Good morning. Today is a one-day sitting, and it's also the beginning of our summer intensive. So I was asking myself, what's an intensive? What's intense about it? What is it that's intensified? In a way, this talk is my answer to those questions. A couple of days ago, on Thursday, I was at St. Anthony's Diner. I was taking a group of chaplain interns down to the Tenderloin to introduce them to life therapy. And in particular, to introduce them to the activities of St.

[01:07]

Anthony's Foundation. An amazing, wonderful place that to me truly embodies the spirit of Francis, of generosity, of giving without questioning. And the diner really exhibits that on a daily basis. It serves about 2,600 people. Meals, lunches. And you just walk in and you're fed. No questions about why you're there or are you eligible or anything. If you come and you want to eat, you eat. And there was a person who was offering the interns orientation to the place. Brief history of And I've known this person for about 15 years. I was working with one program, and she was volunteering with an associated one, taking care of the elderly.

[02:13]

And then she became a volunteer at the Zen Hospice. And for about the last decade, she has worked at St. Anthony's. And she's now the volunteer coordinator. So that's what I did Thursday morning, and then I came back to City Center to attend a meeting, of which I do often. And then as sometimes happens in the dynamics of these meetings, it was myself and the co-abbit, Steve Stuckey, and we were with the group and The group was, in a kind but direct way, saying, and why did you do that? Why did you respond to this issue like that? What about this? And I noticed in myself that there was a lot of space.

[03:23]

There was a lot of space to both hold that questioning. Now, that's a good question. why did we not do this? Why did we do that? And it was kind of a pointed remark, you know, coming from several people in the group. And I noticed in myself a kind of spaciousness that could actually acknowledge and appreciate that perspective and the appropriateness of the sentiment while I disagreed with it. I didn't disagree with it. You know, that's wrong and I have a perspective that's right. More that I have a different perspective. I see another way of addressing this and relating to it. And as I hear you and I see my own perspective, I see how they're complementary.

[04:26]

And... And there's a certain pain for us in trying to find how these two fit together. Because it's not a theoretical issue. It's a real issue about someone's life. How is an institution we're going to respond to it. And as I noticed all this, I realized how deeply I'd been touched by what happened in the morning. How going to St. Anthony's, an organization I've had the good fortune to be involved with, one way or another, for many years, about 15. I realized how, what, the way in which that organization inspires.

[05:31]

informs me. What it teaches me about how to live. And it was very interesting because none of that was cognitive. It wasn't like I was at Sundance and I was thinking, yes, this is the right attitude. This is appropriate. It was more something underneath thinking. Something underneath attitudes underneath opinions like a deep remembering and then later it reminded me of a quote from poet Yeats, where he said, and so to live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even fiercer life because of our quiet.

[06:48]

And I think this is something of the intensity that we try to create in the intensive. Not so much that we formulate new and improved opinions, a clearer sense of right and wrong, of should and should not, but more that we touch something that we've always known, a disposition, a spaciousness, a form of engagement that holds perhaps opposing points of view, and discovers that they're not really opposing. There's a way in which they're complementary. They inform each other. A disposition that lets us address and relate to the vicissitudes of life that inclines it towards harmony rather than conflict.

[08:05]

And it is a position that reminds us, not so much as an ethical proposition, but more as a sentiment of the appropriateness of kindness. Not only its profound compassion, but its profound wisdom. But in giving, we receive something extraordinary. So for the next three weeks, a group of us will involve ourselves, we hope, involve ourselves in a way that will quicken this process.

[09:10]

that will bring forth a clearer, perhaps even fiercer way of being. And of course we're much too complex a creature, we're much too complex a being for this to be a simple linear process. As we settle We unsettle, or we settle into our unsettledness. Recently I was reading a talk by Katigiri Roshi, a Zen teacher who Suzuki Roshi asked to come over from Japan and help them develop Zen Center. And then Katigiri Roshi moved to Minnesota and started his own Zen Center. But in this talk, Katigiri Roshi was saying, that he felt like close to the heart of our being, there's a sense of, oh, close to, oh, no.

