In 1902, Paul, poet Rilke went to Paris and he met the sculptor Rodin. And they were talking about. I was going to say they were talking about practice, but that's a great stretch of the imagination. They were talking about their kind of practice, the practice of the aesthetics of experience and how to fully engage. what's being experienced and to see its beauty, or maybe more particularly to experience its beauty. And Rodan said to give Roke this advice, he said, when you're experiencing something, really linger, like look at it for an hour. You know, just keep looking at it. Just keep returning to the simple experience of seeing it and seeing it and seeing it until something sinks in.

[01:13]

Something is felt or more deeply experienced. So like the good student that he was, Rilke did this. He went to the zoo. And any of you know Rilke, you know this poem. He looked at a tiger in its cage in the zoo. And then he wrote this poem, and this is the English translation, of course. His vision from the constantly passing bars has grown so weary that it can't hold anything else. It seems to him there are a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no work. paces in cramped circles over and over. Movement of his powerful soft strides is like a ritual dance around the center of which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

[02:19]

Only at times the curtains of the pupils of his eyes lifts quietly. An image enters in, rushes down through the tensed arrest muscles, plunges into the heart. and it's gone. The notion of Zen practice is to wake up, is to experience what's already happening. And Zen both attempts to offer formulation a methodology and at the same time says there are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth or ten thousand ways to quote another poet you know always we're in the throes of something you know whether we're a

[03:34]

Surfing on the internet or standing in line at Macy's for the sale to start. Or buying a Humvee. Last week I read our governor's comments on owning a Humvee. You know, doing something. Doing something to express what? Or to gain what? And is that passionate pursuit, is it creating a cage or is it creating an experience that touches our heart and informs us deeply about our lives? And what's the process that shifts it from one to the other? Are we pacing back and forth in a tight circle of repetition of behaviors and thinking?

[04:40]

Or are we letting the experience register in a way that it touches something that shows us more deeply how to live? And in the context of Zen practice, how to live a life that's liberated from being trapped in repetition of conditioning. When I thought of this, I thought of this word. I thought of these two words. I thought of humility and humiliation. The root of the word humble is humus of the earth. Humble, to be of the earth, to be grounded. I was thinking of myself.

[05:44]

A while back, I bought a Palm Pilot. And I went to the store and I saw there was a Palm Pilot for about $80. And it was made out of plastic. And it actually had the basic features that I needed, which was really a calendar and an address book. And then there was another Palm Pilot and it had a lovely, shiny, brushed metal cover. And it had all these wonderful things like Bluetooth and a whole bunch of other things, but I never quite figured out what they were or how to use them. Anyway, then I went home and I surfed on the internet, like all good shoppers should do, the comparison shop. And I discovered to my delight that I could buy the fancy one at a discount store online for almost the same price I could buy the plastic one.

[06:51]

So guess what I did. When we look at our own behavior with a wider vision, are a more thoughtful mind. We start to see we're going through this amazing passion play. What was it I was trying to do? Was I trying to be more powerful and efficient? Was I living in a world of scarcity and hunting down the prize? You know, some kind of competition with some unknown other. Was I trying to satisfy some sense of lacking?

[07:58]

And how do I, how does anyone who is getting in touch these kind of impulses that rather than just blindly acting them out we can learn from them we can see what's going on for us we can feel what's going on for us and let that register you know often the initiation of practice is described in the context of a change of behavior. But I think right along with that is something like a change of heart. Some shift where the way in which that deep passion and its impulse to act itself out shifts.

[09:12]

To a willingness to look at it. To take up the question, what's going on? What's happening? And to let that be a passionate question. You know, often that question arises for us when the world as we know it is shifted and usually sadly in a way that's painful in a negative way whether maybe negative is not the right word but often in a way that surprises us or hurts us then we ask with deep sincerity what's going on maybe because as we go through our passion play this really is our best effort at living our lives and reducing our suffering enhancing our happiness our sense of engagement and vitality and of course

[10:41]

To look carefully at that and to be honest about the limitation of our fixed habits can be humbling or humiliating. I looked up in the dictionary humiliation and it said injuring self-respect. About ten years ago or so, I'm not sure exactly when, a number of Western Buddhist teachers had a conference with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. And they brought up the subject of self-hatred. In a way, the antithesis of self-respect. And it took him the longest time to get him to understand the concept of self-hatred.

