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. This summer, and maybe for longer than that, I've been thinking about and talking about a lot this idea that Studying Buddhism is studying the self and wondering what that might mean. Studying, when I say that word to myself or to other people, it often feels too mental, like studying something like the self, whatever that might be, or studying Buddhism even more so. And there was just a, when my dharma sister Tia Strozer was just down here, one of the things that I admire endlessly about Tia is that she studies.

[01:14]

She studies, studies, studies. I can hardly believe it. She always wants me to study with her. And I'm always like, oh, no, let's not study. And then she pulls out some dharma, you know, sentence and says, what do you think this says? What do you think it means? And I'm caught for a while, and they're like, no, no, let's not, let's study the self. Let's not study one of those books. But she brought with her a new book that I hadn't seen before. It's called, I think it's called Realizing Genjo Koan by Shoaka Okamura. And Genjo Koan is one of my favorites. And Shoaka Okamura is one of my favorites. So I open it up to this. I just open it up. And the page that I opened it to was this, to study Buddhism is to study the self. And he said that studying, the word studying in this context means something more like get familiar with, get accustomed to, become intimate with, something not so mental.

[02:29]

at all, really. And then he went on to say that the Chinese character for this studying, the bottom part of it is self, but the top part is the symbol for wings. And that it means something like a baby bird learning to fly. That a bird, you know... It has the capacity to fly, maybe not when it's really young, its wings have to develop a little bit, but it has this capacity to fly, he said, unless it's a penguin or an ostrich. So most birds have a capacity to fly, but they actually have to learn to fly. They have to watch their parents, and they have to try and fail and try and fail, and eventually they fly. And they actually fly in very different ways. Different birds fly in different ways. hummingbird gets confused and watches a hawk, they're going to be in big trouble. They're not going to be able to figure out how to fly.

[03:30]

Of course, a hummingbird wouldn't do that, but we do. We tend to think, you know, oh, I want to be a hawk. Sorry, you know, when really we might be a hummingbird. You know, like fast. You have to like flap really fast. I know that It just occurs to me that when Linda Ruth was here, remember she talked about, those of you who were here, she talked about the geese in a V, flying in a V formation, and how Tassajara was like that, that the air and the way that their wings and the movement of the air that went with them started to support them. It's like there was a wave that they were riding on, and she talked about Tassajara summer being like that. Tassajara all the time, really, but the summer now, and how we were all flapping. And I remember some dining room people after that going, we're flapping across the dining room, across the courtyard, making our wave, carrying Tassajara.

[04:32]

Good, very good. So this sense of studying ourselves in that way, of watching, how do I fly? You know, becoming accustomed to ourselves. I've heard said, I'd never heard Suzuki Roshi speak, actually. Keith, who's now my husband, and I came to Zen Center just before he died. He was very sick, and we saw him alive only once at Baker Roshi's Mountain Seeds ceremony. He was a very small yellow man in a very large yellow robe with that big yellow hat on. But he didn't say anything at the ceremony. I think he was too sick to say anything. But I've heard that he said, actually I heard a tape of him saying in a lecture once here at Tassajara, that the problems that you have now will be the problems that you have for the rest of your life.

[05:38]

And then he laughs. It's really... And I'm here to, after 30-some years of practice, getting close to 40 years of practice, to say he's right. The problems, or at least for me, the problems that I had then are the problems that I have now. But they're... What? You know, I... I never know for sure when they're going to come barreling back. But on a normal day, they're more transparent. They're familiar. They don't have the same power that they used to have. And to some extent, that means that they don't come up as much. Lots of situations don't trigger them in the same way. But they're still lurking there. I can see it. So I'll tell you my worst one.

