My name is Hiro. I'm the today's Dharma Talks host. We'll chant this Dharma Talk with the opening verse, which is available in the chat box. I will post it right now. And you're all invited to chant along with the microphone muted. And I'm supposed... penetrating in perfect dharma is rarely met with, even in a hundred thousand million karpas. Having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I vow to taste the truth of that pagata's words. Thank you, Hiro. Good morning. And welcome everyone to Beginners of Mind Temple.

[02:10]

It occurs to me that even though I'm not actually sitting in city center in the Buddha Hall, we've all started on this journey and we've made a temple of our houses or a temple of a den or a temple of the corner of our bedroom. And here we are together in our temples. It seems like they're individual temples, but actually It's all the same temple. So welcome today to this Dharma Talk. My name is Mary Stairs. I'm a resident of City Centre and also the Tonto or Head of Practice there. And I've been invited to lead a six-week practice period, the spring practice period, which started last week. And I'd like to thank... Abbott David for inviting me to do that. So thank you very much, Abbott David. And I'd also like to thank Annie Treemey for introducing me to me the Lojang slogans all as many years ago.

[03:19]

So thank you very much, Annie Treemey. So today is a one-day sit at City Centre, and this is the first time we've ever done anything quite like this, which is that Everybody is sitting at home and we're joining together on Zoom. Residents are in their rooms at city center and all of you who are at home are joining from your temple. So it's very exciting time to do this together in this new way. So thank you all for joining. This is the second talk of a six week practice period. The practice period is, again, about the compassion teachings or mind training. And today I'd like to talk about the first slogan, which is train in the preliminaries. So let's go back a sec to the reference that I made in our last talk.

[04:26]

So I talked about... renowned teacher named Atisha, and I also talked about a teacher named Geshen Chakawa. So when these two individuals ran into the compassion teachings, they were realized teachers. They had been practicing for years. They had been receiving extensive training. They were both monastics. And they had a certain degree of stability when they first encountered the teachings. And I think this is important because many of you might think, well, they came across these teachings at a time when they already had been practicing for many years. And I'm running across these teachings and I've only been sitting for a day or I've been sitting for a week.

[05:28]

where I've been sitting for a few years. And how is this possibly going to work for me? And one of the examples of the Buddha, I think, that's very important, is that as a human being, he resolved to sit. He sat down and he meditated and he realized the true nature of humans, of our lives. the incredible teachings as a result of resolving to do so in sitting. And we hold him as an example because as a human being, he did this. He, with his own resolve, with his own strength of mind, made the decision to pursue this path. So I think this is possible for all of us here. So that's very encouraging.

[06:30]

And it's impossible for reasons that I'll go into in this talk to compare ourselves to other people because our causes and conditions, what brings us to practice, what occurs in our life is individual to us. And so we have the ability to change our situations and we have the ability to realize enlightenment. So I think also of interest, to me anyway, when I was researching about Atisha, is that he had received teachings from 150 teachers, and only from one teacher, this teacher named Dharmakirti, or Sir Lingpa in Tibetan, was teaching about the compassion teachings. And I'm sure many of you have heard this idea that We have wisdom teachings and compassion teachings, and they're like two wings of a bird, and they both need to be equally strong in order for a balanced approach to happen.

[07:40]

So I was kind of curious about this, how somebody that had been studying for so long and so deeply had not run into these compassion teachings. I think our mind can be very interested in the wisdom teachings. I think they are wonderful and deep and also very heady. And so I think the compassion teachings take a little bit of a different approach. One is not better than the other. And I think that these compassion teachings demand that we examine our lives. They demand that we honestly see where we are. They demand a lot of us. And I think that can prove to be very hard for us. And also it's very rewarding to do so. So at the beginning of this pursuit or this engagement with the Lojang teachings, I first want to say that by doing this, by resolving to study this,

[08:55]

you are being courageous. Looking into your life, looking into the situation of your life takes a lot of courage and bravery. So by resolving to do this, you are, in fact, stepping into your life in a different way, engaging with your life in a different way, and that can be scary. So thank you for being interested in doing this, and please acknowledge in your own center, that you are approaching this with bravery and with resolve. And that is a wonderful thing. So thank you all very much for that. I've read about these teachings in many different ways. And one of the ways that I thought was interesting as sort of a lead up again to these trainings is that The Hinayana approach is about taming our mind.

