This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning and welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. A couple of days ago, given the wonders of the Internet, someone sent me... a clip, a little video clip of a comedian on a talk show. I think his name's C.K. Lewis or something like that. Is that it, C.K. Lewis? What's it? Lewis C.K. Thank you. A clip of Lewis C.K. And he was describing in a wonderful... colorful, irreverent way, what it is to become aware.

[01:05]

I think he didn't quite realize that he was really talking about what happens for him. He seemed to think his response was like a universal response. And his response was something like this, that... in those moments, mostly by happenstance, but sometimes by intention, he becomes aware, he gets in touch with what's going on for him, and it's profoundly disturbing. There's a kind of hollow loneliness followed by a flood of sadness. He described this moment where he was driving along the freeway and he could feel this coming on. And so he said, what the heck? And he pulled over and like, let it all come on.

[02:09]

And then he just, he said, and I just sat there and wept. And then he went on to, you know, he said, talk about how uplifting and noble and appropriate to do such a thing is, and how usually it's the one thing in life we dread and we want to avoid. And today we're having a one-day sitting, and I think of it, it's a little bit like pulling over off the freeway. and letting it all happen. But here's what I'd like to do. I'd like to offer you, and then like, so what's he getting at?

[03:11]

What's a one day sitting about? What's the essence of Zazen? That's what I'm going to attempt to talk about. And maybe, like Louis C.K., as I talk about it, I'm really talking about how it is for me, with the notion that this is kind of something to do, universal. So here's what I'm going to do. I was thinking about Zazen, which is maybe Zen heresy, but nonetheless... if my thoughts were something like this how purposeful how intentional can you be one of the things I loved about the way C.K.

[04:11]

Lewis or Lewis C.K. talked about it was that kind of happenstance quality of it you know like you can't manufacture a spontaneous experience it's just not if it's manufactured it's not spontaneous it's contrived and yet here we are and some of us are going to sit all day and dance between intentional deliberate involvement and getting out of our own way Maybe you could put it that way. How do you get out of your own way? Like Karagiri Roshi, a former abbot here, a wonderful teacher, used to say, to settle the self on the self and you let your life force bloom.

[05:13]

And over the years I've been very inspired by that. But this morning it occurred to me, what the hell was he talking about? What does that mean? And when I tried to answer my own question, something like this. There is actually a felt subjective experience of experiencing the self. There's a difference between acting out and being caught up in what's going on for us and experiencing it and then letting that register. And then as that registers and the influence of it registering has a kind of catalytic effect.

[06:19]

It stimulates the process of what's going on. And then the challenge is to open and allow that stimulation. And I'll talk about that a little bit more in a moment. First of all, I'm going to try to offer you, well, I am going to offer you, we'll see what it produces, two experiential exercises. Because Zazen is an experience. It's not talking about experience. And this is the dilemma of giving a talk. The first experience is about contact. In the realm of experience, contact has a very significant contribution. You can't experience what you're not in contact with.

[07:19]

You can think about it, but that's all you can do. You can do all sorts of other things, but you can't experience it without the contact. The first exercise is about that. And then the second exercise is about experience. With our thinking minds, we so rapidly conceptualize and then relate in terms of our concepts. And one of the fundamental challenges in Zazen is initiate contact and initiate experience. So I'm going to offer you two exercises, and here's the challenge. In the doing, can there be experiencing and experiential learning?

[08:29]

Can there be experiencing and experiential learning? Can there be the experience of contact and can there be the learning of making contact? Okay, and then just to kind of settle you into a deep state of concentration, to just... Take an inhale, and then a long, steady exhale, but like a sigh, like a soft, gentle reassurance, almost like you were emotionally saying to yourself, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. and just put your right hand on your chest.

[09:40]

And if you have, like me, endless layers of Zen cloth on, try to get your hand a little closer to your body. And either way, just press with your hand until literally you can feel the hand. And just feel the experience of making contact. And then maybe move your hand about an inch away. feel the experience of non-contact, and then put it back.

[10:45]

And then just take your hand away. And then just for a moment, explore the experiential memory or the memory of the experience of contact. exercise? No, the second exercise. We'll clear the way with a breath again. This breath. Same thing. Just take an inhale and then long, steady exhale.

