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. Welcome. And thank you all for coming this morning. And to all of those of you that I can see in my visual field, And to those that I cannot see. And all that which I cannot see. And does this sound okay? Yeah? Okay. This good morning and welcome and thank you has become kind of a ritual for some of us. And I've been thinking of it as...

[01:00]

This ritual as a gateway, a Dharma gate, that if you let such a thing register, if you can repeat it for yourself, good morning or greetings, welcome, and thank you. Thank you to what comes, welcoming what comes. First thing when you get up in the morning, when you wash your face, when you have a meal, thank you and welcome. And this every morning, every moment greeting, if we let it register, actually, this could be the whole Dharma talk, but I'll keep saying more words. So to those of you who are new to Green Gulch and maybe online, my name is Sonia, and I'm

[02:02]

although I've been living at Green Gulch or Zen Center and Tassajara and Zen Center for quite some time, I really still consider myself a beginner and still refining all the things that Zazen has to teach or rather show me. And if I'm a learner, it will teach me something. And today I was... searching and searching for what I wanted to offer today and how to say that I want this to be an ode, a song, an encouragement for Zazen. And I was rather, I would say, like maybe some of you even here today, was searching outside myself for something to say. I was searching outside myself to make myself comfortable. And I would say to all of you, it was the wrong direction.

[03:06]

So I just went in, and maybe all of you could just help me and help yourself by just settling. I just settled, and I found my sit bones, and I lifted. And I took a breath in and allowed that breath in to expand or extend my spine. And then the breath out to open. And I noticed if I dropped in, dropped into the body, it allowed me, it didn't make me, but it allowed me to be more sensitive and permeable. to what was whispering something. And I was relatively surprised by what came forward. And in one way, it kind of made me nervous.

[04:14]

Maybe the same thing happens for you when you come across something and you go, is this really it? Anyway, it's what came. And I would like to offer it now to you. So just settle. Please just find yourself settled. You can either close your eyes or the Zazen instruction is the eyes at 45 degrees. And just looking down, not really letting anything in. And I'm going to recite a poem that I came across some years ago when I was tenzo in the kitchen. And it's by a Turkish poet, and her name is Zarad. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. I'm going to recite it one time through as Zarad wrote it, and then repeat it again with a little creativity.

[05:15]

And maybe you'll notice, since I'm this morning calling it a song, an ode to Zazen, you will recognize your very own mind in it. So this poem is called A Woman Cleaning Lentils. A lentil, a lentil, a lentil, a stone. A lentil, a lentil, a lentil, a stone, a green one, a black one, a green one, a black one. A stone, a lentil, a lentil, a stone, a lentil, a lentil, a word. Suddenly, a word. A lentil, a lentil, a word. A word next to another word.

[06:19]

a sentence, a word, a word, a word, a nonsense speech, then an old song, then an old dream, a life, another life, a hard life, a lentil, a life, an easy life, a hard life. Why easy? Why hard? Why easy, why hard? Live next to each other. A life, a word, a lentil. A green one, a black one, a green one, a black one. Pain, a green song, a green lentil, a black one, a stone. A lentil, a stone, a stone, a lentil. A lentil, a lentil, a lentil, a stone.

[07:24]

A moment, a moment, a lentil, a stone. A green one, a black thought, a green thought, a black, a stone. The unique reads of reality. A lentil, a moment, a stone. A lentil, a lentil, a word. Suddenly, a word, a lentil. The unique breeze of reality. Do you see? A lentil, a word, a word next to another word, a sentence. Continuously, creation is working her loom and shuttle. A word, a word, a word. A nonsense speech, then an old song. The mother of evolution. Then an old dream. A life, another life, a hard life, a lentil, a life. Weaving the ancient brocade, an easy life, a hard life.

[08:28]

Why easy? Why hard? Lives next to each other, a life, a word, a lentil. A green one, a black one, a green one, a black one. A painful thought. Incorporating the forms of spring. A green song, a green lentil, a dark thought, a stone, a lentil, a stone, a stone, a lentil. The unique breeze of reality, do you see? Continuously, creation works her loom and shuttle, weaving the ancient brocade, incorporating the forms of spring. Such is each moment, each thought, each lentil incorporating the forms of spring.