[10:00]

So sitting, stabilizing, having a daily practice, resolving again and again and again to sit Zazen. That's more on the Hinayana side. What you're doing is you're taming your mind. And then moving into Mahayana practice, that's more... training your mind. And so this, these compassion teachings, the Lo Da Chang teachings are very much a Mahayana practice. They're about taking that stability that you've acquired from sitting and moving into some contemplations, some day-to-day engagement with a teaching that will then train your mind. So this is moving along the path, into ground that is very Mahayana and is very much interested in the Bodhisattva effort of saving all beings.

[11:09]

So I liked very much Norman Fisher's approach to the first slogan, because in his book, called Training in Compassion, he acknowledges through this first step that we are not entering this with a lot of stability from past sitting practice necessarily. He's allowing a person who started sitting yesterday to read about these slogans and to enter the stream of these slogans. So he talks about... the first part of training in the preliminaries is examine your own life. Consider that everything in your life up to this point is your responsibility. Consider the possibility of letting go of blaming, letting go of excuses, letting go of all those reasons why things didn't work out

[12:17]

both because of what you did and what other people, and acknowledge that from this day forward, the effort is to take responsibility for your life and to become brave and step into the middle of your life, step into this engagement that allows you to examine deeply your life. So this is, in this way of writing it, Norma Fisher acknowledges that we might not have years of Zazen practice or other sitting meditation practices. He's acknowledging that the first real effort that we must make is to examine our lives and to say, this is my life and I want to do something. I want to make some changes. And Pema, in her language around this, the book is entitled Start Where You Are.

[13:22]

Same sort of idea. She's allowing for people to step into the stream exactly where they are. So then the second point that Norman brings up as a way to engage in training the plenaries is to sit tzatzin or to establish a daily meditation practice. Have a routine. Have a routine that allows you to settle, to open up the ground that you're sitting in, to aerate that soil, to allow that air and nutrients and stability to have some subtleness. and to open to the quietness of what needs to happen next.

[14:26]

So how I would frame this is that most of us are used to moving all the time. We're used to doing to-do lists. We're used to accomplishing. We're used to... endless and ceaseless tasks of both our lives and our minds. So we're responding to that energy all the time. And the request of practice is that we stop. And it doesn't mean that our mind stops. What it means is that habitual energy, that energy of motion, of movement and speed, slows down and we start checking into our bodies and checking into our habitual actions. So again, Norman is suggesting by his instructions at the beginning of the book that this is a requirement for this sort of training.

[15:31]

We need to be able to have time, have some awareness, develop a practice. develop introspection, the language around it can be very diverse. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to formally sit down on a Zafu and a Zavatan in a temple and practice that way. I think we're all finding right now that there are many different ways for us to approach this out of necessity, and those ways are completely valid. Again, Norman's encouragement is to start sitting and start turning your mind toward this idea of working with yourself and working with the ideas of a compassionate mind or a compassionate life. I have always heard...

[16:39]

that it's good to start a period of zazen with a foreign intention. And it can be helpful for some people to use that same intention every day, every time they sit. So may I be open to my mind. May I settle. May I realize the Buddha way. I think these are all forming an intention. They don't have to be complex. They can be, for a beginning sitter, I'm going to sit here for five minutes. And no matter what happens, I'll get up after five minutes. So that can be a very encouraging intention. So starting out your practice with Samu. acknowledgement of what is about to happen is very powerful and it supports our practice.

