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 to the Saturday morning dormitoc at City Center. Today is the last day of a year-long program that we offer here at City Center called Establishing the Path of Practice. Like all good programs, you get something to take away with you. One of these.

[01:02]

And I want to read you part of the quote that's on it. It's from Dogen Zenji, the finder of this style of Zen practice, Soto Zen practice in Japan. On the great road of Buddha, the circle of the way is never cut off. It's not forced by you or others. The power of this continuous practice confirms you as well as others. It means your practice affects the entire earth and the entire sky in the ten directions. Although not necessarily noticed by others or yourself, it's so. That's what I'm going to attempt to talk about this morning. that sense of continuity of involvement, but more how that manifests, how that's engaged within the context of the human condition.

[02:23]

And here is an illustration of the human condition through my own day yesterday. Yesterday, as I think many of us do, I had this notion of things that I should do, that I wanted to do, that I could do, that would be nice to do. And amazingly, I didn't get them all done. I don't know about you, but for me, that's usually how the day goes. And usually it's like, okay, another day. About 4.30, I was kind of like running out of steam. And there was something disquieting.

[03:26]

Like, no, you can keep going. You're going to have dinner at 6.30. There's two more productive hours right there. And... I stopped and did some yoga which seemed to have its own appropriateness and then last night had this sort of amorphous dream of getting things done not getting things done the great conundrum of life and it reminded me of this poem by Billy Collins. It's called The Night House. Every day the body works in the fields of the world, mending a stone wall or swinging a sickle through the tall grass, the grass of civics, the grass of money, and every evening the body curls around itself

[04:37]

and listens to the soft bells of sleep. But the heart is restless and rises from the body in the middle of the night, leaves the trapezoidal bedroom with its thick, pictureless walls to sit by herself at the kitchen table and heat some milk in a pan. And the mind gets up too, puts on a robe, goes downstairs, lights a cigarette, and opens a book on engineering. Even the conscience awakens and roams from room to room in the dark, darting away from every mirror like a strange fish. And the soul goes up to the roof in her nightdress, straddling the ridge, singing a song about the wildness of the sea. until the first drip of pink appears in the sky, then they all will return to the sleeping body, the way a flock of birds settles back in a tree, resuming their daily kolokwe, talking to each other and to themselves, even through the heat of the long afternoons, which is why the body

[06:03]

the house of voices, sometimes puts down its metal tongs, its needle or its pen, to stir into the distance, to listen to all its names being called before bending again to its labor. And I was thinking, Maybe that's a good description of Zazen, no? Which is why the body, the house of voices, sometimes puts down its metals, tongs, its needle, its pen, to stir into the distance, to listen to all the names being called before bending again to its labor. Recently I've been thinking of Zen practice, the process of Zen practice, and in many ways the process of awareness and leading a life informed by awareness.

[07:26]

And how it has two requests of us. One request is to listen to the many voices. that are embodied, whatever that means, whatever way we contain the multitude of what we are. I think there's something lovely about Billy Collins' poem, as there is about many of his poems. There's a tenderness, a permission, and a lightness. When I read that poem, I don't get any flavor of scolding. It's not okay to be who you are. You should be different. You should sleep silently through the night. Your mind should be serene. Your breath rhythmic like the ocean waves.

[08:34]

who you are at night has its own mystery. And when we look closely, who we are during the day has its own mystery. And still is this great imperative of living a life. This wild and precious life. And what is it to reach within? What is it to look within? What is it to get in touch within? And let that inform, instruct the intentionality and the commitment with which we live the life we're living. And in some ways, That was, this whole year-long program, that was the gist of it.

[09:44]

So there you go. Now you don't need to bother doing it. Or maybe you've wasted a whole year doing it. I'm looking at someone who just did it for the year. Thank you. And then the year-long, we delve down into the how. But for now, I just like to talk in more general times. But of course, when we sit zazen, we're not only embracing intentionally the notion of being aware and connecting to what is, we're also enacting the how to do that. What kind of effort?

[10:46]

What kind of particularity of engagement, technique, fluidity, openness? There's a how to it. And in many ways, there's a how to looking in and getting in touch within. And in Dogen's piece, he calls this continuous practice, that we're never done learning. We do it and we learn from our own doing how to do it. And then you go back to the start. You start another day or fall asleep into another night. The looking within, you know. Of course, we would like the components, the particulars of the self to be neat and orderly, to behave themselves, to be easily identified.

[12:03]

But most of the time, certainly from my own experience and from listening to others, recount their experience. There are moments of order and there are moments of identifiable particularity. Oh, I have this way of thinking. This way, this habit of emoting. This way of experiencing the body. And then there are elements of it that are mysterious. Is there anyone in this room who could say, last time I sat Zazen for 30 minutes, I could now tell you every thought and image that happened in it.

[13:05]

That would be what it is. to be a fully, completely awakened Buddha. And maybe there are a few in the room, but I think there are many of us who would say, no, it's not quite what happened the last time I sat this in. There were a few brief moments of distraction. Or if we're a little more honest, there was... an extraordinary mix, a mysterious mix. In another opening, Dogen in his fascicles, in his writings, the first paragraph, he gives you the full message. Here's the full message and the rest of this is going to be an expansion, an expounding what's contained in this.

