... [...] Thank you. ... [...]

[04:07]

Thank you. Good morning. Can you help me? My clock now says noon. Whenever I set it down, it resets. So I try to hold it very gingerly. Thank you so much for making the trip out on a beautiful day to Green Gulch Farm.

[05:20]

And thanks to those logging in to join in the Dharma Talk here at Green Gulch in this room. Some people have been sitting for a few days. I've been worried about you all. Timo's very capable hands. Timo, thank you for leading this session. Our plan had been to lead it together, but I had to withdraw. And I'm grateful and honored to at least be able to join a little bit by offering some words of encouragement for our practice this morning. So these days I've been feeling the sashin happening here in the barn while I've been busy nearby and I've been frustrated at the limitations of my life that I can't be in sashin.

[06:46]

I've noticed this thing that life doesn't go how you want it to go. And I continue to be alarmed. And what's the word? Appalled? Or dismayed? That things are not going well. and that there's limitations. Suzuki Roshi has this teaching that I've mauled for a long time and I'm starting to appreciate, although I wouldn't put it this way. He says, you know, when we're practicing Zen, when you are practicing Zen, you are the boss of everything. It's like when you're practicing Zen, you are welcoming exactly everything as it is and engaging and intimate and alive with everything exactly how it is.

[08:03]

You can't imagine it going any better or any different. Everything is going your way because you have no agenda for how it should be going. A little bit of a trick, but anyway, he tries that trick. You're actually in charge. You actually set this whole thing up. But there is a way, you know, when we just release our need for it to be going some other way, whether it's a big different way or just a subtle different way, we can feel like everything is sort of going according to plan. So I've been grumbling about not being in Sashin. Frustrated with my limitation. And meanwhile, all of you have been, who have been sitting, have been frustrated, I expect, by your limitation of being in the Sashin. You know, you see me, see me driving out maybe with my kids, you know, say, oh, that must be so nice.

[09:11]

It's not bad, actually, you know, windows down, beautiful day, but you all are stuck a little while longer. So I wish I had your limitation and you wish you had my limitation. Does that sound familiar? Do you know what I mean? There's this way. Let's see if I can articulate this, but I think it's important to mention. Well, if you had my limitation... you would want your limitation back. And if I had your limitation, I would want my limitation back. In fact, I am you with my limitation. And you're me with your limitation. That's just what we actually are. If I had the conditions that you have, I actually do right now. That's called you.

[10:14]

And you have the limitations I have. And that's called being me. So we are always in some limitation. And I've noticed that, and I've heard the teaching that, and I've noticed that we're always sort of chafing in some level at the limitation in which we find ourselves. We're trying to wiggle free of something all the time. of why we sit still in our meditation practice we sit upright like not trying to slip out of anything here and we sit still so we can really welcome whatever's here to sort of pause the trying to wiggle out from one limitation into the next we have this idea like there's somewhere without limitation

[11:27]

But the only way life comes is in a limitation. So there's this kind of resistance or chafing or friction that I've been noticing kind of existentially between me and my being alive. And it's there when I'm, you know, really railing against the conditions And it's there in Buddhism. You know, people say Buddhism is kind of a downer. It does invite us. You know, even when you're having a really good time, you're kind of not. Because there's this little bit of friction. You know, you're sitting in the cloud. You know, you're lying in the grass and the sun. And this little bit of like, oh, the cloud's going to come. When it's something we don't like, the friction is like trying to get out of it. When it's something that we like and we have. The friction is, ah, can I just keep it a little bit?

[12:38]

We have on my altar, have this little gold, thin kind of gold foil thing with some Chinese characters, and it says on it, live smoothly. I love that. I don't know what the... I don't know what that means exactly, but I find it, you know, I say it to myself, just live smoothly. Why not glide, you know? Why not glide? We're in the limitation anyway. Is it helping the catching and grabbing and pushing? Is that helping? That's sort of the offer, the question that Buddhism is posing. So this friction is called dukkha or the kind of fundamental dissatisfaction that we have that the Buddha diagnosed and that we have as living beings, as human beings at least.

[13:49]

And that this dissatisfaction is present and is alienating us and separating us. And then the ways that we sort of unwisely and unskillfully try to heal or to get over this dissatisfaction end up causing all the violence and chaos and devastation in our own lives and in our shared world. We don't feel good and we're trying to get out of it. So then we enter something like a sashin and it's just all about limitation. even down to like how you're supposed to hold your hands. Everything is, you're in this container or in this limit and it's artificial, but it's just like we are now in a limitation. You know, whether you've been sitting here for a few days, whether you're just arriving, you know, the doors are not locked, but you're kind of agreeing to be limited for a while.

