This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Thank you for coming out to Green Gulch on this beautiful, beautiful day. For how many of you is this your first first lecture at Green Balch. Welcome. Thank you for coming. I wanted to talk today about the teaching of impermanence. This is a very, very basic teaching and

[01:00]

It might sound simple at first, but I think there's a depth of possibility for reflection and liberation, actually, when we look at this teaching about impermanence. wanted to speak about it because I've been reflecting on impermanence for the last months in preparation for a retreat in Xalapa, Mexico that I'm going to next week. And the guiding teacher of the Montaña Despierta, the Awakened Mountain Zen group in Xalapa was very saddened by the death of his mother a little over a year ago.

[02:06]

And in practicing with this and working with this great loss and talking about this retreat, it seemed that would be the theme, that would be the most important thing to bring up. So I'll be leaving next week for this retreat. And so I've been turning this and looking at this and feel the depth of this teaching. This morning, I opened my computer, opened my email. Actually, I had some notes on the computer and the email I checked. And there was an email from this guiding teacher in Jalapa, Mexico. And... he told me that his father died last night. And he will not be able to come to the retreat, wants the retreat to happen.

[03:10]

There's 29 people signed up. And in honor of both his parents now, he wants the retreat to go forward. So I found that rather poignant, that... in preparation for this retreat, looking at this theme, this has come to be for him. And I'm sorry he'll not be able to attend. So the teaching of impermanence or all composite things are all things. All things, all beings, everything we know will vanish or will not last. Everything changes. Another way of saying this is everything changes.

[04:11]

And this particular teaching, Everything Changes, or the teaching of impermanence, is one of what are called the four... Dharma seals. Seals like, you know, these are truths that are truths wherever you are, whatever age you are, whatever country you live in, there is the truth of impermanence. You can't somehow get around it or get outside it or find some situation where this is not true. So this is the first thing Dharma seal, everything changes or everything is impermanent. And the second Dharma seal which goes together with everything changes is, although it may not seem so clear how come this next one goes with, but the next Dharma seal is that the teaching that there's no

[05:23]

abiding self. There's no permanent self or inherent self, our own selves or selves of others or selves of things like cups and papers. And how is that, how come we can say there's no self if you flip it because everything changes? So if everything is changing, there's nothing that is a permanent self. that one can hold to or grasp or have or that persists in time in the way that we imagine it to. We have a kind of conscious construction. We have a concept and an image, really, of things persisting, things persisting in time. Time is going along and there's these beings and houses and things that are stuck in time and going along. And this is a kind of misunderstanding in a very deep way, a kind of illusion or delusion of the way things are.

[06:34]

But it's a shared, it's very common. This doesn't sound like a surprise that we think in this way. But with this first Dharma seal, everything changes. Along with that comes the second Dharma seal, that there is no abiding self or selflessness. They're like two sides of one coin, really. If everything's changing and in flux and flowing, then there's no inherent self to hold to. Even though it appears that way, it seems to appear that way. So that's the second Dharma seal. Sometimes they're done in different order. The third of the four Dharma seals is... what you might call, what's translated the word in Sanskrit as dukkha or translated very, very often as suffering or unsatisfactoriness or things not being workable, not being able to function the way we want them to.

[07:53]

This is this feeling of dukkha that we can experience all the time, day in and day out. There's things we wish that would happen that don't happen, things that happen that we don't want, things that we wish would happen that doesn't happen. So there's different kinds of unsatisfactoriness or dukkha. And there is the teaching of dukkha that this is a dharma seal. We can't get out of certain kinds of unsatisfactoriness. And they're named. There's old age, sickness, death, and you could say birth and death are suffering. And there's also being separated from those we love we all experience through death or distance or emotional distance separated from those we love and also being made or forced or with those that we don't love or don't like.

[09:14]

People at work, people, our neighbors, people, family members that we have to be with and we don't love them or appreciate them. So separated from those we love, being with those that we dislike, and also not getting what we want and getting what we don't want. These are different ways to circle what dukkha is or suffering or unsatisfactoriness, this quality. That's the third Dharma seal. And these three together, just these three, are sometimes called the marks of conditioned existence or these characteristics that all beings in this world together share. We share together, these three. The fourth seal is peace or nirvana, some uncovered,

[10:23]

peacefulness. And if you look at all four together, everything changes or impermanence. The flip side of that is no abiding self. And then there's unsatisfactoriness or suffering and then peace. When we fight The first two, when we fight, everything changes. When we resist and won't accept and try to get out of impermanence or everything changes and don't live in accord with everything changes and no abiding self, then we suffer. When we live in accord with those, when we accept at the deepest level this truth of everything changing, then there's great peace.

