This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening, everyone. Can you hear me? Good. My name is Hakusho... Johan Astland, and I am the Tanto, Head of Practice here at Tassahara, and welcome to all guests, and a special thank you to an appreciation for all the students who've been working here this summer, particularly all of those who've been here for the full summer, going through this practice period of the Tazahara summer season together and there's something significant about staying to the end actually all the way to closing the gate practicing all the way so one practice which

[01:25]

hear regularly particularly during our monastic practice periods is uh that some students share way seeking mind talks uh share some details of what are the particular aspects or from their current position uh what what might have been the causes and conditions the particular uh the important ones that brought one to the practice at tasahara so i've had a few opportunities to give such talks during my time at San Francisco Zen Center but I kind of wanted to and it's interesting because they change each time so I wanted to amend or add a little bit because just recently this old memory came up to me pretty it was pretty clear, felt significant to share it This is going back to being in college in Sweden, which is where I'm from.

[02:30]

And a friend I had been studying with had a regular yoga practice and had offered a few classes to some of us studying together and got inspired enough to go and actually seek out a yoga teacher to take some yoga classes. And at that time, they weren't... yoga was not a popular practice in Sweden so I was studying in Sweden and I took the train over to Copenhagen to Denmark to practice yoga getting up several hours earlier than I normally did at that time in my life and I turned up and there was this yoga teacher, this little Italian woman with such a presence and just this ujjayi breath that It was like the whole room breathing. I was just struck by somebody so clearly so devoted to their particular practice.

[03:37]

And as she had been teaching us and instructing us a little bit, and I was quite challenged by the yoga, the stanga yoga she had offered. At one point, she included the... She said that I hope that you will let this practice transform you and that you, along with establishing a yoga practice, you will also allow for your life to change in other ways as well. And I just had this wholehearted whole-bodied yes. It came up so strongly in that moment. And it's only recently reflecting on it where... I'm thinking that was actually sort of the first significant call I can recall having felt and listened to and turning to practice. And I think what I think now is that that, yes, also was a big contributing factor for setting in motion as sort of a whirlwind of changes.

[04:56]

activity for the next nine or ten months and some of which especially brought me into Buddhist practice and in contact with the Buddhist teachings and there's a bit of a life crisis that I hit on as well that I had to try to find new ways to navigate and to try to meet. So I think that story is both a warning, be careful for what you wish for or invite into your lives and It's also an invitation for us to be open to change, to not try to be always the one who's in control of our lives and trying to steer things just the way we want. But I think when we step back and invite change, particularly if we have a... Buddhist practice or spiritual practice to allow that to transform us. Great miraculous things can happen actually.

[06:00]

I imagine many of you two have had some of these moments, some of these tugs where There's something being communicated to you that's not your rational mind. I think these happen probably more often than we're aware of, but often our awareness is too blunt to catch it, or we just discard it out of some ego-protective self-centeredness or rationalize it away. Again, I think actually making that trip for me, getting up those hours early and making the trip over to Copenhagen, that effort involved, it feels significant and my readiness showing up to have been a little knocked out of my little sleep deprived.

[07:22]

fatigue from the yoga to letting my defenses down a little bit so my call tonight is actually a call to let the fullness of the teachings and practices of liberation whether it's a Buddhist practice we have or a different one to really let them into our lives and to rather than to try to pick up some small section of our life. And if I do this, then I want this outcome. You have to not try to control where our practice might bring us. And we're living in a larger culture where there's a real tendency to equate time with money. highly value convenience.

[08:24]

Wanting to be in charge or have the sense that we are the boss in our life and dictate what happens to us. And also where we might value the outcome more than the activity that we're engaging in itself. We're always trying to get somewhere and that's really what we're focused on. So if we're approaching spiritual practice with those tendencies as well, we run the risk of falling into what's labeled Mac Mindfulness. It's this term of wanting some quick fix, something convenient that requires very little effort, is inexpensive, and it's available on any street corner. And one way I think which we counter that is we make practice more difficult than necessary, requiring a little bit of an extra effort.