[17:41]

So then to move into the traditional preliminaries that are outlined in, or I've found them to be outlined in all the texts that I've read. There are four elements and these elements are assuming that that a practitioner has already done some stabilizing. So then the contemplations are to strengthen your resolve and to realize some appreciation of the thing that you're about to do. So the first element in training in the preliminaries if you're looking at the classical approach, is to contemplate the preciousness of Kirin birth. And we're incredibly fortunate to have a body.

[18:46]

So I can taste a strawberry, taste how delicious it is and how the sun has brought all the flavors together. I can walk in the sun, having a body allows me to, well, it allows me to be alive certainly, but it allows for many other things. And often the messages we send ourselves are not like, oh, I'm so lucky I get to get up and eat breakfast. It's more like, oh, oatmeal again? Well, that's not so good. Or, boy, I wish I were smarter. I'm not handling this so well. So again, this contemplation about the preciousness of human birth is to realize that we have, despite all our impediments, amazing possibility because we can move through the world.

[19:51]

We can move in our houses. We can move outdoors. We have this... We have this inherent ability for motion and engagement. We have, as humans, powerful minds. So we can solve problems. We can create problems. We have this ability. And so being grateful that we have a body and a mind, that we have an emotional world, that we are... able to learn and grow. This is part of the contemplation of the preciousness of human birth. It also goes to other areas, which is that right now in this moment, we could be thinking, oh, I wish I could go to a Giants game. Or I have these symphony tickets and I can't go to that symphony because we're not allowed to leave and gather in that way.

[20:58]

So again, there are so many ways we could look at our situation. We could always be bringing forth sort of this negative idea, or we can think this is the perfect time to sit down and to study. This is a perfect time to talk to somebody that I haven't talked to for 20 years. This is a perfect time to spend more time with my pet. This is the perfect time. to do fill in the blank. And I think this is part of, again, this notion of the preciousness of human birth. As a human being, we can make up our minds about things. We have choices. And I think the hope through contemplating this particular phrase or this, this, they're called before remembrances, is that we have the opportunity to be always kind of a downer or we can focus on the positive things because there are so many positive things.

[22:14]

And then another aspect of this preciousness of human birth is that at this moment right now, all of us are sitting in some sort of relatively safe environment, watching on Zoom, listening to me talk, and I am here to speak. So that in itself shows an amazing degree of fortune, good fortune. We're not in the middle of New York City in a hospital. or at least I'm not, and I know some of you aren't. So our situation is very, many of us have fortunate situations right now that allow for us to be watching and thinking about the slogans and these remembrances. So all these things are examples of how on a daily basis, it's very good to think about

[23:25]

how precious human birth is. It's rare. It ends. It ends at any time. And that takes us into the next remembrance, which is impermanence. And right now we're living in a moment that I would say completely highlights impermanence. So about eight weeks ago, most of us were at our jobs, enjoying them or not enjoying them, walking outside, eating in restaurants, going to grocery stores so we could cook at home, spending time with friends, spending time with family. And that situation changed in San Francisco on March 16th when we had the shelter-in-place order come down from the mayor. And that city center There was this moment where things seemed to be pretty normal, and then all of a sudden things were completely changed.

[24:33]

And we have this tendency as human beings to not want things to change, although things are changing all the time, and to be frustrated by change. And so this remembrance is about... understanding that impermanence is inevitable. Change is happening all the time. Even things that we think are very static are changing all the time. Mountains are either rising because of geography and the tectonic plates, or they're waning because of age and the breaking down of rock. So even these things that we think of as very static are always changing. So again, to contemplate that this is an inevitable part of human life and that change, it is not a good activity.

[25:40]

It's not a bad activity. It's something that happens. And that as human beings, it's good for us to get used to this idea of impermanence. And with this comes the idea that our lives are impermanent, that death can come at any moment, that we could get sick tomorrow and we wouldn't have much say in that, probably. And so the arising out of this contemplation on impermanence is the thought that it motivates us to study and to practice and open to ourselves and our potential as practitioners. So it's not the contemplation around the possibility of death. I don't think it's supposed to be something that drags us down and makes us or allows us to feel like we don't have options.