[12:12]

And then as you pause and breathe in, really try to open up to experiencing any and every sound that's happening. Long steady exhale, open up and experience any and every sound that's happening. Experience hearing. I don't know how much you got out of that, but I'm going to pretend you got something out of it.

[13:52]

But I would say this, you know, it's a tall order to just suddenly say, okay, drop everything, all the preoccupations, all the thoughts, and just give attention completely to this. In a way, it's a tall order. But intriguingly, we're totally capable of doing it. It's not like we're missing some vital part that we need to gain somehow or another. We're totally capable of doing that. And yet, the activity of the self in all its array of being interrupts. modifies. I would suspect that most of us had a kind of muted contact and muted experience.

[15:02]

But this is the process of zazen. The process of zazen is contact and experience. It's not defining what should be experienced. It's not controlling the sounds. It's not controlling what arises in the self. It's trying to stimulate the engagement of it. And the reason we're spending all day, many of us are spending all day exploring that is because it's mysteriously ungraspable. In that very human impulse, as we start to become aware of something, something in us wants to take charge.

[16:13]

And then on the other side, there's part of us that thinks No, I'm too busy. I have too many things to think about, to feel, to plan, to remember. And part of the challenge, part of the art of Zazen is to not set up a dichotomy. What should happen and what should be prevented from happening. How do we chart the middle course of a dedication, a steady commitment to contact and experience and let it turn out whatever way it turns out. It's like the emphasis is on the process, not the outcome. And then usually what happens for us is we have moments

[17:22]

we have glimpses of what it's like to become experience. Become experience that's more phenomenal. When the sound is just the sound, the mind doesn't even label it a car. It doesn't even place it on Page Street or Laguna Street. It's just sound happening in a realm of being. And in the language of Zen, in the language of Buddhism, that's called no-self or dropping the self. And we have glimpses. And then usually what we do is we immediately return to the self. But the challenge is, when those glimpses occur, can we allow them to become informative and influential?

[18:33]

In some ways, just to acknowledge, in that moment, the agendas of the self, the urgencies, the dramas of the self, fell away. Dugan Zenji, the finder of this style of Zen, Soto Zen in Japan, he often referred back to a pivotal moment when he was in China and he was practicing with his teacher and the teacher said something out loud in his endo and he dropped away the self. And then that set him, according to his description, on a journey. That gave him an insight, a realization.

[19:37]

And this is a key part to Zen practice, the realization. The experiencing the experience stimulates a realization that thinking about it doesn't do. When something's experienced directly, the nature of what is is realized. And it doesn't actually matter what it is that's experienced directly. It's the direct experiencing that stimulates realization. And, of course, to our cognitive mind, that's, in a way, not that interesting. You know? but consciousness settles and it's more available, that experience has an authority.

[20:39]

And it's very interesting because it has a kind of thoughtless authority. So Dogen had this experience And then he went to his teacher and he said, I had this thoughtless moment of dropping everything and just being. And the teacher said, that's it. And then Dogen finished his time in China and then he went back to Japan. And then about eight or ten years later, he wrote an essay. And he was referring to this thoughtless experience, and he said, this realizing is what all the Zen teachers have done.

[21:43]

This is how they experience and communicate Zen. And then the challenge for each of us is to tune in, open up, drop off, whatever verb or preposition you want to add to it that enables realization. And I would say to you, especially those of you in today's sitting, this notion of making contact and experiencing what's contacted. And then, of course, there's all sorts of wonderful techniques. You know, like that thing I said, like extending the exhale. It's quite common in the Zen world. And there's many others.

[22:47]

And the technique can facilitate, or it can become a preoccupation. You stay busy techniquing. Because somewhere in the back of your head, you've formulated success. And now you're setting about creating it. And in some ways that's okay. Because we're in a learning process. And learning process is about keep doing it wrong and learn about the ways in which it can be done wrong. You can get lackadaisical and there's no contact. You're just in a dream.