[10:29]

Close to, oh, this. It reminded me of another talk that Kategori gave. Close to his death, he died of cancer, kind of came on suddenly, and within six months he was dead. And close to his death, he gave a talk, and in that talk he said that when he listened carefully and quietly to what was underneath as he was moving rapidly towards death, he said it felt... like a silent scream. And it reminded me that at one point in my own life, I lived in seclusion in a very small monastery, and we all did intense concentration practice. We slept very little.

[11:32]

We meditated a lot. And I would have very A lot of fear, sort of fearful images. And then I discovered, to my amazement, and maybe to a sense of reassurance, that this was very common. That it was so common that the meditation teacher was aware of the varieties of imagery that this fear would take. Oh, you have that one. You're going to be devoured by a creature. Oh, yeah, right. It really struck me that our satellite

[12:36]

is an interesting proposition for us. You know, that we can settle and we can touch something beautiful about the human condition. Something noble. A spacious, generous acceptance. But in the very same passage, in the very same exploration, in the very same activity, we can bring to light, we can bring up more disquieting human responses. A sense of uneasiness, fear, anxiety. That also can perfume our response to the moment. Just as on Thursday afternoon I was fortunate enough to be dwelling in a kind of spacious acceptance.

[13:42]

We can dwell in a sort of constricted reactiveness. Maybe this is what Yates is talking about as he adds perhaps even a fiercer response. One of the things you discover as you continue the path of practice in Zen, and I suspect in many spiritual traditions, one of the things you discover is how to accommodate and relate to these kinds of disturbances. And as we do, it's enormously informative. enormously informative because we start to see and experience and feel the ways in which we act out this deep, this quiet.

[14:52]

You know, we can start to see how that deep-seated fear rises to the surface and expresses itself. push away that which we think might harm us. Or we pull away from that which we think might harm us. Sometimes with great bluster, with great energy, and sometimes just very subtly. We start to see how that anxiety can create own kind of distraction or uneasiness. In another school of Zen, Sota Zen, the primary catalyst we use in this intensifying is Shikantaza, just sitting.

[16:10]

In a way, we can say it's about intensifying what's already happening. But in another equally valid way, we can say it's already intense. And what it's about is noticing the waves that we're trying to dissipate it, trying to separate from it. So Shikantaza, just sitting, is cultivating the capacity, the intention, the willingness, the skillfulness to stay present and to let that intensity intensify. Both when it's glorious and magnanimous and spacious and when it's constricting and difficult and agitating. And to discover directly through our own experience what is the way of relating to a human life that can allow both of those, can allow both of those to inform us about who we are and how to live.

[17:44]

Yeah. To allow us to discover deeply we are the person that we are and that we are the human condition. No. There is no magic fix that can separate us from that and present us with a golden perfect love. However, as we settle, we will both be nourished our moments of opening and we will be deeply informed by our moments of contracting. So in our intensive to intensify our willingness our engagement and our dedication

[18:49]

to this process. And then we do that within a constructed environment. But if you think about it, our life is always a constructed environment. We set up routines. The natural consequence of In Zen practice, the challenge is how to let the constructive environment become alive. So sometimes we say, don't take it for granted. Let this moment be unique, original.

[19:52]

Meet it with original mind. Sometimes we say, engage it fully. Whatever you're doing, do it completely. And let that engagement ripen. Let that engagement cut through being spaced out, being distracted, so that the of the moment has its own vitality, its own purposefulness in being just what it is. It's not a means to something else. It's not something I'm doing while I'm waiting for something else to come. It's not something I'm doing in the hope to create something else.

[20:57]

But this moment has its own fullness, its own authority, its own completeness. And then an interesting aspect of structured environment is that what we do matters. Maybe help us all wake up. There's something about how you hold your body. There's something about how you breathe. How you direct your attention. There's something about how you move your body.

[22:01]

can stimulate awakeness. In Zen practice, there's a deep request that whatever way your body's in, whatever shape, that that posture is held with awareness. And it's an interesting process because the more you do it, the more it makes sense. The more you attend to your body, the more you discover how you're holding your body influences your state of mind, influences your dispositions. You can experiment. Walk around with your shoulders hunched and your head done. for an hour.

