This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Thank you all for coming here today down into the mist. So my name is Jiryu. I live here and currently serve as the head of practice, or Tonto. And it's a great honor to be with you this morning and to be encouraged and attempt to encourage you all in the practice of being a human being. It takes work.

[01:04]

So coming down the stairs here, really coming into this room, I wonder if those of you here are really here. Are you all the way here? Am I all the way here? What would it be to be all the way here? We've come all this way. We're all dressed up. What would it be to be totally here? What would that be for you? And what would that take? What would help? What are we waiting for?

[02:04]

What am I waiting for? To be totally, wholeheartedly here. The image of coming down from the bleachers, you know. Let's come down from the bleachers of our own life into the body, into the full being. That's what our practice is about. And to come down from the bleachers again and again. So what is it like to be wholeheartedly here? All the way here, the whole body. You know, the toes participating. The top of the head, the back of the neck, all active and here. the whole mind, the whole attention of mind.

[03:11]

Could that be here? Could the whole mind be right here? Letting go of what's next and letting go of what's before and just letting the whole mind be right here. Maybe the whole heart too. could be brought along, the whole warm, broken heart, could that all be here with us? What would it be to be totally alive, totally wholeheartedly alive, fully engaged with life in this moment? And what are we waiting for exactly? What conditions are going to do that for us. So one thing we may be waiting for, one thing I'm waiting for is a Dharma talk.

[04:19]

Like that would be, especially if it happened to be a good Dharma talk, that would be really helpful, wouldn't it? If it were a good Dharma talk, then we could really be here for it. So we may be mostly here, but we're kind of waiting. You know, like my ears and, you know, part of my head are here. But before I really bring along, like, the toes and the elbows, I got to see if it's worth it, you know? If this moment and this situation is really worthy of my total, unreserved, full participation. So you might feel that. And I totally feel that, which is a problem.

[05:20]

So I feel like, well, I can... Your wholeheartedness, which I deeply want, and my wholeheartedness, which I hope you want, that your wholeheartedness is in my hands somehow. Like if this is a good Dharma talk, then you'll be wholeheartedly here for it. And if it's a so-so Dharma talk, then, you know, just little parts of you might be here. So I fall into that trap, I think we often do, of thinking that certain situations are worthy of and really call forth our full life energy and attention. And then other situations, not so much. For example, some of you are thinking, I think I've heard this Dharma talk before.

[06:31]

What are we waiting for to fully engage with life? Some situations call forth my full, wholehearted participation, and others don't. This is the path of a ghost. This is a path of alienation from our own life and livingness. So our usual way... is to value things differently, to compare things with each other, value them differentially, and to then show up and deploy our life energy according to the value that we've assigned to the situation. This is worthy of my full attention. This is not worthy of my full attention.

[07:49]

Some things are inspiring and some things are not so inspiring. There's treasures and there's trash. And so we assign our wholeheartedness, we assign our attention accordingly. It's true that things are different from each other. Like here down on the farm, we don't usually harvest the weeds because the vegetables are better, actually. They're nourishing and nutritious and the weeds are not. So we can make that distinction. There's nothing wrong with making that distinction.

[08:51]

The problem comes when we then live our life according to these distinctions that we've made. applying ourselves fully to some things and withholding our life from others. There's a beautiful violin playing somewhere in someone's purse. calling forth my wholehearted hearing, like, that's something to be here for. So how is it so far, you know? Maybe you're with me for a moment and started to feel, yeah, yeah, maybe I could be fully alive. And then maybe you said, I'm not sure about this talk anymore, actually. He doesn't quite seem to know where he's going.