[26:40]

I think it's the opposite action. It's to encourage us to say, hey, you don't have all the time. It's not the moment to wait until city center opens so I can go sit in the Zendo and really start practicing. That's not the request of practice. The request of practice is that right now, in this moment, we start working on our lives. We start acknowledging who we are and our potential in our lives and opening up to the possibility of being kind to ourself and others. So again, impermanence is about not waiting. It's about moving. It's about immediacy. It's about responding. to the changing nature of being human. And that takes bravery. And it's acknowledging that this is possible for us.

[27:42]

There are no hindrances to starting to practice right now. We can always come up with hindrances, but actually there are no hindrances to us practicing right now. The third remembrance is cause and effect, or karma. So this is said, there are many ways of talking about this. I thought I'd read a few of the things that have popped up in the text that I mentioned. So Chölyam Trungpa says, the entrapment of karma, that whatever you do, whether virtuous or not, only entraps you in the chain of cause and effect. Norman Fisher calls this the awesome and indelible power of our agents. Another teacher, Trolley Kadgon, writes, our actions are not like footprints left on water. They leave imprints in our mind, the consequence of which will invariably manifest unless we somehow nullify.

[28:51]

So I like that a lot, that somehow we think that our footprints will disappear, or that our actions will just go away. And what this idea of karma, cause and effect, is that it is teaching us that that is not so, that we, by actions of body, speech, and mind, leave footprints, And they stick with us forever. And it doesn't matter whether you believe in lifetimes, multiple lifetimes, or whether you're thinking about this particular lifetime. If you engage in wholesome action in this lifetime and practice engaging in wholesome activity in this lifetime, that will follow you through your lifetime to your death. I was just thinking about my parents.

[30:00]

So my parents had both died. And my mother, in the sort of weeks or months before her death, was very content, very gracious, sweet to people. She acknowledged that she was tired and she had a wonderful life and she was actually ready for death. And my father was belligerent and angry, not ready for death. He wasn't curious at all about what was going to happen next. And I don't think it's that my father led a particularly awful life. It's more that he didn't have... the interest or the capacity to examine his actions necessarily.

[31:01]

He didn't contemplate, particularly as he got older, the effect he had on other people. He didn't have a lot of peace. So that was a very startling example for me in my life and as I work with other people of what our lives, the seeds that we sow in our life, bear fruit in our life. Jamgun Contral writes about this. The result of wholesome action is happiness. The result of wholesome action is suffering and nothing else. These results are not interchangeable. When you plant buckwheat, you grow a buckwheat. When you plant barley, you get barley. So I think this is a hard lesson for us. I think we don't like the idea that the seeds we sow are the seeds we reap.

[32:09]

And so getting used to this, contemplating this, believing it to be true, takes some effort, actually, to think that our actions of body, speech, and mind plant seeds that bear fruit. Sometimes we think, well, the thoughts I have, it doesn't matter what I think, it matters what I do. And these teachings say that it is not so. They teach us that all three of these things, body, speech, and mind, have karmic effect, sow karmic seeds. And so, Working and training to develop reliance on wholesome thoughts bears fruit, as does reliance on unwholesome thoughts. So learning to work with that takes a lot of effort, and realizing that change is possible, and that we can, as humans, with our choices and with our training, can change our situation is...

[33:23]

Very important contemplation. So the fourth remembrance is the inescapability of suffering. So I once had this described in a certain way that I'd like to repeat because it, for me, was so... It has stuck with me. So if you can imagine that you have a housefly that's trapped in a very, very large glass bell jar or jar. So the jar can be quite large, and the fly is in there. So the fly has quite a bit of space, and still the fly, no matter what it does, is not able to penetrate the glass. And it can be content sometimes, And then there's that frustration of hitting the glass, wanting to be on the other side of that glass.

