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 to be here with you this morning. What I'd like to speak about this morning is Big Mind. The reality of big mind of our life. The reality of our life called a big mind. The reality in our life of big mind. What is it? What do we mean when we say big mind?

[01:02]

And how do we get it? For those of us who may be interested in acquiring such a thing, I recommend it. But actually, as you may know, It can't be acquired in that way. It's not a thing. It's not a possession. So maybe we could say more like, how do we allow and encourage the arising of big mind in our life? Ahem. How do we create the circumstances that allow it to come forth, to be expressed?

[02:12]

And also, how does it help? What good does it do us, as it were? We're always very interested in that. What good does it do us? So it's a big agenda for this talk for 40 or 50 minutes, so I'll give it my best go. But I may not complete everything, but that's okay because we always complete the Dharma talks with our practice. Each one of you, each one of us. completes the talk with what our practice actually is. As they say, when the rubber meets the road.

[03:13]

Whether we're on our cushion or off the cushion. So the reason I want to speak about big mind is because I feel the activity of practice, the direction of our practice substantially includes big mind. Recognizing, cultivating, and amplifying big mind. Big mind doesn't actually need to be amplified because it's already big. Maybe our recognition of it and our cultivation of it and our inculcation of it need to be amplified. Also, I mentioned help.

[04:28]

And help, again, is a central concern, a central direction of our practice. Help for ourself and help for others. Other people, other beings. Our practice doesn't work unless it's both. We can't just do help for ourself and forget help for others. We can't just do help for others and forget help for ourself. Both are there. Both are simultaneous. Help, assistance, refuge. How do we support ourself and our our world?

[05:32]

How do we support ourselves as we make our way through this life? And I feel that the notion of big mind is of benefit, great benefit to us. Maybe more than benefit, maybe it's a necessity. If we're going to make it, it's a necessity. And in this, I'm not speaking so much of each one of us individually, but more of our society and our species, this group we belong to called human beings. If us human beings are going to make it, it would do well for us to recognize and amplify and cultivate and develop our big mind attitude.

[06:46]

So, you know, I can... speaking about it as a notion or a thing is not so accurate. We could say attitude or capacity. Our capacity for big mind. Our big mind capacity. Or another word I like is inclination. Inclination, if I were... live with you you could see you could see but i have to make sure you can see me so inclination is nice because it refers to the incline right that's what's that's where inclination comes from from an incline from a tilted thing so the ball is up here and then it goes down the incline so that's our practice the ball of big mind up at the top and then we have to

[07:55]

Give it a little push. Then once we give it that push, then it just keeps going down. This is, my arm is limited in length, but this incline, the inclination of big mind, is infinite. Those are different ways of thinking of it. So I want to bring in... a Zen story, an enjoyable Zen story, short, a koan, so-called koan. And if you've ever looked at koans or heard koans, often they are hard to understand. For example, I thought of an example of a hard one to understand because just recently I was studying it with some friends.

[09:05]

So here's a koan that involves Zen Master Yunman. This is not the koan I'm going to talk about. So Zen Master Yunman and his student practitioner. And the student says... asks a question, if not a thought arises, is there any fault? So, we haven't gotten to the answer yet, but already some of us might be lost, you know? What is he talking about? If not a thought arises, is there any fault? And Yun-men responded, Mount Sumeru. That was the totality of his response as far as we know.

[10:08]

Mount Sumeru is a mythic mountain in the center of the earth, a gigantic mythic mountain, much bigger than Mount Everest or any other mountain. That was his response to the question. So I would put that in the category of, I don't know, what's going on here? What are they talking about? The category of difficult to understand. But the colon that I'm going to tell you is, I think it is pretty simple to understand, straightforward. It's basically a person talking to themself, which we are all, I'm sure, familiar with. Usually we talk to ourselves, you know, not out loud. But he's talking to himself out loud. And indeed, sometimes we may talk to ourselves out loud as well.