[23:07]

And then walk around with your head held up and your chest open. And just notice how it influences your disposition. It's extraordinary. In Hatha Yoga, postures that close the body are quieting and settling. Postures that open the body are enlivening. in broad terms, but in significant ways. Similarly, how we relate to activity, to objects. This is another part of the Zan heritage, you know. When you lift something, lift it with both hands, fully engage it. through the threshold.

[24:13]

Do it consciously. Do it deliberately. So how we relate enlivens the space. And the space enlivens the relatedness. It intensifies the involvement. And then also, continuity. In our more preferential way of being, usually we give attention to what we like, or what we think is important, or what we think is significant in terms that will help us get away from what we don't want. And then we tend to go to sleep.

[25:15]

We tend to space out. situations and states of being that we either don't consider consequential or we'd rather not be present for. So a continuity of attention. And this is also a very interesting process. There's something about continuity. that is an agent of discovery. Because the very things that we tend to turn away from, space out from, ignore, usually have a significance in our life. A significance that through ignoring them, we're not aware of.

[26:16]

One of the main lessons you learn when you start to meditate is how incredibly difficult it is to simply stay continuously present. You discover that you can space out, come back to awareness, and have no idea what was happening before you come back to that moment of awareness. We're so experts. at doing that. And so as we first start to practice this continuity of awareness, it can feel like a burden, an imposition. Like in some way, something's being imposed upon you. You're not able to be yourself. And the challenge is, To maintain your diligence about continuity of awareness without tightening, without starting to struggle.

[27:30]

To return to the basic notion of Shikantaza, spacious, open, settled, available, willing presence that can hold the sense of struggle. the sense of imposition, the sense of unease. So as we return to awareness from a moment of being spaced out, to do it as smoothly and gently as possible. This is a very helpful feature of maintaining awareness. Kadegari Roshi again. Kadegari Roshi said, this moment of returning, everything is forgiven. It has that kind of spirit to it.

[28:32]

There's no need for self-criticism. There's no need for recrimination. What has happened, has happened. This simple, powerful returning. And of course, you don't need to be in a formal setting to do this. You can do this anywhere. Walking in the park. Working at your job. But there is something intensifying about deliberately doing it, about taking on a deliberate posture and making it a dedicated, intentional activity.

[29:38]

And discovering something in that that you can then carry into everything else. The discovery within the formality and the carrying it into the informality, they both have a significant part of the teaching. In one way, in a common sense way, what would be the point of being totally present and then not knowing how to bring it into all the parts of your life? And then as you bring it into your life, start to notice where do I tend to space out under what kinds of conditions under what sorts of states of minds what sorts of mental emotional conditions tend to sweep me into unawareness and of course at first

[30:50]

We're just hovering around the edges. But as we persist, something starts, some light starts to penetrate the darkness. And sometimes it's extraordinarily slow. Sometimes it's hard to believe how long it takes us to learn certain lessons. Sometimes as you continue to practice, you notice something about yourself, and you just have to marvel that it took you so long to see what's now obvious. Sometimes as we continue to practice, there's a growing clarity about something maybe we've already seen about ourselves. just see it with a little more detail, or a lot more detail, if we're lucky.

[32:04]

And as we start to do this, we both make sense to ourselves, make more sense to ourselves, and we discover how to trust ourselves more. Because there's something about when we're in a reactive state There's something limited about that perspective. There's something limited about that compulsion to react, to come from a rigid place that we don't fully trust. Even though we may endorse it passionately, we don't fully trust it. As we continue, and we can see underneath the reactiveness, and we can see how the reactiveness, the contraction comes into being, quite literally it starts to teach us, it starts to suggest, it starts to request a different way of being.

[33:21]

And then from a Zen perspective, We're never done with this. This is a lifelong learning. So great patience. That was kind of Gary Roche's name. Dying in. Great patience. And in the midst of this, something is intensified. And sometimes it's confusing. It's not so obvious whether practicing and emerging yourself from practicing is making matters better or making them worse. Because the truth is, as you pay closer attention, All those things that you were so skillfully not attending to because they didn't sort of fit into how you've constructed the world.

[34:33]

Now they're there, living and demanding their place. Look, you're having this feeling. Look, you're caught in this way of looking at that. Sometimes it seems like it's an affront to our positive self-image. But from this place of growing trust, this kind of deeper trust that we develop, it's not because we have a more robust sense of our own perfection. that we've become more skillful at dealing with the human condition in all its shapes and forms. We've become more skillful in opening.

