This podcast is offered by San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome. I had the experience this morning coming in to do all the ritual before giving the talk of embodying the very thing that I was intending to talk about today, which was, which is kind of being a fool, being a fool in transition, because I'm unfamiliar with many of these forms, and I forgot my zagu, and so this is actually kind of precisely what I wanted to talk about. But I'll start on a more sober note. I wanted to share this quotation from T.S. Eliot. We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

[01:12]

It's from the four quartets. And it has a certain resonance with me and meaning for me as I've just returned to the city. I think last week when Paul offered his welcome to everyone at the beginning of the talk, he welcomed those people who'd been here before, those people who've been here many times before, and those people who were here for the first time. And when he said that, there was a little voice that went off in my head that said, I'm here for the first time. When in fact, I've been to the boot hall many times over the last 20 plus years, and I don't know exactly where that... voice was coming from. I have to confess it was the first time I had come for a Saturday talk since moving back to the city three months ago so that was part of the first time I was there and I think in another sense I was feeling that this particular version of me that's arising each moment for each of us there's who we are is actually arising freshly each moment dependent on

[02:17]

really the whole universe, dependent on the causes and conditions of that moment. So for each of us, we were actually here for the first time. Each moment we're here for the first time. And of course I've heard this, but it was kind of a lived experience of it because I was looking around the Buddha hall and it did seem incredibly fresh. Like, have I seen this room before? And like this red stripe here above the, kind of on this wall, I was like, had I ever even noticed that before? It was like the room just kind of, I just kind of saw it in a new, kind of fresh, Before I get too far along, I also want to thank the Tonto David Zimmerman for inviting me to give the talk today and for lending me your zagu. As I mentioned, I just moved back to the city a few months ago. I've been living at Gringold's Farm Zen Center for the last 13 years or so. And so, as I said, kind of... returning to the city feels like a kind of homecoming to me, and I'm definitely in some transition around that.

[03:26]

And in kind of reflecting before giving the talk, in addition to feeling gratitude to David for inviting me to give the talk and kind of welcome me into the community in this way, I was feeling a lot of gratitude to the people who first welcomed me to Zen Center over 20 years ago. showed up in the mid-90s at a 20-something-year-old, not so long out of college, and quite honestly pretty lost and confused, trying to find my way in the world, and stumbled upon Zen Center. And at that time, too, had this kind of little uncanny sense of homecoming, you know, upon arriving and getting Zazen instruction from Adilio Cisneros, and just feeling there's something, kind of some magnetic pull. to the practice, to the place, as well as a lot of skepticism I had. And then tried to, in some kind of anonymous, unclear way, try to make my way into the practice while being kind of very skeptical about the forms and all of that.

[04:29]

And so just feeling how I was supported to find my way in by so many people who may not even have known they were doing that. Paul, of course, who was here then, but also I'm thinking of Michael Winger and Blanche Hartman and Lou Hartman, who I remember used to get up here and give a talk and say, well, I prepared to give a Dharma talk today, and now I cannot give the talk that I prepared. Every time he'd get up and say he prepared to give a talk, and then he couldn't give the talk that he prepared, partly because, I guess, it was an entirely new moment, and he was an entirely new person, and that wasn't true for him anymore. And I just so appreciated that sense of utter authenticity in the moment to just toss out... what you prepared and offer something fresh. I'm also thinking of Jerome Peterson, Mark Lancaster, so many people who actually aren't in the sangha with us anymore, but people who are also Vicky. I also remember Vicky giving an early talk that I came to on a Saturday morning and was telling the story of the myth of Cupid and Psyche.

[05:41]

Cupid Eros inviting Psyche to be his lover and kind of giving her kind of these palatial domains to live in, but kind of making her swear never to seek out his identity. The condition of her kind of being his lover and living in this way was that she couldn't know who he was and couldn't see him. face to face, and then Psyche under kind of pressure from her jealous sisters who kind of plant seeds in her mind that perhaps Eros is some kind of monster who's going to do harm to her, you know, kind of enjoying her to find out who he is, and so she breaks her vow to Eros, and in the middle of the night kind of lights a candle so she can see his face, and then a drop of wax from the candle drips and hits him on the face, and he wakes up and sees that she's looking at him and says, well, now you need to go and we'll never see each other again.

