This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Nothing like a nice sip of cool water. It's wonderful to see so many of you here today. I wasn't sure what... would be like with Highway 1 closed, but it's great that so many of you made it for the last talk of the year, 2014. This is also the first day of our New Year's retreat at the end of the year. Each year at Green Gulch, we have a retreat starting the 26th or 27th and going through New Year's Day, which is kind of a offering for a kind of quiet, contemplative, reflective way to make the transition into the new year.

[01:04]

So a number of folks, 20 or so folks, arrived yesterday for that retreat. And this is the kind of first full day of it. So the talk I'm giving this morning is also kind of in the context of that New Year's retreat, which I'm leading. Such a beautiful day today. I remember last year I also gave the last talk of the year and it was a similarly kind of beautiful day and I remember saying something about feeling like it was very auspicious for the new year to have such a beautiful sunny day and then right after the talk I kind of remembered that we were in the middle of a drought and I kind of wondered how auspicious it really was to have such a sunny day. So I won't say it's auspicious but it is beautiful and I do encourage you all to to enjoy the day and enjoy your time at Green Gulch today. Our New Year's retreat also ends with a larger New Year's Eve event that we host here at Green Gulch every year.

[02:09]

Some of you may know where folks can come in the evening and we have kind of meditation program starting around eight going into the New Year's. We serve hot noodles and make little lotus candles and do some chanting. And it's also a very kind of sweet and wholesome, peaceful way to bring in the new year, which I think is rather rare in our culture. I feel it's one of our great offerings as a community, is that we offer this place for people to come for the new year and really have that kind of mindful, wholesome way of, again, making that transition. I remember when I was a relatively new, like, pretty new Zen student. I was living in San Francisco and going to the city center and coming for a talk like this, like, right around New Year's, might have even been New Year's Day or a little bit before, and the speaker was, you know, talking about the New Year's event at the city center, which, there, they do this big temple cleaning, you know, so they're basically inviting people to come help them clean the temple, you know,

[03:18]

And I think he might have said something, you know, this may not sound so glamorous, you know, but in some ways it might be better than kind of trying to be out there someplace really trying to enjoy yourself. And that really struck home with me, just that effort that we make so much of the time, and maybe especially in New Year's, a kind of really example of us have to really make an effort to try and enjoy ourselves, to try and have a good time, which often actually doesn't feel so good at all. So sometimes just taking out the broom and cleaning the temple and sitting is actually the most enjoyable thing of all. I just got back myself from being away for the holidays. I was down in Southern California for Christmas with my sister-in-law and her family, and had a pretty peaceful and joyful, maybe unusually, not exuberant, but kind of a joyful, Christmas. And I was wondering if one of the reasons for that is I was starting to contemplate the teachings that I wanted to offer for the New Year's retreat, which I mentioned to the group last night are the Four Noble Truths.

[04:31]

It just so happens the retreat has kind of four full days, so they're usually four days of teaching. So for the last few years I've been trying to think of teachings and themes of four that I can offer. So two years ago, I did the Four Methods of Bodhisattva's Guidance, and last year, the Four Brahma-Viharas, and thought, well, this year, I'll do the Four Noble Truths. And I also thought New Year's is kind of a time where maybe it's good to get back to basics or something. There's something about the Four Noble Truths, which are just so basic to the teaching. The Buddha taught them in his very first discourse. And so I think I had that feeling, too, of like, it's nice to start the new year with something just very kind of simple and basic. You know, but as many of you know, probably, you know, the first noble truth is the truth of suffering. And so I was actually starting to turn my mind in this direction and contemplating suffering. And there was some, like, resistance to it. I came out of the practice period that we did here this fall, which for me was a very intense...

