This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Do you know about mere cats? Is that that creature? Yeah. My friend was supporting my posture and showed me some pictures of meerkats. Looking up and out, the whole body comes up naturally. Looking for predators, no doubt. I don't know what it's like to be a meerkat. I don't know if they need to settle down sometimes. I know that I do.

[01:03]

So maybe as we sit upright and open into the awe and wonder and aliveness of being here in this very still and quiet room this morning to first settle into our bodies Finding the breath in the belly. Easing with the breath all the way out and all the way in from that low belly. As low as it wants. making room in the upper body to let the breath flow upright and open and relaxed so the breath is unimpeded as it goes all the way down to the root and all the way out from the root.

[02:28]

Relaxing our body, we relax our heart too. And just let in the warmth, our natural tenderness and love for each other, for what's here, for this being. and letting go of whatever ideas we can let go of, whatever's in the mind, just letting it fall away. And then with open eyes and open ears and open pores, just receiving this being, just

[03:41]

being upright and open and empty in all of this light and sound and sensation together. It's funny, you might think that to ground is to ground, to connect with something that you know. But in Zen, the most grounded place we find is a place of not knowing. It's somehow the knowing is like complicated. It's where all the stuff lives, you know? So even if we do some good knowing, it's still, it's just in that ballpark of all that stuff. So the ground we enjoy and practice intimacy from is that ground of empty, open, not knowing. Knowing comes and goes.

[04:42]

There's no problem with the knowing. It's just not our ground. It's like the... It's just a flowing of light and sound, thought, sensation. So my name is Jiryu. I know many of you and some of you I don't know. Thank you very much for coming today. And whether you're here in person... on a beautiful day at Green Gulch, or online, having I don't know what kind of day. Anyway, I'm humbled and grateful for your turning your attention to the Dharma, and you're trusting me to offer a few words of encouragement for our life of Zen, as we call it here, or just life for short.

[05:46]

I saw some people in robes earlier this morning. I thought, why do we do that? And then I remembered it is something like grounding somewhere other than knowing. So anyway, there's a few things I want to try to talk about this morning. And I appreciate your openness. And we'll see if any of this lands for you. And hopefully have some time to share. Though I often go on. Many of you have heard me over the last several months appreciating this, appreciating time, time as a gate to opening and entering into the reality, the unconstructed reality of our life.

[07:09]

And there's this phrase that I've been turning from our Soto Zen founder in Japan, Dogen Zenji, who says, the way... This moment, this aliveness now, this you being you as it is now, is not carried over from the past, and it is not merely arising now. Some of you heard me reflect on this. The way has not, this being alive isn't at all stale. It hasn't gotten at all worn out from the past. It's not actually coming from the past. But it's also not just coming to be right now. So I've been really enjoying this teaching and really enjoying this question of, come on, Dogen, just give it to us straight here.

[08:11]

Did it come from the past or is it just starting now? And I realized as I was thinking this over, This is a very funny thing I'm saying, that I've been now for several months thinking about and working with this teaching that they just started now. But I have been. So I get very excited feeling into this truth, the true aspect of our life that is just starting now. It just started. We just got here. Welcome to this thing. Apparently, we're human beings. There's this planet we're on. Welcome. Nobody was here before to tell you to orient you. You may feel that missed the orientation. Nobody could orient you because we all just arrived together.

[09:18]

So I really enjoy that. And it's, what's the word? Could be a little bit unhinged or ungrounded. Maybe you can picture somebody telling you, you know, grabbing you by the shoulders and saying, we just got here. And you might not want to get in the car with them, you know. Or have them plan an event for you. And yet, it's like, what more true thing could be said than that? What that touches about something that's overlaid with all of this knowing, all of this story about what this being is. And it's all true and it's all good and we're all responsible to it. But what is missing in our usual picture of being? That's why we wear the robes, I think. There's something missing in just this ordinary way where I'm a person and we're all people and we're...