[11:12]

So here it is. It's about a Zen practitioner, teacher, Zen master, Zui Gan. Zui Gan. who lived maybe a thousand years ago or so in China. And it's amazing. We have this little snippet of a story. So the story is that Zui Gan, every day when he woke up, he would sit on the edge of his bed and he'd talk to himself. Some of you know this. story, it's pretty popular. So first he would call his name, Zwiegon. Then he would respond, yes, yes, sir. Yes.

[12:16]

Then he would say, be diligent. Yes, yes, I will. Okay. He would respond. And then he would say, don't be fooled by things. Okay, I won't. Yes, sir. Diligence, don't be fooled by things. Some translations have it as don't be fooled by people. But I think the way I'm going to speak about don't be fooled by things, is the same thing as don't be fooled by people, don't be fooled by others. So, you know, it has a very contemporary feeling, you know, because we could say, you know, psychologically, he's having an inner dialogue or

[13:26]

Zuigan, the Zen teacher, is talking to Zuigan, the Zen student, and they're chatting about things. It feels very psychological. So the first thing he says after he gets his own attention, not always easy to do for him or for us, But the first thing he requests is be diligent. It may feel like be diligent is something like a scold, like scolding, like be diligent. Sometimes our practice has that kind of feeling to it. Somebody is... bossing somebody else around telling them what to do. We're bossing ourselves around telling ourselves what to do, which I don't think is accurate to the actual sense of it.

[14:39]

So Suzuki Roshi used to say, make your best effort on each moment. That feels softer to me. Make your best effort. Make your best effort, he would say, on each moment, which is a little unusual construction in English, but that was how he said it, on each moment. And I want to take a little sidebar here. to say something about Marlon Brando. So for some of us, if this is not relevant for you, good. Don't pay any attention to the next minute or two of what I have to say.

[15:43]

But for some of us, when we hear be diligent or make your best effort or that kind of thing, we immediately incorporate it into a very self-criticizing further dialogue. Oh, I'm not making my best effort. I didn't do it. I don't know how to do it. I can't do it. I'm no good at this, et cetera, et cetera. So don't do that. Don't do that. Don't go down the road of measurement. It's all measurement. Measurement means measurement and measurement's companion, comparison.

[16:48]

Often it's a comparison to some imaginary perfection or some imaginary person who does it better. And indeed, you know, we could say this sense of big mind is in the way that that measurement kind of compresses things. This sense of big mind is opening, is liberative, is a liberation from measurement. A wonderful... instance that I heard of not too long ago involving Kobun Chino Roshi, who was a teacher in the early days of Zen Center and so on. He's no longer alive and was, apparently he was a, you know, Kyudo archery master.

[18:00]

And there was some kind of an, I don't know the exact details of the story, but there was some kind of exhibition at Esalen, which you may know is a retreat center. I think it's still there, down near Big Sur on the coast. Dramatic, beautiful Pacific Ocean. And a target was set up right at the edge of the water on the rocky coast, on the Rocky Mountains by the Pacific. And then he stood at some distance away and he pulled the bow and then he leaned it up and then released it. And it went into the air and landed in the Pacific Ocean. Very, very, very far away from the target, the so-called target. And then he said something, I'm not sure exactly what he said, maybe something like, I always hit the mark.

[19:06]

That's big mind. I always hit the mark. That's our effort. Our effort is to get the arrow into the ocean. Never mind that little target that's a short distance away. Our effort is that large and continuous on each moment, as Suzuki Roshi said. And this measurement leads us to an endless shift Circle, circle, circle, circle. It's not good enough. It's too good. It's too bad. It's this. It's that. It's big. It's small. Endless measurement and going around and around and around keeps us very busy. It's very entertaining.