[09:53]

And so then you might kind of Start leaning back. So this is what we do all day long. Holding out a bit to see if this situation is really going to call forth and deserve my full energy and attention, my full participation. Is this like kind of come down onto the field sort of situation or is this a stay up in the bleacher sort of situation? And then the years go by and say, how come I haven't really been on the field much? So how do we give 100% of our life energy? What would that be for you today, right now, to just give 100% of your life to this so-so moment in this old musty barn? If we think it's good,

[10:56]

inspiring, valuable to be here, then we may be bringing that all forward. And if we don't, we may be indulging in that distraction. Like actually, maybe now would be a good time to work out that calendar issue I had. Or now would be a good time to kind of like rehash that old enmity. I can't believe it. this would be a good time to do that. So we wiggle away, we absent ourselves, and we withdraw half a heart or so. So if you feel that this situation is not completely worthy of your attention, you may give half a heart or less. We may be here with some small amount of our life energy.

[12:01]

I've certainly been in your seats using half or 25% of my heart. 5% sometimes. I think I've managed to come into this hall with 5%. It's hard to get much below that. 3% engaged. You really, to even be here physically takes like two or three percent? So we wait for the situation to call forth our life. rather than taking full responsibility for bringing our life into the situation. And the illustration I've been using for this, the urgency of the need to bring our life forward into the situation, is to reflect on my experience as an adult playing the game Candyland.

[13:21]

So some of you may be familiar with the game Candyland. of you may not be. So I thought, as I have done recently, I thought I might just refresh your memory. So this is Candyland. It is such a boring game. This is actually the The only thing I want to convey today is that Candyland is an extremely boring game. And you might find yourself playing Candyland with a very precious person and feel that your mind and heart are totally numb because the game does nothing to call forth your life energy.

[14:27]

So you might ask the young person you're playing with, could we play a different game? Because I'm having trouble being wholehearted and really feeling fully alive with this game. And they might say, sure, we could play something that's actually fun. Or they might say, no, actually, we're playing Candyland right now. So when we're playing Candyland in this situation, it's OK to ask, I'm feeling sort of mostly dead inside right now. Would it be okay if we played a different game? But we need to be open to the possibility that the answer we will get is no. No, we can't. Or we might have the situation where we're nearing the end of the game. So if you remember this game... there's a path with colors and some figurines and some cards, and you draw a card, take turns drawing a card, and each card has a little box with a color, or sometimes two boxes with the same color, which is a double.

[15:44]

Or very occasionally, it has a creature or a candy on it. And so you draw the card, and then you go to the square. You go to, so for instance, If I drew a green card, then I could go, and my figurine is here, I could go to the green. Or if I was a double green, that would be super exciting. I could go one, two. So one of the things that happens in Candyland is you're getting towards the end, thank God, you know, where we can then like do the next thing that actually might bring forth my energy and fullness of life. And then you get like the gingerbread person. And you have to, you know, go back and keep playing, you know. And this, it's occurred to me, as I've shared with some of you, that I think only a child or Buddha himself can fully, be fully alive, fully present in this game.

[16:49]

Who could give 100%? I remember as a child giving 100% of my life, feeling that this game was calling forth my full life. You know, we say in Zen, we say, let each moment burn you up completely. Let each activity completely burn you up. And my feeling about Candyland is that it's not quite hot enough, you know? It's not hot enough to burn me up. There's like a lot unburned. But for the Buddha, you know, the Buddha who is just burned up by a moment of life, just being alive is enough, you know? So the Buddha in enlightenment, in that total oneness with life, is able to be just totally wholehearted in this game. I thought this would be a good confirmation of his enlightenment or a test for one another, you know? The student says, you know, I think I realized. I say, okay. Here we go. Take out the candy land. I'm going to keep it maybe in the interview room, you know.

[17:55]

So in the koan curriculum, sometimes someone responds, a pretty good response to the koan that really indicates that they might have a deep understanding. And then there's a testing question. There's some follow-up. So this would be the follow-up. It's like, okay, so you understand that what you are is... always and only in total dynamic interaction with all that is, that what you are is nothing but life itself, moment after moment, totally exerting itself and then fading away with no trace just to fully express and exert itself again. Let's check it out, you know. Here's Candyland. No modified rules, you know. Play the full game. And what's so painful about that moment, you know, sort of half asleep, on the floor, playing Candyland with somebody that you love, who's very into it, is that you know in your mind, you know, this is supposed to be precious, right?

