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. My name is Kiku Hoetsu Kristina Lenher. Kiku Hoetsu means... Loom, weaving loom of emptiness, and ho-etsu is translated as dharma, joy, or rapture, or ecstasy. And with that, dharma is meant the joy, or rapture, or ecstasy that comes from, today I would say, being aligned with reality.

[01:01]

Of course, like everything else, this talk is going to be a tentative form, as Suzuki Roshi calls it, because everything is continuously changing. So I... I would like to know who is here for the very first time. I see a lot of familiar faces, but also a lot of faces I have never seen, which doesn't mean you haven't been here before. I'm not living here anymore. So who's here for the very first time? Welcome specially to you. I hope you make yourself comfortable, change your positions, also the old timers when you need to and I hope you feel welcome and you may even be able to take something with you to your everyday life from this all over experience you're having for the first time here.

[02:16]

So I have been thinking about today's talk. And kind of the title that came to me was Living in Alignment with Reality. And what does that mean? So this was just a very wonderful beginning to it. You know, here I come, and I stand in front of the altar, And I just start bowing, right? And it all feels totally right, you know, nothing off or right. And then I notice my helper, Peter, kind of walk back at an unusual, it's kind of just unusual. So, oh, I didn't offer incense. So I go offer incense, and then I walk back, and after offering incense, you do three boughs.

[03:35]

So I go do three boughs, but you don't know that. You're trying to align with what I'm doing, so you ring a bell. Wonderful, thank you. No, perfect, because this is really how it is. We just got a wonderful example of how reality is and how we're with it. So we realign. So I stand there and think, should I now just do a standing bow because you did the bell? Or do I do my three bows, even though I did three bows before? So I do three bows and you... probably are also wondering what is going to happen next. And you wait. You see me do three bows, so you just realign and then when I do my standing bow, you wait to do your following bows.

[04:36]

So we all have been, you have been wondering what to do up front. There is the incense and nothing is happening. So we all have been wondering and realigning and realigning and realigning. And so I couldn't have planned this, but this is just, for me, such a wonderful example of what is meant by living in alignment with reality. And Buddha's teaching has something really helping us. And it is expressed, I think, for the first time in the Upachihatana Sutra. I don't even know how to pronounce that correctly. Upachihatana Sutra, and it's from the Pali Canon, and it's, the translation is subject for contemplation.

[05:49]

And in it, is what Buddha called the five remembrances, which already in their title have that it's something to be remembered, something that's important to remember, to keep remembering. And it's the five facts regarding the reality in which we live, we all live. All of the phenomenal world lives in these realities. It's affected by those five factors. Whether it be plants, animals, matter, human beings, all are living in that reality. And they are talking about life's fragility.

[06:52]

the vulnerability and about what ultimately will be our only inheritance. Not the money maybe we get from our parents or pass on to our children, but what do we take with us? You know, in the Christian tradition it says only a wise person can get through the, like a camel through the eye of a needle. You know, how does the camel get through the eye of the needle? You can't take anything with you of your possessions. And those are the five things. There are five things we should remember. And Thich Nhat Hanh expresses them this way. I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

[07:56]

I am of the nature of having to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health. I am of the nature to die. There's no way to escape death. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are the nature to change. there is no way to escape being separated from them. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand. So to come back to just what happened at the beginning here, These were the only grounds we stood on, sitting there, standing here, holding the bowl with the flower petals.

[09:05]

How we responded to the situation at that moment was the only ground each one of us had we stood on. And it's ephemeral, it's already passed, We couldn't repeat it even if we tried it because it would be kind of just a repetition but not the reality of that moment. So it's again a really beautiful example I think that we all participated in. Another way of expressing those five remembrances is, I am sure to become old, I cannot avoid aging.

[10:09]

I am sure to become ill, I cannot avoid illness. I am sure to die, I cannot avoid death. I must be separated and parted from all that is dear and beloved to me. Or I will be separated either because I'm dying before them or they die before me or they leave me to go to another country or in the country somewhere or something separates us or we have a falling out and we can't repair it. I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions. Actions are the womb from which I have sprung. This is more the old poly thing. Actions are my relations. Actions are my protection. Whatever actions I do, good or bad, of these I shall become their heir.