[20:11]

But don't go down there. Don't go down that path if you can help it. It's not reality. Why I mention Marlon Brando is because I have to admit a line that Marlon Brando said in a movie that he made in 19... It came out in 1954 called On the Waterfront is one of the things I remember in my life, actually. In the movie, he's a dock worker in New York.

[21:12]

And at one point in the movie, he's in the back of a cab, I think it's a cab, with his brother, who's a lawyer. And he says to his brother, with a New York accent, strong New York accent, he says to his brother, I could have been a contender. He means he could have been a contender for the heavyweight championship, boxing championship in the United States. I could have been a contender instead of a bum, which is what I am. This was extremely self-critical. And actually, he wasn't a bum at all. He was a hero. He worked himself.

[22:14]

Not worked himself. He made an effort. So that by the end of the film, he was actualizing Big Mind. His character certainly wouldn't... wouldn't have said that, and Marlon Brando probably wouldn't have said it either. But that's actually what was happening. It's a really fabulous movie. I recommend it. On the waterfront. So Zui Gan said, be diligent. And Suzuki Roshi said, make your best effort on each moment. And Dogen, the founder of our lineage, who lived in Japan in the first half of the 13th century, Dogen, in his instructions about how to do zazen, the fukan zazen gi, instructions for zazen, Dogen says,

[23:35]

is all about big mind and big mind effort. That's not what he said. What he said is, if you concentrate, the English translation is, if you concentrate your effort single-mindedly, that in itself is negotiating the way. Okamura, Shohaku Okamura, who's a contemporary Zen master, Zen teacher, lives in Indiana, Bloomington, has a somewhat different translation. He translates mind, the Chinese word that is used there, he translates it as heart. Mind, heart. So his translation is heart. This is a paraphrase.

[24:41]

I'm not sure exactly his wording, but it's something like, if you concentrate your effort wholeheartedly, it's not just a mind, mental thing, wholeheartedly, that in itself is negotiating the way. Making wholehearted effort is negotiating the way. Negotiating. I looked it up. Negotiate means different things. One of the things that it means is making your way through a difficult path. They didn't say it in the dictionary, but we can say making your way through a difficult path called my life. So this is really striking, I thought. and something for us to take in.

[25:42]

Dogen, our revered founder, brilliant founder, and deep practitioner, says that if we make a wholehearted effort, then that is making our way. Then we're making our way. like from San Francisco to New York. If we want to get from San Francisco to New York, we make our best effort, and that's how we make our way. But there's no, he doesn't talk about what you get at the end of it. He doesn't talk about the end point. Essentially, what he's saying is, is that the means, what we call the means, is the end, which is really surprising.

[26:44]

and really unique. I've commented on this before. This is a unique, really unusual perspective on how to conduct our lives, on how we live, what we do, and why we do it. So a couple of echoes of this is also Suzuki Rishi in a different Dharma talk. In another Dharma talk, he said, what is important is not the teaching, rather the effort and character of the student, of the practitioner. That's really surprising. Don't you think?

[27:46]

What is important is not the teaching. I thought it was the teaching that was important. That, you know, there's this thing called the teaching and somebody has it, right? Some person has it and they're going to tell it to you or let you know about it and then you're going to find out about it and then you're going to have it after a while through your effort. Means an end. So he's saying, no, that's not the way it works. He didn't say this exactly, but I would say that's not the way it works if we are recognizing and cultivating big mind. What's important is not the teaching he's teaching. He's teaching us. His teaching is that what's important is not the teaching, but the effort and character of the student, of you, of me, of any of us, of Zuigan.

[29:03]

So this Effort that is in itself negotiating the way must, of course, be endless because we're dropping off the endpoint part of it. We're dropping off the ends, the means. We're always in the means part negotiating our way. And I think Suzuki Roshi meant that, that that's what's important, our endless effort. You know, when you say it that way, it sounds very tiring. It sounds, oh my gosh, endless effort. Wow, I'm just tired thinking about it.

