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. Good morning. And welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. My name is Mark Lancaster, and I'm a priest in the... in the Soto tradition, the tradition of Dungshan and E.E. Dogen, and countless men and women, women and men who have come to places like this to make an inquiry into their lives, to explore their lives together. So today I wanted to talk, we're starting a practice period in the fall about the theme is the Zen path. And I wanted to talk about the Zen path, and in particular, working with some aspects of the Zen path that I believe come up for everybody, which is working with resistance, basic confusion, and neuroses, the difficulties that we experience in our lives.

[01:07]

And some different ways that Zen practice or the Zen path can offer to assist you. with doing this sort of work if you choose to do it. And I was thinking, you know, I've never met anybody, indefinitely including myself, that's free from these afflictive states or negative states, states of anger or aversion or greed, the twists and binds that we find ourselves in, this getting stuck or toxic states. You know, we start out in a very simple way wanting to just find some pleasure. We have a desire to, just like Hattie, this baby that just left, to just be happy, to feel some pleasure and some safety, to thrive. And then it becomes complex as we win our way through life until, you know, one day, $50 billion. might not be enough to secure our situation for us, to make us feel truly safe in love.

[02:14]

So I want to explore what happens along the way from playing with our toes until we come through a door like the front door here and start a process of inquiry together and some techniques that I've found useful along the way. in working with these sorts of situations of affliction and difficulty. And it is complex, I thought. Our birth family, friends, enemies, joys. I started thinking of all of just going back in my own life, the situations that I'd been through, some fortuitous and some just dreadful, and my responses to them, and the people that showed up in my life at unknown times to help me with them. and how complex this journey is, this journey of looking into our very lives and encountering these difficulties, these knots or afflicted places.

[03:19]

So I thought for a moment, close your eyes, and we'll do a little searching, a little inquiry experiment with body and mind, and maybe go back... Relax and go back to a time in your own life that you felt some contentment and ease, some sense of safety, some sense of warmth. Picture it clearly. Explore it. Who was there? What people were involved? How did it feel? How did you relate to it? Did you want to continue it, to hang on to it? Did you enjoy it and let it go? And feel deep in your body that one sense of ease and security.

[04:21]

Thanks. You can do this also with more negative states. Or you could, in fact, people still have their eyes closed. You could stay in this place of contentment. It's okay. Stay there while I talk. It's actually, everyone's smiling a little bit. It's kind of nice. Don't leave that place if you don't want to. And there are difficult states. You know, what happened in those difficult states? What people were involved? How did you respond to them? You know, what did you do? So I thought, how complex this situation is that we find ourselves into, knots upon knots in many ways. And how do we even begin? How do we even begin to work with such a wild and uncanny situation as our lives? Well, one way is when you came through the front door here, to come to a place like this, a hall of inquiry with like-minded people,

[05:28]

In a sense, you've acknowledged some desire to look a little bit more deeply, to go a little bit more deeply and to see what's happening in your life. Usually, I believe, we find, you know, we get weary or we get stuck in some way, usually with the situation that we've done over and over again, trying to secure our pleasure. trying to secure our own individual happiness and situation and finding that that's insubstantial, not sustainable, and can be very difficult and painful and causes pain and difficulty in other people. So we come to places like this. We call Buddhist temples or, you know, therapy rooms. But we have a Buddhist temple here, so we'll use this example. In our... It's important to see this as a place of a journey, the beginning of a journey in a deep inquiry with certain circumstances in ways that we encourage and help people to understand what's happening in their lives.

[06:39]

Actually, you find ways to understand what's happening in your lives. When we come through the door, we're already admitting that we're not going to blame our circumstances. Although we sometimes don't admit that it took me seven or eight years after I came through the door to realize I'm not going to blame these external circumstances. I'm not going to blame other people. I'm accountable. I can work with this situation. So by coming in here, we begin the process of taking on this accountability. I think that's one of the hallmarks and why there's an attraction for Zen practice or Buddhist practice is it's something that you can do. It's something that you undertake directly. There are no... There's no intervening deities or other situations that you need to have. It's simply your situation and being aware or taking on this situation, being responsible for it. And we begin to then do something about it. We come in here, and in the midst of our life, we make a commitment to become adults, to become adults together, to grow up and take on this responsibility and this difficulty.