[09:36]

One example is this robe that I wear, these priest robes. The practice is one sews them by hand, stitch by stitch, taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. So it's a big effort and a lot of work and that doesn't make from the sort of convenience when a quick results point of view it's not making a lot of sense and when we're asked to make this effort there's an opportunity for some kind of yes some resonance to arise within us to touch on something and I think it's hard to Somebody told me it might be 15,000 stitches in this. I don't know if it's true, but I think it doesn't make any sense to make all that effort if there isn't a yes that arises through the effort.

[10:41]

I also do... all these other rituals and ceremonies that we do that are similarly perhaps more complicated than from a rational, convenient mind. A scientific mind is not making any sense. So in order for it to really nourish us and sustain us, it challenges us to step into a different reality, a different way of looking at what we're doing and who we are in this world. So, as a child, again, growing up in Sweden, at that time, when I was going to school, I was real eager to learn. And at that time, it wasn't until I started eighth grade that we started receding grades. And sometime soon after that,

[11:55]

The way it impacted me as I remember it was that soon enough I basically started calculating to see how I could get through school with minimum effort and still come out with the grades that I needed. I didn't need the highest grade. If I went for the second one I could get there quite easily. So I found myself quite clever. I think school became less and less about learning and more about this coasting and getting by. And so just sharing that story now is not an argument about when children should receive grades in school or when not. It's because I think there's a real risk to approach spiritual practice in a similar way. kind of transactional approach.

[12:55]

If I'm putting this much in, I want this much back. And what if I put a little bit less in maybe? Or what if this really great thing that I want if I don't think I can get it? And I'll put a little bit less in and let's see where that will take me. often, if we're grabbed by these teachings and this practice, we might enter with a wholehearted effort, really pouring ourselves in, and sort of soon enough, these tendencies for what Shohaku Okamura calls the merchant mind, this, okay, I'm putting this much in, I want this much back, easily slips in, unless we're vigilant, and it's hard to catch it and see for what it is. If there's one thing I regret about getting caught and thinking I was outsmarting the system in school, it isn't necessarily about

[14:13]

what I wasn't learning from not putting that effort in, but it's about the lack of wholehearted engagement with my life that I missed. The only outcome being this satisfaction of feeling that I outsmarted the system somehow. And also actually cultivating that kind of greed and selfishness and just focusing on acquiring something rather than about the engagement. I was thinking about that and how it might translate to practicing a tasahara. I think when we're here in residence for a little while, sometimes it gets tempting to think that, oh, I can skip a few of these events that I'm expected for.

[15:29]

They'll still let me stay here and practice. I don't have to pour my whole self in every day. That's a lot. And there are a lot of expectations when one does come to practice here. To follow the schedule completely, you say. It's usually the first one. Stop and bow to each other when you meet on the path. Bow three times and recite the gatha at the bathhouse before you enter. Show up on time. Sign up to help clean the student bathrooms, etc., etc. There's a lot of things that are required of us. And it's easy to get sidetracked and to do well enough and sort of giving ourselves a bit of a pass. And even more so, I think the pit that's infinitely easier to fall into is that of actually showing up physically.

[16:43]

coming to the Zendo, sitting south and waiting for service, showing up for the talks and classes and all of this, but we're not really fully here. Our mind is running its usual course, and we're just sort of sitting through it. It's almost impossible to not fall in there over and over again. And so I was really inspired and struck by Zenju Earthly Manual's teaching. She was here a couple of weeks ago with her Sangha, the Still Breathing Sangha. And for their study, they were using Japanese nature poetry as part of their study and reading Basho and all these other poets. And one of the primary characteristics of these nature poems is that there's not a I mean mine in there.

[17:46]

The self has been removed. And Zenji was talking about meditation practice, the right effort aspect of meditation as getting the self out of the picture to stop our tendency to think that I'm driving this. It's different from just sitting there and letting your mind wander because it's still driven by the self, right? So there's a diligence and an effort there to be attentive and present, but it's not I'm doing Zasen. The Ancestors talks about Zasen doing Zasen. This is not being driven by a self. Our ancestor A. He Dogen says, take the backward step.