[06:42]

My worst one? I don't know if it's my worst. But anyway, one that I, for years, really did not like, which is, you know, I think it started, I have no idea how young it started, but it certainly was there, like in high school, when there was some real need to be validated by someone else, a man, of course. In my case, a man. You can choose your own object of, you know, who gets to validate you. But, you know, doing really stupid things like riding my bicycle across town to catch sight of the man who was supposed to validate me. The man, the boy who was supposed to validate me. You know, and then, of course, having to duck around the corner and hide because the validation wasn't happening in quite the appropriate way. So, you know, yucky stuff like that, which only got worse as it became narrowed more closely completely on one person so like keith of course was the the worst example of this uh dependent this hole you know what felt like this hole that needed to be filled by someone's assuring me that i was okay someone not not just anyone you know whichever one i chose not knowing that i chose thinking that they were you know

[08:08]

to be the one to convince me that I was okay. Only over years did I see I was kind of putting someone in that spot. But it was a terrible feeling, which some of you, maybe a lot of you, might have some experience of, of really feeling when that validation wasn't happening, like I, I don't know, it didn't exist or shouldn't exist. or a panicky feeling, a really terrible feeling, which every time it was there, I sincerely hoped would never come again. And over the years, really being forced to study it, to be with it, to get accustomed to it, to get familiar with it, to be intimate with it, because there was no choice.

[09:09]

And, you know, I've talked several times to those of you who've heard me about the time after Keith and I had been living together for some number of years, so I was nicely, totally addicted to this feeling that he left me for six months or something. It was the most important time in my practice life, actually, when I was at City Center and had to... accept this there wasn't anything I could do about it he was completely out of reach I couldn't go try to convince him differently I couldn't and I and it was bad enough that I couldn't ignore it and also was bad enough that I didn't want to do anything to make it worse like hope or pretend things like that and the The result of having to be that intimate with it was that it started to show what it was made up of.

[10:13]

That it was very circumstantial. And maybe the biggest thing was that I didn't die from feeling it. It was a surprise to me. every morning, every midday, that I didn't die from feeling this feeling, which I couldn't get away from. And something about knowing that I could live with this feeling and, in fact, go on functioning with this feeling, put it in some more perspective so that it could become something that over the years I could practice with when it appeared. You know, like, okay, I'm not going to die. I can stay with... this feeling and like i say i don't know when it might pop up again it's at a pretty low ebb now after you know four years of essentially marriage too but um but i don't know you know what will happen if keith dies before i do that will be interesting um but i can now you know if it comes up a little bit anyway so far i can actually say oh i remember you

[11:24]

And obviously you're not gone completely yet. There's some kind of still basing my identity on this. It's not exactly on that person. It's more like on who I think I am in relationship to. Having some idea of who I am and that being very important to me and having it pulled out from under me at any point has been threatening and now is less so, but still enough that I can get a whiff of it. And it's a very useful problem to continue to have, I guess, for the rest of my life. I've often thought of practice as a slinky. You know slinkies?

[12:24]

I don't know what you're supposed to do with them. I bring them to Dharma Talks about once every 20 years. So practice is like a slinky because they go around and around and around in very thin movements. So this getting familiar with ourselves, this having the same problems... you know, for our whole life, is actually a very lucky thing. If we had different problems every day, you know, if, yes, tomorrow you woke up and you had, we all switched problems, and you had somebody else's problems, it would be very confusing. You know, you'd have to start over, but it's not like that. We have the same problems every day, or we have maybe not the same problems every day, but we bring a lot of the same material to situations every time we meet a situation, moment after moment.

[13:26]

So it's kind of like a slinky. You go around, you learn, like about that much, about who you are, studying the self, just like about that much. And then the next day, you get to learn, or the next moment, You get to learn about that much more, a tiny little bit more. But you're going around and around the same body-mind. Around and around the same body-mind with the same... And there are changes. You go down a little bit. But basically, the material... It doesn't stay the same, of course, because... Because... the entire universe is the dharma body of the self. Because the entire universe makes us and we are in closer contact with different parts of it at different moments. And the different parts that are having an effect on us at that moment or having a more dynamic effect at that moment bring out a different part in us.