[07:49]

It's not a simple path. You can ask the residents after this lecture interim starts, and they have the next week where they can sleep in. So twice a year, I believe, twice a year, there's a week where you can catch up, catch up on your rest a bit. So it's a dedication you need to undertake this inquiry. It could be in a residential practice place, and it could be in your life coming here. to ask questions or asking these questions in your workplace, wherever you're at. You can begin to make this inquiry. Now, luckily, our practice period, as I said, the theme is the Zen path. And there'll be at least seven or eight teachers here that are going to offer a variety of ways to, a variety of answers to this question of the Zen path and how to work with it. how to work with our fundamental difficulties and afflictions. So each class, I think, will be 18 to 20 hours long.

[08:54]

So you'll have, if you would like to be part of our practice period, you have a chance to go more deeply into this topic. Definitely I'm not going to go 18 to 20 hours here today. So I'm going to just touch on a few points that I think are very important. a very important part of this practice, maybe six or seven points that I've found useful in my life when I run into these difficulties and these afflictive situations. Yeah. Probably for me, the most important thing that I've found, and I've been around the bush for the first six or seven years, you know, I was trying to I was trying to live out a bit of a religious fantasy, I think. I wanted to be a very nice person, a very kind person, which in itself is not bad. It's not an evil thing to want to be, but there was a part of me that I wasn't acknowledging, a shadow part that I needed to come to grips with, some difficulties in my own life.

[10:04]

So be honest seems to be, for me, and I think in our practice, a very important characteristic Be direct with yourself, simple with yourself. You know, I think of the old nuns and monks that studied with the Buddha, and they say that there was, you know, they learned very quickly. And if you read sometimes the old Pali canons, the sutras, they had a very direct way of saying, you know, they had a very direct way of raising questions with the Lord Buddha, asking them about their lives and their perplexity. I think in our modern era, we have become very complex. We use many types of analysis, psychoanalysis, theoretical approaches to existence, where sometimes just to look at our situation in a fair and balanced way is very useful. Acknowledging when you're angry as anger, when you are feeling hurt by somebody,

[11:09]

Just feel the hurt. When you feel joy, just accept the joy and see what that state is. Don't add extra stuff at that point. There's a tendency to make things very complex for ourselves very quickly. We begin to project onto other people our states. I feel hurt. And then we talk about difficult or problematical people, and we begin to characterize them in ways that become naughty very quickly, become very complex. We have to go back to this simple ground of this is my experience, this is what I'm observing. So this kind of simplicity and honesty I would commend to you as a useful practice if you want to continue this inquiry. into looking at these places in your own life. Another one that I find, I call it, don't buy into your stories or tales or samsara's merry-go-round.

[12:18]

And this happens very quickly for me. I'm 61 this year, and I'm still working hard on this. So something happens. are sort of direct with it, a situation comes up, and then you begin to characterize or make discursive stories up about what happened. Somebody criticizes you, maybe with good intention, maybe not. And then you begin to say, you know, people don't appreciate me here at Zen Center, for example. People like that, in fact. Men or women, it doesn't matter. And then it becomes incredibly elaborate, the tale. And then we actually have ideas about our response, about the men and women who are attacking us or are critical of us. And we have feelings about that, and then we make up even more stories. So this quickly begins to spread, at least it has for me, into kind of a paradoxical,

[13:29]

it's like shattered glass. It spreads in all directions very quickly, hard to keep up with. Once I get in there, I'm completely off the ground. I can't relate to things in a direct or cogent way anymore. Often, in fact, it's really great when you've really gone through the whole cycle and you've made up a fantastic story, and then you run into somebody and they say something that... totally knocks you off balance like do you want to go to lunch and you think they're the worst your worst enemy or they say something flattering it pulls you back again to the earth to being grounded in something so this grounding and getting off samsara's merry-go-round is critical our wise our mundane or wise mind actually comes up with many theories why things are happening and it's very hard to get out of them So here we say come back to the ground, come back to being with each other.

[14:32]

If you're hurt, acknowledge the hurt. If you want to talk with somebody, be direct with them and raise the question if you can. This straightforward way seems frightening actually when we're stuck, you know, when we're stuck in these storylines on samsara's merry-go-round because, you know, we think if we can come up with a better theory, we'll actually be safe forever. know who these people really are but when you go when you get to that place there's no you're completely lost so you have to come back and ground yourself again you have to get off the merry-go-round you have to let go of those ideas and then back to the freshness of contact of being with each other or being with your real feelings so For years I would think, I've got to think my way off this thing. I've got to figure out how to be free. And then I realized the fastest way is get off. Don't buy more tickets and get off the merry-go-round.

