This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. So I'm going to use some of the examples of the students. One of the differences between practice, how many, by the way, how many of you are in the practice period here in the city center right now? Well, quite a bit of you. I see we have a new student, Steve, here, as part of the practice period. Beginner's mind, absolutely. One of the things about a practice period is you commit to following as much of the schedule as you can, and especially in one of these places, or if you're at Tassar or Greengolds where you're living in residence, that's enough just to follow the schedule. But if you're doing a practice period... like I was leading, since we only met on Fridays for an hour and a half and then once a month for half-day sittings and a few ceremonies, you have to have your own personal practice focus, what you do on a daily basis to intensify your practice during the two-month period of time.

[01:22]

And... So I asked all of the students to come up with what their personal practice focus would be for the practice period. Most of them, as you would imagine, since this is a Zen group, said that they were going to sit more Zazen. So instead of those who were already sitting once a day were going to sit twice a day, and those that weren't sitting once a day were going to get up earlier and sit Zazen. We had a meeting at the beginning of the practice period where everybody shared their personal practices, and I think that was very helpful. And then we had a meeting, several meetings after that, where everybody discussed how they were doing with their personal practices. And, of course, the first thing one learned is all those that made the commitment to get up early in Sitzazen began with the apology that they actually weren't getting up every day to Sitzaz, and they were only getting up two or three. And we discussed, you know, techniques about how the night before, when you're setting that alarm 30 minutes earlier, you say, yes, I really am going to get up.

[02:30]

I'm going to commit myself to getting up. And if you're not willing to say that, don't even set the alarm for 30 minutes earlier. And another student was sitting in the afternoons when her husband was taking a nap, but then that turned out to be a problem because he varied the times he took his nap, and then it didn't, you know. So... Part of why I'm sharing some of that stuff is if you live at Tassajara and do a practice period or Green Gulch or even a practice period here in the city, one of the key things that you experience is Sangha. How many people are familiar with the term Sangha? A lot of people. Sangha basically means the people you're practicing with. And Sangha is one of the three treasures besides Buddha and Dharma. Sangha is one of the three treasures in Zen practice. And if you live in residence at Tasara, Sangha is just your life. You cannot escape each other. As one of the students when I was down there last week and said, you can't write anybody off because you walk to the Zenda with them, you sit with them, you eat with them, you bathe with them, you work with them.

[03:38]

They're just... in your face. And a very interesting thing happens in that process. First of all, I recall one practice period, there's always somebody in a practice period that you really don't like. You know what I mean? Their personality and your personality just sort of like, it's just opposites, right? And at Tassajara, they rearrange the seating and the zendo for each practice period because for various reasons, different people come and go. So This was, I guess, my third practice period at Tassara, and I looked at the seating schedule, and who was I sitting next to? As you all know, the woman that I just... Why do I have to sit next to that woman? I mean, really, I was a firstborn son, and my father was a kind of you-do-things-right, so when I sat Zazen, I sat still. I didn't fall asleep. That was my style. Her style... was to fall asleep, weave a lot, make various sounds, etc.

[04:45]

And, of course, you know, I'm sitting next to her nine hours a day for three months and passing gamachio and just, you know, we're eating together the whole... And the interesting thing that happens is, you know, we became great friends. Wonderful friends. And what happens if you live that intimately with people, even people whose personalities at first don't match with you, there's a wonderful quality of friendship that develops that helps you and encourages you in your practice. And I think that's the theme of this practice period, isn't it? Friendship or something like that. So I'm very pleased that you're talking explicitly about how helpful Dharma friends can be in your practice. Part of what I was doing in the practice period I was leading is trying to figure out ways when you're not living together that intimately that you can develop that quality of friendship.

[05:47]

So that's why we have these frequent meetings where we would all get together and share how poorly we were doing on our personal focus practice, our vulnerability, and inspiring each other in doing this. And it was that... level of verbal sharing that becomes important when you're not just automatically sitting with each other all the time. I have these notes in front of me, but who knows how well I'll follow any of them. One of the other things that encourages this Dharma friendship when you're doing a practice period like I did is everybody chose a Sangha partner. which was someone that they would call up or meet with weekly or so and share how they were doing with their practice. And that was very reassuring and encouraging for people. And I remember one person who was having great difficulty with bowing.

[06:51]

Are you familiar with our tradition of bowing? I mean, I did three bows here. Some people don't understand bowing and have a great resistance to bowing. especially if they came from a certain Jewish or Christian childhood, and they think you're bowing to something greater outside yourself. Anyway, she was one of those students that had a great misunderstanding about what bowing in Buddhism is, and she had a sangha partner who had been practicing for several years, and through discussions with each other, she actually overcame her concerns about bowing and learned how to bow. And she remarked that at some moment she was bowing and had just this wonderful, pure experience of gratitude. Such a lovely emotion gratitude is.