[10:22]

We're vertical on this round earth and we're wandering around over time. I arrived on my birth date, you know, and I'm kind of unfolding from there. That is absolutely the true thing about our life. It's insane to not acknowledge and be responsible to that. And yet, if that's the only kind of mind we know, if that's the only way we're here, we're just missing something so real and true about what this experience is. of being alive is. So Zen has all these teachings that kind of push us to just remembering, remind us, yeah, I know, the whole thing, yes, all of it, true, but right now, what is it actually like to be? And how do we forget that? And one of the kinds of things that might come out of Touching what it's like to be is, I can't really say when this started.

[11:27]

What would that even mean, you know? In this moment of being, to say it came from before or it's going to somewhere later. If we're not grounding in that knowing, what would that even be? Do you know what I mean? So we talk in Buddhism, in Buddhadharma, there's this teaching of the middle way, that we're always walking the middle way. In my study, I've been feeling more resonance with the view of the round way, the circle, the all-inclusive way, the way that totally includes these both sides of what we are, to not be confused by either, to not be that kind of wide-eyed. You know, we just got here and not able to kind of snap out of it, you know. It's not, I think, where we want to be.

[12:28]

Although they seem to be having a fine time. But it's not authentic. It's not totally authentic. I want to try to say something about that. It's not totally authentic to just say, you know, I was born on my birth date and I've been unfolding ever since. And it's not totally authentic to say, this is really wild. We just got here. What's the way that includes all of that? The round way, the whole way, the middle way. So there's a story we have in our tradition, maybe a story familiar to many of you, of a person who was insistent on that there is no past or future, and that what this life is, that we just got here.

[13:40]

And his name was Hyaku Jo, and he lived in the distant past, like maybe eons. or at least many centuries before another Hyakujou who lived in the Tang Dynasty in China and was a great ancestor of our way of Zen practice, Hyakujou or Bai Zhang. So in a long tradition of hapless abbots, this hapless abbot, the old Hyakujo, tried to give a talk on a Sunday and someone asked him some question and he said, we all just got here. And I don't know if it was at that very moment or just a few years later that he turned into a fox and said,

[14:45]

had to stay in the body of a fox for 500 lifetimes. And it seems like not one of the happy foxes. I think about the happy foxes, if you've seen, did you see the one where they're in the snow? You know, and there's the mouse underneath. That seems like I would do that for 500 lifetimes. And then there's like a delicious sandwich under there. But in this tradition, you know, for some reason, you do not want to be a fox. So maybe somebody knew something that I don't know about what it's like to be a fox. So the sense of like, because you were pushing away the actual reality of... that you're a person in time and the stuff you do matters and you're an ordinary person in the world and you're responsible to that.

[15:49]

Because this teacher was so excited about the present moment that he didn't include that, then he had to be a fox for 500 lifetimes until he kind of got the idea. So he's there as a fox kind of reflecting on, I guess I just arrived here now, but how come I'm a fox? It's like, oh, right, because something carried over from the past. So he started over these lifetimes to grow up, to mature. You know, some people read the story and say he was punished, but it's more like he just needed more training. He needed 500 lifetimes as a fox to really get like, yes, you're just arising now. You were totally right about that. And also, there's something you need to include, which is that you carried over from the past. Or, as Dogen Zenji in his profound maturity puts it, It's not that it was carried over from the past, and it's not that it's arising now. It's not any of those things. You're trying to get a handle on the ungraspable being that includes all of it.

[16:52]

So you say, it just started now, or I'm old and tired because it's been going for a long time. Both of those are just trying to get some handle on the thing, the thing that we're doing together that we don't really know what it is because we can't step out of it To know it. So this fox, growing up, lifetime after lifetime, the story is vague on how he managed this, but then he shows up at a Dharma talk disguised as a human. So I'm always on the lookout. And he... was able to have an exchange with our ancestor, Baijang, or Hyakujo, which is the name of the mountain. So they're all named Hyakujo, which is confusing. So he asks, he has an exchange with Hyakujo where he comes to realize that

[18:08]

What he does matters. What he is, is just arising now, and it's carried over from the past, and he's liberated from the fox body. And then the Tang dynasty, Hyakujou, in a beautiful kind of capping moment of that old story, gathers the assembly and says, we're going to have the funeral for an abbot. And they go up in the mountains and find the body of the fox and hold an abbot's funeral where the fox has been liberated from his idea that either he is just arising or that he's something that exists in time that you could get a handle on. So it's so important, you know, what this old Hyakujo is bringing, that truth of the immediacy of our life.