[15:35]

Step off. Let go. You may be right. This person was wrong in their criticism. So what? Now you're stuck with this dark state. And what are you going to do with it? How are you going to respond to it? Get off. Let it go. Meet the person again. Let go those thoughts and the clinging mind, that obsessive mind that has to spin a new tale. So another thing that I, this is kind of my to-do list, by the way, of entering the Zen path. It's the one I use every day with some success, often not a great deal of success, but some success. Don't make cartoons. Don't make up stories. Kids like cartoons. But when you grow up or when you're undertaking this becoming adult, you need to begin to accept the complexity that comes with being an adult, with being alive. If you simplify people and situations, then afflictive states like anger are very easy to sustain.

[16:45]

Usually when someone irritates us, it's very easy to color all of the things that are bad about them in. But they always have this, to me, it's like a sort of a dark Walt Disney enterprise. You have this quality about the person that's simplified. It doesn't take into the depth of what it is to be a human being, to have lived on this earth and gone through. this life with its both tears and its joy things aren't simple you know and that kind of simplification is very dangerous so be willing to hang out with complexity with not knowing you know with maybe being open to the situation in a way that could surprise you let people surprise you let yourself surprise yourself You know, and it's hard to judge as quickly.

[17:52]

It's hard to defend yourself as quickly from that ground of complexity. You're in between things. You're in a state that's not quite so easy, so refined or so clear. And this is a good place to be, a state like that, when things aren't so easy to answer. You may be absolutely right in your judgments. but you might not be. And then you're not, and clinging to the judgment, you can get lost and you can confuse other people. Now in doing this work, in doing this kind of work, you have to be kind. You have to be kind because honesty or directness that slips into harshness can lead to a kind of disassociation of not really doing the work and I think a little bit that was my you know method of operation when I wanted sort of more sublime religious states for myself in my first seven years at Zen Center it was a desire to be happy and to be safe and so

[19:13]

I wasn't dealing as directly as I could have been because I kind of lacked a helpful quality for myself, a kindness in doing this work. I told a story once. Lynn Zanke was a priest who was here and has been gone now for a number of years and is still a close friend of mine. And in the early days, I used to be here continually helping everybody and running around and trying to be... And she said, you know, if you could just sit down and love yourself, it would make it easier for somebody like me to love myself, you know. That was a great lesson to me, you know. Done it while doing dishes one day. I think I was doing all the residents' dishes, trying to be helpful. And she said, put your feet up and just love yourself a little bit. So it's very important to give yourself that kind of kindness, you know. You need to do this in order to even begin to do this kind of work to make this inquiry.

[20:16]

Dishonesty is best done with mother's milk. Mothers don't let kids get away with things, especially harmful things. But they always hold out the best for their child. They want the best. They hope for the best, even if things are difficult. So it's very important when you do this work to be saturated literally with this kind of kindness and softness. Along with kindness, as a part of this kind of practice, is a kind of discipline or order or simplicity. Here we have our forms. We adopt some boundaries or order in our practice. On the one hand, you have to be compliant and soft with yourself, and then you have to have some clarity in what you're doing. You need some order, some orderly way to proceed. So we, because of the women and men before us, have these forms.

[21:20]

We wear robes. We bow to each other. We create a container which allows for some simplicity and safety to develop. Not having to pick and choose everything. We can simply go a little bit deeper. into these areas of affliction and difficulty these knots that we so desperately want to let go of we want them to open up and to do that we need a safe grounding board a place where we can be together and it's important you know that sometimes I've done this although it's not usually my thing you know we forget that we The forms support our practice. Our practice doesn't support our forms. In other words, these forms are meant as invitations to you to meet yourself. I was thinking of A. A. Dogen. He's one of our core teachers from Japan. We say he went to China from Japan on a great voyage, making an inquiry into Buddhism.

[22:28]

But actually, that journey was a journey into the heart of his own life. It was lived out by going to China, by studying texts, but he was looking for his own heart, for an understanding of what this desire for happiness is, and what true happiness is. So again, out of the work of a human being like Dogen and so many people, we've come up with some forms, some ways to work with this. Now these forms are pretty safe, and you want to have forms that are pretty safe because They're both simple and hard to deify. We don't pray to our zafus. We don't worship things in that way. We use them with gratitude. It's very important. There's nothing to cling to them. They're quite clinging at their edges. We simply use these things. This kind of simplicity and order or adopting a form is one of the aspects that Soto Zen or Zen practice offers people.

