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. Welcome. Welcome, everyone, to Beginner's Mind Temple. On this auspicious day, it's almost auspicious. Buddha's birthday is actually April the 8th, but we'll be celebrating it here later today. It's also the day before Easter. I think it's the fourth day of Passover. I also saw it's the anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination, 1968. I want to start with a story.

[01:08]

The topic I want to talk about is the joy of delusion. It was Dogen who said you should establish your practice in your delusion. I want to talk a little bit about what he might have been talking about and how that applies to our practice and our lives but I want to start with a story of several years ago I did a talk at Green Gulch Farm and my next door neighbor had started practicing with me and she decided to bring her 8 year old daughter to the talk and it was the first time that either of them were at Green Gulch and and they were sitting in the back, and many of you know this, some of you may not, but there's Green Gulch, the Green Gulch Zendo, it's quite a bit of drama about it.

[02:21]

It's a big old barn, and the big bancho bell is ringing, and I came in, you know, in full robes, person carrying incense, you come up, And one of the things I love about Zen is it does create a sense of drama and something unearthiness or beyond earthiness. And just as I put my hands in gashou to begin the chant, my eight-year-old neighbor's daughter turned to her mother and said, is our neighbor God? So I've been reflecting on this. And the more I think about it, the more I think it's the question that could save us all.

[03:32]

Imagine if we all were constantly... asking the question, is our neighbor God? And maybe even including, you know, am I, in what way am I God? It's a funny word. It has, you know, what's interesting, we talk about Buddha, right? We use this word Buddha, and we talk about emptiness, and we talk about, we don't use the God word so often, but occasionally, I love in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, where there's a chapter called God Given, where Suzuki Roshi says, everything, everything has been given to us. The sense that everything has been given to us by Buddha, by God, or we already have everything. And so, you know,

[04:36]

This being celebration today of Buddha's birthday, I was thinking about how it was through the importance of his parents' delusion that led him to become the Buddha. His parents tried to sequester him from all difficulty, from all suffering. And as a result, contrast, right? The historical Buddha leaving the confines and discovering old age sickness and death. And here we are in today's world I think we in some way we long to be as we should. We long to be safe.

[05:36]

We long to be sequestered. And yet, we find ourselves in this world right now where it feels like many dark forces feel like they've been unleashed. And I think unleashed out of... So I think there's maybe different ways to talk about delusion. I think we're seeing the... the power and destructiveness of delusion on a very large political basis, leadership basis. But for us, I think, in our day-to-day practice, how do we work with delusion? What does dogin mean by delusion? you should establish your practice in your delusion.

[06:37]

And I'm surprised how often this word delusion shows up. This is one of my favorite passages from Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. He says, everything comes out of emptiness. When we reach this understanding, we find the true meaning of life. So everything comes out of emptiness. I think you could say, Maybe everything comes out of our relationship with God, or everything comes out of our relationship with Buddha. Everything comes out of letting go of our usual sense of ego or of self, something beyond our usual limitations of self. He says, when we reach this understanding, we find the true meaning of our life. when we reach this understanding we can see the beauty of human life before we realize this fact everything that we see is just delusion sometimes we overestimate the beauty sometimes we underestimate or ignore the beauty because our small mind is not in accord with reality right so is our neighbor is our neighbor god

[07:59]

is our neighbor God, I think is just a beautiful way, practical way, maybe to cut through the delusion of us being separate, of us being separate from Buddha, from God, from emptiness. And I love how, again, Suzuki Rishi says, to talk about it is easy, but to have this actual feeling is not so easy. And here he, as he does almost in every chapter, comes back to meditation practice or zazen practice. But by your practice of zazen, you can cultivate this feeling. And I think, right, so how do we cultivate this feeling? And I think it's this feeling of, is our neighbor God? In what way am I, in what way is each of us,

[09:04]

extraordinary, beyond, you know, beyond measure. You know, this... It's quite, you know, quite amazing what we take for granted in this human body and mind. And it's interesting, I think, the practice, just like the practice of the Buddha was seeing... seeing how sequestered he was and wanting to understand, wanting to penetrate his delusion, the delusion of that there was some safe place outside by escaping from what was happening in our world. And Suzuki Roshi goes on to say, when you can sit with your whole body and mind and with the oneness of your mind and body, under the control of this universal mind.