[23:51]

You can get and there's too much control. You can get ambitious and there's some goal that has to happen. This is not it. This is not the moment. This is not the moment. And the contact and the experience they reset our effort. Because there's an exact, simple, utterly available expression of being. There's nothing needed that we don't already have. We are intrinsically capable of awareness. We are always in contact.

[24:56]

one way or another with the experience of being alive. So the glimpse... If you think about it digitally, in Buddhist psychology it says we have six discrete experiences per second. But that requires... an astute perception. An astute perception only is available when the mind is quite settled and in its settledness is capable of attending closely. If we can make a point of contact once every second or every couple of seconds, after a couple of minutes, that will have an extraordinary potency.

[26:07]

If in that couple of minutes it isn't interrupted and hijacked by thinking, we will remember that moment for years. Like Dogen. It will become a realization that illustrates life. There's something powerful and mysterious about the process of awareness. that when it happens, something in our being rises to meet it and there's a mutual affirmation. So that's one side of it, the no-self.

[27:17]

And then there is the self. What happens in the process of exploring the exquisite nature of experiencing the experience? The self happens in its amazing variety of ways. Whether you are like Louis C.K., and it comes as a flood of The words he used were a kind of, he seemed to say something like this, a loneliness, almost a despair of meaninglessness, and then a flood of sadness. But anyone who watches themselves and pays close attention for five minutes, you know,

[28:24]

all sorts of things. All sorts of feelings and distractions and concerns and hopes. But the very same process, contact and experience. And what it does... the way in which all those intrigues and dramas and agitations and hopes weave together a world. The contact and experience starts to add a few cracks where awareness can enter. We start to see. And then sometimes... something opens more fully, and we see, and it's almost like we're startled by the revelation of who we are.

[29:37]

And it can be anything. Once many years ago, I was at Tassajara, our monastery down near Carmel, and we're eating our yoke, It's a formal eating style. Someone comes around and serves you. And I was quite settled and concentrated and quite proud of myself. But I didn't see that part. It was part of me was thinking, I'm pretty good at this. I'm really doing it. And I was sitting there and I was aware of moving my hands. It's kind of a wonderful piece of theater. And then the server come over to serve the middle bowl in lunch, the soup. And they scoop the liquid of the top without scooping down and getting those delicious, nutritious, essential vegetables.

[30:43]

And in response to that travesty... My serenity just went straight out the window. And they kind of like, just the kind of the annoyance, the hurt, the betrayal, the mistreatment, you know. And just boom. And then I saw it. It's like, hmm. Look at that. Just how someone scoops a soup can stir up such a sense of violation and mistreatment. And of course, utter disapproval of how they serve the soup.

[31:53]

And often when that happens, very interestingly, we think of it as profound failure. I have failed at being a good Zen student. But if we think about it simply, and I would say closer to the heart of our practice, as awareness, How wonderful. We get to see some impassioned expression of our own being. We get an insight into the workings of how we put together the world, what's meaningful for us. How interesting in that time that I was so susceptible to that, that experience.

[33:06]

If you think of all the other experiences that I had around then, that I can't remember. What about all the times someone did dip time and give me the vegetables? So the other aspect is that with awareness, with the practice of Zazen, the person we are is more available. Maybe it's more enlivened also. Sometimes I think of it in terms of energy. The energy is going into this and then... The very same energy that's going into concentrating is now concentrating on this being the affront of being mistreated.

[34:15]

And when we stay close to the admonition of be aware and experience the experience that's being experienced, something is revealed. Something is revealed about the workings of our own self, and something is revealed about the conditioned nature of existence. The inevitability of cause and effect that we're just part of. Whether we're proud of it or ashamed of it, whether we delight in it, or we do our best to resist it. We're part of it, no? Part of the endearing part of Louis C.K. 's little vignette on that talk show was, in the midst of all its bravado and bluster, in a few swear words,

[35:32]

There was a kind of poignant, tenderheartedness in how he just was opening to accepting what he was. This is the expression of my life. And I just pulled over and wept. Experiencing the experience does an interesting thing to our state of consciousness. It's like it's inviting it to expand in contrast to contracting. If you watch your consciousness and feel it, it can often contract around what's happening.

