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 by people like you. So here we are. I don't know most of you, so I'll just give you a little bit of my... My background here, I'm Charles Cagnon, and I practiced here full time in the 1970s. Tassajara, Jordan and I were roommates and Michael and all his other friends in the Zen Center businesses and sometime with Akatagiri Roshi in Minneapolis. And after the beginning of the 1980s, I left Zen Center and had a business career, which I've had since then. And recently I've started doing co-on practice with John Tarrant and Rachel Howlett and David Weinstein at Pacific Xan Institute up in Santa Rosa.

[01:10]

And that's been a real interesting for me. And I thought that what I would do tonight is to talk about my experience with doing co-on work and then to have us sit with a co-on with some guidance for a period of time. and then to maybe talk a little bit more afterwards. So if that's amenable to you folks, I'd like to tell you a little bit about my koan experience and what they're about. And then the most important thing about koans is they're about your life. And it's better for you to taste it for yourself and process, in my opinion, than for me to talk to you about it. Just simply, you know, I've practiced here for a long time and associated places. And, you know, I had pretty much had the hang of things. And I felt like that something was missing with my practice. And I recognized that I was believing my thoughts and my stories and it was causing me to suffer.

[02:14]

And and I also was aware that I didn't believe my beliefs. So I was believing something that I knew I didn't believe. And I felt like that I was self-aware about that issue and could speak about it. I didn't think that I was lazy or in denial. I could talk to Michael at some length about it and see what it's done to him, all those experiences. So I thought that there was some, in a sense, kind of like an iceberg situation, in a sense where I could see that there was something up with me, but there was clearly something below the surface that I wasn't getting at. And I felt like that in my own life, I had a kind of a quality of vigilance that I was kind of on guard for the iceberg and that that was uncomfortable. So I think that the central, you know, one of the central points of this talk tonight is that, you know, I feel like I feel like I looked at my condition in my life and I took responsibility for where I was at.

[03:18]

And I think that. From everyone's perspective, that's the most important thing is to take responsibility for where your practice is at. And so getting into Koan practice, I found it an eye opener because I found that he had a much different experience personally than Koan studied. I think many of us know the old stories and the traditions of the old masters. I found that studying them and engaging with the practice was somewhat different. The practice of Cohen study is to stand in the shoes of the old masters and see your life exclusively through their wisdom. It's to enter into their vignettes, their words, their relationships. And I also was aware that it wasn't exactly a mindfulness based practice.

[04:29]

There was this that that that the holding of a koan was not principally about my life in sort of the matter of fact way I would practice from moment to moment. The the the attention was dedicated to maintaining company with the with the koan. But it was, although the practice wasn't deliberately aiming at mindfulness, I found that it was and is an awake practice. It's almost as if awakeness is sort of an output rather than an input. And another interesting feature of it is that it starts from a perspective of reality. It doesn't start from a perspective of my own personal story. You know, if I were to sit, you know, normally following my breath or something like that, my own personal story would my own personal situation would rise up and be an important element in the sitting.

[05:38]

And with this practice, there really isn't much. Consideration, consideration of that. And also there's there's a sense where the the paradoxes and the enigmas of the coans don't give much comfort and for the intellect. So we have a thinking mind and the coans present something that engages the thinking mind. But the thinking mind provides no reward. It's it's tied up. It's active. But it's pointless. And so there's a kind of a way where the thinking mind is it's kind of given something to do that doesn't really that satisfies its need to be active without having a consequence to to the to the practice. And it's almost like what's relied upon is the mind that appreciates art. It's a more broad and intuitive mind that that blocks things.

[06:40]

without necessarily having to sort of see them in a linear kind of fashion. The practice is, in my mind, there's an aesthetic magnet to it. There's a lot of imagery to the koans and the wording and the style and the mood. There's a whole kind of an aesthetic that one can soak in and is integral. That's soaking in the beauty of them is integral to the appreciation of them and to working with them. Another thing about it is that it's a practice of commitments. And I wasn't overt commitments and I wasn't aware of that before before then. And there's two principle commitments. There's a there's a commitment to a curriculum. You know, there's plus or minus a thousand cons. And after you kind of get the hang of what's going on with the koan practice, you make a decision whether you're going to ceremonially sign up for this path.

[07:44]

And if that's your path and working with koans is what what your activity is. And I've done that. And then there's the second commitment, which is the commitment to each koan itself. So you're assigned a koan and that's what you work with. And you're and you're responsible for. conveying and expressing your own manifestation of the Dharma point that's embedded in the koan. And you stay with it until you do. And that's that. And so there's a kind of like you have to rise to the occasion because you know when you're seeing your teacher, there's business at hand. And it adds something to the doksans, which is that there's a... It's sort of a binary decision in the hands of the teacher, which is whether the teacher appreciates your understanding or not. It's also social. You know, there is a collaboration between you and the teacher.