[06:46]

And when kind of Vicki got to that point in the story, I remember just starting to weep because it resonated with some loss in my own life, some grief in my own life that was bringing me to practice. And that was kind of another moment where I felt there's something going on here, you know, that something could kind of penetrate that deeply. And so again, coming now, although generally under kind of cheerier and clearer circumstances, I am in some transition where there is, again, some suffering and loss. It's not been so easy for me to leave where I've been the last 13 years. And as transitions go, you would think it's not such a big deal moving from one beautiful temple of the San Francisco Zen Center to another beautiful temple of the San Francisco Zen Center. But it kind of speaks to the truth of the Buddhist teachings about the nature of attachment, some deep attachment that I'd grown to that particular place, probably largely informed by the kind of...

[08:01]

rural bucolic beauty of the place but as well as all of the relationships with the people that i had in the community there and it was also the place where i raised my daughter i have a 15 year old daughter who just started high school and we lived there since she was two so it was her kind of childhood home so it's also kind of leaving behind that whole phase of my life we lived in this little white I didn't plan on going into this in such detail. This little white house across from the pond there. And it always felt like kind of like a fairy tale house to us, you know. So some sense of innocence and, yeah, this kind of little childhood dream for our daughter. And now we're in the big city, you know, and she's off in high school and said innocence is fading. And, yeah, and I'm working with being in this new situation. So that's kind of what I wanted to talk about today. I wanted to talk about transition. And as I said, the way in which, by the very nature maybe of being in transition, we're kind of forced to be a fool of some sort.

[09:02]

I think I gravitated to this date to give the talk. David gave me an array of dates to choose from, partly because of its proximity to April Fool's Day. I like to often tie in the talk to something that's happening in the wider world or in the calendar, and there's this whole motif in Zen practice of being a fool. And there's a kind of lightness and playfulness in that that I like. But I may have also been drawn, you know, at a deeper level because, you know, I'm feeling a little bit like a fool myself, kind of like I was this morning, kind of stumbling through the forms. I think often one of the ways that we guard ourselves against being a fool, you know, is we kind of try to shore up... our identity in certain ways. There's a certain kind of image management that we're often up to. Any kind of community, any group, society, any situation they're in, they're always kind of standards of how one should be. In some ways it's clearer, or in some cases maybe less clear at the Zen Center, but definitely ways to be part of the group, ways to have a self, and we're often engaged in some form of maintaining an image, maintaining a self.

[10:15]

And then, you know, I think another way that we kind of guard against being foolish or being a fool is through avoiding certain experiences, certain kind of experiential avoidance that we tell ourselves we have a certain kind of wisdom to only stay within these domains and not go over there and not do that other thing. But often what we're doing is just keeping ourselves out of some uncomfortable, you know, situation. And then when we're in some big transition... we often can't do those two things. We can't manage our attention quite the same way because those markers aren't there. And we're often thrown into circumstances that maybe we wouldn't have, you know, kind of voluntarily, you know, gone into. And then so we are, then we sometimes feel like a, like a fool. So I wanted to talk a little bit about, about that. I hope, I hope you all enjoyed your April Fool's day, this day that we kind of celebrate the trickster and delight in our own capacity to be fooled, to be naive and gullible. I think Suzuki Roshi once said that if someone's trying to fool you, you should let them.

[11:21]

If someone wants to fool you, you should let them. So if you got fooled yesterday, then you were following the advice of a sage. But this image or this theme, as I say, kind of pops up in a lot of places. The one that comes most readily to my mind is at the end of the jewel mirror Samadhi, this kind of foundational liturgical song or poem or chant of our tradition by the 9th century Chinese ancestor Dengshan. He was kind of the founder of our lineage in China. And so he's credited with writing this song called the Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, which is, samadhi means kind of like absorption or concentration, you know, awareness. So this is kind of the mind of awakening, this jewel mirror. where you could say, you see the whole universe as a mirror, you see everything as yourself. And the end of the song says, practice secretly working within like a fool, like an idiot, just to continue in this way is called the host within the host.

[12:30]

And there might be lots of ways to kind of understand that phrase. I mean, first of all, I appreciate kind of leading up to it, practice secretly. working within. Again, Suzuki Rishi often would say, what is your innermost request? So I feel like this is where we do our work. And like a fool, like an idiot, might mean not making any show of it or continuing to do this inner work regardless of the consequence or regardless of what it looks like to the rest of the world. That same phrase, like a fool, like an idiot, shows up in the commentary to a koan in the Blue Cliff Record. It's the 80th case in which a monk asks Zhao Zhou, does a newborn infant have the sixth consciousness? And I don't mean to get too esoteric here. The sixth consciousness in Buddhism is the mind consciousness, essentially.