[11:47]

And then finally he got it. And what their teachers from the West were saying, this is one of the most pervasive problems for Westerners when they come to practice. The way in which they criticize themselves, the way in which they put themselves down, the way in which they don't have self-respect. They don't hold with benevolence and respect the workings of their own being. They're more prone to relate to them when they do relate to them with self-criticism. And maybe remarkably to us that when the Dalai Lama finally got it, he was astounded. Why would they do that? What's the point of that? Why would you hate yourself? Why would you criticize yourself? This marvelous cultural gap.

[13:01]

Like to him, it was incomprehensible. And I think to almost all of us, it's one of those nagging pains that seems to come up in a whole variety of ways, some very obvious and some very subtle. In the realm of practice, there's a real challenge for us to discover the difference between being humble and humiliation. Relating to our experience honestly and letting it show us the limitation of fixed thinking. of habitual ways of responding, of approaching the world with certain agendas that aren't informed by close examination and thoughtfulness, that aren't informed by a sense of connectedness in which we're constantly learning what it is to live, what it is to be alive.

[14:16]

What it is to be intimate with the environment, with other people, with our own emotional life. Our own imagination. Now this is the gift of humility. And this is part of what makes practice difficult is when we think it involves humiliation. Somehow, if we really admit to ourselves, when I sit down to meditate, my mind is sort of out of control. Or maybe it's not sort of out of control. It's just jumping all over the place, thinking all sorts of things, triggering all sorts of emotions.

[15:17]

possible to relate to that honestly with humility and not humiliation, not let it be a source of humiliation. My own experience and the experience I have on coaching others to do this is that it's really a process. That it's not as simple as just working on it on the level of ideas. It's not something you can just say to yourself, okay, I'm not going to be self-critical. I heard it in the talk that it isn't that helpful. You really have to get down into the workings of your own being. That this is something that we discover how to do in real time.

[16:27]

That to be present for the occasion, the experience of self-criticism. To see how it comes forth. To see how it takes shape. To see the feelings that come with it. To see the physical experience that comes with it. To see the description of the world. comes with it and right there in the midst of that let something soften let something loosen but the alluring thing is if we start to think about that proposition that I could actually live in a way that decreases my suffering and increases my happiness that I could actually do that If we let that idea sink in, then this very same territory, which is both dangerous and painful, also has this possibility.

[17:34]

This possibility of a change of heart, of a shift, of discovering how to enable happiness and lessen suffering. Here's another attribute that I think is part of this process. And that is patience. There's a word in Japanese, naru. And naru means to learn. Usually we think of learning as, you learn history. Rilke came to Paris in 1902. We learn facts. But this kind of learning is more like learning to play the guitar.

[18:39]

You know, or learning to type or learning to drive. It's through repeated engagement. Something is learned. And then the interesting thing, and I think we all do this, you know, like learning to drive. You learn how to give over. At a certain point, your mind isn't telling your body how to drive. At a certain point, your body is driving. Something has been given over to the process. This is the meaning of naru, to learn through the repetition that creates the intimate engagement of giving over. Anyway, that concept is the whole key of Zen practice. It's a giving over to the experience.

[19:42]

That's what Rodan was teaching Wilke. Experience it until it's not just you have the experience, but the experience has you. And if the experience has you, something bigger. then your ideas about it, your opinions about it, your judgments about it, something bigger is created. And if you think about it, in a way, this is another version of being humble. There's something, there's a bigger possibility than the one my mind can conjure up. That the world is something more than what I say it is. There's a way in which we're simply being asked to give up our agenda.

[20:50]

To give up a determined effort to control our experience. How will I be happy? I will be happy by figuring out what will make me happy, how the world needs to behave, how other people need to behave, how I need to behave, that I will be happy. And then with great determination, make that so. With great determination, I will meditate. I will sit upright and still with a clear mind. an open heart, and I will be precision presence with each experience. And then everything will be perfect. It doesn't happen. Maybe you have moments.

