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. Welcome, everyone. It's so great to hear so much dharma being expressed. Freely expressed. So especially, I want to welcome the littler people here. Little in size, but not little in intelligence, or little in wisdom, actually. You don't have to be a big person

[01:01]

to have a true mind. I was in, between Christmas and New Year's, I was in Washington, D.C., and my daughter and granddaughter came down from New York. And my granddaughter's seven years old, and she brought me a book. It was her book. She showed it to me. She didn't give it to me, she showed it to me. I wonder how many of you know the book, Moody Cow Meditates. Here, yeah? Yeah? Moody Cow Meditates? Somebody here knows the book, yeah, okay. Well, it's one of my granddaughter's favorite books. And Moody Cow, has a difficult time some days. Some days things happen and the mind of Moody Cow gets all shook up because sometimes something happens that Moody Cow does not want to have happen.

[02:18]

Has that ever happened to you? Or sometimes what Moody Cow wants to have happen doesn't happen. That ever happened to you? Yeah? Like what? Like what? No barbecue. Exactly. Did you hear that? We were supposed to have a barbecue last night, but we didn't. So what happens then in the Moody Cow book is that there's this mind that gets all shook up. So I have here this jar with various things in it which gets all shook up. Now, in the Moody Cow meditation, Moody Cow eventually goes to see the grandfather who is wise like me. And grandfather has a magic mind jar like this, right?

[03:28]

I tried to make one, but mine didn't come out very well. So this is... But I know that sometimes the mind gets all shook up, right? But when Moody Cow and Grandpa sit down together and they shake up the mind jar, and in the mind jar, there's little bits of anger. Little bits of... Oh, just real excitement. Little bits of disappointment. little bits of stories about, oh, someone pushed me. Little bits of, oh, someone did a mean thing to me, and now my mind is holding on to that mean thing. And so then what Grandpa and Moody Cow do is they put those things in the mind, and then they put it down, and they let it settle. Just sit for a moment and see what happens.

[04:29]

Now there's still a couple of kind of pesky ones that are still not... Some things take a long time to settle down. So it helps sometimes to observe the mind settling by bringing your attention to your breathing. I think just about everyone here can do this, which I call nose and tummy meditation, which means you put one hand at your nose, right under the nostrils, and the other hand on your tummy, and we just for a moment, feel what the breath feels like when it comes in the nose and it comes across your finger coming into the nose. What does it feel like? And what does it feel like with your hand on your tummy when the breath comes in?

[05:43]

And when the breath goes out, when the breath comes out at your nose, what does it feel like? the breath goes out of your body, what does it feel like in your tummy? Do you feel some movement? So just pay attention for one half a minute when the breath comes in and when the breath goes out. and then you can report back. So I wonder, can anyone tell me, do you notice a difference

[06:59]

When you feel it with your finger, do you notice a difference with the breath coming in and going out? I hear some people discussing it here. Yeah? Yeah? Do you notice a difference? What did you notice? Feels kind of what? Relaxing. It feels kind of relaxing when you do that? Okay. Yeah. It does for me too. But I can tell it doesn't feel relaxing for everyone. Did anyone notice that when the breath comes in, it's cool? You noticed? Yeah, you noticed. Yeah. And did you notice when the breath goes out?

[08:02]

No, there's a hand up over there. Yeah? Yes. That's right. When you breathe in, your tummy moves. Yeah. When you breathe out, your tummy moves. You've noticed that. That's wonderful. Yeah. Yes? When you breathe out, the air is hot? Yeah. It's warm. Someone says warm, someone says hot. You notice anything else about it? It's warm. When you breathe out, your breath is warmer. And do you notice it's also a little bit wet? Did anyone notice that when you breathe out? You notice that? It's a little moist. Warm and moist. Yeah?

[09:03]

You notice that? Yeah. Okay. I think that's really important to notice that. Because it tells you that inside your body is water. And every time you breathe in, you're receiving a kind of invisible food. Kind of invisible food in the air. It actually comes into your body. And when you breathe out, You're also, with the air, for the food to be received in your lungs, food in the air, which we call oxygen, to come into your lungs, you have to have moisture in your lungs so that the air can move into your blood. And then the moist air, when you breathe out, is conveying what you don't need in the air, back to the air, and also moisture. So even if you're just breathing, after a while you need to drink a glass of water.

[10:08]

Or have some tea. Or have some orange juice. Something like that. Anything you can drink. What were you going to have to drink at your barbecue? Don't know? Yeah. So I just want to remind everyone to have a drink of water. And also to stop every once in a while and just check out with your tummy and your nose and see what it's like. Okay? And I do recommend the book Moody Cow Meditates. Okay? So maybe the littler ones can go out and have some activity. It's a beautiful day. And the rest of us will regroup and continue.