[14:36]

And actually make a different us. that moment but still there's a lot of continuity so we can have we can become familiar with how we respond and yet it's this strange combination of the same and yet different different every time because because the entire universe is a Dharma body of the self because this self that we're studying is is different every moment because of something different coming in contact with us. Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen, who wrote the Genjo Koan, also in a different

[15:38]

fascicle writes that only fish no one but a fish can know a fish's heart and only birds can can know the traces of birds and then he says don't understand this is no one can know a fish's heart fish actually know each other's heart they're not like people they actually know each other's heart that's what he says I don't know how he knows this but he says it as he says everything as if it's really true So Dogen says, only fish can know a fish's heart, and only birds can see the traces of birds. And he says, you know, when animals or people look at the sky, they don't even imagine that there's such a thing as traces of birds. But actually, birds can see the traces of birds. They can tell where big birds fly and small birds fly, and that it's as clear as a cart tracks on the ground. Again, I don't know where Dogen gets his information. This is what he says. And then he says, only Buddhas can know the traces of Buddhas.

[16:42]

And that if we don't, which I take to mean, when Buddhas look around them, they see the traces of Buddhas. They see people and things acting like Buddhas, being Buddhas, leaving traces of Buddhas around. And that if we don't see... traces of buddhas if one like when we look around what we see is a mess or um you know one of the things that that happens to us is we as because we're people we uh tend to think of ourselves as separate we we actually have an experience of i'm here and you're there that makes sense right i'm here you're there and and therefore we're separate and various things in that experience cause us pain like when we wish we were closer to something or we wish we were farther away from something or when something bumps into us or when someone looks at us in what we think is an angry way or says something to us that feels unkind those things cause us pain and our normal

[18:03]

for most of us, our normal understanding of when we feel pain is that something's wrong. It shouldn't be like that. Somehow, life should be good. We should not feel pain. And so when we have this experience of pain and then this idea that that's not right, there's something wrong with it, another than normal... Answers to that, there's two things. There's someone to blame. That's it. There's one thing. There's someone to blame. There's two possibilities of who to blame, me or them. So when I feel pain, when I feel actually any kind of unpleasantness, the normal human response actually is to look for who to blame, look for what's going on and try to figure out, is it my fault or is it the rest of the world or somebody in the rest of the world, me or them.

[19:06]

So this comes from this misunderstanding of our separateness and our misunderstanding of that actually it's not supposed to be painful. That's actually a misunderstanding. Actually, having a body and having a mind is sometimes painful. It's just that's the way it is. So when we look around and see... it hurts, and it doesn't look like traces of Buddhas to me, looks like either I'm really a creepy person, certainly not a Buddha, and causing this pain, or they are, or that one is, causing me this pain, then we're not seeing the traces of Buddhas. So what Dogen says is when you don't see the traces of Buddhas, you should look for them. Start looking for the traces of Buddhas. When you don't see them, stop try to stop if you think about it if you can remember it try to stop doing this blaming thing this it shouldn't be like this and go back to are there traces of buddhas here and then he says and if you when you're investigating if you see footprints investigate the footprint so they don't have to look like the buddha's footprints just if you see anything that's happening that looks like it might be a clue to what's happening

[20:32]

to investigate it and try to see, is it the Buddha's footprint? And so my translation of this is, try to see if it is beneficial. And sometimes this might take a while to see, is it beneficial? Some of you have been talking to me about, oh, that thing that I thought was really terrible. I still wouldn't have chosen it, but I'm beginning to see there's some benefit here. You know, there's something right about what happened to me that looks so wrong. I think that that often happens for us. So essentially he's saying, one way of saying this is he's saying do zazen. You know, sit still. When you feel like things are not right or when you feel like it's unpleasant, sit still, keep your eyes open, investigate what's happening. open heart with the possibility with the desire to get familiar with it difficult to do when it's unpleasant but if you do this a few times and it works it gets to be a little bit easier to do because there's some faith grows that it's a beneficial thing to do so and then look and see is there anything beneficial here and if you don't see it keep looking so essentially do Zazen sit