[14:13]

But he uses the term in Japanese term, myo, mysterious, wondrous. The way is mysterious and wondrous. And maybe this is the lesson we get each night when we're sleeping. We conjure up a roaring dragon charging off on a great adventure. We conjure up something, some thoroughly subjective response to being alive. The residue of the day, of our life, who knows?

[15:15]

So as we touch within, as we sits within, of course, technique, how? The particularity of the thumbs touching, the position of the elbows, the physical alignment of nose and nostrils, mouth and tongue, chest and heart, abdomen stomach abdomen you know and the breath flowing through all of these in and out it has a wisdom it's been studied by human beings for thousands of years and we've learned a lot and each time we sit We can avail ourselves with the wonders of the internet.

[16:24]

You can reach out into a great deal of our human knowledge. And yet, it evokes the mystery, the complexity, the depth, the bindlessness of the human condition. And what I'm trying to get at is, which I think this poem gets at, an acceptance. We could even say a generous acceptance of what we are, of how we are, of how we're manifesting any particular day, any particular moment. Within the skillfulness of awareness, acceptance, opening, a willingness to be what you already are, is a key ingredient.

[17:44]

An unwillingness, a resistance, a denial within the yoga of awareness. is actually a waste of energy. You're having the experience you're having. Now, your response to it, that's another matter. Your approval or disapproval of it, that's another matter. But the simple extraordinary truth is the experience that's happening is the experience that's happening. And that as we engage the inner, it's in allegiance with that willingness to be what already is. And can the breath flow through that being?

[18:49]

Can it breathe it in? How can it let go? And it has its own kind of disruption. The nature of our consciousness, the nature of our mind, and even our emotions, I would say, and how we relate to our body, we're on this grand quest for wholeness, for integration, for all this to be engaged in a way that causes less suffering and more happiness. This is the grand quest.

[19:54]

And we act it out and act it in a variety of ways. The willingness to be the extraordinary mystery of what is confines that quest. We are not in control. We cannot guarantee the result we would wish for, prefer, or wish to avoid, no matter how exquisite and detailed our to-do list. No matter how diligently you're willing to stay working, we can participate. And so there's a key term that has been coined in Buddhism.

[20:57]

Some people would say in the very beginnings of Buddhism, some people would say later. and the term is shunyata. It's very interestingly up until about 15 or so years ago was uniformly translated as emptiness. And then Thich Nhat Hanh with his own kind of genius and I would say accuracy translated as As well as dragons, we have strange wailing. This is our interbeing. Whether we like it or not. One of the key characteristics of shunyata is that in the intervening of the many facets, of the many arisings of existence, it's always dynamic.

[22:29]

We can't keep it in a singularity. When we look closely at what happens in sasad, when we look closely at what happens in sleep, when we look closely at anything, it comes into being, it goes out of being. It's always in the process of interaction. So we can, on one hand, we can say it has no fixed being, And then we can, on the other hand, we can say, it's this dynamic, pulsing aliveness of being. It's interbeing. And that's what we tap into when we practice awareness. And we practice and we delve more thoroughly into when we sit still.

[23:37]

When we let that awareness tuned into its experience of being alive. And it can manifest itself in an extraordinary array of ways. The technique we may involve ourselves in whether it's rigorous and determined and singular, whether it's wide and open to whoever it is, in a way they're all in the service of contacting it, experiencing this interbeing. And then the great koan of life in the end terms, the great request of life, the imperative of life,

[24:39]

is how will you live this wild and precious life? What's the intentionality? How will you engage? In one way we could say it's the yin and the yang. The yin is this immersion, this becoming part of what is without an agenda. And then the yang is, do it. Now what? What are the guidelines? What are the aspirations? What are the intentionalities that guide your life? there was a student of Freud who broke off from the Freudian method, or he would probably say embellished it or improved it, but with the notion that the Freudian method was too mechanistic, that it left out this human capacity for intention.

[26:10]

that we as human beings can experience and based on that experience intentionally engage. I think it was Asaglioli that then went on to develop psychosynthesis. This notion that From our experience, we intentionally engage. And then do we engage from within the likes and dislikes, the desires and the aversions that we've seen arise within us? Or are we informed about them and engaged by that information?

[27:19]

And the flavor of the Zen school is that it doesn't offer a fixed prescription. Here's the recipe for how your life should be lived. It offers more, here's the process of inquiry in the exploration and in the action. Both constantly ask for beginner's mind. Both are constantly asking for a willingness to learn, a courage to act. And it's the willingness to learn and the courage to act. They complement each other. They bring each other into balance.

[28:32]

And in some of the systems of Buddhist thought, Balance is considered the key attribute. Equanimity. The capacity to return to uprightness. In Japan they have a doll called the Daruma doll after Bodhidharma. It's a doll that's a very weighted base so when you push it It always returns upright. But it's also fluid. When you push it, it doesn't stay static. It moves. And so what is it to live a life that responds to what's happening?