[13:34]

They have the same five sense organs that we do, sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, we, as opposed to Buddha doesn't mean something other than we, but in our Western sense of the senses, and then they have a sixth sense conscious, which is mind. So thought is an object of the sense organ, which is mind, in the way that feeling is the object of skin, as a sense organ. So the monk asks Xiaojou, does a newborn infant have this sixth sense? sense consciousness, the mind consciousness. And Zhao Zhao says, tossing a ball on swiftly flowing water. Tossing a ball on swiftly flowing water. And I don't think the monk quite understands what Zhao Zhao's answer means. And so then he goes and asks another teacher, Zhao Zhu, and what about tossing a ball on swiftly flowing water? And Dao Tzu says, non-stop, moment to moment, non-stop flow.

[14:41]

Moment to moment, non-stop flow. So I think this is a kind of instruction about the mind of practice. It doesn't, maybe like the mind of an infant, it doesn't get caught on concepts. This is the sixth sense organ, right? It's the part of us that's... always putting the world into concepts, always conceptualizing, organizing the world, often in relationship to me, in relationship to the ego. And so the mind of practice, it's not like it's not happening, but it doesn't get stuck. There's a nonstop flow. It's just one moment after the next. You can kind of keep up. And so in the commentary to that case, in talking about this, it says that we must have the mind of an infant. to practice in this way, just kind of in this way that's being described. And it's just kind of like a fool, like an idiot. You know, when the mind becomes kind of motionless like this, it doesn't get caught around the objects of awareness.

[15:43]

That's where you really kind of enter the way. And there's some sense of being completely free of gain and loss, of right and wrong, it says in the commentary, good and evil, long and short, that this kind of comparative way that we often get caught, again, often around what's good for us, or what do we need, or what do we want, or what do we like, that we're kind of free of that. And that's really where the Zen practitioner gets free, is in this mind of an infant. So I started thinking about this mind of an infant. What are the qualities of it that really kind of resonate with practice? And I think it's this kind of quality of being continuously aware that I've mentioned, kind of the sense of wonder in an infant. I mean, you can imagine, you can maybe all can visualize that kind of sense of an infant when they're just kind of absorbed in awareness, you know, in the present moment, and there's kind of a receptivity and kind of wonder.

[16:43]

They are kind of like, again, almost like naively trusting of the moment, like there isn't anything in their world except what's showing up right there. kind of innocence, this kind of being unencumbered by concepts or fixed views, as I was talking about, non-comparative. So I think these are all the aspects of the kind of mind of an infant that we're encouraged to have. I think Kishi Zawa Iyan, who was one of Suzuki Roshi's teachers, was a great scholar, a great Dogen scholar. I think he was working with another monk on various things having to do with Dharma transmission. And that monk later said, I actually understood almost nothing of what he was talking about during Darwin transmission. But the one thing that I got, the one thing I remembered was that you must have the mind of an infant to practice. So this is very important, you know, this mind, this mind of an infant. And I think there's lots of ways to talk about it. I mean, I've already started, but, you know, even more so.

[17:45]

I mean, one that I particularly appreciate, it's kind of one of my favorite Zen teachings, is the... Genjo Koan, teaching by Dogen in particular, the passage in there where he says to carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion, that myriad things come forth and experience themselves as awakening. To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion, that myriad things come forth and experience themselves. So again, I think this speaks to the way that maybe habitually we're moving through the world and the basis of how we're moving through the world is, is this good for me or is this bad for me? Do I like it? Do I not like it? And this is carrying the self forward and experience myriad things.

[18:46]

And that works okay. But I think over time we find that it actually doesn't actually work so well, that only being moved by, you know, only operating according to what seems good to us or what we like. First of all, it makes the world very flat and kind of narrow, kind of making the world over in our own image. And then ultimately the world won't comply. It won't go along with just what we want and what we like. We all know this. And so we suffer. And so there's this other teaching, this other way of being, which you could say is kind of being like a fool, being like an idiot, being like a newborn babe, which is to welcome, to accept what is arising just now, to trust what is arising. And this really does offer us a new...