[08:46]

While this is a little bit daunting, what I'm describing, you know, the teacher is actually there to help. And there's kind of a feeling of a of a hand picking at a chick's egg. You know, there's a collaboration of both of them, both of trying to work together. And there's another issue, which is respect to, like, the emphasis on the Dharma point versus the emphasis on the journey getting there. And in the Koan tradition, in some Koan traditions, there's a stronger emphasis on the classical Dharma point. And the students expected to present those. And that's essentially what's going on. And your own personal life story and your problems and that kind of things don't tend to come into play. And the integration, they call it, with your personal life happens towards the end of the practice. And I think that in the West, it's becoming more where the personal integration is happening concurrent with the Dharma points.

[09:52]

And so it's sort of an equal, it's an equal process of you, of your own journey within the realm of the koan and where it takes you and what it means to you how it touches your own life and your daily life how does this tool and this wisdom touch your life in addition to the dharma point and at one point i i was so enamored by some of the nuances and meanderings of one particular koan that i sort of was kind of trying to negotiate with the teachers that are saying you know basically this is really much more interesting what i'm doing than what this dharma point is supposed to be about And the teacher said to me, well, that's really wonderful that you find that that way. But actually, I'm not going to pass you on to go on until until you get to the point is that we can be friends. But business is business. And so for me, you know, what's what's happened with this for me? The first thing I'd say is, is that this has really given me an appreciation for don't know mind.

[10:56]

For not knowing, you know, I think, you know, we call it beginner's mind. But there's a kind of a crisp feeling that, wow, like there's a real appreciation for not knowing. And not knowing is basically a fancy way of saying keeping an open mind, you know, which is the old saying that every culture has. Just keep an open mind about things. And that's great. But obviously it's easier said than done. And so I have an appreciation for that. And in conjunction with that, there's an appreciation of an awareness of how much I really paint my reality, that I'm going through my life painting every situation that I'm encountering with kind of some conceptual spin. And, you know, this morning I was at my dentist and I was listening to the Muzak and there was a song from the police. And I was remarking, oh, that's an old song that this is using this old song.

[11:59]

I wonder what what her marketing angle is by using this old music. I mean, she trying to attract a particular clientele that would be attracted to the police. And I was and, you know, I went through this whole thing about her marketing plan. And I looked at her and this is a woman who is an immigrant from Iran and probably didn't have that much appreciation for the police that I concocted this entire universe. around, you know, what this what this music was supposed to mean. And and so that's that's clear to me. And there's another feeling which is a color to this, which is a sense that, like, I don't have to solve my problems by solving my problems. It's you know, I can see my problems and I can see that my problems are just manufactured. And the fact that I can see them as being manufactured means that they're there that I don't necessarily have to sort of get into the substance of them as much. And so I guess that what I'm saying is that stylistically, I'm developing a little bit of a affinity or preference for the sort of the rawness of a don't know mind versus the security of trying to have things neat and tidy and pegged and well understood in my life.

[13:16]

And I think that another thing that I've noticed is that in working with the realm of the koan, that my material that's drawn forth in the work is the right material. So all the things that come up as being distractions or diversions in the koan really feel to me like it's my life. This is my delusion. my choice, my opinion. There's a sense that I'm working with my own life, and it's sort of like I have a greater sense of authority for what I'm working with. Kind of a sense of a little bit of coming home to myself and of meeting myself in all these occasions. I may not like what comes up. I may not choose it, but it's me. Okay. And so I don't mind. I don't mind. It's translating a little bit for me into a sense of greater faith, faith in the process, faith in the triple treasure, faith that that that the path can rescue me.

[14:33]

And there's a quality where if if I find myself in prison and I'm working with a koan, that working with a koan will enable me to see that I'm. concocting a prison for myself. And that's a tremendous relief. And then if I realize that I can have faith in the way that I concoct prisons for myself, then why do I even have to sort of indulge the prison to start with? I can begin to set the whole process aside. Another thing I'm noticing is that my boundaries. are changing that there's a certain sense where the weight of what comes up that might I might have identified as myself in the practice begins to be equally weighted to the things that come up that might have been considered other. And so there's less of a less of a distinction and preference for self and other.

[15:38]

And it's showing up. I feel like it's showing up in my behavior, you know, the way that some of the engagements that I have and. and relationships, and I find myself picking up trash and things like that. I'm going soft. And I also recognize that koans are not everything to me, that I have a greater, for some reason, by doing koans, I have a greater appreciation for Shikantaza and for the Dogen way. There's a kind of an appreciation of the gravity and the weight of my moments and that each moment is free. And that because of each moment is free, it has tremendous importance. And that other aspects of practice have much more sort of unexpressible importance. You know, a form, a ritual, repetition. It's kind of like a.

[16:40]

A savoring of just the events. And one of the things that I've really sort of noticed here in coming around Zen Center and dropping in from time to time is that I've noticed that the students that are practicing at Zen Center now seem to find practice to be more accessible to them. than I did and people of my generation. For us, it seemed like it was so hard. It was such agony. The sitting was such agony. Staying awake was agony. The schedule, you know, the gripes. It just seems like, you know, the people, you go into the Zendo and people are awake and they sit still. You know, it's like, It's like everybody's wearing a 13th century dress and following a 9th century schedule, and it's as American as apple pie.