[30:15]

So another way, maybe this is less tiring, is endless effort is nothing other than energetic beginner's mind. That's beginner's mind. Our effort is to... Each moment is... continuing to open up each moment, like a beginner. The beginner is always in the so-called means, means and end, always in the means part of the formula, as it were. But we never leave the means. We never get to the end. The means are good enough for us. The means are everything. So one way that I tried to put that into words is energetic, endless effort is energetic beginner's mind, which is the actualization of big mind.

[31:43]

I feel like that's accurate. The actualization, making it actual, the realization, making it real. That's how you make big mind real, is by exercising energetic beginner's mind. So, I can't be sure that Zweigon had all of that in mind. And he said, be diligent, but that's my understanding of it. Energetic beginner's mind, sans measurement.

[32:49]

Oceanic. beginner's mind. Let's see here. So I did want to speak also about the second encouragement, admonition from Zui Gan. Don't be fooled by things. Don't be fooled by others. Don't be fooled by people. To be fooled by things means to be captured by mistaking how we see things for how they are. Being captured by how we see the world.

[33:54]

Literally, how we see the world. I'm looking out the window here at Green Gulch, at the beautiful greenery. To be captured by how we see the world, so literally how we see the world, but of course also metaphorically how we understand things. This is the first... fold of the Eightfold Path, right? I mean, as you know, view, drishti in Sanskrit, view, how we see things, is very, very important. It forms the basis of how we think and what we do. To be fooled by things is to be captured by thinking that how we see things is how they are. Then further, once captured, here we've got another incline.

[35:05]

Excuse my bare arm. This is a bad incline. This is a negative incline. Once we're captured by that mistake, then we make it stronger and harder and stiffer. And more and more rigid until we have, I believe that this is true. And it's not an accident that this is a fist. Because if you don't think so, I'm going to punch you in the nose. Or do much worse. So being fooled by things is when we believe that our limited perspective, our perspective which is limited, when we believe that that's reality.

[36:09]

So a very simple perspective. You know, a very simple physical illustration, we all know this, right, is that our vision goes from here to here. You know, what's it called? Ultra-infrared to ultraviolet. That's how far we see. And similarly, our hearing, right? We can hear from the lowest tone to the highest tone that we can hear, human beings. That these hands that demonstrate a boundary, that there's no boundary there. There's lots of stuff on both sides. On both sides of infrared and ultraviolet, on both sides of our lowest tone and our highest tone. That's just our karma as human beings that it's limited that we see it only that. So if you ask a tree, a tree mate, they say, no, no, no, no.

[37:26]

You're missing a lot in terms of reality. If trees could talk, you ask a whale. You have no idea, you human beings, about what can be seen and what can be heard. So another historical example is that at one time there was a small group of human beings. The group that I'm talking about lived in a place that we now call Europe. A concept that doesn't exist ultimately. And this group thought that... And maybe other groups thought this too, but I'm just... I know about this group from history, you know, from our written history.

[38:29]

This group thought that the sun revolved around the Earth. Not just the sun, the moon, and all the stars, the entire galaxy, what we'd call now the galaxy... revolved around the Earth. And further, that same further, oh, well, that fits because, after all, we are the most important things in the universe. So it makes sense that everything would revolve around us. And then Galileo came along, I think in the mid-16th century, and said, basically what he said is, that's rather small-minded.

[39:41]

You have a rather small-minded perspective on this. Your perspective, you're mistaking that. the influence of your perspective for reality, he said. He didn't say it in those words. He said, no, it just looks like the sun revolves around the earth. It's actually the earth revolving around the sun. And now, of course, a few centuries later, we know that actually the entire universe does not revolve around human beings or a small group of human beings. who have white, you know, pink, white, pigmented skin, who live in what we now call Europe. Far from it. Where's some tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little participant in the universe? So, you know, there were folks called the Inquisition who had a very, they knew the truth and they knew that

[40:50]

Galileo was bad and, you know, etc., etc., so they were going to kill him, but he recanted, so they just put him under house arrest for the rest of his life. So, just have a few more things I want to say here. So, Shohaku Okamura, Okamura Roshi, the person I referred to earlier, summarizes the situation as we are inevitably deluded. But we shouldn't be deluded by our delusion. I think that's... Brilliant. Really good way of saying it.