[10:05]

So it's interesting, he talks, he almost, this universal mind, or Buddha mind, or, you know, original mind, or God, God mind, is our neighbor, is our neighbor God. He says, if, when you, right, when you can access this universal mind, your everyday life will be renewed without being attached to an old, erroneous interpretation of life. You will discover how meaningless your old interpretation was and how much useless effort you've been making. You will find the true meaning of life. Even though you have difficulty, you will enjoy your life. Wow. So I think this, what he's suggesting, and I think what Dogen is suggesting, you should establish your practice in your delusion.

[11:13]

Again and again, seeing the delusion of our own separateness. So I've been thinking about, I've been starting to, I always find there's something missing from my life if I don't have a book project. And then as soon as I do have a book project, I mean, really, what was I thinking? This is so hard. But I've been thinking a lot about illusions, delusions, and mistaken beliefs. I've always really loved illusions, like you probably know the illusion of looking at an image of an old woman. If you see this woman in one way, then she turns into... a young woman, right? This is a classic illusion. And it's interesting, you know, illusions are more something that, oh, we get that we just weren't seeing it correctly.

[12:18]

But it's not so different than, you know, Shinryu Suzuki saying, you know, if we think that when we die, this is the end of our life, this is a mistaken belief. If we think when we die this isn't the end of our life, this is also a mistaken belief. It is and it isn't. We are God and we're ordinary. We're God and we're ordinary. We all have everything we need and we also need to practice. Yeah, if we think we have a body and a mind, this is a kind of delusion. So in this way, delusion is like the deepest, deepest form of practice. I think there's illusions, mistaken beliefs, and then there's the delusion of especially of separateness and the delusion of thinking that things are permanent.

[13:32]

not being able to step into seeing the nature of impermanence. And these are both incredibly pervasive and difficult to work with, these two delusions. The delusion that we have a self and the delusion that, you know, we think, in some way, we think of our self and we think of the world from a sense of permanence. One of the very earliest and first of the historical Buddha's teaching was looking at trying to unpack and disassemble what we think of as self. So he talks about form, he names, he says to his disciples, you know, does form exist?

[14:37]

Do feelings exist? Do perceptions exist? Form, feeling, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. And then a few hundred years later, this became the first line of the Heart Sutra, right? Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, when deeply practicing the Prajnaparamita, clearly saw that all five skandhas are empty and thus relieved all suffering. So he's talking about the delusion, the early teaching of the delusion of self. The delusion of self. In re-reading and studying the Heart Sutra, which is kind of the primary chant in Zen, chanted every morning in every Zen temple around the world. I hadn't quite gotten that it starts with Avalokiteshvara, which is the representation of compassion.

[15:48]

Often people ask, well, why doesn't Zen practice emphasize compassion more, that we don't hear a lot about compassion? compassion. But here it is as the first line of this most important, one of the most important teachings in all of Zen. So in a way it starts with compassion and then it emphasizes wisdom, which is the sword of wisdom of cutting through delusion. And how do we do that? We do that by seeing through this, what we call self. I've been reading Michael Pollan's new book about an exploration. It's an exploration of consciousness. Really interesting. Although, I'll give away the... It's a really interesting book and worthwhile read.

[16:53]

And the punchline at the end... is that we don't know what consciousness is. And I don't think it's... To me, it's not as important and interesting a question as what is self and what is... How do we work with the delusion of self? And what are mistaken beliefs? So one of... Dogen's teachings is around delusion. When Dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you think it is already sufficient. When Dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing. For example, when you sail out in a boat to the midst of an ocean where no land is in sight, the ocean looks circular.

[17:54]

and does not look any other way. But the ocean is neither round nor square. Its features are infinite in variety. It's like a palace. It's like a jewel. It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time. All things are like this. So that we, you know, If we think we know who we are, if we think we know what we are, we should know this is delusion. And how do we find some comfort in this? So it's interesting in Zazen practice, I think it's letting go of our usual ideas around time and space and who we are and what we're doing. And loosening all of that, our usual sense of self, of time and space, and in a way, entering some more universal space or God-like space.

[19:13]

Again, this coming back to, is our neighbor God? A practice I used to... give in um workshops that i taught was to was to ask the question um what if what if the next dalai lama is in this room who who who of you might be the next the next dalai lama maybe another version of this question um is our is is our neighbor god is our neighbor god What if everything is extraordinary, miraculous, and ordinary? What if everything is beyond any sense of what we can really understand? So I've also been... It's interesting, this whole realm of mistaken beliefs.