[11:14]

Okay? Thank you. Thank you for listening. All right. You get to go. Do you need those for your dharma talk? Not anymore. It might not come back to sleep. It doesn't have to come back at all, whatever, yeah. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Bye bye.

[12:19]

Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. People who need a seat, please come forward. There's some seats available up here on the front. Okay, it looks like that's it for the seats in front.

[13:33]

But people can sit on the... We permit sitting on the meal board these days. So it's good to have the young generation in here. The youngest. And it's also good to have older ones. which points to the teaching of impermanence, points to the teaching of change. It's a fundamental observation in Buddhist teaching that things, whatever we call things, phenomena, whatever seems to appear and take some form of existence is subject to change.

[14:42]

So I'm recently thinking quite a bit about the impermanence of human life because of several deaths that have occurred in San Francisco Zen Center, Sangha. Maybe most of you know about. Yesterday at City Center, we did a funeral service in the afternoon for Jerome Peterson. Jerome used to reside here at Green Gulch for a while and at Tassajara and then lived out his last, I don't know, a couple of decades at City Center in San Francisco. So we honored him yesterday with a funeral service in the city. And then we have one of our other teachers, Darlene Cohen, who recently died. And we will have memorial service for here on a Friday afternoon in February the 25th. And I think our oldest member, Lou Hartman, died recently.

[15:57]

forget the dates, but just a couple of weeks ago. And in March sometime we'll have another memorial service for Lou, mid-90s. And I talked to my daughter, actually, who grew up partly here at Green Gulch, and she's 34 now. And I told her Lou Hartman died, and she said, Lou was always old. And I've mentioned to some of you also that my mother, who's 90, just went into hospice a couple of days ago in Kansas. And she's being well taken care of, but I'm going to fly out there tomorrow and visit for a few days.

[17:04]

So because of these recent, we can say passing, we can say death, we really don't know. Except it may even be joining. Joining the majority. but we do know that all of us are subject to impermanence. So in Buddhist practice, traditionally, there is what's called the five remembrances. Those of you who know the story of Shakyamuni Buddha's decision to study suffering was prompted by a recognition of old age, that there is old age, and that there is illness, ill health, and that there is death.

[18:12]

So those three recognitions were prompting him to take a deep look at the nature of existence. and the nature of how we experience distress. And then he was inspired by seeing someone else who was cultivating their own mind, cultivating a way of acting with some dignity in the face of these distressing changes. So the first three of the five remembrances are that I myself am subject to old age and I can't escape it. I myself am subject to ill health and I can't escape that. And I myself am subject to death and I can't escape that.

[19:18]

And furthermore, the fourth is that all things, all things and all the ones that I love, are all subject to change, fundamentally not stable. And the fifth remembrance, then, is that what is the ground of my life has to be in the midst of change. The ground of my life actually has to be in action, in how I behave. And what I choose to do, how I choose to take care of this life in the midst of change. So how I choose to do it points to practice or activity. And what we emphasize in Zen is practice.

[20:21]

What's a good word for it? It's not practice... as if we're getting ready for a performance but actually each action is an opportunity for cultivating cultivating a deeper awareness and that means to base one's action in this present moment awareness I want to read a little bit from The Dhammapada, very early Buddhist teaching. This is a translation recently done by my friend, Dharma brother, Gil Fronsdale. I'm following my own advice.

[21:24]

Drink water, yeah. If you breathe, you need to drink water. So the first lines of the Dhammapada, I'll read the first six verses. It goes like this. All experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind. Speak or act with a corrupted mind, and suffering follows as the wagon wheel follows the hoof of the ox. All experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind. Speak or act with a peaceful mind, And happiness follows like a never-departing shadow.

[22:29]

He abused me, attacked me, defeated me, robbed me. For those carrying on like this, hatred does not end. She abused me, attacked me, defeated me, robbed me. For those not carrying on like this, hatred ends. Hatred never ends through hatred. By non-hate alone does it end. This is an ancient truth. Many do not realize that we here must die. For those who realize this, quarrels end. So the deeper meaning of these simple verses requires much study. And in his commentary, actually, Gil mentions it's actually very difficult to translate the Pali, which is ancient language that this was written in.

