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. Morning. This is working. Good. I'm very honored to be here and to... be invited to offer the Dharma talk this morning here at Green Gulch Farm and Zen Center. It's really lovely to see so many faces. I was here through the weekend and somehow everyone disappears, so it's really quite lovely to see all the beautiful faces and everyone that has come again post-ish pandemic to To be together again has been a long time since I've been in this location, this seat, and this kind of togetherness.

[01:05]

Thank you for being here and for being my first time to return in this way. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Reverend Angel Kyoto Williams. I have great affection for... the Suzuki Roshi lineage that Green Gulch is a part of, and it's not the lineage that I grew up in. And it is really a beautiful thing that we are coming to a place in which many of our lineages are inviting each other to share, opening things up. in a way that sometimes doesn't always feel open when we're inside of it. I feel the phrase, now more than ever, feels worn, thin, and also now more than ever.

[02:06]

Now more than ever. It feels so important for us to be able to find ways to come together from different... backgrounds, traditions, faiths, lineages, races, genders, orientations, even ways of showing up in the practice that we believe that we share and we believe has protocols that we do it like this, which is true, and also we have to find our own way within each of our own paths. Because at the end of the day, Our liberation is our own responsibility. We're lucky enough to still be young enough to have parents to be helping us carve the way. And my journey through formal Zen practice has been quite unexpected for me.

[03:09]

I had some imagination, as we often do, about how I would be in it. One of the things that I found is that as I took it to heart, it would keep blowing up my ideas about what I thought was going to happen. And somewhere along that way, and I don't even remember what it was, there was something about not making it precious. It was actually through Suzuki Roshi's teaching about not making something so precious of it. that it's special and it's also incredibly ordinary. And to live the practice in that way, rather than to identify with Zen as I was inclined to do, I love robes. Oh my goodness. I love the forms. I love the incense. I love the whole pomp and circumstances as much as we talk about how simple it is. I love all of the things.

[04:12]

That sort of caught me at some point. I was like, oh, there's a lot of identifying there that will keep me from it. In black culture, we have this phrase, we like hugging on it, like we're hugging on it too much. It's not the good kind of hugging. It's the hugging that can smother a thing. And you can miss it for all the hugging that you're doing. You can miss who you're... holding on to who you're hugging, who you think you're loving, you can miss them because you're more invested in the idea that you're the one that's doing the hugging. And so it took me out into the world. I can remember, Shani, right? I sort of had a little disdain for priests that didn't wear their robes all the time. I was like, my nose was turned up. I was like, they're not serious enough. And too precious.

[05:14]

I was holding it too precious. And so I went the direction that was exactly where the opposite of what I was inclined to do as a way to invite some tension into my own practice. There were some aspects, I would say, of the... the way in which we practice, at least in my own, amongst the people that I practice with in the lineage, that some of the things came a little bit, I want to say, it appeared to other people too easy to me, meaning that it wasn't, you know, I could apply effort, you know, it would look effortful, but I knew for myself that there wasn't enough tension. There wasn't enough of a a tautness, a dynamic tension that allows me to neither collapse nor stretch so tight that it becomes brittle.

[06:22]

And that idea of a dynamic tension within my practice has become something that is central. I found it most formidably in the posture of Zen sitting. which could also be standing, which could also be lying, which could also be walking. But in the posture, we speak about posture and in many ways can get overly fixated on the posture and also forget the importance of posture. Over my time here, we had the beautiful opportunity to have Schrader to give us instruction and invite us to see the forms here again and, and, and just exquisite attention on, on a posture. And it reminded me of that sense of, uh, how core and how key posture is.

[07:23]

And not in the sense of, you know, being rigid, uh, in the, also studying yogic traditions and, uh, what we call postures asana. And asana is referred to as being a steady, the word that is often translated as uncomfortable seat, a steady and comfortable seat. Sometimes in many Zen spaces, people will say upright and flexible, but they all mean something of the same thing, a dynamic tension. Positioning ourselves where we are held upright, And that we have an attention to that uprightness, that initial setting our posture. Placing ourselves in relationship with the earth and with the sky, the heavens. Locating ourselves as joining and meeting both the sky, both the heaven and the earth.

