This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. is going to be a kind of a hello and goodbye talk. Adjust my ear. How's that? No?

[01:01]

No good. Better? No good. It's very strange and... I don't know, is that okay? Is that okay? That's okay. Kind of a hello and a goodbye because most of you I don't really know anymore because I haven't practiced with some kind of continuity at the city center for maybe 10 years. So hi. And it's a little bit of a goodbye because I'm leaving in a few days back to it's hard to start talking.

[02:28]

I'm kind of tired of words. I'm sure you guys have heard the Dharma hundreds of times. And words are pointers and helpful. But they don't really reach the truth. So it's hard for me to start talking. About a week ago, a little bit more than a week ago, I was 72. I am now 72 years old. And I've been sitting since I was 24.

[03:31]

I started sitting in 1968, Los Angeles. So that's almost 48 years, give or take, two or three that I haven't been sitting every day. So I consider myself qualified to call myself one of the fourth horses. Kind of a slow but very determined student. what it says.

[04:43]

And the more I have practiced the less I know. So it made me think about this koan that I really like, which is a koan about a person who's going around on pilgrimage. A teacher sees somebody leaving the monastery and asks them, I see that you're leaving.

[05:48]

And the student says, yes, I am. And the teacher says, what are you doing? And the student says, I'm going out on pilgrimage. And the teacher says, what is a pilgrimage? And the student says, I don't know. And the teacher says, Not knowing is nearest. Not knowing is important for us.

[06:54]

It's the same not knowing that I mentioned about words, that words, concepts don't really reach to what our inmost yearning is about. It's the same not knowing as Bodhidharma when he met Emperor Wu and eventually Emperor Wu asks him, who are you? And he says, I don't know. Because the mystery of the truth of who we are, the truth of our life, is not known conceptually. It's the same not knowing that Suzuki Roshi mentions or points to when he calls this very temple Beginner's Mind Temple. Because he says in his book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, That this beginner's mind, this openness of mind, this readiness of mind is wisdom.

[07:59]

Not knowing is nearest. Not knowing allows the mind to be ready for wisdom. So in 1968 I met Suzuki Roshi first. And when I saw him, I thought to myself, I would like to be like him. When I watched him move, I watched him handle things, I watched him... Everything he did was complete... He embodied a kind of appreciation for life. That at 72, I wanted to... Actually, I was 24 at the time, but at 72, I didn't understand it then, but I felt it then.

[09:12]

An understanding of life, an embodiment of life. That is a very deep appreciation for the fact... that we are alive and know that at all. I spent the summer of 71 with him at Tazahara. And after that I met Shoyam Trungpa who gave a lecture here on Franklin Church. And when I studied with him he helped me feel compassion not by talking about it but every time he saw me act from a place of the heart without duality, he said something that made that moment like a picture for me. He kind of froze it. So I felt what it was, what it felt like to be compassion.

[10:15]

And then from Trungpa, I studied with Katigiri Roshi. That was his jisha for a while. And he helped me feel what it's like to live in the flow, to live in time, dropping the self whenever the next moment, the next activity appeared. without judgment, without past or future, just completely in the present moment, in the next activity. So I have a taste, I have a fragrance, I have a feel,

[11:21]

of what we're aiming at. I know what it looks like. I know what it feels like. It's a gift. One of the things I could feel from them is this, when I'm talking about this not knowing, I never heard from them words that categorized people, what we were doing, themselves, in any way.

[12:24]

And it was clear to me then that whenever we know something, it separates us. from reality. Our path is a lived journey and the teaching is a lived teaching. And whenever we find ourselves enmeshed in conceptuality, we miss the reality of this moment in front of us. So along the way I picked up some skills, not from the not from the monastery, because the monastery is the easiest place to practice, but from urban, from urban practice. We have to sit every day. And we have to sit long sittings. When we sit every day, we're trying to adjust the mind to remember its true nature. That's our sitting.

[13:27]

That's how we sit. It's not like a fuzzy presence, you know, or we are counting breaths and in the background thoughts are going on. No. It's a bright, open awareness which is our true mind. So every day to return, if we can, to that place. Every day to check in with your mind, your body, your heart. How is the mind this morning? Is it busy or not? How is your heart? Is it open or closed? How is your body? Do you need to stretch or not? Every day, remember. It's good to check in with our intention. Why are we here? Do we really want to end suffering for ourselves? Do we want to know the truth or not? It's good to develop continuity of awareness all day in the present moment.