[19:25]

So we can see, you know, either that person who's a little bit unhinged, who's kind of in some altered state thinking that it's just the present moment. We could dismiss that because it seems kind of immature and we could dismiss Hyakujo for saying there's just the present moment. But there's something so important for us there. What is this actually? Is it more like vertical people on a round big ball? Or is it more like I don't know? I can't even say if I just got here or if it's coming from the past. So Suzuki Roshi tells this story, as many Zen teachers do. Suzuki Roshi, the founder of this San Francisco Zen Center and Green Gulch Farm, Tassahara Zen Mountain Center.

[20:30]

He talks about this story, and he says, I was asked by a student to to speak about the relationship of one moment to the next moment? There are two ways to answer this question. One answer is that there is no relationship, and the other is that there is a relationship. We could get away with so much. We beg you to hold us accountable. I'm laughing because if I have to say something, I always must say it in two ways. He doesn't want to be a fox. But to just say, you know, oh yeah, I can tell you the relationship of one moment to the next is that, you know, they go one after the other causing each other. It would be selling short the dharma, to put it that way.

[21:42]

would not be helping somebody open to the ungraspable embodied reality of their aliveness. So then, so yeah, there is no relationship and there is a relationship between one moment and the next. So is there a relationship between one moment and the next? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. If you stick to some dualistic understanding of yes or no, that will be the wrong answer. Because reality does not exist in that way. Yes is right and no is right too. Yes is not right and no is also not right. Reality, not reality in some sense other than our life, but the reality of our life. doesn't exist in that way, that you could say what it is or what it isn't.

[22:45]

You can be it fully. And it sure seems like we can be it half-heartedly. But it doesn't exist in the way of yes and no. So we try to appreciate and enter the stillness and openness the non-grasping of Zazen mind, not reaching for any knowing, letting the reality be not yes or no, to fully be this. We're trying to appreciate and the teachings help us to appreciate that we're layering a kind of view onto the situation that might be effective or true in its way, but doesn't really reach.

[24:35]

So there's another story that Suzuki Roshi comments on that I want to share briefly and then hear what you all have to say. Another famous story, kind of fundamental story in Zen, of the arrival of Zen in China through the person of Bodhidharma, who met the emperor. So here's how Suzuki Roshi puts this story. Emperor Wu of Liang asked Bodhidharma, what is the first principle? Or what is the absolute truth of our life? Or like, what's really going on here? You seem to know something. And I'm the emperor, so come on. What's going on here? He's been holding it together pretty well, you know, all these years as emperor.

[25:43]

He founded a dynasty. But he's like, what is actually going on? And Bodhidharma says, there is no holy or common person. So there's no holy person, there's no common person. That's a way of expressing what's really going on here. It's not divided into people who get it and people who don't. No holy person, no common person. And the emperor said, well, then who are you in front of me? And Bodhidharma said, I don't know. I think it's easy for me to not appreciate what it would be like to meet the emperor of China.

[26:49]

to have that kind of composure and that confidence in your being. He's saying, aren't you a great person? Aren't you a holy person? I don't know what I am. I just got here. There's just this aliveness that I'm being together with you, and I don't know. And you can't make me know. I'm not going to be intimidated into knowing, saying all the sutras that he knew, you know? And then he went and sat in a cave for nine years, maybe just to like recover from that. It's just like, I can't believe what just happened. And to grow the composure, you know, part of why we're so, you know, Zen of course is offering some teaching.