[19:48]

way of being in the world, a new kind of basis for decision-making. And I think when we're like this, the world all of a sudden has a kind of depth to it. It does have perhaps that kind of freshness I was alluding to earlier, that we can see things in the world beyond what we were looking for or beyond just what corresponds to what we like or don't like. And then And then maybe there's more possibility to give up kind of those habits I was talking about earlier of kind of image management, you know, maintaining this self in a certain way, which often ends up feeling quite narrow and kind of impinged, you know, or avoiding, you know, experience, certain experiences until our world again gets narrower and narrower and we can be kind of be vulnerable. I guess there's that. that saying about fools, you know, fools rush in where wise men fear to tread.

[20:52]

So being a fool, I think, doesn't mean being kind of careless or reckless in moving into situations, but that, you know, maybe sometimes our good judgment, you know, or our acting from our experience really diminishes, you know, our lives, really narrows and diminishes our lives. And where do we find the capacity to act? freshly in our life to nurture and maintain some sense of innocence. This is really a vital force that we need to keep alive, some sense of innocence of being in the world, which again is kind of captured maybe by the Fool's Russian or Pablo Neruda. Neruda talks about this a little bit when he talks about following his impulse to be a poet. This is an excerpt from a poem called Poetry about when he first decided to become a poet. And he writes, and something ignited in my soul, fever or unremembered wings.

[21:56]

And I went my own way, deciphering that burning fire. And I wrote the first bare line, bare, without substance, pure foolishness, pure wisdom of one who knows nothing. and suddenly I saw the heavens unfastened and open. And something ignited in my soul, fever or unremembered wings, and I went my own way, deciphering that burning fire, and wrote the first bare line, bare, without substance, pure, Foolishness, pure wisdom of one who knows nothing. And suddenly I saw the heavens unfastened and open. So, I mean, it's a particularly poetic and profound expression of this sense of being able to follow this inner impulse.

[23:14]

some impulse that comes from some innocence in which the world can really open up for us. And although he says, you know, I went my own way, I think this is not a kind of egoistic move. I think when we're kind of opened in this way, you know, being a fool in this way, There's a kind of deeper way in which we're kind of in accord or in harmony with all things. Again, kind of like the jewel mirror samadhi suggests where we see others as ourself. And this itself, from a certain point of view, could be, to our everyday mind, might seem a foolish thing. We're often concerned about what's good for me in this situation. So what is it to really see others as the self? And I think there's something about this way of being too, which there's kind of a Zen expression called fishing with a straight hook.

[24:17]

This is kind of a way of talking about Zazen. Again, kind of a pretty foolish thing to do. You get out on your boat and you sail out to the middle of the lake or wherever you're going to go fishing and you cast out your rod and at the end you have a straight hook. You have a hook that doesn't have a hook on it. It's just like a straight needle. So this is kind of an image for... So we go out there and we cast our rod, but we're not trying to catch anything. The fish can come and take the bait right off the hook and they don't get caught. That's a very generous way of fishing. So this is the Zen style of fishing. So it's that kind of innocence of being full, this kind of innocence of letting the myriad things come forth and experience You know, other images that I kind of associate or resonate for me with being a fool in Zen also is like this image of a true person of no rank.

[25:20]

This way that we kind of give up, again, kind of concern of like where we fall in the worldly kind of ranking of things. We're willing just to be completely who we are. Like this morning I looked in the mirror as I was kind of getting... brushing my teeth and whatnot, getting ready to get the tuck. And I saw that big brand new pimple. I was like, great, just in time for my big live stream debut. But I also thought, how perfect for the tuck, right? Because it's about, you just show up pimples and all. I was thinking about the word sincerity, which I think literally means without wax, sin from sans, without wax, which I think refers to when they would make They made busts of people, you know, sculptures of their faces to memorialize them. And then over time they would wear down or there would be cracks in them and then they would be restored by putting wax in the cracks or in the places where the bust had kind of... But to be sincere is not to put wax over your pimple, not, you know, over your cracks and flaws and blemishes, you know, but just to show up.