[23:30]

you know, a safe way to progress. A schoolroom with our unnecessarily sharp objects or things that you can get into trouble with. Just a few more. Definitely under 18 hours, just a few more I wanted to share with you. And big humor. A big humor about our situation. A big panoramic humor about being a human being, you know. The truth is, none of us are going to get out of here alive. We're on a sinking ship. And we try so hard. And we're so touching because of this effort. And in the midst of this strange odyssey we're on of not getting out of here alive and eating our next meal and having a delicious bowl of soup, a kind of humor can develop, a big take on our situation, a big look at things. soft big look at things so I would encourage you always to have some sense of humor not haha small humor but this kind of big humor about being on this journey together it seems sad when we think of our death and yet what a wonder you know when I come in sometimes I look at all the shoes outside you don't think

[24:57]

What a variety, what a wonderful variety that we bring to our lives. Pointed shoes and round shoes and shoes with bells. It's incredible the things that we do. And I think we're so touching in our earnest effort to be free, to be happy, and the situation we find ourselves in. So to kind of hold that spirit, that big humorous soft spirit with each other. We're all trying to do our best here. We're all trying to secure our happiness. And we're trying to figure out the best way to do it. And we've made some unusual choices, usually. And we'll continue to make unusual choices. But like a mother, hold out the best for each other. We want the best for each other. It's easy to be critical. Oh, that person isn't so good. But maybe they really improved a lot. Have you seen that? Are you paying attention to that too?

[25:58]

And energy and joy, a great gift, energy and joy, in an odd way, knowing you're not getting out of here alive, frees you up to actually give up trying to secure yourself to hang on to anything, which you can't do anyway. We can't even hang on to our lives. We can't actually hold anything. And on the ground of that, inability to secure ourselves and to make ourselves safe, a lot of freedom can come up, a lot of energy, maybe a kind of crazy energy almost. Wow, I don't have to do anything like that. I can just be here. I can just be with other people. I can just work with this situation now. I find models very useful for me in my practice. And the Paramat model in this tradition is Shakyamuni, you know, a human being who turned into the midst of his own humanity and began to, first, not only began to, but established that he, as a human being, had a right to stay here, that you have a right to be wherever you're at in your life, an absolute right to abide there.

[27:23]

and to accept this human situation and not turn away. And by doing that, you can wake up. You can be truly happy if you want. It might not be the happiness you thought you were going to get. You might be surprised, but you can be truly happy. Be willing to be surprised about that. So models like Shakyamuni, Einstein, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, I would name people in this room, but they would get embarrassed. Modeling is good. Enacting this with your own body is good. Sometimes I say to people in practice discussion, you know, don't think about being Buddha, just do it. What would it be like to just do it? How would Buddha respond if somebody said something to you that you didn't feel like? What would Buddha do? So that's good. You have that big inspiration, a big thing to reach for. And at the same time, stay with the shadow.

[28:27]

That's the thing I lost track of. Stay with the shadow part. What's really happening for you? It creates a tension. You have this big ambition, big reach. And then you have this gritty reality. Out of that tension comes truth. Something develops. Lost in the vision? Not so good. Lost in the particularity of your being stuck? Not so good. When you do both, something new can happen, something new and unexpected. This is when a Buddha and a Buddha meet in practice. So being willing to be surprised in your life. And I think maybe realizing that your desire for happiness is okay and it's universal. We all desire happiness, you know. gives us compassion for each other too we may not understand the way I might not understand how you're trying to be happy that may be difficult for me but to accept that that's what you're working with no one starts out to do harm and then things happen so to accept that fundamental drive and then to let it deepen become more complex and work with it is

[29:51]

I would say the Zen path, or the Zen path I'm presenting today, one version of it. You can have it now for your version or parts of it, and if you don't like it, it's okay. You don't have to have it. That's about it. There are many more pages, but I'm not going to do that. No 18 hours for me. There once was a buffalo, Wutsu's buffalo. It's one of my favorite koans. And this buffalo flew up to a window and tried to get through. And every part of this huge water buffalo easily slipped through the window, except its tail. Over and over again, its tail got stuck, and the buffalo just couldn't go anywhere. Why is that? Is the tale a problem, or is the tale actually the possibility of developing as a human being?

[30:56]

Is getting stuck the opportunity to be here together, to make this investigation and inquiry deeply into your life? I like that old buffalo. I used to tell Michael Wenger this... I told him I like this koan a lot and he gave it to me and he said that's okay but don't be buffaloed about it he's a punster don't be buffaloed about it see what it is to get through see what it is to be safe and secure yourself is that what you want or do you want to stay here our vow is to stay here together forever not going anywhere staying here and practicing together through thick and thin so Getting good and stuck. You know, if you're not in the game in a way, you're not in the game if you're not good and stuck somewhere, working with something. And don't give up.

[32:01]

Sometimes getting stuck can feel really gritty and you feel uncomfortable. It's okay. It's okay. You got a lot of friends here. That's it. 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.

[32:45]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_96.87