[29:39]

and returns to balance. What is it to live a life that's dynamic, that's engaged, that's intentional, but not rigid, not prejudiced? My opinions of this moment are the truth. How do we do that? What does it look like? How can there be that kind of commitment to what life's presenting us with, and how can it be balanced with this fluidity of beginner's mind? So this is the koan.

[30:49]

In Zen we say the koan of life. These two, the introspection and the action are the two hands that come together in Gesho. They are the yin and the yang that balance us in our internal energy. and our action. And the time I have left would be to, I want to offer some involvement in that, some of the particularity. It's almost we could say, The internal is a yogic practice. Yoga, to yoga.

[31:52]

But we can expand that notion to align our involvement in the human condition with awareness. And this is part of what we're doing, practically, when we sit. We're discovering balance within the body. We're discovering balance within the breath. Within the alignment of the body, within the physiology of the body, within the psychosomatic being of the body. this embodiment can hold the complexity of the human condition more thoroughly than the thinking mind.

[32:57]

Of course, it is our restless inclination to try to capture it with our thoughts. For most of us, that's a deeply embedded impulse. But in a way, it can separate us from the willingness to experience. And so when we shift to embodying the experience, when we shift to breathing the embodiment of what is, it helps loosen up the grip of figuring it out. And most of us in our sitting will resume the conceptual process.

[34:01]

How it has come into thought, how it has come into memory, how it has come into image. And then In the awareness, breathe that through. Breathe that in, breathe that out. In this end school, the meditation is the enactment of being what is. Of returning to that. of discovering that, of realizing that. And in the process rediscovering, recreating, realizing balance. And the complexity of the arising of our human existence is not a problem.

[35:12]

It's not that we're wantonly disavowing the request of practice. We're simply, moment by moment, creating another manifestation of what is. Another opportunity of touching and connecting and learning from what is. pleasant and unpleasant, seemingly knowable and seemingly unknowable. There it is. That beginner's mind doesn't know what should happen. That beginner's mind doesn't put limitation on what should happen. And each time we sit down to rediscover, to reconnect to that immensity of being, to that generosity and permission of being.

[36:40]

And then to stand up and live enter the life that you call, that I call, that we call my life. And to both carry that awareness into that life, but to carry it with the flavor of shunyata. This life too. even with its so-called particularity, even with its so-called agendas. We live in a material world. We live in a social structure. We live with a physical body.

[37:50]

There are many contributing factors and influences in the world we live in that are asking for a response. And can that response come from an intentional place rather than a reactive place? And in that ingredient we're looking at empowerment. There is a strange talk the finder, Suzuki Roshi gave, where he says, be the boss of everything you do. I would rephrase his words, without his permission of course.

[38:52]

intentional involvement which is the whole talk in itself when we're living our life with intention not because we know all the answers not because we know what should happen and what shouldn't happen but because we have some connectedness, some relationship to what we are, to what it is to be alive, that it's taught us the values by which we can live. And here are the current circumstances I'm dealing with. Here's today's to-do list. Here's this person in front of me.

[40:00]

Here's this situation. Someone told me recently, her three and a half year old child has been declaring adamantly that although they have a boy's body, they identify with being a girl. And she was simply saying, this is what's coming up in my life. Asking for me to relate to, to be accepting of, and to be skillful in my response to it. We can resent what comes up.

[41:05]

We can try to deny it, suppress it, get away from it. But in a way, it's disempowering. Whereas when we meet it, when we relate to it intentionally, something comes alive. We come alive. The engagement comes alive. And this, in the flavor of Zen, in the wind of the Zen school, is the genjo khan, the khan of being alive. Okay. So let me end once again with Billy Collins' poem. before I do that.

[42:08]

And then how do you live such a life? Well, that's our human wisdom, our Zen practice, our Zen tradition, our Buddhist tradition, the wisdom traditions of the world. They all have a response to that. And when we pay close attention to ourselves, we discover there's a wisdom there too. but back to the night house, that's what the poem's called. Every day, the body works in the fields of the world, mending a stone wall or swinging a sickle through the tall grass. The grass of civics, the grass of money, and every night the body curls around itself and listens for the soft bells of sleep. But the heart is restless, and rises from the body in the middle of the night, leaves the trapezoidal bedroom with its thick, pictureless walls to sit by herself at the kitchen table and heat some milk in a pan.

[43:19]

And the mind gets up too, puts on a robe, goes downstairs, lights a cigarette, opens a book on engineering. Even the conscience awakens and roams from room to room in the dark darting away from every mirror like a strange fish. And the soul is up on the roof in her nightdress, straddling the rage, singing a song about the wildness of the sea until the first drip of pink appears in the sky. Then they all will return to the sleeping body the way a flock of birds settles upon a tree, resuming their daily colloquy. talking to each other or themselves, even through the heat of the long afternoons, which is why the body, the house of voices, sometimes puts down its metal tongs, its needle or its pen to stir into the distance and to listen to all its names being called before bending again to its labor.

[44:29]

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.

[44:59]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.25