[26:32]

completely who you are. So there's some spirit of this being the true person of no rank, which also made me think of kind of this Western idea of the fool, like the fool or the jester in court, who's there precisely because they're kind of free of the kind of political intrigue of the court. There's someone there who can speak the truth to the king, who's not going to be concerned about the consequences. So I think there's that spirit, too, in Zen practice of being the fool. It was kind of stepping outside of the worldly way of being that we can express our truth quite directly. And then thinking more specifically about the fool in Lear, in King Lear, who really bridges, I think, the experience of the audience and the play. and functions as a chorus in that play, speaking the true feelings of the audience, and speaking truths to Lear that no one else can, and that he also can't completely understand.

[27:40]

The fool even there has to speak somewhat indirectly, in riddles, somewhat like koans, but also the spirit of being a fool in practice. I think in that play he's referred to as Lear's shadow. the fool can see and speak the shadow. And being a fool in practice, I think, means also being able to see and speak our own shadow. So those are some thoughts about being a fool in Zen practice. I think after the talk, there's like tea and cookies. So you will have an opportunity to like, to see how you're doing with image management and experience avoidance as you head into that complex social situation of having to get tea and cookies with the rest of the Saturday sangha so you can study. Am I maintaining myself here? Am I holding on, trying to hold on to some sense of who I am or trying to project myself as a certain person in this situation?

[28:46]

Am I avoiding some situation, some part of this which feels uncomfortable? Or... you can see what it feels like to kind of be a fool as you get tea and cookies and kind of blunder into some way that you wouldn't normally, you know, some way to kind of connect and really express your true feelings of the situation. But I didn't only want to talk about being a fool. The whole reason that kind of being a fool came to mind was because of transition, you know, this thing that I've been practicing with so much the last three or four months, being in transition. And so I wonder, you know, is it enough to say, well, if you're in transition, we'll just be a fool. Or are there other things, other ways to work with transition? As I said, there has been suffering for me in this transition in my life. And it's kind of brought home these things which I've heard so many times over and over again in the last 20 years about just the thoroughgoing kind of impermanence.

[29:48]

of things, that we will be separated from those we love, from what we love, that everything does change, everything is impermanent. Again, they sound kind of like clichés, I'm sure you've all heard them, but they've kind of come home to me in kind of a felt way, these kind of just basic marks of existence, the impermanence of everything, the lack of self of everything, and the suffering. you know, that pervades our experience. And this kind of transition, this is kind of a very gross example of it, where it's kind of very obvious to feel, but, I mean, this is the reality that comes home to me, is it's actually happening every moment, right? Every moment where this kind of transition, I think Proust, in Remembrance of Things Past, talks about, I mean, gives such a kind of detailed, you know, picture of the psyche, you know, through his own, kind of exploring his own psyche, and at some point he talks about the the kind of moment-to-moment suffering of the self transitioning each moment because it can't actually quite hold on to who it thinks it is.

[30:56]

We have some idea that there's a self. We have some idea that there's some fixed entity, but it's not actually the way things are. But being in this kind of discord, this kind of discrepancy of the way we think about the world, the way we think about things and the way they actually are means that kind of every moment there's this kind of suffering because every moment the way things are isn't quite exactly the way we think they are the way we want them to be so kind of every moment there's this kind of this kind of suffering of of change so there's kind of gross change in that kind of more minute change and so i've been working with this and studying a little bit about about working in transition and change in one book that i've been reading is called um The Anatomy of Change by Richard Strozzi Heckler. He's actually an Aikido practitioner. So it's not maybe strictly speaking Zen, but there's a lot of kind of resonance with the way he talks about working with change and Zen practice.

[31:59]

So I wanted to just share a little bit of his teachings around working with change, which again, I think are quite resonant. So he basically talks about there being kind of five stages of working with change or transition. centering, grounding, entering and blending, skillful action, we have this in Buddhism too, skillful means, and then union, where you actually have kind of merged with the change, the new situation. So centering, this is why a lot of us actually come to Zen practice. I talked about my own experience finding Zen center in some... time of confusion and loss and grief, and I think this is how many of us come to practice, is through some disruption in our life. And often we're just looking to center, you know, in some way. So this is kind of the first aspect of working with transition that Strozzi Hepler talks about.