[11:19]

So it's the same thing. And Dogen Senji, founder of the school of Soto Zen, says, your practice affects the entire earth and the entire sky. So you could say your actions affect the entire earth and the entire sky in the 10 directions. Although not noticed by others or yourself, it is so. A lot of our actions, we don't see the results and we don't necessarily notice them. That doesn't mean we're not at the receiving end of the consequences that they create. So the instruction, the Buddha's instruction was to keep remembering those facts. those five realities that we all share.

[12:26]

Our friends, our enemies, the people, the whole world. The people fighting for their rights, the people being subjected to judgment and oppression, everybody is in that space. So it's really important for us to even though they're worded as I, because it's really important that each one of us includes that reality, not just mentally. I surely know I'm going to die. I mean, I would never argue with anybody about I'm the one who is not going to die. But I keep forgetting. I keep forgetting in my everyday activity that it's a reality. And that will shape how I'm going to respond.

[13:30]

If I respond thinking, oh, you know, I made a mess here, but I can clean it up. You know, I have a long time to clean it up. I may not have a long time to clean it up. You know, kind of push it aside and not tend to it. So it's really crucial. There's a complete difference with living having fully realized that reality to just knowing it intellectually. And in the teachings it says, not acknowledging, not knowing fully with your body, with your whole being, that you're living in this reality of ephemeral reality. That is what Buddhism calls... what creates suffering, that ignorance that's actually not really, not knowing, it's like denying, not integrating the knowing what you know intellectually in your everyday activities and to embody it.

[14:38]

That is what creates, is the ignorance that creates suffering and that is also then feeding greed and hate and delusion. So the ignorance that's referred to by not incorporating with your body that understanding, that reality in which we live, is almost willful ignoring of those facts. Actually, it needs a little effort to ignore it because it's all around us. I mean, who here doesn't have somebody who is ill right now in your circle of relations? Or may have just passed away or is on its way to pass away or has lost somebody, has lost a job, has lost a partner.

[15:57]

We're surrounded by it. And somehow we do something to ignore that and behave like in our small world things are going to stay put. And we want them to stay put, the ones we like. We want only to change what we don't like. But we don't want to change ourselves. It should change out there. That would be the easiest. And that's, you know, that we all share too. So we can hold that with lightness and humor and not with kind of a you know, you shouldn't be doing that, that's very bad. It's just creating a lot of suffering. And it's not really working. And it's not, so I would suggest to memorize those five factors.

[17:00]

And you can find them on the internet. And say them to yourself, listening to yourself out loud in the morning when you get up. Do that for three weeks or four weeks, just as an experiment. And then after four weeks, then look, how does that have any effect on my life if I do that? It will take you A little bit to memorize, which is easy for a lot of young ones. Like me, I have to do it a little more. It takes a little more effort. But once you have it memorized and you say those every morning, it will take you two minutes. The instruction is to say it out loud because... you hear it, it comes through your ears and it doesn't stay just in your inner system which is used to ignoring those factors until you break your leg or they kind of hit you, stand in front of you and you can't look past them.

[18:16]

And it also touches your body and invites the whole universe to participate in that realization of those realities because it's said out loud. It takes you two minutes. If you do it for four weeks, just without going, why would I do this? Just it's an experiment. And then see how does it or doesn't it affect your everyday life. And if it doesn't, forget it. I'm not saying that's the way to salvation. You know, that's one of the wonderful things in Buddhism. It's like don't believe anything. Buddha was not instructing anybody to believe his understanding or what he shared, but to find out for yourself if it's relevant, if it's true for your life. So it's not about negativity, it's actually

[19:26]

if we align ourselves with that reality, we will not cling so much. Once that is more incorporated, we see how precious every moment is, how precious it is what we have, and we don't know how long we're gonna have it in this way. Nobody does. And so it's actually creating what is in my name, Dharma joy. The joy that's in the middle of being in touch with reality. And that can be a painful reality. But if you're really in touch with it, there's also a peacefulness in that place and a special taste of She's not the jumping up and down joy, but it's a real, like a fragrance.

[20:33]

It's a real, it's like being completely in touch with what is, has something very peaceful and very supportive and very quietly blissful. One of our friends who was in a... horrific accident, and after weeks of being in a coma, came back, was in excruciating pain, and was absolutely blissed out, which is like you go, what? But the pain was so strong that there was no way to be any place else but completely in touch with And in the center of that was a big sense of freedom. So this is not about getting morose or thinking everything is negative.