[07:52]

We don't feel it enough. We don't feel grateful for the life that we have. But when we do, there's a kind of natural generosity that comes forth, because we no longer have that sense that we don't have enough. We have plenty. Our life is enough, and we then feel generous to share our life with other people. And she was encouraged in that practice through her Dharma friend, her Sangha partner, in the practice period. Bowing is a wonderful practice, and it's almost as good as zazen, or maybe better. But it's not the subject of this talk, so I won't talk anymore about bowing. I would just recommend that you try it a little bit. So I want to talk about one of the practices that one of the students took up. She was working in her work group.

[08:56]

She was working with a lot of people, so she decided she was going to try to meet people better. So she was going to say the person's name as she passed them in the hall. And this practice evolves from a practice at Tashara, which is when you pass somebody on the pathway, you bow to them. You do a standing bow. So two monks are passing on the pathway. You just put your hands like this and you bow. You don't say anything necessarily. I mean, you can have a conversation, but you're not. This is sort of the tradition that you do this bow. And most of the time at Tassara, you're not talking to each other. So this is one of the ways that you end up relating. And it's a very, very interesting practice because it means that you actually have to meet people. One of my good friends who's a teacher in a Zen center was commenting to Suzuki Hiroshi that he was walking along and he came up to a friend who he all of a sudden felt very, very angry to and wasn't sure whether he should bow to them or not.

[10:01]

but he decided to bow anyway. So he bowed, and then he asked the Zikorshi later, was that okay? And the Zikorshi said, perfect. Perfect. You can bow to anybody no matter what you're feeling. That is, you can meet anybody even if you're angry or upset. And in the process of bowing, not only do you sort of meet them a little bit, but you meet yourself. You become aware again of what you're feeling, what you're experiencing. And as you know, mostly what Zen Center practice when you're in a practice period is all kinds of little reminders of bringing yourself back into the present moment, ways to remind yourself to be present instead of lost in whatever train of thought you might be in. I'm going to give you a few of those examples. You can make up a lot yourself. But anyway, so to continue on how this woman applied this idea to her work life, she decided every time she was making a phone call to somebody, before dialing, she would imagine that person, wherever they were, and if she'd been to their office, their office, and what it was like there, think of that person, bring that person into her mind, and then dial the phone number.

[11:24]

And I practiced this for years while I was an executive. I had people reporting to me in eight or nine different states in America. And it was really interesting to imagine what their life was like there. Dial the phone, and not only did I, when I contacted them, have a more immediate sense of who they were, but the process of thinking about them reminded me of, well, how am I today? Am I angry from the last meeting I was in, or what's my feeling like? And in that process, we were more immediately connected. So anyway, I was thinking about this same process with email, which is sometimes just before sending that email, before I hit that send button, I pause and reread the email and think about that person and wonder whether I should rearrange some of the words in that email before I hit the send button. I don't know, most of you guys probably don't make phone calls or email anymore. You're all texting and twittering and stuff. I'll leave it to you to figure out how to apply this concept into the way that you're... But this is another one of those ways where you just pause for a moment and check in with yourself before making contact with another person because meeting another person is a wonderful thing.

[12:46]

And we do it all day long. We just are sort of mostly just passing it by. I remember when I was in the business world, one of my friends was very good at work, meaning he was very productive, and he was very perfectionist, so his assistant was preparing an important letter to a customer. The assistant came in, had been working on this letter for a day and a half, presented him the letter, and he, as he told me the story, read the letter, made several quick corrections so that it was perfect afterwards, handed the letter to the person without even... looking at them. And the person walked out of the room and he didn't understand later when he was talking to me why that person was so mad at him. It isn't just the work that's being done, it's the people you're working with. How you connect with the people that you're doing the work you're doing with. Several of my friends are down at Google now teaching mindfulness classes, and they're reframing it called emotional intelligence.

[13:50]

That's what it is. When you actually connect with a person that you're working with, that's called emotional intelligence. I'm so happy we have these wonderful words for these things. Anyway, back to these practices that we have in Zen Center that sort of remind you where you are. One of the practices is if you walk through... these doorways here, and if you walk through on the left side, you're supposed to step through with the left foot. And if you walk through on the right side, you're supposed to step through with your right foot. I don't think there's anything particularly religious about that, and there's no sin involved if you don't do it. So I was at Tassar, and I was working in the shop, working on a carburetor that was not coming around as it was supposed to be coming around and the bell rings for zazen so you know you leave and you go to the zendo and you step through the the door of the zendo but i was still thinking about that carburetor because i just couldn't figure out why it wasn't working so i i noticed that i stepped through with the wrong foot and i was reminded that i was entering the zendo and that

