like going to a movie and being aware you're going to a movie, which is something you don't really like to do. You like to get lost in the images. So here we have to kind of get lost. We have to go to the movie and be aware we're in the movie. It's a very different thing to do. Very unusual way to act. And we need all the help we can get. because sometimes the movie is pretty spectacular. And I could tell you later some of my movies and you could tell me some of your movies. We've got plenty of them, you know, layered away. So we have to examine the movie house, what we've layered away. I also imagine dispositions is like greasy film, you know, murky film, like

[26:07]

saran wrap with a little oil on it. You know, you layer it, and you layer it, and then you go, it's really hard. Yeah, that guy's really bad. This is true. And then actually when you have that experience, you create another greasy filter. So this is conditioned existence, Buddha says. This is called karma. When you lay down this next filter, it's going to come back. You know, at some point you're going to run into a situation and all of the loops in the program, it's going to run again. And the more layering that you do without awareness, the harder it's going to be to see conditioned existence without this twist to it. This twist being, I'm separate, I'm different. Buddha said, don't see yourself in the earth. This is a parallel phenomena with disposition as appropriation.

[27:09]

We appropriate phenomena quite indiscriminately to become us. We fuse with it in odd ways. So he said, do not see yourself in the earth or the earth in you. See clearly what the earth is made up of, how it comes into being and passes away. See clearly how thoughts come into being and pass away. So we have to take some care when we go to the movie theater, not to get all yelly, you know, eating popcorn wild. We have to pay attention. We call that attention mindfulness. So this is important to me. Attention is to know where your feet are. Mindfulness is to know the meaning of having feet. It's actually bringing a kind of broad intelligence to the whole situation. the whole structure that you're involved in, the story that you're telling. And in one level, because of the dispositional nature of sentient life, we live in a series of stories.

[28:13]

Some are quite frightening and cause us to hurt people. David Loy, who I've really begun to like in the past year, said, do you want to get a script? and read from a script or do you want to co-author your own story? What's it going to be? Do you want to do that? So that takes some bravery to start to tell your own story. What would it be like this story? How would I relate to you in these dispositions if I tell this story? To do that you have to have some confidence. A lot of times We project Mara, but it's just another part of phenomena that we split off from, energy. You can't do this. It won't work. Nobody can figure this out, especially not you. It's either not true or you're not good enough, and it is true.

[29:16]

Endless mismatches are created. So it takes a kind of serene heart to go, hmm, I don't buy that. I can tell a story here. I can step into my life. I have that kind of freedom. This, to me, kind of produces the possibility of some harmony, some relating to the images on the screen, how they got there, and something a little bigger, the surround. Sometimes I imagine, you know, we use the word emptiness, but it could also mean dynamic existence. You could change it. It means that everything is so alive, so incredibly particular and shining like a jewel. But we call that shunyata or emptiness, that experience.

[30:18]

And for us, you know... we have to do a lot of work. It's hard to relate these two things, the particularity and the bigness together. It's like, ultimately, you need two glasses, form, lens, emptiness, and then you kind of work with this until you're residing nowhere. It's not there and it's not there. It's a funny kind of thing to do. So the Tibetans say, actually, is where Buddhas exist in simultaneously and form an emptiness. But that groundlessness, being undefended like that, is quite tricky. It takes a lot of work. We're all working at it. Usually we use monocles. Yeah, this is really what it is. And then we let go. Yeah, no, it's really big. And we have to go back and forth. And we have to be upright. And all the information is somewhat distorted. So this is a big job.

[31:22]

That's why we say, can we stay together? Seeing how big this job is, I need all the help I can get, you guys. I'm liable to fly away out there any minute, you know. I'm astonished. I mean, an hour from now, God only knows what I'll be talking about, who I'll be, you know. But somebody will say, what? What are you doing? Mark? What? And I'll get irritated maybe. Don't you know? Oh, yeah. I'm back. Coming back has a little pain to it, interestingly. It's a very interesting place. That experience of coming back, I like that Dongshan is our great-great-great-great-grandfather in China who was one of the many founders of this, and he said, looking into a brook one day, he saw his reflection in the water and had some insight. So this is the mirroring nature of existence.

[32:24]

Where is it? What's it made up of? You know? Oh, it seems to be connected to me in some interesting way. I wasn't aware of it. So he made up a poem, and he said, Alone now, everywhere I go and meet myself. It's a funny poem. Psychologically, it feels really good, though. Alone now. There's some quality in this place. Alone now. Maybe not so easy. Maybe ashy. Alone now. And yet everywhere I go, just there. Wow. Not separate anymore. So you had some big insight. And then, I think, you know, when we see this relationship, the intimacy, with some balance, it's pretty hard to be mean to things. You know? I think, I don't know this because I don't have this experience. Sometimes I have some sense.

[33:25]

It's like hurting yourself. The self that Dogen talks about is big. The big self. So it becomes foolishness. So Buddhas just act in certain ways out of the clarity of being upright, seeing things clearly. Kind of grown up now. things you just don't do. You could say, well, don't you want to do that? You'd say, well, why would I want to do that? It hurts. I can see where this is going to lead. This is called conditioned existence. When the fear is removed of defending this separation, things become clearer. Oh, this is going to lead to a real problem. I'm going to have to taste this spitting in this soup. I'm going to have to drink it later. Maybe I won't do that. So cleaning your lenses.

[34:29]

Keep cleaning. Let other people help you clean. Where it gets irritating is actually where you're a little stuck or I'm a little stuck. It's interesting. It's where I'm a little defended, where I'm clinging to something. This is attachment, upadana. I'm stuck there because I'm trying to secure some place, some psychic place, to let go. And it hurts a little to let go because it's scary. But then it feels really good, like a knot in your back loosens up and you go, oh, my God, I can move again. So it's a little difficult, this practice. But, you know, let Sangha massage you. You'll feel much better. Take a little time. Take some trust. So let us massage each other, you know. Blanche likes that. If you've ever done a sitting with Blanche, sometimes she'll say, I used it in a sitting we did. He said, okay, everyone turn one way and massage the person in front of you.

[35:33]

And then we all rotate and massage the other person and everyone gets massaged. So giving ourselves permission of feeling the safety of being massaged takes time. It really takes time. There are places... You're not touching that. Not right now. I am not ready to let that go. I don't even know what it is, but uh-uh. Maybe I want to end this. And then people that want to, we can hang out in the back and talk a little bit. This book I really like, The Not Always So. A friend in Arcata translated it. It says in there somewhere, there are two characters that mean not always so in Japanese. And the person said, Mujo, maybe would be the closest. Mujo? Kahitsu. Well, there you go. But this is the book, Not Always So.

[36:42]

There's lots of good things. Actually, just in each chapter, you could read the little blurb and just read the blurb and just take it in without, I don't know, do anything you want with it. You don't even have to read the whole chapter. The blurb is great. But you can read the whole chapter. When you are practicing, you realize that your mind is like a screen. If the screen is colorful, colorful enough to attract people, then it will not serve its purpose. So to have a screen which is not colorful, to have a pure, plain white screen, is the most important point. So this is the instrument. We're very aware of the pictures, the images, which are colored through strips, shot through space on a screen, but not always aware of the screen, which is endlessly receptive. Sometimes we call the screen guanyin. Endlessly patient. Oh, there you go.

[37:46]

So aware of the screen and in the image, back and forth. And seeing how that feels. The big thing is see how it feels for you. Take it around the block. Do it today. Okay. Thank you. 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.

[38:35]

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