[27:51]

It's offering some framework. The purpose of the framework is to try to shine some light on and unhook us from the framework that we already are totally swimming in, which is just this kind of objective, materialistic kind of view of what the world really is. Like, I like to do spiritual stuff, but really, you know, when the bills are due, I know what the world actually is, which is that it's, you know, vertical people on a round thing, like stressing each other out. Zen is not trying to say, oh, really, it's the opposite of that. It's trying to say, do you see that that's an idea that's not actually touching your own direct experience in this moment of being that you don't even know when it started or what's inside and what's outside? So we're trying and it's impossible. So that's why it lasts for thousands of years, this tradition, because we're trying to use some framework to kind of dislodge a framework.

[28:52]

to just enter the stillness and reality of the feeling of actually being, free of all of our ideas about it, including I have a body, I have a mind, I, you, it. So we're not throwing anything away, we're just trying to find all that space underneath the framework so that we can live with more space and ease and but not be stuck on that new one, you know, not be stuck on the thing that's supposed to help get us unstuck. That's the old problem with Zen that's been trying to talk our way out of it for a long time. We say, you know, in this tradition, we don't use words because any words will be confusing, and then we go on and on about how we don't do it. So he goes to the cave to sit for nine years facing the wall to just abide in this wonder, in this I don't know.

[29:58]

And growing his strength to tolerate that, I think part of why we go back to like, oh, I know what the world is, and maybe even it's bad and stressful and small, but at least I know what it is, you know? And as we open and connect with the more ungraspable, aliveness and the wonder and this kind of truth that nobody knows what's happening here and we all just got here. That's kind of like a lot, you know, to meet. Especially when the emperor is looking right at you. So we grow this kind of strength or composure or great patience. And in the tradition, fundamentally, what that patience or composure is for is so that we can actually open to how amazing it is to be alive. We're kind of like recoiling from that a little bit.

[30:59]

So then we make the world small and wonder, why am I suffering in this small world? It's like, well, because it's kind of scary to just let go of everything and just plunge into this moment, not knowing what's going to happen or who you are. But you can trust it. So he sat for nine years growing his wonder and growing the composure to allow the wonder to keep growing. They have to grow at the same speed. And that's maybe this kind of wide-eyed person who can't snap out of the oneness. It's like, oh, your composure didn't grow quite as fast as your wonder. So we take care of both. So Suzuki Roshi of this, Story of Bodhidharma says, Bodhidharma, by saying, I don't know, revealed himself to the emperor as someone without form or name, who was just sitting without thinking, without doing anything, being with everything.

[32:07]

That's a really important point for Suzuki Roshi. In this kind of unconstructed being alive, everything's included. That's not like something you're doing by yourself. The aliveness is the whole field of alive. That's what our life really is actually like. It's not separate from the stuff in it. So being with everything, he's just everything and says, I don't know. But the emperor and the fuller stories, versions of the story elaborate how disappointed the emperor is in this answer. So he says, but the emperor wanted to meet someone wise and powerful and learned and very helpful. So this question and answer was not so successful in the story, you know. So Bodhidharma goes off and then the emperor later, you know, realizes what a treasure that was that he was offered and tries to send some people to get Bodhidharma back.

[33:13]

But they can't find it. because he's in a cave. And he's everything. He's the people looking for him. So I'm not going to find him. So the emperor wanted to meet somebody great, but he just got this, I don't know. So then Suzuki Roshi says, this other phrase that I've been sitting with and working with, trying to grow into, we should understand ourselves in two ways. as a particular person, and as someone who has no name, no body, and no mind. We should understand ourselves and fully live from this understanding of ourself in two ways, as a particular person responsible for our life, and as this being, this aliveness that has no form and no name.