[09:33]

Although we can say we don't know what Zazen is, sitting absolutely present and still, Suzuki Roshi says, we say to shine one corner of the world, that is enough. Not the whole world. Just make it clear where you are. We say to shine one corner of the world, that is enough. Not the whole world. Just make it clear. where you are. My words are not the depth.

[10:34]

Your going in and staying with your breath is the depth. To know what is important to you and to know what is being met or not. Not leaning forward and not leaning back. Just show up. Our zazen, this sitting, builds a foundation. This foundation from which we make contact with what's important to us. Not necessarily the whole world, but to you. you then become the gift. We honor our journey. This foundation, perhaps, it's based on a vow, an aspiration, an intention.

[11:52]

What Is that for you? I don't have the answer for you. We're here together in this room and online, and I will create, allow a gap right now to see if you go in. What is it? that matters to you. What one thought, one word, what is it you're looking for? Can you articulate that for yourself? We sit, I sit, we witness, I listen to what's underneath this robe, behind this face, and try to bring it forward.

[13:14]

What's coming to my mind now is what brought me to Zen Center. Or it brought me to Zen. Not really knowing that I would practice Zen. But when I grew up, the generation I was coming up in was a time of the Civil Rights Movement. And also in my family lineage. My mother is from Germany. And she... lost her mother and her family in the concentration camps. And I wondered, I wondered, what is it? What is it in the mind that leads to such catastrophe?

[14:23]

Maybe I would say it that way. And I decided that I would like to devote my life to understanding maybe we would say love and hate or what is othering and belonging, what creates belonging. And you can see how you do that for yourself. Somebody in your sangha, in your life, in your family, they don't meet your expectations perhaps you know your values and do you other them or do you stand back in calm and try to understand what were the causes and conditions what is the conditioning for such a thing to arise and what would be a helpful and appropriate response what I understood as a young person

[15:27]

before I learned the words conditioning, is that we all grow up in a context and in a family and hearing over and over again certain messages, and then we take them in before we have a discriminating mind as set that this is what's real. And when we sit, when we sit down together to question that reality, we have an opportunity to drop into a different heart-mind. So when we're sitting, we're kind of listening backward into what brings us in today. And in sitting, maybe we have the opportunity to move from our head here, to hear, to our heart.

[16:32]

And we, listening forward, listening forward and through, we allow ourselves to see the world in a way where we're carried by vow, intention, or aspiration. Do you have an aspiration? Do you have an intention? however brief, can you make contact with it? Right now I'm imagining that you might have an intention and then a random thought comes in and you become distracted. And then you have to have, well, I don't know if you have to, but you might want to have the commitment and the attention. Go, oh yeah, I remember.

[17:33]

I wanted to be calm. I wanted to be present. I wanted to remember that I'm a conditioned being and I want to open. Open to that which I can't see and don't know. When vow, intention, and aspiration isn't centered on what about me, but on something wider and larger, there's a possibility to respond in a wider and larger way. Does this help? Is this useful? The trick is, again, the commitment and vowing to remember to return. You know, when I was thinking about commitment and return and forgetting and remembering, I remembered when I had the opportunity to train a dog named Madra at Tassajara.

[18:54]

Some of you might have known Madra. And training Madra to sit when I wanted Madra to sit. We actually taught Madra how to bow. So for those of you who are yogis, you know, in yoga, the posture downward dog. Well, Madra got downward dog to bow. And when the abbot came to visit in Tassajara, I'd say, Madra, bow. In front of the abbot, Madra, go into downward dog. But I would like you to know what you can already imagine. It didn't really happen automatically. I had to catch Madra in the morning when I came home from Zazen. And Madra's down there stretching, and I'd say, good, bow. And give Madra a treat.