[20:22]

I've been... I've been collecting some of my most popular mistaken beliefs. Some of you may be familiar with the Enneagram system. Any of you know that? Yeah, I know some of you are very familiar with it. And what I like about it is that it's actually a system, it starts with suggesting that we all become familiar with what our core mistaken beliefs are about ourselves and to try and understand how those core mistaken beliefs lead us to be the way we are, lead us toward our own strengths and growth areas. For example, some of the mistaken beliefs that it names are you're not accepted by others for who you are. You need to be good.

[21:24]

You need to be good in order to be accepted. You have to be needed in order to be loved. In order to be loved, you need to be needed. Does that sound familiar to anyone? You're more valued for what you do than who you are. You need to be successful. More valued for what you do. You must be missing something important. You need to find... perfect circumstance in order to feel like you belong. You must be missing something. You must be missing something. You have to accumulate knowledge in order to be loved. We can protect ourselves by our knowledge. Well, here's the one that's my favorite because it's most personal to me. You need to avoid conflict and seek comfort in order to be loved. you substitute comfort and lose sight of your real priorities.

[22:25]

The importance seeking comfort and not leaning in toward difficulty. So, what do we do or how do we practice? How do we practice with illusions, delusions and mistaken beliefs? I love coming back to this question, you know, is my neighbor God? In what way am I God? And to be curious, to be curious about really, in our zazen practice, in our meditation practice, and in our lives, Noticing our own attachment to ourselves. This is one of the great benefits of living in community, like here.

[23:30]

Living in community is hard because all of our mistaken beliefs come right up in relation to other people. They're just right there. They come out. And we learn about them. I think it's really important. And it's one of the things I think that's become more difficult to live in community. So I think having a practice, a meditation practice, where we can step out of the stream of our mistaken beliefs and delusions and just sit maybe right in them and let them stew and see what happens in a safe container. to live in community and to make our lives, as much as we can, lives of practice. What is the feeling of practice and how do we support this feeling of practice?

[24:40]

I love, like, here, you know, When we go into the restroom, we bow. We bow at an altar before we go in the restroom and after the restroom. Very concrete way of helping support the feeling of practice. And everything in this room, it's all of these robes and this Buddha and the care. This is all about, I think, supporting. and helping us to enter the feeling, the feeling of practice, the feeling of emptiness, universal mind, something, seeing both ourselves and the world as extraordinary and ordinary. I think I want to do something.

[25:43]

which is, I would like to ask that you all just quietly turn toward a person that you're sitting next to. Just turn toward a person. Find a person, without saying anything, just find a person. Just find a person. If you can, anyone still need a person? There's all these persons everywhere I look. There's persons. If you're online, You can follow these instructions as well. Maybe do this by yourself. So I want to suggest a brief conversation with this person. A couple things you could talk about. One is, what's in your heart right now? Two, what are some of your favorite delusions or mistaken beliefs? And anything else?

[26:45]

And we're just going to do this, we're going to do this for five minutes. I know from experience, you need to keep voices down, like you need to get close, because otherwise everyone will be yelling in a few minutes. So keep it down. What's in your heart? What are some of your favorite mistaken beliefs? And anything else you'd like to talk about with your partner? And... As you do this, I want to suggest, see if you can do this. This is an exercise in the feeling of practice. The feeling of practice with another person. So you don't have to say anything. You can just sit there and feel what it's like to practice. Or see what words happen in this topic. Go ahead. Five minutes. feel like I'm breaking the rules by doing that. Anyone make a new best friend?

[27:50]

I want to open it up. Because of Buddha's birthday, there's not going to be questions and answers after, so we're going to do it right here, right now, which I prefer. Please. Thank you so much for your talk. It was very beautiful. A memory came for me, a memory came for me, that I used to practice a shamanic dance with Gabrielle Roth. And we would dance for days. And in the trainings, what would happen for me would be I would dance for two days straight, for three days straight. And then at that point, I would be looking at everybody. And you're God. Oh, you are God. You are God. You are God. And, but it always, it was beautiful feeling. And it also came with grief because I also felt, how could I, how could I live this way of not knowing this all the time?

[28:56]

Yeah. Thank you. I mean, I think people feel that in Sashin's here or in any, especially in long sittings. And then the, I mean, that's beautiful what you said. And then, so what do you do to integrate that into your life? Or what might you do? As I am. Exactly. Why not? Thank you. As for God, like this?

[30:08]

Okay. As for God, I've learned that we all are gods because we create our own illusions and our own realities. And this God comes from our mind and from what we determine as childhood. This is my toy. I become I. But before you became I, this is my toy. You are a little baby. You have absorbed all the comforts and pleasures of being a baby. As we grow up, we collect all kinds of illusions. I like this one program that says God is an energy. We all have the energy. And we all create constantly with internal chatter and emotions. And that, you know, I have... ADD, autism, ADHD. Do you have a question?