[36:41]

Sometimes you can notice it in your body. Sometimes you can notice it in your breath. And the willingness to experience tends in the other way to an expansion. Sometimes in a moment of awareness, it can feel like it's spacious. There's a kind of spatial acceptance. It's like when we have space around our own emotions. Now I talk about that moment in the intensity of emotion. Intensity. There's no, there's a spaciousness, you know?

[37:47]

There is no need, internal need, to kind of wrestle with it, try to change it, try to justify it. Okay. contact the experience as it enters into the subject of conditioned existence. It offers an interesting kind of liberation. Maybe it's not the liberation we were expecting or hoping for. Hopefully never again will I feel mistreated. Yeah? Sounds pretty good. But what about the sense of liberation that allows the person you are to be fully alive?

[38:53]

What about the sense of liberation that the energy and vitality of your being flows? other than contracts into a mysterious struggle with being alive. Now we can think about that and get ourselves into trouble. Oh yeah, that's what it is. Let me write that down and next period of Zazen, I'll get busy making that happen. to remember, it's a process of realization. It's realized through experience. And actually, getting too caught up in the thoughts about it is somewhat helpful.

[40:01]

It can sort of stimulate and guide our effort. then going beyond that or letting that be the introduction to experiencing. And so as we sit, as we sit this day, as we live our lives, you know, this is not just Zazen or the exotic structure of a one-day sitting. It's whatever we're doing. How do we stimulate and stay on track with experiencing the experience that's being experienced? And as we do that, in the words of Buddhism, it's called the unfolding of the path.

[41:03]

The path is something we We create breath by breath, experience by experience. But it has a character to it, as Dogen says, that's common to all the practitioners, all the great sages, all the great Buddhas. And in this way of engaging, the path unfolds. And then literally how to get a feel for that. How does any one of us sort of stay on track? How do we start to notice where we go off track? And often this is the great gift of one day sitting.

[42:12]

It's like all day... You're trying to stay on track. You're trying to stay in proximity or in the midst of immersed in awareness or returning. What's happening now? Very different question from what should be happening now. What's happening now? the mind can play a part. Sometimes there's a stabilizing and an orienting through noticing and acknowledging. I'm all caught up thinking about such and such. And then can that introduce contact and experience? And in a way, we could say that this is the core around which all the practices of Zen are created.

[43:28]

And then, just before I finish, I want to do a shameless plug for a course I'm going to teach over the next three months And it's called establishing the path of practice. And here's the premise of it. Okay, every day could be a one-day sitting, or a one-day standing, or a one-day doing. But how do we establish the path of practice in an urban environment, in a life that requires, seemingly, requires us to do a whole number of things, a whole number of activities to dedicate our efforts in a whole variety of ways. How do we do that? So we come up with this course that tries to tie together different elements that support that unfolding of the path of practice.

[44:44]

the suggestion of individual practices that help enable it, the coming together in groups that allows us to support each other, instructions that follow something like I mentioned today. Here's the teaching. Here's the experience that realizes the teaching. And then here's the takeaway that you take into your life to keep exploring and discovering. And then just weave that through the three months. Hopefully that it becomes a kind of embedded in your being. It influences your state of mind.

[45:51]

It influences the impulse. It stimulates the impulse to be aware. So that's the lofty intention of the Course. And it's called, now we use an acronym for it, because establishing the path of practice takes much longer to say than we have time to say it in our busy lives. So we just call it EPP. And it happens here at City Center, and it's also available online. But just to say, whether you do that course or not, you know, is beside the point. Because from the Mahayana point of view of Zen, we engage intimately in our own being and it connects us to all being.

[47:05]

As we engage this way, as we practice this way, it not only influences us, but it sort of like radiates out and influences others. There's an image in the Mahayana that says, we are all radiating this influence and each of us is affecting everyone else and everyone else is affecting us. So there's this, what you might call, web of mutual support. Once someone told me, as an student, he works downtown, and he said on his lunch hour, he would walk around and very deliberately think of each person he saw as Buddha.

[48:12]

So practice is everywhere. The human consciousness is fully equipped to do it. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[48:53]

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