[14:32]

It's necessary. It's good to inquire because the truth responds to an inquiring mind. It's really important to be ruthlessly honest. What is really going on? Is my life alive in this practice or not? Am I not being willing to admit certain feelings that are happening within me? Do I need to put myself in a situation in order for those things to arise so I can be with them and watch them? and then a willingness to really be whatever arises. These things are necessary in an urban practice. And at some point you have to sit long sittings.

[15:32]

A month, three weeks, four session a year. I don't understand how people do this if we don't sit. I couldn't in any way. We're fooling ourselves if we think we can. unless you're one of the very few people who have such discipline that you can do this on your own. Very rare, not so many people. So what I've seen is that our way is to study the self. What do we mean by self? Self simply is the narration in relationship to a believed thought of me. That's what it is. So to deeply study the self and to forget the self, then we are awakened with all things.

[16:42]

We can be awakened with all things, as all things. I'm going to tell you a story. When I was with Suzuki Roshi, this is a little bit personal, but when I was with Suzuki Roshi upstairs in the Doka-san run upstairs, after I spoke with him and we were done with our conversation, which I totally don't remember, he felt in me such need because where I was coming from, deeply inside my core, default belief about myself was that I was not good enough. I was afraid of being a failure. I wasn't good enough. Life wasn't good enough. Teacher wasn't good enough.

[17:44]

Community wasn't good enough. Relationship wasn't good enough. Because I wasn't good enough. And my need was palpable. So he went over to the, what do you call it, mantle on the left side of the room and there was a flower arrangement there that had a pyrocanthar twig branch on it. Pyrocanthar is like a, the branch is dark and it has little orange berries on it, right, pyrocanthar, yeah. And he broke off some of that twig. And he gave it to me. He handed it to me with both hands, so completely, so thoroughly, that I thought it was the most precious gift anyone had ever received.

[18:48]

A twig. And I saved it for years. So this is an example of using these skills with a core identity, core believed narration around the idea of me. So the first thing that happens is we are completely in delusion. We totally don't know that we're being run by this core belief. We act out not enough in every way. And we don't know it. And then we come to practice. And then we get a little taste of freedom. And this taste of freedom is when we wake up just a little bit is all we need.

[19:55]

And we call it the witness. All we need is is to be able to watch not enough happen. We are still completely run by it, but we're watching, we know that it's happening. That's a gigantic taste of freedom. It's not a small thing, it's a big deal. And then the next thing that happens is we begin to work with it in a real way. The way I talk about it, which is pretty widely known now, is through RAIN, this acronym that means be present enough to recognize what's happening. Acknowledge what's happening. Allow what's happening. Accept what's happening. Be willing to be what is so uncomfortable.

[20:57]

Understand that it is just a passing physical event. And allow yourself to feel sensations in the body of what we call not good enough, the manifestation of not good enough, which is a shrinking physical, you know, dropping away of energy, fear comes up, heart shakes, kind of weakness happens, turning away for sure. And this practice, when we practice like that, it's the beginning of allowing ourselves to integrate that psychological conditioned event. And when we do that, each time we do that, a little bit of that energy falls away. And we begin to really develop a sense of self-worth. That's where self-worth comes from. Allowing yourself

[22:02]

to be open to what it is that you're totally not wanting to see. Self-worth. Unconditioned acceptance. That's what that is. The second thing that happens is the beginning of compassion happens. Self-compassion. The very act of allowing yourself to be what you don't want to be, that's hurtful, that's painful, that's suffering. is unconditioned compassion and unconditioned love. And the next thing that happens is because you finally allow yourself to feel the depth of your own suffering, you don't want anybody else to suffer that way. So out of that practice comes compassion for other people, the definition of compassion. Letting yourself be with someone else in their suffering without having to fix it.

[23:07]

Without making it a drama. Without talking about it. Just being with suffering. Now all of this happens in the realm of psychology. You can talk to therapists and they can talk to you about all of this. Necessary. It's necessary because our path, we need to mature psychologically in our path. Insight is not enough. You can have insight and it becomes a memory if you don't embody it. In order to embody it, you have to psychologically mature. And that's why sometimes we see in Buddhist circles people who have made real mistakes because they have insight but they are not mature. And being mature is not enough. Because without insight, this deep, deep sense of tana, thirsting desire, the deepest kind of suffering that the Buddha was talking about, cannot be turned.

[24:21]

Because it depends on not-self. So insight and psychological maturity are both necessary. So these three things I just said are all about psychological, basically, growing up. And then the next two things I'm going to talk about, we start Buddhist understanding. The next way of relating to this, the next thing that happens is through either sitting or grace or luck, we have a taste of our true nature, this sense of awareness as of the depth of who we are.