[14:53]

Like you maybe thought it was a good idea to come in, but now that you're in, you're sort of like, hmm. And it's going to be awkward to get out. You know, there's people around me. So you sort of have embraced or you have this opportunity to surrender for a little while until my clock says 12. Surrender for a little while. Find the ease for a little while in the limitation that you have. And so that's kind of Zen practice. Take a posture. let that posture limit you, and then see if you can find the freedom, find your own life, not by getting free of that limitation, but right within the limitation. Suzuki Roshi talks about this, our Zen Center founder, Suzuki Roshi, talks about this way of practice a lot, that we always want some vast space, we always want to be free, but really what we need to learn is to find our freedom within limitation it's a wonderful chapter where he says so I don't talk about the whole universe or some mysterious experience but just about finding yourself in a small room or in the strict practice of formal zen where we say you should cross your legs in just this way

[16:22]

under this kind of limitation you will find yourself your real self is there but because you discuss whether this room is good or bad big or small you lose your real room before you discuss and before you are caught by discrimination or thinking mind it is your own real room so to find true joy under some limitation, is the way to realize the whole universe. There is no other way for us to get an approach to the whole universe. When you exist right here, the whole world makes sense to you. The whole universe makes sense to you before you think about it. It is important to give up your foolish discrimination or foolish ideas of freedom. This is the way of practice. So to find true joy, under some limitation is the way to realize the whole universe to stop trying to slip free of what's enclosing us of our limitation and find it right there in the middle of that the whole universe true freedom

[17:51]

Not a foolish idea of freedom that imagines we could have our life somehow free of limitation, but real freedom, which sounds like welcome. Welcome. Free to welcome whatever it is. What could break that freedom? One of the Sushin participants was appreciating to me that Timo's offering that surrender. How does that word sound? Surrender. Do you feel the grasping or pushing away or indeterminate? Those are the three feelings. Surrender. Maybe we're worried, you know, who's asking? Who's asking me to do that? But it's your own heart. How about the one that's coming from your own heart? The surrender, not that someone is asking you to do, but that your own heart is. Wondering, could we just stop fighting how our life is?

[18:59]

Please? That little call from our heart. Just surrender. That he said surrender is wholeheartedness. The way to be wholeheartedly in our life is to surrender to our life. Did you say that, Timon? Something like that? Somebody heard it. You might think, well, to surrender to these conditions, to surrender to my limitation is like to be defeated and to be small and to lose my energy. But the sense of surrender, welcome, as the ground for this wholeheartedly living. We're not trying to get free anymore so we can just fully be, fully meet what's right here. Whether that's, I have to be in Sashin or I don't get to be in Sashin. A good way to do this, you know, is to breathe out.

[20:06]

To breathe all the way out. And I'm just letting everything go. All that resistance, all that trying, all that manipulation. All that being someone. just let it fade away as you exhale. And then keep exhaling a little bit. And there is the perfect calmness of your mind. This is with Hiroshi's words. Just past the end of that exhalation, that surrender, release. is the complete calmness. And then from there, very naturally, an inhalation comes.

[21:15]

We're brought to life by an inhalation that comes after we surrender. and we realize, oh, I am held, I am given life. Surrendering, we see how supported we are by everything. When we're busy making and doing our life, we are not so clear about how we're receiving our life. So Suzuki Roshi says, rather than trying to be active, or kind of make our life happen, if we can be calm and fade into emptiness on this exhalation, then naturally we will be all right. Buddha will take care of us.

[22:21]

Because we have lost our mother's bosom, we do not feel like her child anymore. Yet fading away into emptiness on the outbreath can feel like being at our mother's bosom. and we will feel as though she will take care of us. So surrendering, we find ourselves in the lap of the Buddha. Something is taking care of us. So this is our practice of zazen or shikantaza. We just sit, surrendered, in Buddha's lap, welcoming each thing just as it is, radiating through that welcoming, Buddha's love. You can try that any time.

[23:24]

It sounds like welcome. And saying welcome, feeling the welcome to the sound of the bird, and the sensation and the way the light is right now. Behind that little welcome that we offer is the big welcome that we are resting in in Buddha's lap, holding us. And there's no friction, no resistance. just surrender into the gift of life that's living us. So I was listening recently with my son to this audio documentary by someone named Annika Harris.

[24:30]

This cool documentary, it's called Lights On. It's about consciousness. When you're not in Sashin, you get to do stuff like that. she was describing a conversation she had with her friend about their shared experience of kind of growing up as a human being. And there's this expression of being one of the trippy kids. And so she or her friend described it like this, and I loved these sentences. She said, when the adults were teaching us all that stuff about how to brush our teeth and get dressed and go to school, all the day-to-day stuff, we were the ones thinking, okay, but is anyone ever going to acknowledge or explain this insane situation we're in? That we're here and alive and experiencing all of this? What is this place? Sounds like maybe you know what she means.