[18:49]

Bring ourselves to the cushion and we show up mindful of our body and our posture and our breathing and then to sort of relax that self that's engaging somehow as a koan. How to do that in our sitting practice and in our everyday life to not be engaging from this I may mine or try to soften it and see it when it's there. So, of course, there's a lot of places in life where one might have a lot of success with this self going forward with great effort and kind of force and pushing through. But if we're striving to wake up to the illusion of our separateness, how we're actually not this illusionary

[20:04]

nature of our self, of who we think we are, then engaging us with this sense of self, this identity, is counter to that outcome. Instead, rather than trying to counter this sort of gaining mind, to engage with the, okay, I want to be more awake, I want to be more relaxed, less stressful, I'm going to pick this up to, this is the change I want in my life, I'm going to give meditation a go and see if that brings it about, and if If I don't have any results in a few weeks, I will try something else.

[21:05]

So instead, the effort we're making is to actually try to stop ourselves from leading the way and finding the supportive conditions in which to kind of plant ourselves and then to relax and step back a little bit. So Zen meditation, Zen meditation in particular, I think, really cautious to teach it as a technique. There's sort of mechanics for bringing us something, or for eliminating some specific kind of pain. There's not much promises of that either, or achieving some special state of mind. And so if we're no longer trying to step back from this sort of ego-driven self leading the way, what else are the other resources, teachings to pull on?

[22:23]

Some of our ancestors, our Japanese ancestors today, Heidogen, Especially, I'd say, this is the phrase, Kano Doko, sometimes translated as mystical comedian, or... Inner felt resonance. Let's say that my... experience at the yoga studio was just my body talking to me or as sort of my Buddha nature, my awakened nature letting me know something that was true. Dogen says,

[23:37]

The aspiration for awakening arises in the mystical communion between Buddhas and sentient beings. It is not given by Buddhas or Bodhisattvas, it is not created by oneself, and it does not simply arise spontaneously. In the same fascicle he says, Just cast body and mind into the house of Buddha, and all is done by Buddha. When you do so, you are free from birth and death and become a Buddha without effort or calculation. So I don't know how this is. I think in what we are, one of the aspects of the teachings of the practice that we might be most tempted in the Western modern scientific culture to drop off is this belief that some mystical cosmic Buddhas or...

[24:38]

something like this that's helping and supporting our practice and our awakening in some way. So he's speaking from a 13th century Japan and its culture and it might seem totally foreign to us here. And I think actually in today's if our only two approaches to is either, you know, I'm in charge, I've got the control, I've got the power enough to accomplish something, or the more common one is, oh, what can I do by myself? And that's kind of despair. But what... what are the resources might we have to call on, whether it's for magic to happen, perhaps, in this way.

[25:53]

Suzuki Roshi says, to offer incense is to invite the Buddha. If we can't feel that, then maybe we can feel just how our bodies are speaking to us and listen to those messages. We can call on our friends and communities for support. Any resources we can find in our lives to not feel that I am in charge and whatever I'm, both to relax our expectations of an outcome in a spiritual practice, but also to not be trying to drive the effort ourselves, it will tend to strengthen our sense of identity of self, which tends to separate us from

[27:08]

the world around us, and according to the Buddhist teachings, there's more suffering there. So, a couple of other Dogen quotes, I've got a couple of minutes, but he says, Give up holding back your life. Or when you let go, the Dharma fills your hand. A practitioner should not practice Buddhadharma for his own sake, to gain fame and profit, to gain good results, or to perceive miraculous power. Practice only for the sake of the Buddhadharma. for one question.

[28:12]

Yes? Tim? Yeah. imagine it gives rise to a significant amount of faith in the practice did it does it yeah yeah and then I think can you then trust your practice to not just have

[29:30]

saved your life in this particular instance with the particular challenges you were having there, but to serve you well and broader in all of your life as well. 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, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[30:08]

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