[34:15]

And so in sin, we tend to, you know, we chant like every day in a temple. We say, no, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no form, no name. We're really exercising that part. But it's not because we are going to live there, but just because to come into balance, to grow that side of what our life is. Do you know what I mean? Maybe you don't have that problem. Maybe you need to grow the make your bed side, you know. But for many of us, it's just like the, what is this really that doesn't have a name or a body or an inside or an outside? It's just this undivided field of being, not as some special state, but it's just the actual fact of what this is. So to be both of these and just what does that feel like? What does that look like to fully embody both of these sides, to be a particular person? and to be this being that includes everything, that has no name and no form.

[35:21]

And I thought this morning as I was enjoying breakfast, Zen students are pretty good at making breakfast, even though they don't know who they are or what anything is. Like the bell rings and they go to the kitchen and they don't know who they are or whether it just started. And they don't know what an onion is. And they don't know what a hand is. But they reach for the onion and they put it on a board and it turns out they know how to chop an onion, even though they just got here. They're not sure if they just got here because how come they know how to chop an onion? Maybe they didn't just get here. And they chop an onion. And then they turn on a stove, even though they don't know what any of that is. And they mash up some tofu and they fry it until it's just right.

[36:26]

And then they sit down and they might feel like, I just got here and there's a bowl of tofu scramble for me. Even though somebody looking from outside say, you just made yourself breakfast day. To be amazed, you sit down, wow, thanks for making me breakfast, whoever that was. And this practice, you know, when we have the opportunity, what an honor to be able to make breakfast for each other. So we don't know what any of that is. We've managed to make breakfast. We're eating the breakfast and someone comes and says, hey, are there any allergens in the breakfast? No. And even though you don't know what an onion is and you don't know what your being is, like Bodhidharma, you say, yes, onions, garlic, soy. Do you know what I mean? You can fully live both of these sides, a whole person.

[37:30]

You can be a whole person. And then someone can say, that was the best breakfast ever. And you can say, you're so welcome. It was a joy to make a delicious breakfast for you. And then someone else will come up and say, that was a terrible breakfast, and I hate you. And you can say, I'm so sorry. I want to talk about that when the time is right. I'll try to listen, and it'll be hard. So this isn't like an abstract teaching. It's about being fully alive as our life is, which is all of that. Not sticking to knowing or not knowing. But now and then to sit in zazen and just taste that unconstructed, timeless, formless being alive.

[38:35]

I'll continue a little bit more of Suzuki Roshi on this and then close. To understand ourselves in these two ways is liberation from ourselves. In the true understanding of ourselves, there are both viewpoints. That is what we mean when we say things as it is. And that is how we should exist as a human being in this world or else we will be lost. Most Of the time we lead our lives from the one-sided viewpoint of just being a particular person who can be known by others, but then we lose the other side, that we are someone who has no name, no body, and no mind. That is why this world is so busy and noisy, because we've lost that other side, the most obvious side. I know. We're here. When we understand our world in the true way, with calmness of mind, understanding both viewpoints, we will have compassion for the people who are involved in just the one-sided view.

[39:58]

And of course, for ourselves, when we're involved in the one-sided view, we should concentrate on this through our everyday near-at-hand practice. And the teaching is so clear, you know, that in doing so, in living in this whole way, that's good ground to be a benefit to each other. So we do this practice to fully enjoy our life, to fully become ourself, and also so that we can really support each other in a true and deep way. So whatever good comes from our practice is always offered. to everyone, to all of us laboring under these one-sided views, who we think we are and what we think this is and how we're trying to get out into something better. Just a few more minutes if there's any comment or question, if anybody wants to share a reflection.

[41:06]

Thank you. It feels so good to be here. Today happens to be a little bit higher. Thank you so much. Today happens to be my birthday. And so when you say that, like, just arrived here and it's all unfolding and both are true, it is such a relief to hear that. And I feel so safe in this room with these people and these walls. Yeah. And then I have to go back into the world. And I have to go to work and know things. And I don't get to say, I don't know, I just got here. And I have to make good decisions in my relationship and with finance and every day. And that's so hard. And I get, I've answered it in the last hour. And I get that I'm using this practice to unlock that other framework. but how do I be inside of it? How do I, 40 hours, 80 hours, 100 hours a week, how do I bring this framework into that framework and not just unlock it?