[11:24]

So this is, these four Dharma seals are about, they're not theoretical things to learn by heart exactly. They touch our everyday lives profoundly in all ways. You know, I heard on the radio yesterday that one of my favorite radio programs that I've been listening to for decades, Click and Clack, the Tappic Brothers, Car Talk, right? We love it, right? We love to hear Click and Clack. They're retiring. Oh! For those of you who don't know Click and Clack, who doesn't know Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers? Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers are these brothers who are car mechanics and also very intelligent guys.

[12:28]

And they have a call-in radio show where you call in and say, you know, my 99 Honda has a funny noise and they make noises. Anyway, they're very funny and they're very helpful. And I've been listening to them for 25 years and they're going to retire. And... And because I've been practicing with this, all things change, you know, and not holding on and accepting the truth of impermanence. That was very helpful rather than, what do you mean click and clack are not going to be on? So at that level, you know, our radio programs, our favorite radio programs, the great little restaurant down the street, Our neighborhoods, that's at that level. We kind of know they're going to change. And we feel that as loss, disappointment, or a longing. We don't want it to change.

[13:30]

We don't like impermanence. We think. This is on a kind of superficial level. I don't like it. And if we look deeper into impermanence, and everything changes, and the truth of this, without change, without impermanence, nothing would come to be. Nothing would manifest. Nothing would appear. Because everything would be just as it is. I mean, even trying to imagine this is hard to even conceptualize that if things were permanent, that would be it. We'd be here, right here, for the duration, right? All of us together. You're not leaving green culture. But because of the truth of everything changes, this talk will end, lunch will happen, and tea, and the...

[14:36]

the person that I was that came in and did vows is vanished now. And the one who started that talk is no longer here, making room for or vanishing so that the next manifestation, the next coming to be, dependent, co-arising, the next arising of momentary existence can come to be. Because it There's this truth of everything changes, nothing's permanent. So there's the sadness, and at the same time, without that there would be no bread baking, no crops growing, no children growing up, no nothing, really, nothing as we know it. We live in, not we live in, we are, we are manifestations and living exemplars, examples of this truth of everything changes and impermanence.

[15:46]

We may fight it, we may want certain things to change and other things not to change, but the truth is this ever-changing, arising and vanishing and momentary existence is our world together, and is both the beauty and inconceivability of how we are all together, and then at a more superficial level, we resist this. and resentful and, you know, these kinds of sufferings, these kinds of qualities we might realize means we're not settling deeply enough in the truth of this changing.

[17:00]

So... The Buddha on his deathbed, maybe some of you know this story, but the Buddha could tell that his time was, his life force was diminishing and that he was dying and he was very, very careful at the time of his death. He chose the place and the time, he waited for people to come and his monks and nuns and the lay men and the lay women gathered round, and not only that, townsfolk and animals, and in the scripture it says he asked a monk to step aside so that the celestial beings who had come to pay respects could see and pay respects. And at that time, he asked the monks,

[18:10]

and those in the Buddhist order at the time, were there any questions that they were not clear about, that they had not settled? Now is the time to ask. Please ask. And nobody, there was silence. No one asked anything. And he said, if you're holding back out of respect for the teacher, please, now is the time to ask. Is there anything you need to settle in your mind about the teaching? Still, no one asked. And I think a third time he asked, you know. And then the last words that have come down to us that he said were something like, this of course is in English, something like, all composite things, all conditioned things are of the nature to vanish.

[19:12]

Practice, be a light unto yourselves, practice diligently. So those were the final words. So noticing this teaching of impermanence, everything that we know, there will be a time when it will disappear, come apart. Some things take longer than others, but everything is of that nature. And then he exhorted them to practice diligently. In the midst of the world of impermanence and change, we need to practice. Now, someone might ask, what do you mean practice? And I think there's many, many practices. The practices of paying attention to exactly where we are, what we're doing, being fully present. And that may be very, very difficult unless we can calm down, stop running around, stop trying to distract ourselves from the truth that everything changes.

