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. And welcome. This morning here in this very Buddha Hall, we celebrated... Buddha's enlightenment, Shakyamuni Buddha's enlightenment. It's the last day of a seven-day meditation intensive, Rohatsu Shashin. And on the last day of this December Shashin, we celebrate Buddha's enlightenment. Now whether it happened on this day, that's a whole other question. This is when we celebrate it. The story of Shakyamuni's enlightenment is like many epic stories that are around the globe.

[01:13]

The hero or the heroine sets forth with resolve, with integrity, with courage. They set forth to meet the challenge. that lies on the path to that which resolves, fulfills the human potential. And this is what the story of Shakyamuni lays out. He leaves the palace, he becomes a renunciate, he accomplishes different attributes that contribute, that support wisdom. yogic skills, intellectual skills, and then sets forth from there on a deeper kind of renunciation, not even knowing how this part will unfold.

[02:29]

And in the story, he continues, And very interestingly, to my mind, in this story, his own determination becomes an enemy. And then there's two versions of the story. One version is he has an insight into this process of how his determination is perpetuating the very difficulty he's trying to overcome. It's one version of the story. Then the other version of this story is that by random occurrence, an each-year-old girl, in passing him, not knowing who he is, but just moved to be generous. And that her generosity tips something in his process. not because of its exquisite intellectual content, but just because of the efficacy of generosity.

[03:43]

And from there, he has a deep awakening. So, inspired by this, each December at this time, we... those of us who engage Hashin, set forth on our own epic journey, with as much resolve, integrity, and courage as we can muster. And I think for most of us, in the process, it doesn't seem like we've mustered very much. But as you engage the process, you discover that's part of the process. I started this machine with a poem, which actually I read in a Dharma talk here about a month ago. The first line of the poem is, it's hard not to love the world, but possible.

[04:50]

You know, if you think about it, we're capable of love, And we're capable of hate. We're capable of generosity and we're capable of hoarding. These different attributes that we can bring forth within our capacity. in some ways the process of awakening is to just pause for a moment and think, what is the alchemy that turns us one way rather than the other? What is the alchemy that turns us towards hatred and violence? And what is the alchemy that turns us towards love and generosity? The one story of Nelson Mandela that stands out in my mind is the fact that he invited his prison guard of 23 years to his inauguration.

[06:09]

After 27 years of imprisonment, some generosity, some integrity, some... sense of shared humanity still burn bright? How did he do that? How does a human being do that? How do we relate to our own sense of being mistreated? in a way that doesn't diminish our capacity for this nobility of spirit. So hopefully we set out on the journey with this attitude, this disposition of questioning.

[07:17]

And maybe most of us also set out thinking we know something. We know what it is to engage in spiritual practice. We know what it is to practice mindfulness, awareness, presence. But hopefully whatever knowing we bring, or we think we bring, that it's held up with this deeper question about the human condition. What turns us towards a patient acceptance? What turns us towards an impatient opinionation about what should happen and what should not happen? So Shishin, we commit ourselves to a particular way of life.

[08:45]

And actually, we're always committing ourselves to a particular way of life. Often, not quite knowing what it is we're committing to. Well, in Shishin, The gift of Shashin is that it's evident. And it's made evident by the pact we make. Okay, we will do this. We will get up every morning, we will go to the meditation hall, and we will meditate. And we'll do some version of that all day until the late evening. And it's great that it's a short pact. Because if it wasn't, probably most of us would give up along the way. Maybe in contrast to Shakyamuni's story, which at some point became a singular journey, the journey we take is both collective and singular.

[09:56]

We make... collective pact, and then within that collective pact we work with the person that we are. And the first steps on the journey are attention. What's happening now? In the heritage of Zen, this is the hallmark of our practice and the core of it. What's happening now? Not what should be happening now, what should stop happening now, but what's happening now. Within Zen perspective, this is starting at the finish. This is the place we start and the place we abide.