[05:33]

practice period and really, I think, pushed me in various ways. And I was kind of really tired coming out. And I came out just feeling like what I really want, what I really, really want is just a relaxed and joyful mind. So that was kind of still my intention kind of for the new year. That's my kind of practice intention, just relaxed and joyful mind. But I'd already kind of set myself up to teach these teachings, and the first one is on suffering. And so I think I was feeling like some contradiction between this kind of wish- you know, for a joyful mind and contemplating the truth of suffering, you know. But what I found, you know, actually is that kind of acknowledging and accepting my suffering actually created a lot more ease. I mean, I was thinking about that too in terms of this as a kind of holiday theme that vulnerable truths and the truth of suffering because Although, again, there are times where there's a lot of talk of joy and peace, and many of us do feel that, and there's a time to connect with family and friends.

[06:40]

And as many of us know, it's also a time of a lot of suffering for people, almost precisely for that reason, because there is a kind of idealization of the kind of happiness one should have, maybe, at this time, and we often don't feel that completely in our lives. And then there's kind of suffering around that. And... So for myself, just immediately turning my attention in that direction, like, oh yeah, there just is suffering. There just will be suffering. And to accept that really kind of minimized the suffering about the suffering and created a kind of space, actually, to just be much more kind of relaxed. Again, in kind of a quiet way. But I did notice it. It was enjoyable. So I'm going to talk a little bit more about the... Four Noble Truths and the First Discourse today. I also feel like the holidays are this time in our culture where we do kind of tell these kind of central stories, these kind of central myths of our tradition, of course, Christmas, and for me, Hanukkah, it's not the most central story of Judaism, but in this kind of story of miracle and illumination.

[07:56]

And so I thought, well, you know, it's also the time of year in Buddhism where we have this very central story of our tradition to tell the story of Buddha's, you know, awakening and beginning to teach. So I don't know how universally traditional this is, but in Japan, anyway, the Buddha's Enlightenment Day is recognized as the 8th of December. So we're kind of just past that. retreat earlier in December that's partly meant to kind of commemorate and celebrate Buddha's awakening. And then it was following his awakening that he gave these first teachings. So maybe just to set the context a little bit, not to tell the whole story of Buddha's journey or his awakening, but I have been more and more thinking about Buddha's journey, you could say, or his quest, or his effort, or, you know, as a kind of heroic story.

[09:04]

And I think it is both a model for and fits, you know, a kind of standard kind of template or something of the kind of heroic journey, you know, which in his case, you know, included kind of setting out on some kind of quest or mission and encountering many difficulties and kind of overcoming those difficulties, getting help from mentors, but his mentors couldn't take him all the way. You know, he got some help and then realized he had to kind of complete it on his own. And also included many kind of wrong turnings. I mean, the Buddha tried many different things trying to resolve his problem, not all of which worked, and he put a lot of effort into things that ended up not working at all. before kind of finding his way. So anyway, I just wanted to kind of frame his story like that. I've been thinking about it more like that for myself and the way we all can maybe relate to some heroic journey that we're on.

[10:12]

I'm also happy about the etymology of hero, which is related to eros. So a heroic journey is really a journey of love. In fact, that's what Buddha's journey was. And for him, his central problem was about suffering. And I think we all have some, obviously, familiarity with suffering. But there was something about human suffering that struck him so deeply, so profoundly, that he felt he had to completely turn his life toward understanding it, resolving it, finding some release for it, coming to terms with it. I guess there are different ways to frame it. But that was just completely central. Nothing else was of import to him. And even after he had his realization, his awakening, how we understand that,

[11:20]

still what was most important to him was this question of suffering. And there's, you know, a famous little anecdote of him walking through the forest with his students, with his monks, and kind of grabbing a handful of leaves, you know, from a tree or maybe on the ground, and asking the monks, are there more trees in this entire forest or in my hand? And the monks, the students say, well, of course, there are more leaves in the entire forest than in your hand. And the Buddha says, so it is with what I know. What I know is like the leaves in this forest. But what I teach are the amount of leaves that I'm holding in my hand. And essentially what he said he taught was suffering and the end of suffering. So that continued to be really his focus, the thing that he was most concerned about. But it wasn't clear to him initially that he would even teach.