[17:47]

And I'm a little bit jealous. I'm a little bit jealous. And I think that there's been modifications, and the leadership has listened, and people have opened their hearts to try and make things more suitable for newcomers. And it shows. And I think that all this or a great deal of this came from the turmoil that happened when I left Zen Center. And it's interesting how things can be a blessing in disguise. And that's sort of the painting of things. You think that something is a particular kind of way and you really, really don't know. You end a relationship and something new happens. And and you go along expecting things to be great. And it turns out that it doesn't mean anything to you is a saying you can never get enough of what you really don't want.

[18:53]

And so what I'd like to do now is to is this is in light of that and light of that, that feeling of of. how things can be blessing in disguise or vice versa. And sort of the it's a full moon tonight. I'd like to shift gears now and suggest that we take up a koan meditation. And and I'd like to spend a few minutes sitting with a koan and I'd like to guide guide us through it. Because the thing about the koan practice is, is that, you know, talking about the practice is one thing, but but appreciating in your own life is another. If you don't mind, let's just try and settle ourselves and sit comfortably and naturally. Don't worry too much about your posture. We're not going to be sitting for very long. And just settle into your body. Settle into your body and your breath and your place and the room, your neighbors.

[20:04]

Just how your muscles feel and the sounds of my voice and the sounds of the city. And if your meditation in your own personal practice is fine and you're happy with it, then you don't have to pay attention to what I'm saying. Just treat what I'm saying like the sound of traffic. Or if you're doing kohan meditation in a different tradition. Please stay with that if you'd like to. But if you'd like to try something new, here's a vignette from some old masters to take up. A student asked a master, what if it's a disaster? The master replied, that's it too.

[21:07]

The student asked the master, what if it's a disaster? The master replied, that's it too. What if it's a disaster? That's it too. So for the remainder of this evening together, Just keep company with that koan. There's nothing particular to do. There's no particular way of judging how well you're doing or how you're doing it. Just stay present with the koan. Just maybe repeat it. Hold it in your chest, in your belly. That's it too.

[22:15]

And if you drift off, just refresh the koan. And if something comes up in your mind or something gets your attention, or you notice something, a sound, a thought, an opinion, a plan. Just bring that back as part of the koan. Everything that happens from now on is part of the koan. has a particular priority for you, one of the phrases stands out or a word, stay with that.

[23:18]

If you have a sensual response to the koan, the words, the rhythm, the emphasis, the mood, just be with that. If it changes for you, it's okay. Just maintain a light contact with it, like a fingertip physical connection. Some people have described working with a koan as simply getting into a pen with the koan. You get in the pen with the teachings of the master. Let down your guard. and let it teach you about your life. What if it's a disaster?

[24:25]

That's it too. disaster.

[35:17]

That's it too. So what did you notice? Anyone care to share what it was like? It was freed me up when I practiced with it.

[36:51]

And this seems to be the same thing. This is a lot of emotion. You paint the situation with a lot of emotion. This is a disaster. because it seemed so obvious and I thought koans were something that we kind of went at and then suddenly exploded so firstly I was feeling disappointed and then it moved into never apart from one right where one is and that seemed to open it and then it felt like indeed everything became part of the koan When it opened, it was much more. This takes on it takes on what we what we do to our lives and then it takes it away.

[38:02]

It sets up what we do and then it takes it away. The. If anybody has anything that is burning to say something. But just yes. Go ahead. Yeah. [...] Absolutely. That's absolutely true. Another, you know, another thing that this, if you obviously this is very brief, but these things are really deep and poignant.

[39:08]

And, you know, after this, if you're so inclined, you can keep company with this and see how. see what it opens up for you. But, you know, one thing that that I think about with this is whose disaster? You know, there's, you know, like your neighbor, probably, you know, to your right or left in this room, probably has some feeling for this matter. And, you know, probably all sentient beings have this question. And when do we have it? We have it all the time. And, you know, we obviously, as you were saying, you know, how we load the word disaster onto a particular kind of reality as a as a way of shorthanding it and also making yourself safe. And there's a question of whether that's true or not.

[40:11]

Is it a blessing in disguise? And how do you actually know? And then there's also a there's also a another point, which is do you fall for the joke in this? Do you take the bait? Because, you know, you're you're looking for a disaster, but you're presented with an occasion of looking for disaster. But do you want to play? Do you know how do you feel? How do you feel? Is it is everything is a disaster? Are you going to start looking at everything in terms of disaster or not? Who are you? Who are you in this situation? Yeah. So yeah. So tonight we've tasted a disaster. We've tasted our life within a disaster. And so my time is up. And thank you for creating this disaster together. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[41:33]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:36]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_94.67