[23:45]

So we say that the first lines are all experiences preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind. Experience here, actually the word is dhamma. The word is phenomena. The word is what we ourselves form in our conceptual experience based upon what arises in our senses. And then when you reflect on it, you realize that the mind may have some condition states already, and the condition states of mind affect how one receives, even how one perceives, and then how one receives and interprets one's experience. So the next verses point out that one can live in a state of blaming others

[24:57]

He abused me. He attacked me, cheated me, robbed me, hurt me, insulted me, dissed me, put me down, made me feel stupid, made me feel like I'm not really worthy. And that can be a pattern of thought then that is endless. So the practice of cultivating a little peaceful mind, of letting the little particles in the jar settle, gives a chance to clearly observe

[26:00]

more and more, what is actually happening in the mind. So this is a study, an ongoing study, and each of us is unique and each of us has our own experience, and each of us has our own, we say, karma, because previous actions, previous thoughts, and here we also say that thoughts are actions of the mind, Condition what's happening in the present. So if you want the Packers to win the Super Bowl this afternoon, and they don't, you may feel disappointed. You may be looking at who to blame, the quarterback, the coach, If you want the Steelers to win and they win, you might feel elated.

[27:09]

If you put money on it, that may increase the preconditions of your mind, right? In other words, when you put money, we say you put your money on it, then, of course, that raises the ante, right? Raising the ante means that you're actually more unstable, right? It's like building up, putting more and more little heads above your own, right? So then what happens up there when it falls off, oh, I'm attached to it, so I fall over. I can be very disappointed, and I can set it up, actually, so that there's a good chance I'll be disappointed. I don't know, maybe no one here is interested in the Super Bowl. I wonder if anyone here is putting money on the Super Bowl.

[28:19]

Are you willing to raise your hand? No? No one? Yeah, someone? I know some people who have. I know some people who really get into it and, you know. place bets on the point spread and make a dozen different wagers. So that means there's a lot of excitement about what happens. That excitement about what happens can actually be a study in itself. But you don't need to put your money on the Super Bowl. to really be excited about what happens. What happens is already in place or in play. The big game is already going on. The Super Bowl is happening right here in this room.

[29:20]

The real Super Bowl. The real Super Bowl is what's happening in what we say is inconceivable reality. So much is happening that we can't even grasp it. But we can respect it. And we can study how we interfere with seeing what's happening. Sometimes that's the best we can do, is study how we interfere with what's happening. So holding on to a particular stream of thought and believing that is a form of interference. A form of interference of seeing what is. What is happening right now in this body? What is happening right now in this mind? So much, right?

[30:24]

So we do have the practices of stopping. practice of stopping so that the mind can settle. Someone gave me a news clipping. This was in the Chronicle Thursday. Many of you may have seen it. The San Francisco Chronicle had an article on Alabama prisons having a meditation program. And so this is a prison outside of Birmingham, Alabama. It's a prison that has had a history of a lot of conflict within the prison. And they've started having a course in meditation, in Vipassana, insight, meditation.

[31:29]

And the warden here is quoted by saying he doesn't understand how it works. But he knows it does. He doesn't understand how this meditation practice can transform violent inmates into calm men. But he knows it works. So he says, this is a quote, he says, it works. We see a difference in the men and in the prison. It's calmer. So, you know, the article goes on to quote various, quote the warden and to quote some other people. One of the inmates said, I had a lot of anger, and this has given me a way to deal with it. So for me, that resonates because I have, myself, had a lot of anger.

[32:41]

Now I can laugh. One of my teachers, I've told this story a few times, one of my teachers was Harry Roberts. Harry was... California but he was he was trained in the Yurok on Native American shamanic tradition up on the Klamath River but he was here as an advisor for us in the 70s and but he was in poor health most of that time and couldn't really get around that much but but I was walking across what's in front of what's now the shop over in that part of Green Gulch, and he was sitting in his pickup truck about where the stop sign is now. And I looked over and I saw Harry, and he gestured for me to come over.

[33:44]

And I came over and I said, what is it? And he said, why are you walking like you're angry at your mother? I said, I'm not angry. I wasn't noticing being angry. And he said, the way you put your feet on the earth looks like you're angry at your mother, the earth. So since then, I've been paying more attention to how I've place my feet on the earth. Sometimes I'm more aware of it than others. But with the thought of this earth itself is supporting this life.

[34:45]

This earth and all of the elements, the air, the water, the plants, are supporting this life. And if I am paying attention I actually want to be in accord. I actually want to respect that and appreciate that. And it took a long time for me to realize that for me to not be angry, I had to be at peace with the tension I felt in my own chest and the tightness I felt in my own throat when things would come up and bother me. An interesting phrase, right? Things would come up and bother me. People would say something that would bother me. Or they wouldn't even have to say something. They could just look at me wrong. Maybe they don't like me.