[20:29]

Trying to run from the suffering of loss and... that we're separated from those we love through death. So we often try to deal with these truths in a very unskillful way by maybe diminishing our ability to think clearly. That'll keep us from thinking about it, distracting by substances of various kinds, reading materials, entertainment. So when we say practice all things, you know, this teaching of impermanence, practice. We need to practice in this life. And that was what the Buddha passed on at the end, and after he went into various states of yogic states, at a certain point he

[21:38]

entered what's called parinirvana, or he entered, he died. And around his deathbed, there were many, many monks who hadn't completely settled, maybe, and they, you might think, and they cried and screamed and tore at their clothes, and just the way you would think anybody would at the loss of a loved one, You know, they were beside themselves. And it shows them in some paintings. You see them weeping. And other monks sat in meditation and, you know, understood all things vanish. All things come together and come apart. This is the truth of our life. And it's no different with our teacher, Shakyamuni Buddha. But, you know, it's hard to say. I wouldn't want to say.

[22:40]

The ones who cried and wailed didn't understand. And the ones that were quiet did understand. I think that's maybe too easy. There's stories of Zen masters who you would expect they wouldn't... shout or something at the time of their death they would just be stoic or something or just but there's a story of a Zen master Chinese I think dying and shouting a shout so loud his disciples were deaf for three days you know just some incredible just expression of what of life which is life and death which is impermanent which is arising each moment and vanishing. So I don't think we need to be too quick to judge.

[23:46]

However, this teaching of practice, everything changes, everything that comes together will come apart. Practice. I think many of you know of a poet Jane Hirschfeld, and she has a very simple Zen, you know, the teaching of Zen in a nutshell, which is everything changes, everything's connected, pay attention. And I think those three are very similar, you know, to what I've been talking about. So the suffering of loss and not getting what we want and getting what we don't want and all these things I've described is not an inevitable... The fact that people die and the fact that these things happen, there's the truth of that.

[25:02]

The fact that we can't accept it and fight it and try to make it go away This is the cause of suffering. This is how it is that suffering comes to be, by not accepting the truth and ignoring the truth of our life, being ignorant or turning away from these truths. So one might think, well, that's not true. This is always going to be suffering. This is always going to be... getting something I don't want, is always going to be suffering. And I would like to propose that when we're practicing and coursing along in these teachings, something comes unexpected that we don't like or we don't want, can we study what happens right there?

[26:02]

Can we find right there in the middle of something we didn't want? Can we learn from that? And often, as we know, those situations where we didn't want something to happen, often those are the situations where we learn the most, where we have to dig deep into our own resources to be present. for something like that. And in that digging deep we find our resource, we find that we have an ability to find calm and presence and gratitude even for this life. So out of all these supposed things that we don't want and that we call suffering,

[27:04]

There is something there for us that is bigger and deeper than a life that's constantly trying to avoid anything unpleasant. We can't avoid it. And this practicing with things in this way has a quality of true permanence. Now you might say, wait a minute, wait a minute, we're talking about impermanence, that's the truth. What do you mean true permanence? So right in impermanence, right in this ever-changing arising and vanishing of things, there is the, you could say, the permanence of change. the everlasting, the ever-present quality of comings and goings and changing of not just our own moods and bodies and illnesses, but everything around us is constantly in change, which has a kind of everlasting quality to it.

[28:26]

And so the practicing with this also has an everlasting, ever-present quality. So I want to kind of move from there to this teaching, which kind of flows from this, which is the teaching that impermanence is Buddha nature. So we've been talking about impermanence and change as something we need to practice with and calm down around and enter. And along with that is this teaching from the 1200 Zen Master Dogen's teaching that impermanence is Buddha nature.

[29:31]

So what might you say is Buddha nature or awakened nature? Awakened nature is what we've been talking about this everything coming up, dependently co-arising and everything vanishing moment after moment at such a immediacy and such a rate that we don't notice. We can notice in a very kind of a gross way, maybe. As I said, the person who came in and offered incense vanished, and the person who started this talk vanished. And each one of you, though, you might think, no, I haven't vanished, I've been sitting right here. But this teaching is of everything changes, is that this is happening in the time of a finger snap.

[30:36]

There's thousands and thousands of coming together and vanishing, conditioned co-arising and vanishing. This is, how do we prove that, you know? So this Buddha nature or awakened nature is like this. And our practicing with it and taking up our practices means we ourselves are Buddha nature. We ourselves are of this nature. This nature, awakened nature. It's not something that's over there that somebody else... has or is going to get to, or if we just practice hard, we will get that thing, Buddha nature. But the nature right now of who we are, this arising and vanishing, changing and no self, is the reality of our existence together.