[19:10]

This is like a fleeting precious moment. You have that, you remember that, you might have that idea, but to bring that into the body, to really come up to the full, the fullness, to give the moment the fullness that it's actually calling for. It's hard. We feel that with children sometimes. We feel that with one another. How easy it is to check out, you know, because what's happening isn't interesting enough and then wonder why we seem to be missing our life. It just hasn't been interesting enough. So our training is to give ourselves fully without waiting for it to get interesting. As soon as we give ourselves fully, it's interesting. And even if it weren't, it's worth it.

[20:15]

So this afternoon here at Green Gulch, there's a wedding. ceremony which is very poignant and beautiful always in part because of that the total wholeheartedness total sincere wholeheartedness these people saying I won't take you for granted but you will and I will you know give my whole heart and body and mind and life you know moment after moment And it's beautiful because it's this kind of ceremony of that purity of intention. And then we know this is not, this is going to be difficult to stay so enthusiastic, to stay so completely wholeheartedly engaged moment after moment, you know, in Sangha. So beautiful to be at Gringoce for a little while, you know, and then it stops being so interesting. And so then we start withdrawing our heart Start withdrawing our participation.

[21:21]

And then it's like, yeah, Gringold's just really gone downhill. Since I stopped engaging fully with it. Do you know what I mean? Oh, somebody recently shared with me that they came to feel at a certain time in their life that they were around ghost-like people. People kind of seem like ghosts, like not totally there. And I was really moved by that statement because I felt like I am that ghost. Most of the time, I'm not quite here. And maybe you feel that too. this kind of shadowy way of being, sort of ghost-like living at 50, 40, 30% of our full engagement.

[22:32]

We feel it. It feels awful. And those around us feel it. Where are you? How can you be more fully here? So I think that's what we want deeply is to be totally engaged, totally wholehearted, totally exerting ourself. totally exerting each moment fully. So the basis of this coming to life as it's taught in the Buddha Dharma is it begins with mindfulness. It's careful attention to where am I and how does it feel and what's happening in the Buddha Dharma what's happening in and around me, connecting with that sensation, that experience of being alive. And Zen has that mindfulness as its basis, but also unfolds that teaching into a more fully participatory, more fully engaged way of meeting the world.

[23:42]

Not just that we're aware, but that we're fully present, that we're actually pouring our heart and soul and life into each moment that we're alive. So mindfulness could include that, but it might be helpful to see that as a little bit of a turn of that teaching. Not just to be aware, but to be totally participating. Dogen talks much about the total exertion of each thing, the total dynamic activity of livingness, really participating, joining that. I want to talk a little bit about how we train in that living fully. The basis of the training is to study the way that we're valuing things comparatively and then living according to those comparisons.

[24:52]

And to begin to value things and then to deploy or exert our life energy based not on the comparative value, but on the absolute value of each thing. So, as Dogen often always emphasizes, we make comparisons of treasure or trash, worthy or unworthy, you know, worth my time or not worth my time. If you're doing it, it's worth your time. It's worth the time of this moment when you're doing it. And it's not worth it because something about that moment is necessarily worth it. It's worth it because it is. So this is the teaching in the Dharma, this is the teaching of dogens, of thusness. The absolute value of each thing is not that it's a good thing. It's just that it is. So by nature of it being thus, it has absolute value. It is absolutely one with it.