[35:51]

And then I said, well, I didn't do anything. That's not fair. So taking up the practice of stopping and being willing to just know now, what's the experience right now is, oh, it's simply this residue, this residue of tension in my body from old thoughts that I don't even need to have anymore. I don't necessarily need to perpetuate. I begin to realize that The tension in this body is okay, actually. It needs to be felt. The pain of this moment, this suffering, actually needs to be felt. Just as it is. I may not even understand it. I may not be able to explain it.

[36:54]

That's okay. Because this present moment is the only real life How easy it is for me to be dwelling on some past injury. Present injury I can deal with. Maybe, you know. I remember the Dalai Lama actually gave some talks here in 1979 or 80, something like that. One of his first trips to America. He wasn't as popular then. He wasn't as well known, you know. So there weren't as many people in the room as there are now for this talk. Someone asked him, well, what do you do if someone is coming at you and they're going to hit you? He said, run.

[38:03]

So very practical, actually. So in the present moment, to just respond. Sometimes it means stepping out of the way. But then not to dwell upon what was that person thinking? And who are they anyhow? And the next time I see them, I'm going to get, you know, pretty soon you can get into a whole series of thoughts, right? Somehow, somehow I've been injured and now I'm going to, you know, you can develop that, right? Or you can stop and say, oh, still alive. What a gift. I stepped out of the way of the bus. and I'm still alive.

[39:05]

Or it just clipped me a little bit and now I'm injured and now I need to take care of the injuries. Sometimes injuries can be very severe. But as long as one is alive, the first task is to take care, immediately take care right now. What needs attention? See if you can be present, fully present and see it clearly And then you know, okay, what's the response? So in order to... Just about out of time. In order to bring forth the resources that can help... I do recognize that it's helpful to have the practice of kindness.

[40:10]

Practice of kindness for oneself, one begins to see clearly that the experience that is happening right now in this body or this mind can be more clearly seen if I bring a kind, benevolent attention to it. In other words, I'm not trying to push it away. I'm not trying to make it be something else. I'm willing to not turn away from it. So I just want to invite you to find times in your day and sometimes you may need to create a strategy for when you are reminded to stop and give yourself full attention so that you actually can fully attend to what's happening right now in your own body and mind.

[41:13]

It's a way of being generous with yourself. And if you can do that with yourself and say, you know, everything that's arising in this field of awareness is welcome. Even if it's painful, even if normally I would think it shouldn't be here, it's welcome. It's welcome because it is here. It's welcome because everything that's already happened in the infinite universe has produced this right now. as it has produced this moment of awareness, so that all of the billions of brain cells and molecules are able to come together in this wonderful miracle of awareness.

[42:25]

So as awareness happens, awareness meets the whole universe that is producing this field of awareness and because I understand that I welcome it welcome it doesn't mean I evaluate it welcome it means that I simply am willing to be present with it and give yourself a moment like that a moment of being willing to be present with whatever arises And then you can see, okay, is there something I can do to help? Is there some part of my body that needs a little help? Is there some part of my mind that needs a little help? Is there someone else that I know who needs a little help? But I don't know how to help them unless I actually see them, if I'm willing to be with them.

[43:33]

So with my mother recently, a lot of people have been trying to help her live. And she's been trying to decide it's time to die. It's really her decision. And she's, I think, doing a pretty good job of it. Realizing now, I don't want more medical interventions. I'm actually willing to just see what happens. Just to take care of the needs of the moment, and realize that the situation is changing. Realizing that I am impermanent. Realizing that this existence is only possible because it's supported by so many, myriad things coming together. And at some point, they don't come together in that same way.

[44:39]

So then what is healthy is also to die. What is healthy is to be born, to be a child. What is healthy is to grow up. What is healthy is to respond to all the influences and again and again come back to this moment, this moment. What is it? This moment is the only moment where I can truly live. So I notice that the things that I'm holding on to, or the things that I'm imagining that I want, can be released. So it is a wonderful world. Maybe we should sing it. Many of you know the song.

[45:48]

And with apologies to Louis Armstrong, I just want to... At the end of the song, when we sing it, there's the words, Oh, yeah. So even if you don't know the song, you can really join in on the, Oh, yeah. Let's see. I see trees of green, red roses too, flowers bloom for me and you. And I say to myself, what a wonderful world. I see sky of blue and clouds of white The bright blessed day and the dark sacred night.

[46:54]

And I say to myself, what a wonderful world. The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky, are also in the faces of the people going by. I see friends shaking hands, saying, how do you do? They're really saying, I love you. I hear babies cry. I watch them grow. They'll learn much more than I'll ever know. And I say to myself, what a wonderful world. Yes, I say to myself, what a wonderful world.

[48:01]

Oh, yeah! Thank you for listening and thank you for singing. 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.

[48:41]

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