[41:51]

So, if I were to translate that into Zuiganese, it might be rather than don't be fooled by things, it would be maybe more something like don't be fooled by being fooled by things. You're going to be fooled by things, Zuigan, but don't be fooled by that. Because indeed, as particular manifestations such as we are, we are going to only hear from here to here and see from here to here and things will look a certain way. And then we'll make concepts and we'll add that into the mix. But don't be fooled. That's inevitable. Actually, we have to have those too. We have to have concepts. And yet another talk of Suzuki Roshi, he said, he was talking to people at Tassajara, and he said, there's no difference, there's no distance between me and you, whether I'm here or whether I'm in the city.

[43:07]

But I do have to get in the car and drive down to talk to you. Due to my limited perspective, due to the limited creature I am, I have to get in a car and I come down and talk to you. But I shouldn't be fooled by that, to thinking that is the way things are. I shouldn't be fooled to think I'm here and you're there. There is no here. There is no there. He didn't say all of that, but he said it in other words. The world of there is no here and there is no there is big mind. So the consequences of big mind effort, big mind character of establishing and developing our effort and character

[44:15]

including big mind, or not, not including it, acting in a small-minded way, are enormous. Again, that same group of pink-skinned, pigmented people who lived in a place that we now call Europe also thought that they were the They were the people that an all-powerful God, an omniscient God, basically liked them. And that everybody else who didn't know about this all-powerful God and so on and so forth was inferior and, you know, really didn't matter. And the... horror and harm and destruction that came as a result of this very small-minded perspective to other human beings who had skin of a different pigment and to other creatures.

[45:47]

cannot be overestimated cannot be overstated how much harm was thereby created so this is not small potatoes in our own life A good deal of our practice, of our practice-encouraged endless activity, endless work, endless effort, is, how should I say, recognizing our small-mindedness, getting to know it. working toward opening it up or not letting it push us around.

[47:05]

So I'll just close by mentioning two of the four bodhisattva vows. I think we say those at the end of the Dharma talk. I'm not sure. But the two middle ones, as you as many of you know very well, are. Gee, I'm realizing my voice is kind of lower now. Are you all still able to hear me okay? I'm okay? Good. When I Zoom, I have those little ear, AirPods, I think they're called. But I'm not wearing AirPods this morning. Anyway. Delusions are inexhaustible. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. So I'm proposing a different interpretation of the word end, E-N-D.

[48:15]

It doesn't mean like end, like then there's not going to be any more delusions. They're inexhaustible. The limitations of our perspective are inexhaustible, at least from now until when we die. We don't know. After that, maybe things change in another eon, another world system. But in this world system, delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them means I vow to make my best effort on each moment. I vow to do that. I vow to op, which is the next one. They're a pair. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharmagates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Delusions and Dharmagates are the same thing.

[49:18]

It's not like some other place, some other thing. There's one thing. And with that, we can go down the path of delusion and be deluded within our delusions, as Dogen says. Deluded by our delusions, as Shohaku Okamura says. Or that very same thing is a gate. Then we can walk through the gate to something that is not... not... Not that it's not limited. It's got to be limited because we only know about limited things. But it recognizes the unlimited nature of that which we know as a limited thing. So, this is called Letting Go the Hand of Thought.

[50:27]

or cutting off the mind stream, as we sometimes have the opportunity to do when we're sitting. This is also called generosity. That's generosity. That's Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. One way we enter it and one way we speak of entering it is generosity. Magnanimity. 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.

[51:28]

For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[51:39]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.65