[31:10]

The question you want? Yes. You want me to answer your question? Yeah. I have all this stuff, and how do you perceive God? Because I perceive it this way, and other people don't. So we're different. I don't know how to ask a question. All I can say is where I'm coming from. Okay. That's why I'm here. Thank you. hope to help but i don't know see in the other room and we can really chat okay bye-bye i think that we um we we get to be here together with that question of of what what is what is what is god or uh But there's a kind of, I think there's the, I really love the combined practices of confidence and humility.

[32:14]

So there's great, great humility in this human, you know, this human body, this human body and mind. You know, that we are, you know, we are part of evolution. you know, we are mammals, you know, and yet there's something that connects us to everything and there seems to be something, you know, again, something around our particular consciousness that leads us to ask these questions, you know, leads us to be the most destructive mammals on Earth. But also, I think, at the same time, we have this amazing possibility, I think, of being the most healing creatures on Earth. But we have work to do. We have an awful lot of work to do, to realize.

[33:17]

But if we could just even agree on the question, you know, is my neighbor God? In what way are we all? godlike, that connects us all and connects us to all of life, not just humans, but all of life. I love that the first third of Michael Pollan's exploration is, do plants have consciousness? What about plants? And again, looking, trying to understand. I've been, in preparing for this talk, I found myself trying to understand trees, I think it's a really good practice to see how we take trees for granted as though they're just this thing that we... But they're alive. They are very much alive. And there's really interesting research about how trees can warn each other about danger.

[34:22]

And we just... are too deluded to realize that many things here on this earth just operate in different time frames than we do. And so to be curious, just to be curious. And to be curious about, you know, other humans' experience. To really be curious about what do other people experience? To really want to know. Other questions? We have just a couple of minutes. Maybe the last question and then I'll wrap up. Thank you, Mark.

[35:24]

I'm curious about the question and kind of the sense of expanding it from, well, expanding the definition of neighbor into that sense of like, well, the planet itself, or like you said, a tree, grass, animals, walls. You know, I think sometimes it seems like when we think our neighbor's God, we're talking about humans, and we forget about the rest, and now we have the same issue. So I'm just curious if you would say. Yeah. Well, I think, yeah, to realize, to again and again realize our place in life. But, you know, we seem to be, well, we're pretty bad with not But right now there's a lot of human-to-human destruction going on, not realizing that people everywhere are our neighbors.

[36:32]

And imagine if our leaders had the wisdom to be again and again asking that question. In what way are our neighbors God? I realize there's... a lot happening here at Zen Center and I really appreciate, I know many of you know about the fire at the Tassajara Zendo that burned down last week and I'm sure there's people here from Tassajara. I also wanted, you know, I lived here many, many years ago and this place and this practice continues to be extremely influential, important in my life. My only current official role with the San Francisco Zen Center is I'm chairman of the Elders Council. Elders Council is a very mysterious group.

[37:33]

It's a little bit like the Wizard of Oz. But I was looking... This morning, I looked at an old, old document which said the Elders Council... is the body at Zen Center that provides religious leadership. It will meet periodically to reflect on the health of Zen Center practice and to discuss and approve whatever alterations in our practice may be made over time. And I totally didn't realize that Paul was the first chair. Did you know that? It was a long time ago. It was... 1993. And I want to end by reading just a part, a snippet of a poem. It's a poem by a woman named Jane Gumpel, and it's called The Still Point in a World on Fire.

[38:33]

And this is just the end of a much longer poem. Reality does not need your approval, but it does require your presence. And presence is not passive. When you stop fighting the moment, you don't withdraw from the world. You stand more firmly inside it, grounded, clear, unseduced by spectacle. The secret is not disengagement, it is regulation. Sit, breathe, feel your feet on the ground while the world shakes. And when your mind lunges like a dog at every siren, every breaking alert, every manufactured outrage, pause. Equanimity is not a prize. It is the inner architecture that allows you to stay awake, stay human, and keep choosing how to respond in a world that profits from your collapse.

[39:43]

Keep choosing how to respond in a world that profits from your collapse. And keep asking, is our neighbor God? Is our neighbor? And have a very wide view. Our neighbor is, let's start with planet Earth, planet Earth as our neighbor. Thank you very much. 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.

[40:36]

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