[12:24]

I think this was initially a personal journey for him. He had a personal question that he needed to resolve. And he did eventually have an awakening, which resolved his question of suffering. He found release, realizing that he, along with all beings, were now realized and awake. So it was a personal quest, but the realization was a universal one. But even though it was a kind of universal realization, that didn't translate for him immediately into kind of sharing his understanding. And maybe there were two reasons for that. The primary one being that I think he thought no one would understand what he had realized was maybe so... so counterintuitive, so against human nature, our normal way of thinking and perceiving the world that he thought no one would be capable of actually understanding what he realized.

[13:27]

And I think he had some experience of freedom and I think had some ease about the nature of reality, so I think he didn't feel the need necessarily to teach either. So after his realization, he continued to kind of just sit and kind of reflect on what he had realized, and then kind of continued his practice. And the story goes, it was only when there were some gods who were in touch with him and really encouraged him to teach, saying that there were people in the world who had little dust in their eyes. and who were capable of understanding, and so he should go and teach. These gods actually did also play a role earlier in his journey, I learned recently. So there was one point where the Buddha was practicing very extreme asceticism, thinking maybe the problem of suffering had to do with having a

[14:36]

body or having a self, and the way to get rid of suffering was to kind of like just completely extinguish the body or the self. And so he was contemplating refusing to eat altogether, just to stop taking nourishment. And what I've heard is that these gods were kind of in touch with him and said, well, even if you try and do that, we're going to, like, force-feed you through your pores. Because we don't want you to, like, completely pass out of existence. So anyway, so he had some... So at that point, he said, okay, well, I'm not going to be able to do that then, so I'll just eat very, very, very minimally, which is what he did for a while. But anyway, these same gods apparently were in touch with him after his realization, encouraging him to teach. And at that point, he decided to. He did... And I was just talking about Buddha's journey as a hero, where mostly he's kind of this individual actor.

[15:37]

There's some kind of feeling like he does it by himself. Mostly, as I say, he has some mentors along the way, and then there's this little exchange with the gods. But it's mostly him kind of ultimately sitting under this tree by himself, really trying to understand things for himself. And he does have these various afflictions of lust and anger and various kinds of delusions and doubt, extreme self-doubt. So there's also this moment where he's doubting his worthiness even to be on this quest. And he touches the earth and asks the earth to kind of confirm his right, his kind of birthright, to pursue this understanding. So he does get support from but largely it feels like a kind of individual, kind of solo mission, you know. And I was reflecting that a little bit with other kind of heroic story which might be in our minds this time of year, which is the kind of story of Christ, which in some ways, you know, there's some similarities, but from a certain point of view is also kind of an opposite in that, you know, while Buddha's

[16:54]

the journey ends in him kind of transcending suffering. You could say the story of Christ is really taking on suffering, taking on all the suffering of the world onto himself. And although there are moments when he feels alone, perhaps forsaken, there's also some sense that he's always doing this in connection with God, with other agency. There's other agency helping, so it's also a journey of kind of trust and faith. And so I think that our practice, is it like the Buddha's practice? And I feel like there's also stories of early Zen masters, kind of those Chinese Zen masters, which also have this kind of very individualistic, kind of heroic quality to them. But I feel more our practice, currently, anyway. In some ways, it's more like Christ practice, in that I feel like we sit really with this... with this orientation of kind of trust and faith that we are being supported.

[18:00]

It's not that we're doing this by ourselves, but we're doing this with the whole universe. And we kind of need that kind of trust and faith in our practice. So just kind of comparing those stories a little bit. But back to the Buddhas, you know, movement toward teaching. So he's encouraged to teach and so starts to think about, well, who might be receptive to the teaching and thinks first of his early kind of spiritual teachers that he studied with and kind of mastered what they had to master and had a lot of respect for, although they didn't completely resolve his question and thought, well, maybe they would be good students to go teach, but then learns through his own clairvoyance or other means that they've passed away. One of his teachers had passed away about a week before and the other essentially a night before he was going to go teach.