[08:35]

So we place ourselves initially in that posture. It's more than just the formation of our body. It's an attitude. It's an intention. It's a setting and intention. Sit upright. Make a choice. In this very moment that you begin your posture, that you begin your practice, that you sit upright. Because Along the way, there'll be many times during which you'll want to collapse, that you'll want to give up. And so we set this posture with this firm intention in our bodies, but also in our attitude. Sitting upright, figuring out what that means for us is pretty much the rest of the journey. What does it mean to sit upright in this life, in this lifetime, in this body?

[09:45]

Not the body of 10 years ago. I was perhaps a little bit more flexible. But the body that I'm in now, not in the body of ideas I had about what this practice would be, but in this body of ideas of information of convergences of experience that arrives to just the only moment that I'm ever given to show up fully is right now. I can reflect on the past, and I can project into the future, into a dream state. I can circle and loop around and around again about how I might have done things, how I could do it, wish I'd done it. But the only moment that I have is now. The only moment that each of us has is now. And we can imagine something else. We can imagine. Sometimes we'll say, oh, people are caught up in the past.

[10:47]

But that's not true. We're in now thinking about the past. We're in now projecting into the future. So we can miss it. We can hug on it too much. We can hug on the past. Belabor our mistakes. the labor, the injuries, and the injustices. And it's the only opportunity, the only place that we have to address them, to meet them, to set the foundation for what is to come. It's only ever now. So we sit upright. And then we feel the way in which our muscles soften, our tension wanes, Sadly, we're someplace else. But the only thing there is to do is to return.

[11:48]

In the last few years, during the pandemic, I didn't have the advantage, many of us didn't have, of a space in which we could give people that gentle touch of, like, this is upright. Maybe pull in the ribs a little bit. Allow the soft curve in the low back and in the neck. So I relied heavily on words after coming through a tradition that said so much about how it was not about words. And I wanted to distill it as much as possible, as much as I could, knowing that I was speaking to people that hadn't come to me or the space, the virtual space we were holding for practice, they hadn't come necessarily for Zen, and they hadn't come for necessarily Buddhism. Most of them came for the thing that really all of us come for, to any practice.

[13:01]

They came for refuge. They came for glimpses of their own sanity within a world that felt like it had turned completely upside down. came for a connection and they came for really all of the things that we come to any kind of practice for. To remember ourselves. To remember ourselves in the ways that we can notice in our posture that we forgot. To remember ourselves into this very moment. To just return. Which doesn't mean forgetting all of the information, all of the lessons that we learned as we come along the way.

[14:13]

But to recognize that the only place that we can do anything with it is now, and so we have to come back. We have to come back. We can fantasize about our heroic enterprises, what we would like to be and become, what kind of parents we wish we were, what kind of parents we wish we had. And then there's just return. Sit upright. And to choose the posture. that allows us to fully engage with the only thing we have is now. Which is kind of devastating and also awesome. The only thing we have is now. And as we accumulate our things and stuff, our baubles and trinkets and houses and cars and sweaters,

[15:16]

In some small way, we are avoiding the truth of that when we pass from this life, that all we'll have is now. And yes, we may have things that we'll be able to pass on to our children and children's children. but they have their lives to live as well. It will only ever include now. And we won't protect them from their lives by over-accumulating, by fantasizing ourselves into some idea of safety from the way in which we are relating to the planet, the way in which we are not relating to each other.

[16:24]

The most important thing we can pass on is to sit upright. And keep remembering ourselves. Into. Who we are choosing to be. To not give up on ourselves. That's the posture. When we've leaned a little to the left. Or a little to the right. Or fallen asleep. Or collapsed. At that initial. intention, that setting our posture, that choosing to sit upright is what we return to.

[17:26]

So it's not at all about not falling apart or collapsing or going sideways. It's about remembering that we can return. And the gorgeous thing about now is that it's always there to return to. Unlike the past and unlike the future, we always have now to return to for as long as it matters. So I've enjoyed immensely the simplicity of just return. When you get lost, when you feel overwhelmed, return.

[18:29]

And for me, pretty much most of the practice is learning to remember to return. Everything else is kind of cake from there. So we have these forms and we have gestures that are about remembering our uprightness as we bow. We return. The attention to detail reminds us that when the world goes askew, We can make a little adjustment. Put that cushion just so. And we can return. We may not be able to fix the whole world, but we can fluff up our seat.