[15:05]

And it was just a trick. It just brought me into the present moments. I noticed, oh, I'm thinking about the carburetor instead of preparing myself to meditate because I was entering a meditation hall. Now, there's nothing wrong with fixing carburetors or thinking about carburetors or planning marketing campaigns. I've done an enormous amount of those things in my life. Work is a very important part of life. And work is a very important part of Zen practice. In fact, I don't know, there's Susan, and I don't know if Robert's here. They lead marvelous classes on work practice here at Zen Center. So I would recommend, if you're interested in that, to follow that up. But you don't always have to be thinking about your work problems. In fact, it's very important if you can stop, if you can actually stop that. And particularly if you're going into meditation, it would be good if you could stop thinking about your work problems.

[16:06]

And if not your work problems, the other problems that we're always thinking about is our own problems. You know, why is I'm not getting along with XYZ person or whatever those are, which are endless. So you have to be able to, I don't see, how do I do this? Just there. You have to have a chance to rest your mind a little bit. And if you do rest your mind a little bit, you'll find when you return to your problems, you'll have some energy and maybe some new good ideas. So all those practices are called, you know, we have a term for it, a snake in a bamboo tube. A snake doesn't know what shape it's in, but if it's in a bamboo tube, it hits the sides of the tube and kind of tell what's going on. So when we have all these little ways in which we remind ourselves, and you could do that in the outside world every time you walk through a doorway, you could say, I'm walking through a doorway, I'm leaving...

[17:19]

Whatever I'm doing, I'm entering a meeting with some other people. I'll sort of like look around the room, see who these people are. I'll use that as an opportunity to pay attention to who I am and where I am. And that's how you learn about yourself, you know, by bouncing up against these little sort of reminder techniques. So there are other ways, of course, which you can practice in the world that are similar to... practice at Tassar, and one of them is the following. One of my students said, I'm going to be my age when I'm working with other people. What do you mean? She said, I mean, instead of being the six-year-old girl, I'm going to be a grown-up person, and I'm going to express my view about what's going on. I call that probably some pathological belief she got when she was young about how she's supposed to be around people and probably worked beautifully when she was three years old, but doesn't work so well when she's 35.

[18:27]

So this was a way of noticing whenever she was hitting that sort of belief that she had about who she should be and how she should be, that she would notice it and experiment with being a little different. And this sort of flows from what we call the precepts. We have 16 precepts that people take when they become a Buddhist. Ten of them are called clear mind precepts or grave precepts. They're things like, I vow not to kill, but to nurture and encourage life, or I vow not to steal, but to practice the perfection of giving. I vow not to lie, to be truthful in words and deeds. So you could take one of these precepts up, which is, you know, and typically that's how you study them for a month. You might walk around and notice, what's the practice of lying? You know, what's that like? How often do I lie? Is lying good for me? Is it not good for me?

[19:30]

What's the practice of taking things instead of giving things? So, and those kind of formal specifics. precepts are wonderful to practice with, and I would recommend it for everybody. I've done each one of them for a month just to sort of get a feeling for how these things work. But Suzuki Roshi always encouraged us to find our own precepts, make up our own precepts. And that's what this woman was doing. She was making up a precept of, I'm going to stand up for myself and own my own experience of what's going on and express it in these work meetings. One of the other students in this practice period came to me and she said, I can't do any of these extra things that you're talking about. My life is an absolute mess. I've just separated from my husband. I'm selling my house. I have to find a new place to live. I'm completely anxious. I mean, this is the real world we live in.

[20:32]

We have a lot of problems. So the practice I recommended to her was... Every time you're feeling anxious, take three breaths. Just take three breaths. Just pay attention to your breathing. That's all you need to do. And do it whenever you remember to do that or any time during the day. A lot of times people think Zen practice is about the mind. We're going to study ourself by watching our mind and figuring out. There's no end to that. That is a hopeless process. So Zen practice is really a body practice. Where am I in my body right now? How can I be in my body and experience my life from my body? Of course, that's what zazen is, and I assume, has everybody here, everybody had zazen instruction? Most, maybe one or two, yeah. It's a wonderful practice.

[21:34]

Anyway, this is a practice, this three breaths is a way to get back in touch with your body, what you're feeling at any time during the day, when you're driving, when you're standing in this checkout line and you're late and the cashier is doing whatever they're doing with the customer in front of you. Whole Foods, where I live in Mill Valley, is a complete practice of patience all the time. getting along. It's so crowded you can't even get to the food. I think they made the aisles particularly narrow for various reasons. Anyway, so do you understand what I'm saying about this three breaths thing? It's a simplest possible thing but has a great power and you'll find that if you notice your anxiety and be very settling.