[31:50]

impermanence is Buddha nature. It's not something to overcome. This is the nature of all existence. So the ordinary understanding of impermanence, old age, sickness and death, we can work with that and study that and mourn and be grateful for each other. And the more we're in touch with this, the more we don't take each other for granted, the more we're realizing this may be the last time I see you. In the tea ceremony, there's this quality of this one tea gathering together today with this season and these this scroll with this poem and these tea treats, that's just one time.

[33:01]

And never before will that come again. So tea ceremony really highlights this. You focus on this together and are in touch with this. And we can do that with other parts of our life. those of you never done a tea ceremony or aren't interested each coming together is like this this one meeting one time one meeting how you are together right now so we can appreciate more we can not take for granted we never know we never know what's going to happen This is something we, unless we're working with this, we will be suffering deeply, you know. Last week on Sunday, I co-led a retreat or workshop called The Circle of Caregiving, Giver, Receiver, Giver and Receiver, The Circle of Caregiving.

[34:15]

And in the morning... Fu, Nancy Schrader, and Grace Damon spoke. Grace was in a head-on collision car accident in the Golden Gate Bridge about five years ago, and Fu and Grace spoke about the way their lives changed and what is caregiving, what is care receiving, what is being a caretaker, and a care receiver and how they've worked this out and learned from each other and learned to live in a world that turned upside down in an instant. Things were just going along. It's a regular old day, picking up the kid from school, doing errands, and everything changed. And our life is always like that. This possibility.

[35:17]

Many of you, I'm sure, have stories of everything changes in an instant. So this way of working with old age sickness and death and this changing also helps us to realize compassion for each other because we're all in this together. There's nobody outside of it. There's nobody who somehow is free of this. So working with these qualities and everything changes helps us to have compassion for each other, be there for one another, not take each other for granted, appreciate, care for, as best we can. And that's a practice.

[36:18]

And that's a practice that's never ending. There's no end to that practice. Another way of practicing with impermanence and everything changes is in our meditation practice where we have some idea of ourselves as a fixed body in space that sort of moves around rather than a flowing, walking mountain. So in our meditation, there's a chance in stillness to notice how we've constructed ourself with all sorts of ideas of ugly and beautiful and smart and stupid and too fat, too thin, too tall. These are created stories. These are constructed stories. stories that we believe in and we can be quiet enough sometimes and watching the way we allow ourselves to create ourselves.

[37:31]

I remember speaking with someone one-on-one, a young woman, I think in mid-twenties or so. From my point of view, she was full of life, she was vibrant, she was full of vital energy and beautiful in her aliveness. And she was telling me how ugly she was and what a horrible person and how terrible she was. And it was like, I could, although she was caught in this, I could see that she had constructed, that she had created this idea of who she was, what she looked like. And I didn't see it. And what I created was my creation, probably no more no less true in terms of a constructed reality.

[38:35]

But the way she was thinking was causing enormous suffering, depression, and turning away from life. So the power of these stories, the power of the way we construct things. And so in meditation and in our practice, to actually get quiet enough to actually see how we create who we are and who other people are, who we think other people are in other situations, and to get in touch with the inconceivability of our life, and to force it into some small container, narrow container, is more suffering. Same with pain, I think we have some idea of what pain is.

[39:38]

Pain is bad, I should get away from it if it ever happens, but of course, pain can be Good sometimes, right? It lets us know we need to attend to something. We have to take care of that tooth. Something's going on. If we didn't feel pain, you know, we'd be in all sorts of trouble. And the same with sitting, you know, we're taking a yogic posture and being still and quiet. Pain arises and we notice, oh, I'm actually tense. My shoulders. I'm holding my shoulders. What am I holding? I'm holding up the world. Can I let them go? I'm creating pain. Or we can feel the stress of our life. Or some pain in our knees. Or if we pay very close attention, we see it doesn't stay like a lump. It's moving also.