[25:57]

and equal to and nothing but life-livingness itself. He says in one of the most beautiful instances of this, he talks about the disciples of Bodhidharma, great Zen ancestor, quibbling over who had the marrow of the teaching and who only had the skin of the teaching. And he says, oh, you think the marrow is deep and the skin is shallow? The skin is just a skin, totally thus, and the marrow is just a marrow. They're not in comparison to each other. Each one is completely, absolutely valuable as itself. And as itself, it participates in all things. So to study the skin, to study one particle, whether it's deep or shallow, is to study the entire universe, Dogen says.

[27:08]

To study one speck of dust is to study the entire universe. So playing Candyland, you know. Please stop playing Candyland so I can go back to studying the whole universe. Each card, you know, each little orange square, is the total dynamic function, you know, to enter it, to invite our entry, full participation, full engagement in that. So what is it for you, you know, what is it for you to be fully present, fully participating, fully engaged in life with the body and the mind and the heart? And how do you encourage yourself and how do we encourage one another in this way of being? The basis is just to remember that we want to live in this way.

[28:22]

Do you remember that you want to live in this way? And to notice how painful it is to be kind of waiting a little bit. Well, I thought this might be a really inspiring talk, and then I would have really been present for it, but not really panning out. What is the excuse right now that I'm making? What is the excuse right now that you're making? And can we overcome that, you know, by remembering, wait a second, I want to live fully no matter what. It doesn't matter what's happening. It's not for the thing. It's not like, it's just for life itself that I want to do it. It's not because it's like a great thing is happening. It's for life itself. It's for wholeheartedness itself that I want to be wholehearted. It's not like I'm going to get back at the moment for not being good by not showing up for it. You know, if the universe is going to, like, provide this kind of opportunity, then I'm going to opt out, you know, of really being here for it.

[29:37]

That'll show it. And then I feel like a ghost and everyone around me is with a ghost. So just remembering, I feel like again and again in practice, it's mysterious how it unfolds. But it starts from remembering. It starts from that intention. Wait, I wanted to live wholeheartedly. And actually, sometimes we do a ceremony like a wedding or like morning service or like chanting before a Dharma talk. That's how we say we make offerings to wholeheartedness. We bow to this way of being wholehearted just to help us remember. And then right along with that is the awkward and uncomfortable and painful part of fully acknowledging and feeling our half-heartedness. Who are you calling a ghost?

[30:40]

I'm not a ghost. of fully acknowledging, fully acknowledging our half-heartedness, having that capacity to be able to be with that and feel the pain of that. And then it moves from there, unfolds from there. We have many other practices, like the recollection of impermanence, touching the vow to ease the suffering of the world and letting that awareness of the suffering of the world really inspire our wholeheartedness in each moment. There's something at stake in this practice. It matters more than we know how we are in our life and what we do with our life. We also promote here an activity known as Zazen, seated meditation, which is like worse than Candyland.

[32:00]

There is nothing. Zazen gives you nothing. There is nothing interesting. There is nothing to do. What's the technique? What do I do to make it fun? What do I do to make it interesting? It's not. There's nothing interesting. It brings nothing that's interesting. It's nothing. It's blank. It's just life itself. It's how can we create a situation where only life itself, it's crazy because that's every situation. There's nothing but life itself. But we get confused by words and activities and stuff. So we think there's life itself plus things happening in life, you know what I mean? Which is absurd. But still, we practice Zazen to kind of quiet all that down and say, okay, just pure life. And now get excited, get totally engaged, totally wholehearted about this nothing that's happening. Just life. If we can sit there in Zazen, totally engaged, body, mind, heart, totally engaged in doing nothing, then sure, Candyland, that's like extra.

[33:10]

It's practicing that wholeheartedness. without any reliance on some externally interesting thing? Can I just be wholehearted, just wholehearted, doing nothing? And it's really hard. So we say, well, what's the technique for that? There's no technique for that. Sorry. Really, I'm sorry. People propose techniques, you know, but the techniques stop working pretty much immediately. So if you want to try counting your breath, that's an excellent practice. And that will work for a little while. It might help you be wholehearted. It might help your mind and your body really be in the same place. But that's the only purpose of it. If it's not doing that, it's not working, you know? And it has no value apart from doing that. I want to read from Suzuki Roshi about breath counting, and then I'll end. He says, in meditation we sometimes practice counting our breath.