[34:30]

And we've all seen this when flies try to get outside against a window. They can fly around the room and they have a lot of space. And yet when they decide that they want to go out through the window, they cannot do that. This, I understand, is like our lives. So we are in the middle of a samsaric world. We cannot get out of that. And so that causes us a certain amount of frustration if what we're always trying to do is break out through the glass. And the suggestion here by this contemplation is to think about what else can happen. If we're not always trying to get out through that glass, if we're not always trying to escape into something better, what can we do?

[35:30]

So many of us have great jobs and we've trained for years and we think that having a very good job will allow us to be happy. Many of us have families and we think that having a family and having a house and having a car or two cars and an RV and a dog that will make us happy. And this teaching says that it might make you happy for a time. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that, except for at some point, you will realize that those things have distracted you from the real effort to study not the trappings of our human lives, but our condition, the condition of our human lives. We want to train our minds so we are involved with our situation that exists rather than getting out of that situation.

[36:42]

So for me, this is a very powerful thing. How often do I spend knocking against the glass rather than understanding the environment within the glass and being content with that environment, not as a settling, not as a second best. Rather, it's more like this is the human condition. And so instead of getting out of it, instead of feeling trapped by it, how can I be in there as the best possible person life that I can have. A phrase that I read recently is that so any journey requires good planning if it's to be a good journey. So in our lives, I think there are many ways that we can plan the journey.

[37:44]

We can plan it so we end up being frustrated. We can plan it so we end up being content and experiencing our amazing life as it happens with this sense of brightness and amazement and gratitude and preciousness. So I think that as a... as the ground for what comes next in this compassion teaching, these four remembrances, this slogan is a world that can open up for each of us. And working at contemplating these remembrances is extremely supportive of

[38:48]

moving forward into training and compassion. So what I will do is I will ask the Joshin who's running the online portal to put in some contemplations specifically about each four of these things for those of you who are in the practice period to look at. I'm not suggesting that you memorize these unless it's interesting to you to memorize them. And what I think is helpful is to have an idea of some formal phrases that you can memorize so that when you're engaging and contemplating these four remembrances, you have like a path. So I'll put those, I'll get arranged to have those put up for people to think about and to contemplate.

[39:51]

And this can be for the next few days, the request of the practice container is that as you're meditating, as you're doing Zazen, you bring to mind one of these contemplations a day. You do not, of course, have to do it for the whole time you're sitting. I would suggest that you spend, at the beginning of your meditation, A, form an intention for that period, and then B, think about one of these remembrances, whether it is the preciousness of human birth, the nature of impermanence, that everything changes, that we were susceptible. In fact, we're part of a world that changes all the time, both our inner world and our external world.

[40:53]

We are part of karmic cause and effect. And then the fourth thing is the inescapability of suffering or of suffering. Suffering, sometimes people don't like that word because it sounds too negative. So the inescapability of dissatisfaction because we have human bodies, we have limitations, we have the conditions that we were born with, all of these provide something for us to bump up against. So how can we move out of that frustration? So I encourage you all, to think about these four things and allow them to sink in and allow yourself to explore how this can be a motivator for practice and for compassion, actually.

[42:02]

So I think that is all for today. I hope you have a wonderful weekend if you're leaving now, if you join just for the talk. And for those of you who are sitting today, I hope that your temple, wherever you are, is safe enough and that your mind is free. So thank you very much. Thank you. Please chant along with the microphone muted. We'll end with the closing verse, which is available in the chat box. May our intention equally extend to every being and place, with the true merits of Buddha's way, being so numberless.

[43:10]

I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to save them. The dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. But as a way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it. Thank you very much, everyone. This is Kodo again, City Center Eno. Just with a reminder, for those who are participating in the one-day sitting today, we'll now switch Zoom rooms. So the information you received has the new Zoom room, and you can find your way there. If you stumble in trying to make your way, please feel free to send an email to ccino, that's ccino at sfcc.org. Thank you very much.

[44:09]

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