[25:30]

And with this awareness, which arises out of source emptiness. So awareness is emptiness. What happens is this awareness sees the structure, this narration, this believed idea, this conditioned delusion. of not enough and sees it's empty. It is not self. It is not a me. So emptiness sees form as empty. Conceptuality is mental form. It's an object of the mind. So emptiness sees form as empty. Emptiness sees itself. Emptiness sees emptiness, emptiness sees form, emptiness is emptiness, form is form, form is emptiness, emptiness is form.

[26:40]

And with that, finally, a sense of no self, of no sense of not enough, as it is seen as not self, it drops away. Because, as the Buddha said, when he wakes up under the Bodhi tree, he says, I see you. Your lentil is broken. You cannot rebuild yourself. I see you. So when you see these constructs, these false identities of me, when you see through them clearly as emptiness, they drop away. This is Buddhism. This is our path. It's not psychological. This is Buddha's promise. We can be free.

[27:41]

It takes work. It takes courage. It takes honesty. All the things I just said. So an interesting thing happens when this happens, this falling away. Because the construction of not enough is never going to be enough. He didn't create it to be enough. We created these conditioned mental events to serve a certain purpose in order for us to grow up in our twisted ancient karma. So not enough is not going to go, oh yeah, I see, I understand you're doing positive thinking. So I think, yes, you convinced me. I think instead of not being enough, I'll be enough. That is never going to happen. The purpose of not enough is to be not enough. It helped us get by, get through. We needed it. But when we see it clearly as empty, it has no more job.

[28:52]

And the narration around that structure has no more story to tell. So that entire narrator drops away. The mind is quiet. And when we finally have a sense that we no longer think that we are not enough, then we can finally allow ourselves to feel the unscathed Unspeakable generosity of life, how much we're supported by everything, our friends, even our family, even things that happen that are not so great, all of it is supporting our practice. All of us is carrying us along. And with this sense of abundance,

[29:57]

There's a tremendous gratitude. Of course. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. There's such humility. It's not a question of deserving it or not. It's offered. It's there. It's carrying us. This package of emptiness. this little package of emptiness called Tia or a tree or a bush or Annie or David or Caitlin. All these little packages of emptiness flowing along in an endless stream of silence, of stillness. It's a mystery. beyond words.

[31:02]

And then another interesting thing happens. It's all very interesting. Don't you think? I mean, it's fascinating. It's incredible. Then an interesting thing happens that might occur to us. Instead of identifying, as we had forever, with this structure of not enough, or even, you can say, the small self, or the form that we are, that we think ourselves to be, instead of identifying with this tiny, tiny event We call me, mistakenly. We just have to make a shift. And instead of identifying with, Suzuki Roshi says, small self, we identify with the vastness, the knowing quality of mind.

[32:26]

We identify with emptiness, as emptiness. Identify, not even the right word. We begin perceiving from emptiness, from the point of view of emptiness, instead of from the point of view of separation and me. And then, it's very interesting, then you really don't know who you are. How does emptiness meet the next person? Themselves. Right? On the level of... We're talking about what you see as you look out as the eyes of emptiness. You see yourself. Emptiness sees itself. So how does emptiness relate? in that way. How does real emptiness hear a sound?

[33:30]

How does emptiness see a tree, a bush, a car, the garbage? How does emptiness walk? That's what I saw in Suzuki Roshi. Emptiness picking up a rock. Emptiness arranging the flowers. emptiness picking up a cup. I didn't know that, but it's a taste. It's a taste. This is our journey. This is our journey. It's life's journey. It's not even our journey.

[34:35]

No. It's life's journey. And it's a life's journey. It's the journey of a life. Somebody told me that when I was 24. I probably wouldn't have signed up. No. No. I would have. Because I wanted to know that I did not want to suffer. And I really wanted to understand life. And Buddhism held out its hand. Come. Join me. You can be free. in this not knowing, this wonderful not knowing.

[35:38]

There may be somebody in a year or so, some older woman, might be me, leaving an intentional community somewhere near the end of the peninsula, between a bay, a beautiful bay, and an incredible ocean. And a friend, maybe Leslie, might see her and say, you're leaving. Yes. Where are you going? On pilgrimage. What is a pilgrimage to you? I don't know, Leslie. Not knowing is nearest. Not knowing is most intimate.

[36:47]

When the mind is open like that, love arises naturally let's keep doing this let's keep walking together let's keep finding our authentic self supporting and helping each other it's not easy it's not easy but it's true Everything my teachers told me is true, turned out to be true. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I want to go as deep and as far as I can in this lifetime, and I don't have a lot of time.

[38:01]

72 is like, uh-oh. You can taste the end. Please, you know, make your best effort. Help each other. I've been enormously helped. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[38:56]

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