[34:31]

You may think it is silly to count your breath from one to ten, losing track of the count and starting over. Just use a computer if you want to count. There would not be any mistake if you used a computer. But the underlying spirit is quite important. While we are counting each number, we find that our life is limitlessly deep. That's all. Our life is limitlessly deep. And so we say, one. Am I doing it right? One. You know, each exhalation counting just to find that our life is limitlessly deep. If we count our breath in the ordinary way, our practice doesn't mean anything. To count each breath is to breathe with our whole body and mind. we count each number with the power of the whole universe. So with each number, we allow our full life, our full exertion, which is the full exertion of everything working together to do that breathing, to do that counting.

[35:43]

We count each number with the power of the whole universe. And if the number is helping us with that, then please use the number, you know. but the number is not the point. So when you really experience counting your breath, you will have deep gratitude more than if you arrived on the moon. You will not be so interested in something just because it is considered great or uninterested in something usually considered to be small. So if we can see breathing with our full body and mind, total engagement, the whole power of the universe, breathing, then we're not so confused, you know, like the moon I'm really going to get excited about, but breath number six, you know, not so much. We will, in this way of letting our life be the total functioning, fully exerting ourselves just as it is in life, then the comparative value of situations is total.

[36:56]

is just out the window. The moon is not more exciting than that breath. So to fully exert ourself, to totally burn ourself up in each activity, to come down from the bleachers and totally into our life, participate fully, engage moment after moment our whole self, might have an intensity to it. It might be also just soft and open, relaxed, but fully engaged. Just a person totally being a human being. And it might be noticed, you know, and appreciated by us ghosts. It's a human being, fully being a human being. Wow. So I'm not saying, you know, when we talk about this burning ourselves up and totally exerting each moment, it's not just an intense thing.

[38:04]

It's just open, full living, which is our nature, which is what we are. We don't need to fabricate this whole heart. It's just right there. We just need to stop withholding it, you know. Let it connect. So in closing, and with real gratitude for your presence here and patience and interest and efforts today, I want to acknowledge that we're here in the midst of suffering. We're here in the midst of a suffering world.

[39:07]

And sometimes we feel that acutely. The needless suffering and violence in this world. Part of this study, part of this offering of the Buddhadharma is to notice that that needless suffering and violence all around is a deep and direct consequence of this habit of assigning relative value to people and things. That's worthy. That's less worthy. That's worth fully attending to, fully listening to, fully being there for. That, not so much. Some things have value and some things are disposable. That heart, that habit, that mind that we study in our own life is the root. So please know as we do this practice of wholeheartedly meeting each moment, wholeheartedly engaging with each moment, no matter what it is, without distinction, that that's the path of compassion.

[40:25]

That is compassion, to not be withholding from one thing and giving to another. That is compassion, to be fully engaged with our life as it is. It's based on and ends in and is permeated with compassion. So this isn't a personal practice of like being intense. It's a practice of compassion as a response to the suffering of the world. So we deeply honor life by actually deeply honoring each moment of life. That's how we do it. And we stand together with all of life by being there fully for each moment of life. And we resist the demeaning and diminishment of life within and without by doing this practice. I'm not going to withhold here and give there. you again for having entrusted me with your time I wish and hope and declare that any merit any good that we've generated in our practice today can I just go ahead and offer that to the liberation of all sentient beings you can participate in that too

[42:02]

letting any good that comes of our practice flow out from this hall and cover this whole suffering world with the light and the benefit and the opportunity and possibility of full living in the Buddha way. So may all beings benefit from our practice. Thank you sincerely for your time. Thank you for listening to this podcast. offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[43:04]

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