[11:04]

in the practice of awareness. And then as we continue this practice, we start to discover how hard it is to abide with presence now. We start to discover the momentum, the habit energy of our deeply embedded patterns, our patterns of mind, our patterns of body. And the outcome of transformations, we start to get some glimmers of what it is, and we're trying to bring forth. When the mind wanders, bring it back. when you turn presence into an issue of control, loosen up.

[12:16]

When you're demanding yourself to be a certain way, notice the demand rather than act it out. And it feels like We're being asked to give something up. Being asked to sacrifice some aspect of me. But these habits, these memories, these anticipations, they are the territory that I inhabit as me. And as we ask ourselves to not be stuck in it, to not be caught up in its intrigues, it's like we're being asked to leave something. In the epic journey, leave the palace and enter a more unadorned life.

[13:29]

in a tangible way, as we meditate, this arises for us. And almost always, our own reluctance arises too. And this reluctance asks to be held with patience. If you become impatient with your own process, there's rebellion in the palace. Rather, we try to bring a reassurance. Okay? These feelings, this turmoil is arising.

[14:35]

This reluctance to let go of old worries, of hopes for the future, of unfinished stories that have hurt me, some deeply and some just seem to hang around in an almost frivolous manner. So we engage this with a gentle effort, a patient effort that evokes reassurance. Part of my attraction to this poem, it's hard not to love the world, but possible.

[15:38]

It's so gentle. It's provocative in a gentle way. It's hard not to love the world, but possible. When I'm like this, even the swallows are not God. You have to admit, that's not very scary. It draws us in It's okay. It's okay to sometimes not see the swallows as God. Of course, they are God. But it's okay not to see them that way at times. So this is how we practice presence, how we practice awareness. Okay, the mind has wondered. That's okay. But now, what's happening?

[16:52]

So this delicate mix of renunciation and reassurance, and the learning that happens as we engage it. And in the heritage of Zen, we direct the learning to the body and the breath. Because there's something fundamental in returning to the somatic. There's a nonverbal learning that happens for us. puts us in touch with how we've embodied the deeper impressions that life has made upon us.

[17:53]

And of course, as we enter that territory, and we're not familiar with it, it's mysterious. And very interestingly, as you continue to enter it, it's both mysterious and familiar. As you keep bringing the breath back into the body and discover the wisdom of letting the breath breathe the body, we're also learning to let life live. That the nature of our human existence arises out of all the causes and conditions of being, as exquisitely as the swallows. Then the poem goes on, it says, when I'm like this, even the swallows are not God, even the yellow school bus, even the children inside wanting out are not God.

[19:09]

So like this, we meditate. Even the part of me that resists being present. Be present with that. Where's the problem? It's just the conditioned nature of existence. So the mind is grasping and repeating a story. and accompanying it with emotions. Just be present with that. And in the heritage of Zen, this being present with whatever the mind produces, has its own esteem.

[20:14]

It has its own place of recognition. The finder of this school of Zen says, this process is the essential teaching of all the Zen teachers. Being present with what is emerging. However, whatever characteristics it has, And as we engage in this, we see that the request has not so much to do with producing the right experience as it is how we're relating to the experience that's arising. And this becomes the point of attention. So we shift from what we should be experiencing to how are we relating to what's arising.

[21:19]

And as we do that, the attention quite naturally shifts from the content of the story to the process of how it comes about, how it arises. what emotions accompany it, how it influences the body and the breath, the state of mind. And in the language of Zen, we study the self. We study the self by being this conditioned existence and paying attention to it. And as we do that, the constituent parts start to become evident. It's like hearing a foreign language for the first time.

[22:26]

First time you hear a foreign language, it's just indecipherable side. Then you continue to hear it and hear it, and you start to be able to distinguish something within that sound. It becomes more evident what is contained within it. This is the same process in awareness. Part of what starts to become evident is the nature of mind. So in Sushin, in the talks, I tortured people with descriptions of the nature of mind according to the finder of Soto Zen in Japan, Dogen Zenji, who I think was referencing the finder of Tendai Buddhism, Jir Yi, whom Dogen had studied as a teenager in a precocious way.