[21:39]

It's really about how do we align? How do we align with reality? And that includes also the reality of the being that you are. You know, it starts with you and it ends with you because you're the only one who can do it. Nobody can do it for you. So how do we align with our own being, our body, our heart, our mind and spirit? And you may all know when there's big decisions coming your way You know, how do you get gut, heart, and head on board? You know, sometimes gut and head say one thing and the heart says another thing. So how do you find, how long do you allow those to give each one space till you find where they align?

[22:44]

And then you can know what's the next step. And that may take time. So a practice I am doing often for myself or with my partner is to sit down and check in. And we've done it in EPP with pausing, you know, the practice of stopping and kind of taking stock, checking in with your body, what state is my body in? And maybe it's in different states, but what is, when I'm asking and feeling inside my body, what do I become aware of? What presents itself to me? And then, can I just acknowledge this? Because it may be something I don't like. I'd rather not have. And then I argue with it, or I shut down against it.

[23:49]

It's more, can I allow it to be there? Here it is. Okay, what state, what kind of mood or feeling tone is most pronounced? Do I have a feeling, is there a feeling around that is clearly noticeable? May not be, maybe bland or a little, you know, lots of mixed feelings, that's fine too, that's information. mixed feelings. What's running in my head? What's going on in my head? And knowing that, we can then look, we actually move, we are already aligned with ourselves. We already have, we're not thinking

[24:53]

We're not ahead of ourselves or denying certain things or pushing them away or managing them in some way. We have allowed ourselves to know how our body is, what we feel, and how we feel and what's going on in our mind. That's an action of alignment. And that if we allow that to inform how do we take that into account when we go to the next activity, we'll be much more open to actually be more fluid. If we're already managing, like for example, if I wake up and I'm frightened to give a talk, and then I'm upset that I'm frightened, and I try to manage my being frightened, I get further and further away from what actually is happening in this moment, and it creates more and more tension, which makes me more and more stiff, more and more tense, and less fluid.

[26:12]

And that's a wonderful, simple practice to do too before you go to a next event, before you enter your home after or before you leave your work. To go, how am I leaving my work? Before you drive, in what state am I driving? If you're already very tired and very nervous or something, you might know that then you might drive very carefully. It might help you rather than getting even more tense because it's tense on the streets often. And this alignment you can do wherever you are, on the bus, at your kitchen table, in your bed. It's something you can carry with you with no luggage and use it. So then how do we align with our family and environment, and how do we align with the world?

[27:22]

But it starts really with aligning with yourself, with this being, because this is the being that is through which your life is lived. It's not even you are living your life. Actually, you're being lived by life just appearing. Who remembers having said, I want to be born, I want to be born in this particular body at this particular time with these particular parents. It just got, you know, we got gifted with it, and here we are. That's what we got. But we all got the same capacity to be aligned or be awake or keep waking up, which doesn't stop. because it's always just one moment at a time. So when you think of

[28:41]

saying those remembrances. Really, just, the best is really to have memorized them because that helps you to just say them and hear them and try to hear them without commentary or argument or conversation in your head. You know, do I believe that or I don't like that? Just allow yourself to hear them every morning if you do them, or every noon, or whenever is a good time for you to do that, if you pick that up. And just allow them to, because something happens. Something already happens when you memorize something. Once, you know, for years, I don't know, 10 years maybe, Tenshin Reb Anderson was studying the Sandhinyamra Chana Sutra with students of his.

[29:44]

And at some point he had us each memorize a paragraph out of a chapter. And we were maybe 16, so 16 people had one paragraph of this chapter. And he had us memorize it. And he said, he would, you know, at the meeting, out of the blue he would say, Let's say out that chapter. So you had to keep it fresh because you never knew when you were called upon to say it, your part in it, right? So I got a paragraph I did not understand for the life of me what it meant. I just didn't know what it meant. And it took me a long time to memorize it because I couldn't understand it. But I did memorize it. And lo and behold, over time, actually, I started to understand what it was talking about. It restructured having to keep it alive, having to put reality together in that way.