[21:53]

And I got to say, in coaching people and in my own experience, when those moments happen, we hold them up. like treasures, real zazen. This is the real thing. This moment of luminous, concentrated intimacy. And it is precious and it is wonderful and it is illuminating. But somehow, if we cling to it, it belies the fact That we are part of what's happening. What's happening does not, will not come under our control. And we can consider that a humiliation or we consider it a teaching in humility. To be grounded, to be of the earth, to be part of everything.

[22:57]

This is one of the marks, one of the characteristics of existence that we discover when we start to enter the territory of direct experiencing. What's happening is not under our control and the world existence is not some object there for us to manipulate. We have the experience and the experience has us. And we love it. When we stop being afraid of it, when we can let go of our agenda to control it and make it the way we think it ought to be. something deeply satisfying happens.

[24:04]

You know, right there in our conditioned existence, as Rilke puts it, right there in our conditioned existence, there are times when the curtains on the pupils of the eyes lift and an image enters and rushes down through the tensed muscles and plunges into the heart. There are times when we get it, when something touches us deeply. There are times when a change of heart occurs. Zen practice is to enable this from being a rare event. Something that pops up spontaneously by accident.

[25:16]

When you're out walking in the redwoods or by the ocean or in just one of those magical moments of stillness and quietness. to take it from being a rare event to discovering how to cultivate the possibility, how to dispose oneself to this form of engagement. This is the practice of zazen. But it's not just the practice of zazen sitting cross-legged It's also the dimension of zazen, of awakening, of connecting to the moment. Zazen, the root of the word zazen means to be absorbed in the experience. Without agenda. To let it have you rather than being stuck in you having it.

[26:22]

and certainly in theory we can do that when we're buying a Palm Pilot or standing in line for the seal at Macy's or waiting for the bus or surfing the internet it's possible in all and every human experience however you know the wisdom of those who have practiced awakening is that there is also a craft to it. There is also a way in which we can predispose mind and heart for this more connected way of being. One teaching says there are three, just checking how much time I have.

[27:35]

There are three ways of stimulating this way of being. One way is of stimulating stillness and silence. Accumulating? A little dangerous to think we can accumulate. It has some merit. Sometimes in Zen, as a meditation instruction, we say non-thinking. Because so much, we're utterly caught up in our thinking process. We think reality.

[28:39]

And because we're so habituated to it, we think, well, yeah, the world is what I think it is. Well, only subjectively. Part of that humbling is to discover, and hopefully, with more delight than self-criticism, that the world is bigger than what I think it is. moments of pause moments where the splashing of the rain in the courtyard and the signs of the tires on the streets initiate going beyond the habit of thinking the world Sometimes in Zen called non-knowing.

[30:01]

Allowing the experience to have us. And in Zen practice, through meditation, through attending to the experience of body and breath of mind, discovering that There's a way in which any and every experience can have us. And that the humbling that it offers is a blessing, not a curse. But for almost all of us, this is a learning. That arises through doing. And it's in learning in which we make tentative, careful steps. This is, after all, a precious life.

[31:04]

We don't, most of us don't give it up easily. Or, to put it another way, most of us don't allow in what might seem to limit it or take it away easily. So as you sit and sincerely try to meet the moment, remember, in a way, it's a little bit like a life and death request. Some part of you that has so determinedly brought all your energy forward to keep alive by controlling the world is being challenged. Some part of you that has determinedly said, the world is what I think it is. I'm engaged in a life and death process of figuring out how to live. And then this practice comes along and says, put that down.

[32:14]

Let the world have you. My experiences personally and in the people I've coached to do this is that our sincere answer is no. Maybe sometimes we're polite and we say, no, thank you. But I think actually we just say no. of us go through the humbling experience of sitting and finally admitting to ourselves, my mind is not actually my mind because it's not under my control. I don't know whose mind it is, but it just goes and goes. Actually, sometimes I'm utterly amazed by where it goes and what it creates.