[19:02]

And so then he thinks of these five aesthetics that he was practicing with before he kind of stopped that kind of aesthetic practice and then had his realization. And they were rather... you might even say kind of disgusted with the Buddha, you know, when he turned away from the ascetic practice, they had really devoted themselves to these kind of extreme austerities and really saw that as the pure way, the true way. And so when the Buddha started to eat more, started to take food and be in contact with people, they really thought he had gone astray. So it might not have been clear to him that he was going to be receptive to his message, but he... he felt like they might be. And so he went and found them, and on his way, there's this funny episode too, on his way to looking for the ascetics, he bumps into someone, just a villager, someone named Upaka.

[20:08]

And Buddha thinks, well, this might be auspicious. I've decided to teach, and here someone's coming along my way, and I'll just kind of let them know who I am and what I'm up to. He says, I'm the Buddha. I'm fully enlightened, and I've decided to teach and help people realize the way. And Upaka says, oh, may it be so, and kind of heads off on his way. taking very little interest in the Buddha, actually. So I think it's funny that that's actually his first encounter with someone, is he's trying to teach someone who actually has no interest in what, and he wishes him well, but has no interest, really, in what he has to offer. But then he does meet the ascetics, and at first they are kind of wary of him, but there's something, I guess there's something so compelling about him, so earnest about him that where they see something in him that they do stop and listen to what he has to say. And so he gives his first teaching called the Buddha's First Discourse or the First Turning of the Wheel.

[21:17]

And the first thing that Buddha teaches is a middle way. And he teaches a middle way between what he calls the extremes of pursuing sense pleasure, which he says is low and vulgar and ignoble and doesn't have any useful result. And, you know, by sense pleasure, I think, you know, he means, you know, just the pleasure of our five senses, the things that give us sense pleasure. Also in Buddha, I was mentioning this in the Zazen instruction I gave yesterday, in Buddhist psychology, the mind is also a sense organ. So thoughts are a sense object. So pleasant thoughts are also a sense pleasure. So thinking even noble thoughts or pleasant thoughts are just a kind of sense pleasure. So anyway, so he says pursuing sense pleasure is one extreme to be avoided for one who's going forth for the truth and wisdom.

[22:19]

And then the other extreme to be avoided is devotion to self-denial. and I think he's giving this teaching precisely because he's speaking to these five ascetics who have kind of carved up the world in this way. They have this vision of the world as divided in this way between kind of a worldly life devoted to kind of sense pleasure and then what they're doing, which is kind of denial of that and extreme asceticism. And so they think there's one side of that equation is the side to be on, and that the world is divided in that way. So the Buddha doesn't always talk about the middle way in this way. I think he's talking about it in this way precisely for his audience, which is kind of a hallmark of Buddhist teaching, that the teaching is offered for the listener. It's offered to give them what they need.

[23:20]

So the same teaching isn't always offered in the same way to each person. So he says, these are two extremes to be avoided, and there's a middle way between these extremes. You know, and I would say also that probably, you know, what Buddha's here calling kind of pursuit of sense, pleasure, probably where he draws that line would maybe be different, you know, than where we would draw it. In other words, I think it's not just kind of like over-indulgence in, you know, eating and drinking and other kinds of amusement and kind of an extreme behavior of this kind. But I think probably even, you know, maybe a lot of our ordinary everyday kind of sense-pleasure activity, you know, I think the Buddha sees, has what he literally called a lot of kind of craving or grasping or clinging in it. So even kind of our everyday pursuit of sense pleasure might be something he's saying is a kind of extreme, which again doesn't mean to avoid those things, but the way that we engage them, there might be suffering there that we're not even really fully aware of.

[24:36]

So then he says, so what then is the middle way to avoid these two extremes? And he teaches what he calls the eightfold noble path, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right mindfulness, right concentration. And in some way, this is just kind of an endlessly kind of circling or repeating path that continually kind of reinforces itself, just kind of a reiterative path. So... have some... Right's kind of a funny word, too, because we think of right in terms of right and wrong. And I think there's actually a real inclusiveness to this vision, to right view. So right can also mean, I think in this case, complete or whole or kind of the right, like of a right angle, like kind of true.