[23:47]

that there's both citta, there's consciousness, there is what we would call, in common terms, just our state of mind. It's a very helpful reference. I listen to not only to what you say, but what makes you say it. When that persistent story arises, with all the authority it has, what's the disposition that comes along with it or gives birth to it? This reverberating response we have to the world according to me. And maybe this is like the part of the epic journey where we're inside the unknown territory of our own being.

[24:59]

No one can do it for us. No one can come inside our consciousness and be present for us. No one can tell us what it looks like, what it feels like, how the conditioned patterns of our consciousness come into play. They can stand outside and say, Dogen, quoting Jury says this. Is that a help or is that a hindrance? Well, unfortunately for the people in Sushin, that's what they got to listen to. But there's a very interesting thing that happens to the mind when you do a lot of meditation. It heightens our capacity to learn from what's experienced.

[26:08]

The image I gave was of my own grandson when he was a little bit over one year old. And we were in the backyard, and he really wanted to be participating. So I made up a formidable task for him. I made a pile of dirt, and then I said, move that dirt from there to there. he was maybe about 13 or 14 months, not that long after having mastered walking. So both walking and carrying, now this was like cutting edge. And so he would pick up the dirt with full attention. This took him to the limit, carry it over,

[27:16]

and drop it. He did this for a long time, maybe five minutes. Which I think when you're 14, 13 or 14 months, it's probably, I don't know, hours and hours and hours. And then he stopped. And then he sort of Quivered with exaltation and energy. Being in the midst of being. In the moment, it has its own authority. and the great blessing of having a limited vocabulary when you're 14 months.

[28:24]

Your mind doesn't have so much capacity to be running a narrative and a commentary and a criticism. Why don't we have a wheelbarrow? We could move this a lot easier. What was wrong with all the dirt over there? Looked pretty good to me. And how come you're having me do it? Why don't you do it yourself? Something in us from an early age experienced and engaged the fundamentals of a human life. Engaging the world with these hands, with this heart, with this mind, of seeing within it a way to participate and a way to contribute.

[29:34]

How could he not be enthused by moving the earth? that the earth particularly needed to be moved, but just the beauty of it. We have all experienced this directly. We know it before knowing. It's in our bones. This is part of the power of mindfulness of the body. Our body knows how to breathe. Our body knows that the very breath of life doesn't require mental constructs.

[30:41]

And as we return to letting the breath breathe the body, we can see the territory and the character of our mental constructs. And so citta, the mental disposition, gives us some clues. And then as we enter a little deeper, we see two other characteristics. And one is this fundamental way that we let a situation, we let an experience become representative. We can look at the cloudless sky and it can touch us and instruct us

[31:49]

in the bindless nature of being. We can feel something about how our human concepts and their constructs put a limit on something that's limitless. We can hear a line that says something like, it's hard not to love the world. but possible. And it represents something for us, something more than just the simple logic of the syntax. We can read something like, even the children inside wanting out. Who could not want it out? who has not wanted more than the moment was offering, who has not felt that ache, that sense of limitation.

[33:05]

Even the children inside wanting out are not God, implying even that state is complete. So as we enter the territory of awareness, the wondrous discoveries of a moment being complete. Not because the agitations the mental narrative, the judgments, the accompanying emotions have been sanitized, obliterated, but because when they're not allowed to define reality, but just allowed to participate within it, they're just adornments.

[34:16]

They're just the colors, the adjectives of now. And this reality arising now can be representative. This moment of existence. The empty sky can evoke a connection to bindless being. And then it also offers us a learning. We engage the moment and it teaches. And the more thoroughly we engage, the more thoroughly it teaches.