[25:35]

Is anyone going to mention? I'm like already eight, you know, and no one has mentioned, this is crazy. What is happening? Where did this come from? How come I can't like get my handle, I can't get a grasp on what this being alive is. It's the most obvious thing happening. No one's talking about it. And now I'm getting in it too. I'm brushing my teeth and figuring out how to do the clothes right and go to school. And then I'm starting to not notice or acknowledge even to myself, like, hey, by the way, what? This miracle, ungraspable, boundless, impossible, unknowable, and just started, you know? So I think that's why we come together here, you know, to Zen Center.

[26:45]

I think religious practice, you know, true religious practice is just a place where we can come together and just acknowledge this. It's worth the drive, you know, or it's worth the time to log in just to say, I don't care if it's a good talk or a bad talk. I just want to be around some people who are saying like, yeah, right? It's crazy. She says, you know, acknowledge or explain. I don't know about that part, the explain part, but to acknowledge together. It's so hard to get it. It's so hard. You know, this fact of being alive is so hard to get a grip on. We can't really take it as an object because it's us. It's just everything, you know? So it's really hard to acknowledge, actually, like we would acknowledge a regular kind of thing. It's hard to interact with the fact that we're alive.

[27:49]

It's much easier to interact with our problem or our limitation or the thing we like or don't like, the content, the foreground, the thing that's happening. It's kind of hard to acknowledge, to feel into the background of this fact that we're alive. So what's so cool about religious... practice in my view my experience is that we sort of take this very hard thing to acknowledge and we put it into a statue and we put it on the altar you know we're not really separate from it but now it's on the altar so we get to offer incense to it and bow to it you know and write stories about it and talk about it we kind of objectify it so that we can venerate it So we brushed our teeth this morning and got dressed, and then instead of going to school, we just circle up to acknowledge that we're here alive.

[28:56]

And sitting, sitting meditation is so wonderful. Breathing all the way out, letting the in-breath come all the way in, and just letting that fight with the limitations, letting that manipulation and absorption in the content of our life, sort of quiet and fade, and the background picture, how the light is, you know, and the fact that there's light, what the sound is, and the fact that there's sound, sensation. just becomes a little more present, you know, to us. So today is Mother's Day.

[29:58]

Happy Mother's Day. Mothers. Those present and absent. And congratulations, children of mothers. on loving a mother in some way. Or aspiring to, if not quite there yet. My own mom is very present for me. She died almost exactly six months ago. I think. I'm pretty sure that she died. It was there. And then I was there when she was cremated. I'm still not totally sure. Maybe you know what I mean. So she was one of these adults like Annika Harris was describing who, you know, taught me to brush my teeth and to get dressed and to go to school.

[31:08]

And she also wasn't the type that would say, you know, by the way, this is totally insane and we know that. That wasn't her way. But while she taught me to brush my teeth and get dressed and go to school, she taught that she lifted up that there is a point, there's a point to our being here. There is a way to be in this life, and that is love. So that the point is to walk in this world with love and care. So she taught this and embodied it. I think that there's... I don't want to say there's too...

[32:22]

kinds of kids exactly there's two aspects of the fundamental question of being a human being I think so my mom wasn't so much asking what is this insane situation that we find ourselves in she was asking how how shall we live and So some kids may be saying, you know, when is anyone going to acknowledge this insane situation? The kind of wisdom, that's sort of the question of wisdom. The wisdom question. It's like, what's going on here? And then there's the compassion question. The compassion question is, how come I get to brush my teeth and go to school when so many...

[33:25]

Other people don't get to brush their teeth and go to school. What is with all of this deep suffering in the world? And how can we heal that? You know that question? That's a really good question. If you had to pick, you know, between the wisdom question and the compassion question, let's go for the compassion. But they support each other. I just want to say a little bit about that. We don't have to pick between the loving heart and the awestruck heart. When we quiet down... I think what's so powerful about thinking back to this little kid who's... naturally loving and naturally responding with love and compassion to the suffering of beings, that kind of innocence, or the kid who's wondering, what's going on here?

[34:40]

That reminds us that these are present in our own heart now. This isn't like Zen is telling you you should care about people and Or Zen is asking you to wonder about what being alive is. It's, do you remember? Do you remember how you really don't know and how it really matters to you? This natural question of our own heart. What is this? And how shall I live? I want to just take a moment, you know, these two aspects, these two parts of our heart, the wisdom question and answer and the compassion question and answer. You know, wonderfully in the Chinese word path, you know, way, Tao has both of these aspects.