[42:29]

Help. Thank you for giving us such a wonderful gift on your birthday. Are you sure that you have to know what you're doing? I don't know. Yeah. So you could just try in little ways. You don't have to just like go to work. I think you can go to work and not know because you know what you need to know. It's kind of like the cook making breakfast. your being can be grounded in that, in the more open, immediate, the feeling of your life, of your zazen.

[43:39]

And then your knowing and your responsibility and your interrelatedness, that all is kind of held by that. So I often suggest just trying in little ways, you know, like, I don't know if you drove here, but you maybe will have to walk to your car, someone's car at some point later today. And you could try doing that without being so sure where you're going or why. And I'm pretty sure you're going to end up at your car. It's like to trust, to let go in little ways and just see. Or like making breakfast is a good example. Like, can you go, you know... can you pour the cereal and pour the milk without like as much knowing, you know? And we try that out in little ways and see that actually went fine. The milk made it into the cereal bowl, even though I wasn't like grounding in the knowing.

[44:47]

It was letting the knowing unfold. So there's no blocking of that, but just that grounding in my body, in my breath. It's so important what you're saying and this distinction, this division of like, There's a place where I can be free of that. And then there's a place where I have to be caught up in that. That's exactly what the tradition is trying to help us to soften. I don't know if that's helpful, but thank you for sharing what we all feel, which is how can we live this out and to let it take a long time And when we do have the chance to steep in the formless, it's pretty good to just let that kind of wisdom of that come into our bones a little more. So then it's not even like a separate kind of special effort, but just more like what it is for us being alive. Thank you.

[45:49]

Made my bones feel better. And I'm so touched that you feel safe here. And may we be... Worthy of that trust. And may all beings be safe. Is there another comment or question? There's a microphone that might help for, especially for the people online. Oh, sorry. I was wondering whether the story in the Tang Dynasty originated because of the aliveness of the fox spirit amongst the people who worked in the fields. And you had started off with a meerkat and here was the fox. And the meerkat and the fox are beings.

[46:50]

Yep. They're it. Yeah. That's all I wanted to comment. Thank you. It was you, I see. Zen delights in these kinds of stories. You know, they set up kind of the good and the bad, and then all the Zen teachers get to play with that and say, oh, the thing you thought was bad was actually the good, and the thing you thought was good was the bad. Let's all just be foxes and go play in the sun. Maybe that's enough for today, unless there's another... Okay, yeah, sure, there's something in the... I can cut through. There's one in the back there on the side, Tom. Thank you for your talk.

[47:56]

I was wondering, it's more of a comment, but I was wondering if you could speak to... the interdependence of both sides of that. Can you share more about where you're coming from or what you're appreciating in that? Yeah, just the idea of just being versus being in time and space. And just the interdependence of the two. There's another... teaching from Suzuki Roshi that I thought I might share, which is exactly that, that like the sound of the bird doesn't interrupt our zazen. The sound of the bird calls us deeper into zazen. The thing that's coming up is helping us. So one way that Suzuki Roshi talks about and that I've also been appreciating is like the background and the foreground. So he says that kind of unconstructed or big mind is like the background that things are rising in.

[48:59]

So of course they're interdependent. You can't have the background without the foreground. They're not separate. They're not even separate things. Or the water and the waves. It's the same substance. It's not even interdependent maybe. But like the different views of the same being. And appreciating that, it's so important to appreciate that so that we don't then get confused of like, where's the one? Where's the other? Oh, I've lost the one. I have to scramble back to it. We're trying to scramble back to the oneness, which is the whole point of that was to not have to scramble to anything, you know? And that's the big problem with Zen is that it sets up this thing that we're going to try to get back to, you know, next Sunday or next year or whenever we can do the meditation retreat rather than the call to our life as it is, moment after moment, right in the complexity of to be this person in the complexity, in the tangle, and being this aliveness without form or name.

[50:11]

Thank you so much for your kindness today. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[50:46]

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