[22:49]

So I'm just sort of going through a list of these practices. Another one of my students was a person that always felt nobody was kind to him. A lot of people were being mean to him. That's how he was experiencing lots of people being mean to him. So he decided that he was going to be kind to any person he thought was being mean to him. So he spent the entire practice period, anytime he thought somebody was being mean to him, he just was kind to them. And instead of being unhappy about all the people who were being mean to him, he felt wonderful at the end. Just turning it around, just being kind. I don't think most of these people he thought were being mean to him were being mean to him. I never really investigated that too thoroughly, but that's my suspicion. But by being kind to them, they started being kind to him.

[23:55]

I remember Richard Baker, who was one of the abbots when I was a student here, he said, the way you get people to be trustworthy is you place your trust in them. I used to experiment with that in business. I would think, I wonder if this guy's really going to follow through on this contract. I'm going to just... in every interaction I have with this person that they will. I will act with the positive feeling that they will be trustworthy. It didn't work all the time, but I think it worked a fair amount of time. I want to talk about one of the I was quite moved by this student who had to leave the practice period for three weeks to go back to her family's home because her parents had to be put in a old age home.

[24:59]

They were no longer able to take care of themselves. And she had two siblings, a sister and a brother. I think the sister was a woman she'd never gotten along very well with anyway. but I don't know how many of you have gone through this process. This tends to be a very stressful event. Many siblings break up in these kinds of decisions about the money involved in this transfer, they're going to sell the house. It gets down to who gets that picture, you know? I mean, it really gets... And she knew that this was going to be just really difficult with her sister. So she made up her mind that... Every morning she was going to get up and she was going to use her intention to be as kind and generous to her sister as she could be, but at the same time stand up for what she thought was the right thing for her parents and what needed to be done.

[26:04]

And she was going to set that intention for the day. And she would remind herself as she was going through the day when she would get to these stressful confrontations that that was her intention. And she reported to me at the end of the three weeks when she returned that it actually had worked. That she had managed to sell the house, divide up all the stuff, move her parents into this new home, and have a good relationship with her sister at the end. Right intention, or what I might say is awake intention, is one of the eightfold paths that Buddha taught, and along with right view is the two parts of the path that are the wisdom part of the path. Setting our intention, probably one of the most fundamental things we can do.

[27:08]

if you can align your intention with what is the most important and deepest part of what you want to achieve, you will be very successful at achieving that. So, all these practices, what are they for? I mean, basically we I think Dogen was famous for his saying, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be awakened by all beings. What a wonderful thing to ponder. You know, we are interesting to be a human.

[28:13]

I mean, you know, like we're unhappy, we're confused, we treat people badly, or at other times we're joyful, brilliant, tremendously kind. But I think if we all sort of look at our life carefully, we'd probably rather be less stupid, mean, and more joyful, Kind, right? So our practice is a practice that encourages us to move from stupid mean to joyful, brilliant, kind. So I think it's about that time to end. I think I'll say something about when I met Suzuki Roshi in 1970, Tassara. 1970, we were all enamored with Zazen, enlightenment.

[29:19]

We loved that, enlightenment. I want to get some of that enlightenment. And of course, Suzuki Roshi was just like nobody we'd ever met before, just uncannily perceptive. I mean, just so present, you couldn't believe that anybody could be that present, that aware. But why I and so many people loved Suzuki Roshi was not that, but because he met us. He really met us. Here was this... small Japanese Zen teacher who came to America and we were all running around in long hair, I don't know. It was a strange time in America then. We were all quite diverse, quite different.

[30:24]

And yet he managed to meet each one of us quite profoundly. So this is a story. It was the summer of 1971. Last summer, Suzuki Roshi was at Tassara before he came up to this building and died in December of that year. I think it was one of the last lectures he gave at Tassara, actually. And it was a kind of chaotic summer, and there was a staff meeting during the day. I wasn't at the staff meeting, but there was a staff meeting at the day where Suzuki Roshi was, I guess, firm with one of the senior students because the senior student had been... complaining a lot about all the difficulties, the guests, the guest students, you know, he had a lot of complaints. Sigurishi had been quite firm with him. So that night, he gave a short lecture, maybe a 20-minute lecture, and then he said, I imagine some of you may have a question.

[31:26]

So there were a couple questions, and then this senior student raised his hand, and he said... Sigur Roshi, I've been practicing hard for five years, and I still get all bound up and don't know how to be kind to people. He said more, but basically that's what he said. And Sigur Roshi said rather firmly, five years is nothing. You don't know how hard it is to love some people. You don't know how hard it is to love some people. And I remember that room. It was so quiet. 60 or 70 of us there. It was so quiet. Such a beautiful feeling in that room.

[32:30]

Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[33:07]

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