[25:48]

or recent, another kind of reading on it I've heard is kind of like attuned, so kind of an attuned view. And so we start with some attuned or complete view of things, and then this gives rise to a kind of attuned intention, which we need for action. It's not enough just to have a kind of understanding, but we need to act, and we need to kind of intention to do that. And then coming out of this intention or thought gives rise to speech. So with attuned, complete intention, we have speech that's helpful, beneficial, hopefully lovely to listen to. And that in turn gives rise to action and livelihood, et cetera. And then the last three of the chains of the path are right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration, which are all aspects of actually meditative practice.

[26:53]

So deepening our meditative practice in this way then I feel probably also deepens our view, our understanding. And so it's in that way that the path goes round and round as our understanding gets clearer, the rest of our actions get clearer, our meditative practice deepens. And so it's kind of a path of continual refinement. So he teaches this path to the five ascetics, the eightfold, noble path. I'm kind of interested in this word, noble, too, which at some point I feel like I might want to give a talk just on that word, because it's not one that we use so much in our everyday parlance or our culture. We don't have an easy, positive, necessarily, affinity with that word, with associations of aristocracy and privilege, but I think there's something very powerful in it, actually. And then having taught the path, he then teaches the four noble truths, which we were talking about at the beginning of the talk.

[27:59]

So the first of which is the truth of suffering. And again, probably all or many of you have heard this, and I don't necessarily think people hold this view quite in the way maybe they once did, hearing that the first truth of Buddhism is a truth of suffering, I think there can be some feeling like there's a kind of pessimism in the religion or something. But I think this is kind of just very realistic kind of understanding of the kind of unavoidable kind of discomfort or pain in human life. But I was saying just in this kind of little simple way for me over the holidays, the way actually really kind of meeting that gives rise to a more kind of joyful experience. I think that is actually the teaching. There's a joyful way to have this understanding. There's a noble way to live with this truth, which is what he's offering.

[29:04]

So he offers the truth of suffering. The second truth is that there's a cause, to the suffering, which is, you know, again, with all these things said in different ways at different times and places, but often is said as craving or grasping, clinging, clinging to self. So these are different ways of understanding the kind of cause of our suffering. And again, the way I understand the suffering that the Buddha's teaching that can be relieved or alleviated isn't the unavoidable human pain and discomfort, which he continued to experience the rest of his human life, as he taught, but is kind of the mental anguish. There's a kind of mental anguish or suffering that we often experience, that we overlay on top of just normal human discomfort. And so I think that's what he's teaching. We can be completely, completely free of.

[30:10]

And again, the reason we're not is because we kind of cling or grasp. But then he does say, we can be free of it. There is the possibility of the cessation of this suffering. And then he kind of repeats the path as a way to do that. So it's kind of like a medical diagnosis. He kind of says, this is the illness, and this is the cause of the illness. It does have a cure, and this is the treatment, you know, essentially. Let's take a look at the time here and see where we are. So in our remaining time, I just wanted to talk a little bit more about this first truth of suffering, in part because it's the first of the four days of my retreat, and it's the first teaching, so I wanted to spend some time on it, and maybe a little bit on the second truth as well. So... even though we may not hear this as kind of a pessimistic view of life, I still think it's a very difficult... And we may even have some intellectual kind of acceptance of it.

[31:19]

Well, yes, human life has suffering in it, difficulty in it. That seems obvious enough. But I still think it's kind of difficult for us to fully accept, I think, in the breadth and depth in which the Buddha is saying that this is the nature of I mean, he essentially says there are three aspects to suffering, the way he sees it. So one is this kind of basic human pain and discomfort. So physical pain, mental pain, not getting what we want, getting what we don't want, being separated from those we love, being with those we don't like, sickness, aging, old age. death, you know, all these really difficult things about human life which we kind of see are unavoidable. So that's one aspect of what the Buddhists call kind of the suffering of life. But there are two others. The second is called Anakara Dukkha.