[19:55]

And then, again, And again, and again. And one day I said, Madra, bow. And Madra just did it. It was kind of exciting. So again, over and over again. And when I was young, we had a parakeet that we taught how to talk. Whether that was good or not, I don't know. But we did teach Pepe how to say good morning. Over and over again. pretty peppy, good morning, good morning. I forgot to add welcome and thank you, but anyway. And pretty soon, peppy was looking in the morning in the mirror and saying, good morning, good morning, pretty peppy, good morning. But it took a lot of repetitions. Some of you may be tennis players or musicians. or basketball players, and you know how many repetitions it took to master that chord, to master that serve, so that when you lifted the ball, it landed where you wanted it to land.

[21:16]

How many repetitions? So I ask you, you know, is this your intention, and can you meet it? over and over again. So practice, Zazen, coming to Zen Center. Recently at a dinner table, someone asked me, we were talking about Tassajara practice. I lived there a long time, and they said, can you tell me something about Tassajara or what that was like? And again, kind of like a lentil, a lentil of stone, I just got really quiet and I was surprised by what came forward. And what I remembered, so you might think of this as a metaphor for our practice here. And what I realized, and it's been a long-standing fear, I would say in my life, one of the various fears is of being cold.

[22:25]

And I see one person anyway nodding. And in fact, even when I was younger, I was so afraid of being cold, I thought, what if I was homeless? Then what? On the street. And then somebody told me, well, newspaper is a good insulator. And I thought, oh, at that time there were a lot of newspapers. I thought, well, I could pack myself in newspaper and maybe I would be okay. Okay. Anyway, I went to Tassajara, my first practice period, by fear of being cold. And the first thing that happens at Tassajara, your first practice period, is a five-day tangario. It's kind of like a, well, it's an entering ceremony. You just sit for five days, wake up in the morning with the bell, sit down. There's no kinhin, no anything. You're just sitting. If you have to get up and go to the bathroom, you can do that. But it's a chance for you to just sit and see, is this really what I want to do?

[23:29]

Anyway, I had on about four sweaters and five pairs of socks and a scarf. This is our mudra, as you know, and my mudra was sitting out here in front of me. I was a little bit uncomfortable. Maybe I had on, you know, three pairs of leggings. I don't remember now. but it was not very comfortable, but I was taking care of my fear, I thought. And after about the third day, or you could say maybe the third month or the third year or the 30th year of your practice, you might wonder if it's all my padding and my fear of the cold that's really the problem. And the experiment began, taking off one sweater and another sweater and another pair of socks and another pair of socks and taking away the scarf.

[24:30]

And pretty soon, I could just be with the cold. So as we sit, as we sit, and discover what it is, what it is that we're afraid of, what it is that we're depending on for our happiness. It might be that we'll go in and find our own courage to make friends with this deep, wider, broader intention. Now, why this posture? You know, when we're moving around or digging in the garden or planting the fields or cooking a meal, it's a little harder to stay in touch.

[25:42]

It's a little harder to stay in touch with the intention. But when we sit still and we can use that as our anchor, it may be that all of our actions and our thoughts and words will end up coming through that. That whether you're counting lentils or digging a ditch, you can do that with some, what it might be for you, compassion, generosity, patience, serenity. You can allow that to be the gift. What I'm... I'm sitting still right now with you.

[26:52]

I'm wondering, some of you came here possibly wanting something, hoping for something. And maybe you can offer that to this assembly as a gift. I'm just offering words. I'm not sure who I'm speaking to. I'm not sure what you want. But our practice is call and response. And like a vessel, when we sit still, everything can settle. And then we listen quietly to the whisper to what comes up. What is your question? What is it that would be soothing?

[27:57]

I'd like to invite you after I read this and I guess we do a chant. If any of you have something you could offer, you could offer a lentil, a lentil, a stone, a thought, positive thought, a black thought, a question thought, a song. So this last bit is from Reiner Maria Rilke, who is offering some advice to a young poet.

[29:11]

And I offer this as advice to you, all of us beginners here. I would beg you, dear sir, to have patience with everything, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers which could not be given to you now. because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything, live the questions now. Perhaps then, living into the questions now, perhaps then someday, far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

[30:22]

Live your way into your gift. Live your way into your intention. The power of just sitting, making friends with just this person. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[31:15]

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