[33:20]

primitive and powerful practice of Zazen, of just staying present for that. And discovering that not only is that not just humiliation, is actually, in an astounding way, liberation. To just stay present for it, to just stay engaged. is the first step of the patience of practice. Just stay engaged. And then the second step in patience is letting it register. Feel what you're feeling. Notice what you're thinking. Notice the construct of other. Notice the construct of self. Notice the incessant urge to have some dialogue going inside your head.

[34:29]

Who needs cell phones? You can just keep talking anyway. To make contact, to communicate, to be heard. Though there's this initiation, this illumination of stillness and quiet is a powerful teaching. When we hold that up as an agenda, as an intention, it makes evident the conditioned nature of our life. The ways in which we're not still. The ways in which we're not quiet. And the challenge for us is patience, stay with it, and humility.

[35:35]

Let it be bigger than you. Give up the need to control it and own it and determine it and figure it out. Let it tell you what it has to teach. And then the other way of knowing is when we make contact with the splashing of the rain, the chiming of the clock. and feelings in our hearts and mind they inform us about the person we are because we are the person we are and knowing who that person is knowing what frightens that person what makes that person excited sad

[36:54]

anxious, confident. This is valuable. We do live within this conditioned life. So again, letting the arising experience teach us. How do I respond when I'm frightened? Do I become aggressive? Do I run away? Do I immediately distract myself? Or do I see the color of fear, taste the flavor of it, explore what is there to gain or lose?

[37:56]

What is this ominous other that can cause harm? And we discover the answer to this through naru, through doing. We do it, we touch the experience, we touch it ten times, a hundred times. Because we're working with a psychology, a personality. that has formed over a lifetime most of the deeper aspects of our being we need to explore on a constant basis for us to discover what it is that's going on on a deeper level and again this can be humbling and not humiliating.

[39:02]

There is no reason to be humiliated because we experience emotions, fear, sadness, aversion, anxiety, happiness, excitement, optimism, inspiration, gratitude. When we become engaged in the process of learning, despite ourselves, the self-respect grows. And as the self-respect grows, we can lift up and look at, oh, that annoyed me. isn't that amazing that interaction with that person when they said that I felt annoyed and when I feel annoyed I separate and when I separate

[40:31]

I suffer. I feel lessened. And sometimes that rises into anger because anger has an empowerment. It has an energy. It has a sense of authority. And sometimes it sinks into fear. I feel weak, vulnerable. at the workings of our human nature. How utterly amazing and fascinating to be human. How utterly intriguing it is to explore the difference between being caught in the cage of those conditioned responses

[41:40]

In contrast to letting that show us the path of liberation. And as we start to experience this, as we start to study it through meeting it and meeting it. You know, in our vow, in our cultivating our intention, we say, this isn't going to stop. Just keep practicing with it. Don't hold your breath waiting for it to be over. Delusions are inexhaustible. But as we meet it and meet it, something is cultivated. Something we might call self-respect. Something we might call

[42:42]

Confidence of living the life we have. Something we might call the skill and capacity of living the life we have. And these are the attributes that Zen practice nurtures. And it's not so much something we figure out. Certainly along the way, we are thinking creatures. We are incessantly thinking creatures. We will have our ideas, our opinions, our judgments about the whole thing. But the art of Zen practice is not to try to stop having ideas, opinions, and judgments. The art of Zen practice is to not be stuck in them. My ideas, my opinions, my judgments. Or the right ones.

[43:45]

It's always a work in progress. Our opinions, ideas, our judgments are closer to metaphors than statements about reality. Before I do, just for the heck of it, I want to read another rookie poem. And then I'll stop. Sometimes a person stands up during supper and walks outdoors and keeps walking. because of a church that stands somewhere in the east another person will remain inside their house stays there inside the dishes and the glasses so that their children

[45:18]

will have to go out into the world toward the same church that he has forgotten. It's in there. What is this church in the East that is calling us beyond the world of our own constructions? with its habits of thought, of emotion, of constructive behaviors and limited way of being. What is it that calls us beyond that? Thank you very much.

[46:13]

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