[33:03]

And it's kind of just the basic, you know, openness and willingness to see what is happening. You know, really, am I willing to open to the situation as it is? Again, often we're not. I mean, often mostly maybe the way we're moving through the world is we're not completely open to seeing it the way it really is. We're seeing it through our own lenses. We're seeing it through what we want. And then sometimes that really kind of breaks down and we realize we can't do that, you know, and I really have to kind of take stock or see the situation for what it is. So this is kind of centering. And he talks about all these practices as basically body... practice of centering is very much in some ways how we talk about zazen. So I think in zazen, we talk about the hara being the center, this kind of place about two inches or so below the navel as the place where we find center in zazen, in Zen practice. I think Suzuki Roshi said, we usually think about this as being the main office,

[34:07]

And like the rest of the body being the branch offices, you know, think about a corporation. So this is the main office, you know, giving out the instructions, the executive function, you know. But in Zazen, you know, in Zen practice, this is the main office. And everything else is the branch office. This is a branch office to this. This is the main office right here. This is the headquarters. So this is what Strozzi Ross is saying to this, you know, in transition, how do we find center, you know, here? And that means kind of a coming home and where we start to have some capacity of being able to kind of trust, you know, what we feel and sense that kind of we start to tap into some basic bodily wisdom, some basic bodily intuition about the situation. And, you know, we don't need to be fixated on being at center. You know, this is something that can also happen in Zen practice. Like, oh, we find center. We have some idea about the practices, keeping our awareness here. And then we think it's like staying there all the time. You know, we get kind of fixated or stuck on center.

[35:08]

But center is really, it's a place that you're familiar with that you can readily come back to. But it includes moving off center and falling off balance. But you develop the capacity to come back and keep coming back to center. So that's the first stage. that he talks about of transition. The next is ground. So once we've found center, then we allow ourselves, or we feel the way that we're kind of supported by the earth, that we're not kind of doing this on our own, we're not navigating on our own. And again, he's working from a very bodily point of view, so he's actually thinking about the kind of energies that come up and get released in transition. There's often quite reactive energy. There are ways that we have habitual tendencies of responding to situations. Often these kind of habitual tendencies get activated in transition where we have kind of erratic energies.

[36:11]

And how can we channel those energies into the ground so that we have a more kind of stable and rooted sense of... ourselves and of the situation, that we start to see the situation in its kind of here-ness and its kind of concreteness in a kind of down-to-earth way, as opposed to from our ideas, our reactive sense of it, so it's a kind of groundedness. And then the next stage he talks about is entering and blending. So having centered, having kind of grounded ourself in the situation, then there's actually entering into the difficulty of the transition, the kind of difficulty of the conflict, perhaps, or what's moving in our life that feels uncomfortable. And as an Aikido practicer, he actually gives some instructions about physically how you can start to embody this, how you can get a feeling for moving, how you actually move into a conflict as opposed to moving away from a conflict.

[37:18]

The way to meet it is actually to move into it, take responsibility for it in a way that it doesn't, in a sense, it's not something other than you. It's also this idea of seeing others as yourself. And, you know, in Zen practice, we don't emphasize so much moving, right? It's often more like don't move, right? It's often don't move. But that don't moving actually means being open to what's happening, right? It's don't move away from. So I think in Zen practice, spirit is more kind of welcoming. opening, receiving, but being willing, again, to be with the discomfort of the change, the discomfort of our situation. And then Strozzi Heckler talks about blending. So being willing to take responsibility for the change or the difficulty. Then there's a way that we start to... we're trying to really meet the situation where it is, or if it's a conflict with another, or again, some transition that feels like there's some force outside that's kind of acting on us.

[38:29]

How do we kind of meet that, where it's at, without some idea of our own sense of good and bad, right or wrong, you know, kind of judgment about it, and really also from the point of view of the thing that we're experiencing as causing us difficulty. from the point of view of the thing that's making us move or change in this uncomfortable way. So there's some aspect of kind of empathy to it. How do we, blending is, start to move in the skin of the other or see the world through the lenses of the other. So this is actually the way to, he's suggesting that we work with conflict or work with change, not holding ourself apart, but opening to the conflict and then actively, actively making the effort to to see the situation from what we're experiencing as causing us difficulty. And then from that place, if we can enter and blend in that way, there's the capacity to act skillfully.