[32:24]

The first is called Dukkha Dukkha, the suffering of suffering. The second one is the nature of reality of being constant change. constant impermanence. And that in itself is difficult for us. There's a kind of suffering around that. And you might notice this. So even when you're having an enjoyable experience, there can be, and often is, some subtle suffering with the enjoyable experience or underneath the enjoyable experience that goes kind of like, how long is this going to last? I hope this doesn't go away. Or, gee, things are going so well, I wonder what's going to happen next. So there's some anxiety that often accompanies even our pleasurable or enjoyable experiences. And so this is a product of this kind of constant change or impermanence, which we're aware of. Even when things seem relatively stable to us, we do have some bodily, kind of deep, even mental kind of awareness of the constant change of things.

[33:26]

And so there's a little anxiety. that's always kind of accompanying our experience, even when it's pleasurable. The term for that is actually sukha dukkha, which I always love that term, sukha dukkha, the suffering of pleasure, actually. And then the third kind of suffering, which the Buddha says is just of the nature of reality, sankhara dukkha, is kind of similar to the change, but it's just the suffering of the conditioned nature of reality, that things don't exist independently with some separate self and stability, but that everything arises together. Again, from a kind of Buddhist psychological point of view, human experience is made up of form or contact with form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, our consciousness, our awareness of these things.

[34:28]

So this is kind of our feelings about things, our thoughts about them, our dispositions, the way we kind of bundle and package and put together the world. But this is kind of a conditioned thing. These things are arising together. There's a kind of instability in the situation. And so moment after moment, we're actually making a reality. We're kind of making something of the situation. We're actually kind of holding our world together in a certain way. And so there's a tension, there's a kind of suffering just of this fact that we're actually moment after moment kind of putting our world together, having to make an experience out of these conditioned things. This is the third kind of suffering he teaches, which is kind of subtle, but I think we can sometimes even tune into that the way that just kind of simple everyday experience can sometimes feel like a burden or we're having to hold ourselves together or hold things together. So these are the three kinds of suffering that the Buddha lays out.

[35:29]

And I was saying that, you know, this is pretty pervasive. I mean, what he's saying is basically happening all the time. I mean, unless you've completed, you know, completely completed the path and become free, which is possible. But for most of us, this is happening all the time. And I think it's difficult for us to accept. I think we largely think of suffering in kind of really gross, that there's kind of gross suffering, which maybe we think most of the time doesn't apply to us, and largely we don't want to think about, because it's kind of unpleasant. Or we think, well, yeah, eventually I'll encounter that, but why worry about it now? Or even if we do recognize that we're currently in the midst of suffering, I think we often have some feeling like it can be fixed, like, well, I should just find a good doctor or a good therapist, or if I just took the right course of action, I just had the right initiative or the right job or whatever, that we can fix it.

[36:38]

So, well, yeah, I'm suffering now, but there's something I can do about it, other than the complete Buddhist path. There's some quicker, easier fix. And I think that there's something about our maybe it's just human nature, period, but I do feel like there's something about our culture that conditions us in that way, that we should be happy. We think we should be happy. We should be successful. We should have a life that's more or less free of suffering most of the time. And that's actually kind of what distinguishes you. being a kind of successful human being is if you're able to arrange your life in that way, that you're not suffering most of the time, you know? So I feel like we're really oriented, actually, against this kind of truth of suffering. Oh, something else I was going to say. Oh, yeah.

[37:39]

And because of that... I think that when we do suffer, which we inevitably do, there's often some shame that goes along with it. There's some sense of shame or failure or like I've done something wrong. So anyway, I think it's actually work, a certain kind of work for us, even to just really deeply kind of accept and kind of acknowledge this truth. and be willing to kind of embrace our suffering honestly and fully without feeling like we've done something wrong, that there's something wrong with us, that we failed in some way. There's something we need to fix about our lives. I feel like that in itself is actually a huge step just to kind of like meet this very first truth. For most of us, I think it's a huge, a huge step. The Buddha actually taught that for each of these truths, there were three insights that went along with them.