[35:24]

And in the language of spirituality, we call this insights. And maybe everyone in this room has had an experience where they had an insight about something and mused a little puzzled. It's like, I've seen that so many times. And yet right now, I'm seeing it for the first time in a different way, in a more insightful way. We become aware of the experience that we've experienced many times. And in that awareness, something's eliminated. And as the mind starts to blossom like this, the world becomes teachings.

[36:32]

Sometimes teachings about our own psychological life. The territory we've constructed around unhappiness. The play between love and hate in the process of intimacy. fearful accompaniment of our stinginess and the reckless courage of our generosity. And as they come forth as insights, there's no necessity to turn them into a moral code, or a new and improved set of things I should do and should not do.

[37:43]

They're as blessed as the school children on the bus not wanting to be on the bus. And then these insights nourish us. They nourish us in a way that what we crave and desire can't. Because craving and desire diminish the process of intimacy. And then this evokes its own deeper reassurance, and hopefully its own deeper acceptance of what it is to be human.

[38:56]

And we start to feel in a different way the imperative of practice. in the early sutras, part of the image around Shakyamuni's awakening is that he's held inside this construct. And as he awakens, the construct, the roof comes off, the walls fall off, as bindless as the empty sky. We start to glimpse The impositions, the restrictions I put upon being alive. And how in this curious way, they don't serve. They don't bring happiness. They don't bring intimacy.

[40:01]

They don't bring connection. or the deep satisfaction of having moved the earth with your hands. And the story is that Shakyamuni awakened, he saw this process of how fueled by suffering, we repeat the same pattern of restriction and limitation. And that as he saw it with insight, he saw it, he saw that it isn't an essential part of being alive. It's an affectation of being alive.

[41:02]

It's in that same curious realm of our capacity to love and hate, to be generous and to be stingy. And he saw also the path to let flower the generosity, to let flower the insight, to let flower the love. And the house fell apart. the boundless sky became evident.

[42:11]

And so yesterday, as a way to represent that, I read another poem. Surprise. One by Mary Oliver. also about the house and also about opening the house. For how many years have you gone through the house shutting the windows while the rain was still five miles away and veering its plum-colored clouds to the north away from you? And did you not even know enough to be sorry? You were glad those silver sheets with the occasional golden staple we're sweeping on elsewhere, violent and electric and uncontrollable? And will you find yourself finally wanting to forget all enclosures, including the enclosure of yourself, oh lonely leaf?

[43:12]

And will you dash finally, frantically, to the windows and throw them open and lean like to the dark silvered sky to everything that is beyond capture, shouting, I'm here. I'm here. Now. [...] So. That's Shakyamuni's enlightenment. And maybe that's everybody's enlightenment. Maybe each of us as we proceed on our epic journey. As we live out within the representations we attribute to the conditions and circumstances of our life.

[44:15]

the curious process of shashin. Willingly and knowingly, we make a construct and live inside it to facilitate bindless being. Being. final image in Zen, in Buddhism, and maybe every spiritual tradition, that we experience the self as simply a conduit. How could we hoard this? Wouldn't that be in complete contradiction to the spirit of it?

[45:33]

simply flows through. What we receive, we give. As my dear friend Naomi Shihabnai says in one of her poems, I want to be famous as the person who smiled back. You don't need such lofty goals to just meet the world to offer the world the same kindness and patience and understanding our own being is asking of us to receive the gift that the world is giving

[46:36]

and to give back. So that the awakening is not singular, but a collective process. This is the spirit of sashim and the spirit of our practice, that we awaken together. The story is that as Shakyamuni awakens, he says, All beings are awakening. All beings are experiencing what they're experiencing all the time. Although most of the time they don't realize it. Most of the time they insist upon a limitation. So in the process of spiritual practice,

[47:37]

we practice intentionally the giving back, the inclusion in the process of being present, of awakening. So may you and all beings realize the bindless nature of all being. Thank you. 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.

[48:31]

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