[39:29]

And he talks about that in kind of four main ways. He talks about his kind of positivity or extension, where we're kind of connected to our own power and energy in the situation. And we can express ourselves, we can extend our power into the situation, but in a way that is non-harming, and that isn't disrespectful of the other, because we've done the work of entering and blending first, but we can now express ourselves in that situation. And we can be receptive and allowing, which is allowing the other without losing our own sense of boundary. our own sense of our positivity, of our expression, that we can also allow and receive. And then he talks about relaxation as another skifalmi, which in some ways is a lot like this mind of an infant that we were talking about before. He actually talks about the quiet, alert state of the child as kind of a paradigm of relaxation, where the child can be just completely absorbed

[40:38]

you know, in what they're doing and their ways that they kind of calm their, you know, nervous system so that they can be kind of completely absorbed. So this kind of relaxation, you know, is another way to kind of skillfully be in conflict or transition. And then he talks about timing, which is to be able to respond appropriately to the situation out of this capacity of receptivity and connection with our own kind of inner rhythm. And this... Yeah, this way of, you know, not in some kind of rehearsed or prefabricated way, but of meeting the moment just appropriately through the sense of timing. Our sensitivity to the world and our sensitivity to our inner life is a way of actually integrating inner and outer. And then ultimately he does talk about this kind of culminating in union. It's another new aspect of being in the city, giving dharma talks and having sirens. Goodbye, as you... Give the talk.

[41:39]

So union is when you just completely have become, you're now kind of a channel for the energy of the new situation. There isn't some sense of you're apart from something that's happening. And he talks about the need of kind of discipline to kind of maintain that sense of union or to get into that sense of union, you know, where like the kind of sense of daily zazen practice, I think, is how we work with, you know, union, that effort at making union. So I imagine as I was going through these stages, many of you were imagining how they might apply, but I thought we might just do like a very short... Someone gave me a look like it's after 11 and I'm running out of time and people may be restless. I still want to do like a very short, very short little guided meditation just around these stages. So just imagine some... something that's happening in your life now, something that's real for you, some change or transition or conflict, something that's difficult for you.

[42:47]

And allow that to come up with some sense of reality and kind of vividness for you. And now in that, imagining that situation, in that situation, first, work toward finding center. So as you've kind of imagined the situation, what is it to find your center in this situation? Just your own kind of felt sense of the variance. And again, in Sazhan, we kind of think about being the hara. So coming into the body, feeling in the body, what does it feel like? to be in this transition or this difficulty. And now moving to ground, whatever energy that you're noticing in the body as you find center in this difficult situation, can you imagine actually that energy kind of streaming down the body, actually being pulled by some sense of gravity or kind of deep roots going into the earth?

[44:02]

Can you imagine the energy kind of dropping into the earth, giving you even a deeper sense of kind of here-ness, kind of down-to-earth felt sense of the situation? And from that point of view, can you imagine now opening more to what's difficult to you about whatever you're imagining? and not feeling that it's something other, that it's something that's happening to you, but you actually willingly kind of engage the situation. You really embrace and engage the situation. You take responsibility for being in this situation. This is fast, I realize. It's just to give us a flavor of it. And having done that, is it possible now to imagine the situation from the point of view of the other, if there is some other, or from the point of view of the totality, if it's not really about an other, but just some life change?

[45:17]

What are the forces at play here other than just what you want or just yourself? And can you understand the situation from that point of view, from the point of view of... of the totality of the situation. Maybe now just trying to relax with that. I mean, that'll be as much as we do today, but just trying to relax with the situation that you've been holding and imagining. Thank you for doing that. And I think I will. And now there's a whole other section of the talk. As there often is, I often prepare far more material than there's time to give out of some anxiety. I won't have enough. So if you come to Q&A, I can tell this other great Zen story that I wanted to tell about Seppo and Ganto, who I often think of as being the unnamed Marx Brothers, Chico, Harpo, Groucho.

[46:29]

Seppo and Gante. So I've got this funny story to tell about Seppo and Gante if you come later. But I'll just close with a reading about maybe bigger change, how to be with bigger, bigger change. Some of you may have heard this. This is a short talk or some words that are attributed to a Hopi elder sometime in the past. He says, You've been telling the people that this is the 11th hour. Now you must go back and tell the people that this is the hour. And there are things to be considered. Where are you living? What are you doing? What are your relationships? Are you in right relation? Where is your water?

[47:29]

Know your garden. It is time to speak your truth. Create your community. Be good to each other. And do not look outside yourself for the leader. Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said, This could be a good time. There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift. that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are torn apart and will suffer greatly. Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open and our heads above water. And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate. At this time in history, We are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves.

[48:35]

For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt. The time for the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves. Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones. we've been waiting for. 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 sfcc.org and click giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[49:32]

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