[40:41]

changing it's as someone said it's sparkly there's stuff happening there but if we're always running away from it how will we ever know how will we ever find out that pain isn't pain the way we thought it was pain and that goes for everything we have our view of it our image of it and our view doesn't touch the reality of it which is reality of our flowing existence together, interconnected with all beings, ever-changing, impermanent, no separate self, interconnected. And I think the other or last way of working with impermanence is a deep, deep letting go of these

[41:42]

idea of self, idea of separateness, and transformation of our own consciousness and beliefs in the way we think things are. And over time, working with these teachings, practicing, there can be a letting go, a transformation in letting go. And when there's a little letting go, This is, Achan Amaro says, when there's a little letting go, there's a little bit of peace. When there's more letting go, there's more peace. When there's complete letting go, there's complete peace. when I talked about our this quality of dissatisfaction and wanting to appease it in some way by running around and trying all sorts of things I feel like for me before I came to practice I was very busy running around very fast trying to get out of my life and not face

[43:33]

impermanence and my own suffering. And I was unable to attend to this deep longing and wish to be in accord with the way things are, to be in alignment and accord with these truths, these seals. and to find peace. I was running around too fast. And when I finally came to practice, this was some years ago, and just sat down, I had the physical, emotional, mental, physical, psychophysical, I don't know what even to call it, sensation that something that had been wanting to be met was being met, finally. All the superficial things that I tried in order to meet this part, this, you could say, way-seeking mind or this wanting to find the path that was in alignment with the way things are, all trying to appease it in a superficial way

[44:59]

created more and more and more suffering and confusion. So to come to rest or to try to come to rest and turn and face these very things which I don't want to look, I don't want to look at impermanence and loss and change. But when we do, and I feel like I can attest to this, there is a deep or appeasement of something that longs to be met. There is maybe, I don't know about thirsting and craving, but longing, a deep spiritual longing or a deep longing to live in accord. And how come we have this longing, this deep way-seeking mind, heart, And I would say because the reality of our existence is these very truths.

[46:13]

We're not separate from them, looking for them. We are them. We are changing. We are change. Impermanence is Buddha nature. So we long to come into alignment with our own true self. And we often can't find this or don't settle enough until we are suffering, until we've met and had difficulties. We're hard to stop. It's hard to stop us from running around until we are stopped by difficulties and loss and sorrow and our own loss of our physical abilities or health or all sorts of things.

[47:18]

These difficulties will help us, actually. So Shakyamuni Buddha said, if you want to understand Buddha nature, you should intimately observe cause and effect over time. When time is ripe, Buddha nature manifests. If you want to understand Buddha nature, you should intimately observe cause and effect impermanence. When time is ripe, Buddha nature manifests. And I would say, Buddha nature is manifesting.

[48:23]

We are the time that is ripe. There's not some time that we're in, but we are manifesting each moment in time. in ripeness. So we need to intimately observe, pay attention, practice. So I think I wanted to end with this poem that I wanted to read last week at this Retreat for Compassionate Caregiving. And it's a wonderful poem about, because part of what we talked about was not only caring for others, but self-care. And that caring for ourself is caring for others. If we care for ourselves, we protect others from our burnout and our, you know, our stressed...

[49:31]

and our irritability and our overtiredness. And that affects other people, right? That causes problems for other people. So to care for the self is caring for others. It's not, the two are inextricable. So this is a poem by Ron Padgett. It's called Excerpts from How to Be Perfect. And it's It's about self-care. Get some sleep. Eat an orange every morning. Be friendly. It will make you happy. Hope for everything. Expect nothing. Take care of things close to home first. Straighten up your room before you save the world. Then save the world. Be nice to people before they have a chance to behave badly. Don't stay angry about anything for more than a week, but don't forget what made you angry.

[50:41]

Hold your anger out at arm's length and look at it as if it were a glass ball. Then add it to your glass ball collection. Wear comfortable shoes. Do not spend too much time with large groups of people. Plan your day so you never have to rush. Show your appreciation to people who do things for you, even if you have paid them, even if they do favors you don't want. After dinner, wash the dishes. Calm down. Don't expect your children to love you so they can if they want to. Don't be too self-critical or too self-congratulatory. Don't think that progress exists.

[51:45]

It doesn't. Imagine what you would like to see happen and then don't do anything to make it impossible. Forgive your country every once in a while. If that is not possible, go to another one. If you feel tired, rest. Don't be depressed about growing older. It will make you feel even older, which is depressing. Do one thing at a time. If you burn your finger, put ice on it immediately. If you bang your finger with a hammer, hold your hand in the air for 20 minutes, you will be surprised by the curative powers of ice and gravity. Do not inhale smoke. Take a deep breath.

[52:50]

Do not smart off to a policeman. Be good. Be honest with yourself, diplomatic with others. Do not go crazy a lot. It's a waste of time. Drink plenty of water. When asked what you would like to drink, say, water please. Take out the trash. Love life. Use exact change. When they're shooting in the street, don't go near the window. So that was excerpts from How to Be Perfect by Ron Padgett. Thank you very much.

[53:52]

Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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