[21:59]

in a stable or walk or stand or lie down in a stable posture and keep your eyes open, keep your mind open, keep your heart open. Look and see what's really happening. Don't be too confused by this feeling of separation, feeling that pain or suffering or even unpleasantness is not the way it should be. Just, okay, that's the way it is. What's happening here? What's there to get familiar with? And again, not in this mental way, but more like looking to see how do you fly? How do my wings flap when something unpleasant happens? Do I soar like a swallow? Do I kind of wobble like a tricky vulture? It's not like one is better than the other, right? Conventionally, according to our standards,

[23:01]

You know, we might think swallows are the most beautiful thing there is, turkey vultures wobbling. But we can imagine somebody might turn that around and think wobbling turkey vultures, very beautiful. So to have that kind of, what am I? And I, you know, a number of you, I think, are... somewhat new to this practice, those of you who are here for the summer, for some part of the summer. And I just wanted to put in a plug for sashins, long sittings. We've been doing half-day sittings here some this summer, and I know a number of you have tried those, and that's a great start. And to do a several-day sitting, is it's like a whole other world it's like it really gets you past the idea of what zazen is into the physicalness of what zazen is it gets you to the place where your ideas who cares about your ideas they don't make any sense anyway and they certainly don't match what you're doing sitting there you know so you can have ideas fine fine fine ideas but how am i going to

[24:27]

You get up and walk when this is over. So I don't recommend rushing into these things. I myself took three years before I did a seven-day sesheen, after I started sitting. But once I did, it's very effective, has a big impact. So if you're leaving here at the end of the summer, and if you're thinking of going to Green Dulture, the city center, and doing a practice period, sesheens will happen in those things. And I think you'll find it very interesting if you haven't done one and very, probably very beneficial but also very intense. And if you're not going to one of those places and you're somewhere where you can check out a longer sitting, I recommend doing it because it's the same. It's very much the same as zazen. It's just that it convinces you on your own. I mean, it convinces you on its own. that this is really not what you thought it was.

[25:30]

And it's fine that we have thought, like Shoako Kimura says, you know, when we're sitting in zazen, we sit down, we try to sit upright, and we try to keep our eyes open, and then all of our organs keep functioning. Our lungs keep functioning, our heart keeps functioning, our glands keep functioning, everything keeps functioning, so why wouldn't our mind keep functioning? Our mind keeps functioning. We keep thinking. It's just that we don't try to interact with our thoughts. We just try to be sitting with them. So our thoughts keep happening, and we just try to keep sitting with them. So in a sesheen, that becomes more apparent. Now we might wonder about it. Should I be stopping thinking? Should I... Should I be counting my breath? Oh, bad zazen. I thought all the way through zazen. It becomes apparent that it doesn't really matter. So I recommend that you try that when you get the chance and when you feel almost ready for it.

[26:37]

Don't wait until you feel totally ready for it. It's just a little two-line poem. You can say it either way, either, like a moon through ivy, do you know the self or not? Or, do you know the self or not, like a moon through ivy? Or maybe we could say, like a moon through maple leaves, or through maple branches. Do you know the self or not, like a moon through maple branches? like a moon through maple branches do you know the self or not that this kind of this kind of studying you know like how do you get accustomed to become from intimate with yourself in the way that you become intimate with the moon through the maple branches you know where it's it's vague vaguely through the maple branches but there it is

[27:49]

Can we have that kind of open, gentle, curious attitude toward the self that's continually changing, continually appearing in a slightly different form, in a slinky-width different form? And then stick in there. getting intimate, familiar with that for as long as it takes, which is probably our whole life. And it makes a difference. It really makes a difference. It's a different way of living. 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.

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For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

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