[35:51]

On the one hand, it's the truth of existence is the way. It's like the reality of things. And it's the path, the way to be in the world. So what is the world and how to be in the world? Those are both expressed in this word path. And they're right here together. When we take care of one, are we taking care of the other? So just like, you know, as we sit, we rock one way. And the other way, in order to make sure that we're centered, I thought we could just do a brief checkup on these two chambers of our heart, the wonder and the love. Our Zen practice, our seated meditation, nourishes both of these and blossoms both of these and fully expresses, actually, already both of these.

[36:54]

We do a little wonder checkup, lean into the wonder. Our Chan ancestor Hongjer says, you know, silent and still, opening our eyes, this wonder is restored to quiet and forget for a moment or for a breath our involvement in things and touching directly this feeling of being alive

[38:12]

the sort of strangeness or ungraspability of it. The way that it's not clear, you know, what it is or where it is. Not so clear what's inside it, what's outside it. What is this thing? What is this being alive? Who am I? What is this? You settle into this kind of inquiry, you know, you may have a little fear, it's not so unusual.

[39:16]

I'm not sure I want to let go in that way. So to restore some wonder in our life, part of why we sit, may you find that in your sitting and your walking, not knowing. our ancestor Bodhidharma, couldn't even say his own name. Who we are, what we are. Any wonder registering? Okay, so that's one piece to nourish and cherish and care for.

[40:22]

What is this insane situation? And then the second chamber of the heart, you know, the second aspect of this Zen practice is how am I walking this path of being alive? Okay. How is my love? Thank you to those who are tending to the temple by leaving the hall from the frying pan into the fire. Oh, that looks nice, right? They get to leave. But they're probably saying, oh, we have to leave. It's crazy, right? All day long, we can live like this, never noticing our life and never touching our loving heart. So the point of being here is to touch this wonder and then to touch this love, this innocent, natural, innate, loving heart.

[41:26]

Just feeling that and practicing that through the loving welcome for whatever's here, especially if it's a little difficult, you know. there's a little bit of unpleasant sensation a little bit of knottedness in our body or our heart to welcome to find that loving tender natural welcome and reconnect with that wish to be tender and more important, really, while we're here in this unknowable life than to just love each thing that arises. Remember? Was there something more important than that? Remember why? What was it?

[42:38]

It was more important than just loving what's here, walking with love and tenderness and kindness. breathing with love and tenderness and kindness. That natural call of our heart to live in that way. When our zazen practice, these two aspects come together I want to end with another teaching from Suzuki Roshi about the practice of zazen as a mother's practice, a practice of a kind of motherly love that's intimate and awestruck and tender.

[43:42]

This is both sides of the body in balance. Both chambers of the heart fully expressed. He says, a mother will take care of her child even though she may have no idea how to make her baby happy. Similarly, when you take care of your posture and your breathing, there is a warm feeling in it. So we put emphasis on warm heart, warm zazen. The warm feeling we have in our practice is, in other words, enlightenment or Buddha's compassion, Buddha's mind. It is not a matter of just counting your breath or following your breath. The point is, while inhaling and exhaling, to take care of the breath

[44:50]

Just as a mother watches her baby, if a baby cries, the mother is worried. That kind of close relationship, being one with your practice, is the point. You don't know what your baby is. but you're right there with it. You don't know how to take care of it, but you're right there with it. You don't know what your breath is, but you're intimate, right there with it, not knowing, loving. That kind of close relationship, that intimacy, that's the medicine for this friction. this resistance we have to our limitation, to our life as it's appearing, as it's arising in us.

[45:56]

How about instead of chafing and resisting, we take this limitation, this sensation, this feeling, this thought, and not knowing what it is, with wonder becoming intimate, and caring for it. I think that's a good way to live. Good way to take care of this natural love that is what we are and this insane mystery that we find ourselves in. This is our practice of sitting and our practice of working and our practice of walking to say welcome.

[46:58]

I don't know you to each thing. Thank you so much for your kind attention. is that by diligently sincerely allowing this these aspects of our heart to actually guide us what would that be in your life in my life to be so in touch with that awe in our heart and so in touch with that innate love in our heart that whenever we had any problem or any question or any doubt That would be our guide.

[47:59]

Wouldn't that be wonderful? Why not? Just surrender to that awestruck and loving heart for the benefit of everyone. Since it's the Sheen, I'll close now and some of you will return to Zazen. Others will find your difficulty elsewhere. May we all live smoothly, because really, why not? Thank you.

[49:23]

... [...] I didn't understand myself, but I didn't bring myself to the world. I didn't think I was able to do this to me and then. I didn't think I was able to do this. [...]

[50:19]

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