[38:47]

The first was a kind of intellectual or philosophical understanding of the truth, which maybe some of you are now having something like that with regard to the first truth. You have some feeling now about how this may be so or that this is so. It makes sense to you intellectually, and there's enough that you can reference in your own experience. that feels like, oh, that's true. But that's actually just kind of like the most superficial kind of insight into the truth. The second kind of insight, and again, this is for each of the four truths that the Buddha said was possible and necessary, was a kind of experiential knowledge, experiential insight. So it's to really embrace the truth and commit to living your life with the understanding of that truth. which in the case of this first truth, the truth of suffering, is really to be willing to meet one's suffering, which, again, I think most of us, most of the time, are trying to avoid.

[39:49]

We're trying not to do that. So the second insight really has to do with being willing to meet, kind of fully meet, the suffering in our lives. And... Now I'm having some hesitation about speaking for all of you. Maybe I should just be speaking for myself. It's hard for me to fully embrace my suffering. And then the third insight for each of the truths is then knowing that you know. Having embraced and committed to the truth in such a way, had a kind of felt experience of the truth, this experiential knowledge, that now you know you know. the truth of that teaching. So just staying on this first truth for now. So for suffering, this means not only hearing the teaching and reflecting on having some understanding, but then really being willing to meet the suffering in our life.

[40:59]

Which again, can sound kind of negative or something. And I experienced that myself just in preparing for this talk, like it was actually sometimes kind of hard to make myself read about the truths or about something. There's some kind of wanting to avoid kind of encountering this, really, really encountering this teaching. Or I noticed that in my body actually sometimes as I was thinking about this part of the talk or this part of the teaching that I would actually start to get a little bit more anxious as I thought about this truth of suffering. So there is something that we do have, anyway, I have, we may have some aversion to. But that really is what Buddha is encouraging as this next step of practice is to meet that, to kind of really feel the pain of our suffering. And I think what often happens if we don't do that is we try and cover it up you know, in various ways.

[41:59]

We distract ourselves, we do various things to get away from it, and we often end up creating just more pain and suffering for ourselves on top of the kind of initial basic discomfort that we were trying to get away from. So there's also a negative consequence to avoiding it, as well as the positive benefits of, potentially, of embracing. Of embracing. And I think there's a kind of freedom which one can already potentially feel even in the third, you know, if we can get there, even in the third inside of the first truth. So even before we've really started to tackle clinging and craving or gotten to complete cessation, I think if we can come to a place of knowing that we really do understand and know this truth of suffering and have been really met our suffering, I think there is a kind of ease and relief that comes with that precisely because we're free of perhaps the feelings of shame or humiliation or failure or the other kinds of suffering that we layer on top of the initial suffering.

[43:14]

If we can just accept our life as it is, I think even in that there's a kind of ease or peacefulness that we that we feel. So anyway, that's a proposal anyway. We're a little after 11, so I feel like I shouldn't go on too much longer. I'm tempted to say a little something, though, about the second truth, about the truth of craving. This kind of early teaching says there's basically kind of three forms of this. One is the kind of craving for sense pleasure, which kind of Buddha referenced as one of the extremes that should be avoided. The second is what's called a kind of craving for becoming, which I've been thinking of lately as often the way we just think of how we want to be.

[44:15]

So we normally often think about this in a positive way, and I think there are wholesome wishes for becoming, wholesome desires. So we have some wish of what kind of person we want to be or how we want to turn out or some way we want to improve. And so we kind of take birth, you could say, in that wish. And part of why I wanted just to say something about craving is it's been a lot of work for me to try and understand and still try and understand what might be called the paradox of of desire or something. So sometimes it's taught like all desire is craving. Anything we desire has this kind of element of suffering in it. But I've been more and more feeling that there's nothing wrong with desire itself. Desire is kind of a natural kind of human energy and probably essential in certain ways because you can't do much without desire and can't do much good without desire.