[19:38]

We may not be able to knit together. all of the divisions that we see and hear about. But in this moment, we can return to our upright posture of remembering ourselves as committed to being connected. And so when our ideas and ideologies get a hold of ourselves, get a hold of us and pull us away from connection, We can remember. We can return. We can remember what we're choosing in this lifetime. And we can return. And over and over again. through, I don't know, maybe a year or so, saying something just like that, many times in many different directions, a very lovely young man said, oh, you always say just return, and I just realized that you meant just.

[21:11]

Just return. means no quibbling, no arguing, no browbeating, no judgment. We literally just return. We cut out all the stuff in between. That are new ways of distracting ourselves from coming back. Oh, my mind is wandering. Why is it wandering? It should have been here. That's new wandering. Just return. I wish I had been this kind of a person. I wish I hadn't done that. Just return. There's such grace.

[22:17]

Starting anew. With the only thing really that any of us have, which is what we've already got. That's it. And we can ponder and we can pound our fists. But this life will only ever begin now. It is all that we are granted. It is the grace that every single one of us have. Sometimes it's so simple, it makes my heart hurt, like in the best way.

[23:23]

It hurts. It's like, oh. And I complicate it so much. So I love the simplicity of it for that reason. It's just return to being upright. Taking my seat. Steady and at ease. upright and flexible, not too soft and not too tight. And everything there is for me to live is right there. It isn't in the... Maybe this is sacrilege. It isn't in the... the storehouse of sutras or bibles or purans.

[24:25]

We have that. We learn from that. We learn from teachers and teachers and teachers throughout history and time. More and more women, please. But they can pour the storehouse of their wisdom into us. And we are the ones that have to live it. So in the midst of our very complicated sometimes lives, and maybe in the midst of our sometimes over-complicating the simplicity of this practice of zazen, please remember that really all there is is to just return. we have some incredible intuitive knowing the truth of that. It's not my truth. It's just what we've been given, what we've been granted. But after all of our charts and spreadsheets, trying to figure out our lives, let a moment pierce us through.

[25:42]

There's just It can make us almost frantic to hear that, I have found. Something of the quality of relief and panic at the same time. Because it means that we're responsible. We're responsible. And that all of the ways in which we fabricate interventions and distractions and side paths, that we're responsible.

[26:51]

We can find someone to blame. And boy, there's many systems and structures that deserve to carry the the weight of responsibility and accountability for what they've done. There are people in our lives. There are situations, they're very real, very tangible, but only we can live this life. And whether they offer their apology, Grant us access to the pearly gates. Really all will ever have is now. We can wait until someone apologizes or fixes it or does something about it or shows up differently.

[27:59]

Good luck with that. we can sit upright, return, tend the heartbreak and the grace of having just now. posture I'll offer is that I have found for myself lies somewhere between rest and rigor.

[29:19]

That's like Goldilocks, not too soft, not too tight. In all things. Restful enough so that we're not overwhelmed. We don't. Take ourselves out of the equation. The importance of caring. These precious and fragile bodies that we have. Regorous. Enough that we stay alert. Committed. Finding our new edges over and over again. And recognizing when we've overstepped them. Unfolding our knees when

[30:34]

resetting, and we're called to. I sometimes wish it was more complicated, but it really isn't. busy modern mind wants there to be more. More to say, more to do. Can't be that simple, that direct. Because if it is, as Fusan has said a few times this weekend, I'm left with what now?

[31:43]

Maybe take a moment to imagine that in your own life, if that's all you have, the only move you had was to just return. That's it. If all of the collection of tools and, dare I say, weapons that we have collected, they were no longer available and all you had available was to just return, what would your life look like? What would your practice look like? Where else would you go? Other than now. And if all you could do, if all you had to do was to continue to be in the curiosity and the discovery of what it means to be upright, not in your lifetime, just now,

[33:28]

What would it mean for a planet that has borne too much of our doing? What would it mean for our relationships that suffer from not enough of our presence? might be healed by nothing else other than you making a choice to return. I feel very grateful to have the wool that I had over my own eyes pulled back to relinquish the way in which I was at some point making my own practice and my own life work.

[35:17]

so that I could actually meet this moment of doubt, so that I could just return. Where everything and everyone that matters is here. Thank you so much.

[36:15]

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