[35:36]

We've become more skillful in relating to contracting. We can see reactive mind. We can see magnanimous mind. We can see how they construct the world and define it. We can see how they come and they go. And we can see that this isn't unique to me, that this is the human condition. That we are all in this together. Which leads me to this poem. You're the field. I'm the tractor. You're the paper. I'm the typewriter. My wife, mother of my son, you're a song. I am the guitar. I'm the warm, humid night the sight's wind brings.

[36:41]

You're the woman walking by the water, looking across at the lights. I am the water. You're the drinker. I'm the passerby on the road. and you are the one who opens his window and beckons to me. You are China, and I'm Marzi Tong's army. You're a Filipino girl of 14, and I save you from an American sailor's clutches. You are a mountain village in Antolia. I am your city, most beautiful and most unhappy. You are a cry for help. I mean, you're my country. The footsteps running towards you are mine. So as we engage this inner work, quite naturally, quite organically, we discover we're not in it alone.

[37:52]

of the human condition and were part of all existence. And so this inner work becomes an outer work. That we realize that feeding ourselves is no different from feeding the hungry at St. Anthony's Diner. That they're the same act of nourishing. That to nourish one is to nourish the other. To nourish the other is to nourish this one. We discover an order, a way of being that in a way disorders a world based on a separate self.

[38:54]

A world that says, the most important thing is me. And what I want, and what I don't want. So in a way, the process of shikantaza takes us very deep into an inner work. And in another way, takes us beyond the self into a sense of greater being. As Dogen Sanji says, we forget the self. The marvelous, magical thing in what St. Anthony's diner is this. You have intense suffering.

[39:58]

You have intense poverty. You can see it on the people's faces who come there to eat. And then you have volunteers who are simply there to give. Without judgment. Without questioning. without reward. And when these two come together, something is intensified. Because we're all both, you know, as this poem says, you know, we're both sides of the equation. We all deeply feel the pain of our own sense of impoverishment.

[41:02]

We all have the capacity of generosity. And whichever side we're on, we can be nourished. Either side we're on, we can nourish. So Chikantaza, just sitting, sitting down and intensifying the life that's being already lived. Of course, we can adopt a methodology. You can cut your bras on the exhale or on the inhale and the exhale. You can pay attention to the pressure between the thumb tips. You can notice your thoughts.

[42:08]

You can release conflicting emotions on the exhale. You can open your eyes wide. You can gaze down at 45 degrees. And all these things are efficacious. All these things can be relevant in the process of discovering disposition of shikantaza, of just sitting. And the challenge for us is not to just stay busy in the details. The challenge for us is to see how the forms point to the formless. How the details of how we're intensifying are just an agent for what is inherently present for letting it be more apparent so in Zen terms Shikantaza is inherently a koan it's inherently a request to be fully present

[43:37]

and discover the intensity of life that's already happening. Beyond what we want it to be and what we don't want it to be. Only what we want it to be and what we don't want it to be. That profound request that we are capable of responding to That's the amazing thing. In the midst of our preoccupation with our selfishness, we are fully capable of this way of being. And things touch us the way my visit to St. Anthony's Diner touched me. How to let ourselves be undone by the intensity.

[44:51]

This is the spirit of Shikantaza. So for the next three weeks, a group of us will indulge in this endeavor. And for the rest of the day, a group of us will indulge, engage in this endeavor. And I'll just read this poem again. And of course, engaging this endeavor requires no special circumstance. No special activity. You. You're a field, and I'm the tractor.

[45:55]

You're paper, and I'm the typewriter. My wife, my mother, or my son. You're a song, and I'm the guitar. I'm the warm, humid night the sights wind brings. You're the woman walking by the water, looking across at the lights. I am water. You are the drinker. I am the passerby on the road. You are the one who beckons through his open window. You are China. I am Mao Zedong's army. You are a Filipino girl of 14. I save you from the American sailors' clutches. You are a mountain village in Anatolia. You are my city, most beautiful, and most unhappy. You're a cry for help. I mean, you're my country. The footsteps running toward you are mine. Thank you very much.

[47:02]

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