[45:21]

Desire for kind of wholesome, Wilson things, so that the suffering really isn't around the desire itself, which we can allow and I feel like should be open to, but the suffering is around kind of clinging to the object of the desire, kind of insisting on wanting to realize the desire or have the object of the desire. So anyway, as I say, for me, there's kind of been work on trying to clarify this, or I feel like there's a kind of subtle distinction there between the desire itself, which I feel like is fine, there's necessary, and there can be freedom with that, but then the kind of clinging, we think if we have the desire, well, that means I need to satisfy the desire, I need to have the object of desire. And I think that's the place where we can cut some clinging or grasping attachment. Anyway, I just wanted to put that out there because it has been a con... point of confusion for me.

[46:21]

For me, you know, before coming to Zen practice, I felt like I did a lot of work actually just trying to acknowledge, you know, acknowledge my desires that I had them and that they were, you know, okay. And so then it, sometimes encountering the teaching can be confusing in that regard or there can be a kind of subtle slipping into, we hear that the problem is craving or desire. So there can be a kind of subtle slipping into a kind of self-negation. Like the problem is, so I shouldn't have any desires or something. Or, you know, Suzuki Boshi teaches no gaining idea. So does that translate into, well, I shouldn't have any, I shouldn't want anything, I shouldn't have any desire. So I feel like this is kind of a really subtle point, but wanting us to see if we can make that distinction between kind of the life-affirming energy of desire and then the clinging around it. And, you know, and then on the other side, too, the confusion around maybe hearing that the problem is self-clinging and thinking that that means we should, we need somehow to kind of get rid of the self, which is actually one of the things the Buddha tried that didn't work, right?

[47:35]

That was kind of what he was doing with the ascetics. But I noticed that I still slip into that, like, I have some suffering. So I think, oh, okay, I know I have suffering. That must mean there's some self-clinging in the neighborhood. If I could only get rid of the self, there wouldn't be any self-clinginess. There's a kind of abandoning of myself or something in trying to get rid of the suffering. But I actually don't think that's the right understanding. I actually read something recently about a metaphor for the ego, the self. It's kind of like a little puppy dog. And it's got a lot of energy, and it can have a lot of fun, but also can kind of get into trouble sometimes. But the problem is that it's not like you want to get rid of the puppy dog. It's just like you don't want to put the puppy dog in charge of your spiritual practice, or in charge of your life. But it's part of there. You want to take care of it, too. So that was helpful for me. Oh, this is just my puppy dog. Well, maybe that's enough.

[48:37]

for this morning. There's obviously much more that can be said about these things, but I feel like it's maybe a good amount of time. And there will be question and answer after tea, so if you want to come back and talk more, I'd be happy to. Maybe I'll just close with a couple poems, maybe, or a poem and an excerpt of a poem. So the first is a poem by David White, kind of on this theme of... meeting our suffering, or in this case, meeting our grief. It's called The Well of Grief. Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief, turning downward through its black water to the place we cannot breathe, will never know the source from which we drink, the secret water cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown by those who wished for something else.

[49:50]

Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief, turning downward through its black water to the place we cannot breathe, will never know the source from which we drink the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown by those who wished for something else. And that last line, those who wished for something else, from a certain point of view, I think is kind of another way of talking about clinging. It's another version of clinging. Clinging in some ways is always clinging for something other than I mean, maybe we're clinging to what is, but it's, again, I feel like the release of clinging is really this very deep acceptance of how things are. So these are kind of early Buddhist teaching, and so a lot could be said also about the Zen understanding of them.

[50:58]

And I think our Zazen practice really is the practice of these Four Noble Truths, maybe all kind of simultaneously in some ways. And it's a kind of practice that we do through stillness. And so I just want to read this last thing, which has a kind of Zen feeling. It's actually from the Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot, but it's a kind of Zen instruction about how to practice with the paradox of desire. Neither from nor towards, at the still point, There the dance is, but neither arrest nor movement, and do not call it fixity, where past and future are gathered, neither movement from nor towards, neither ascent nor decline, except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance, and there is only dance. So thank you all.

[51:59]

I wish you all a very joyous new year. It's great to see you again. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[52:35]

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