[30:52]

I mean, the reality of that paragraph that it was describing in that way, in my brain, reshaped my brain. I mean, reshaped my thinking. There's something very powerful about that. So if you basically agree that that's true, those five remembrances, and then you say it out loud every day, it helps you incorporate them in your daily life. And it will free you from... You know, in Buddhism, you always hear attachment, you know, non-attachment kind of sounds better or is better than attachment. So there's another way of saying, you know, from destructive kind of attachments that are possessive, that you are attached to the ones you love.

[31:55]

It's not a bad thing. A mother should be attached to her baby But she shouldn't be attached to her baby in a way that the baby has to satisfy her needs. That would be destructive attachment. Or if you are attached in a way that your life depends on the other person, and then when that person dies, because you've given them all the power over of your life, then you can't live anymore. That's... kind of a destructive attachment. But that we suffer when somebody we love dies, that we are sad, that we have to live through life without them and adapt to that big missing, you know, and not being there. That suffering we all will have even if we are free of attachment. It's not indifference. It's more like...

[32:56]

The more we are attached and don't see that reality, the more we will not really appreciate when it's here. We will be much easier caught in petty, you know, I'm not gonna talk to you because you weren't friendly to me this morning. No, not today, not tomorrow. Who has gotten the silent treatment for a long time? Maybe some of us. And that's out of a fixed view, out of thinking there is time that we may not have. Good, we can stop soon. I thought about what can I bring to this from what other people have said.

[34:15]

And I think a lot of what also happens when we start incorporating that reality, the reality of what life how life is, we become more trusting and more confident in also the moment in this being and its capacity to make a mistake and realign. I mean, then it's not even about mistakes or no mistakes. It's just like a dance. It becomes a dance. And if you keep... realigning and finding your way. So it's all about finding your way. And it's not the way of yesterday and it's not the way of tomorrow. It's the way of now, the path of now and the steps of now. And one of the main things too is in Buddhism there is this deep understanding or expression of that nothing has permanent, continuous existence.

[35:48]

And that And that also includes that there is no separate, independent being. That's I, myself, or that's somebody else. my thought. And it was a good one. Oh, when

[36:54]

when we align with that reality more, or when it strikes us in a way that we can't avoid it, which, for example, aging does, then what is also happening is that we, our minds, always create an image about ourselves. And we have created one from the time we started being able to think in concepts and trying to make sense of our experience and the world around us. We created stories about ourselves and how we're okay and how we're not okay and what we can accept and what we can't accept about ourselves. So now we're aging and we can't do the things we used to do. Or even work. That's one thing. Then you can say, well, I just can't do them. That may be That may be hard, but kind of acceptable.

[37:57]

But what if your interests shift? If the life energy shifts and something that has been full of life and energy just loses its energy and it goes somewhere else? Are you now disloyal? Or, you know, was this nothing worse before? Were you a fraud before? All these things. I mean, your self-image starts coming forward and you just start seeing what you haven't seen because it's been operating in the back and it's been satisfied, so it wasn't so noticeable. Suddenly, you know, and how do you align yourself with that? So it's a complete re-shifting and re-changing how you see yourself and how to, why can I be okay with that? and what are my values, and how are they influenced? So it's a real challenge.

[38:58]

So these five remembrances also help with that, to kind of loosen up those images. So Hafez has one of his poems, and that goes, how do I listen? Because You could say alignment has also something to do with listening. You know, listening to your body, listening to your mind, listening to other people, listening to what's happening. It's a kind of listening which is very different than doing and then responding. So how do I listen? How do I listen to others? As if everyone were my master speaking to me his cherished last words.

[40:02]

So if I listen to everything as if it were my master speaking to me his cherished last words. Here it is again, last words. kind of has a poignancy. How can I respect everything radically because as if it were the last thing I would do? So if I had fallen over dead here doing my vows, that would have been totally okay. And it would have been totally okay because I, unbeknownst to me, not done by me, by the me-me, I was totally just, I wasn't anywhere else. There was no space to think, be, feel anywhere else than what was just happening in that moment, much more so than sitting over here.

[41:07]

There's more space to think, how am I doing, or whatever. So that would have been a perfect moment to die. And we all have moments like that through our days. And when we become aware of them, they really encourage. They're very encouraging and very happy. So can we listen to everything as if it's a cherished message? And it's just the message of this moment. That's the last word, you know. And respond to it. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. And thank you for living your life in alignment, whichever way that plays out in your lives.

[42:19]

Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[42:45]

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