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. Good morning. I had this clock in my sleeve, and the hands on it are loose, so whenever I put it in my sleeve... arranges itself in a random way. So I never know what it's going to say when I take it out. So I just guessed it and reset it. In the last week, I was introduced to two Japanese notions. The first one was the word yitori. I hadn't heard it before. Has anyone here heard of that word before?

[01:01]

Okay, well then, you'll probably think how I describe it is exactly right. Don't be so sure. I was actually teaching a workshop with Naomi Shihabnaya, a poet, and she'd been teaching in Japan. And she told me while she was teaching high school students, and they introduced her to this word. The way she described it to me, as it had been described by the high school students, was a sense of spacious psychological ease and contentment. And then, like any normal person would do, I googled it. I came across this intriguing analysis. And in this analysis, it has eight factors.

[02:05]

Here are the eight factors that contribute to yitori, psychological ease, well-being, and contentment. Free time. Sufficient finances. Access to environmental amenities like parks and trees and such things. Functional competence. That you're capable of doing the things your life is asking you to do on a functional level. Contentment. That you have a sense of contentment in your life. Empowerment. Oh, excuse me, I didn't read my own writing right. Enjoyment, that you enjoy what's going on. Challenge, that there's things in your life that, not challenging in a way that, distressing, but challenging in a way that it stimulates your interest.

[03:15]

And behavioral freedom, you have the opportunity and the capacity to respond appropriately. And I read all those and I thought, oh, okay, so it's impossible. Maybe there are brief moments in our life, you know. And maybe that's what your Tori is, those brief moments where we go, ah, this is sweet, this is sufficient, this is okay. And then the other notion I was introduced to was someone sent me a little clip of a movie. Unfortunately, it's not easily accessible, so I apologize for that. It's called Fukushima Monomore.

[04:18]

It's a play on Hiroshima Monomore, which is made related to Hiroshima. Fukushima was where that tidal wave came over and devastated a nuclear power plant and created a very significant sort of meltdown in the power plant and spread radioactivity all over the place. So much so that it crossed the whole Pacific to the Pacific Northwest. It was made by a German director, Doris Dori. And it was looking at what do you do when a major catastrophe happens? How do you continue? How does the land continue? How do the people continue? I thought of it as the kind of the counterpoint of Uttori.

[05:25]

That moment of sweet thorough appropriateness or something in its size with relief and appreciation to that other very human sentiment where this, as I playfully said, you know, okay, so... It's impossible. That way in which you can't fix a human life, no matter how diligent, how skillful, how determined, you can't take it and wrestle it into perfection. And in that way in which, when we look at that carefully, we struggle with that. Sometimes in little ways, sometimes in ways that are painfully obvious, sometimes in ways that we just touch on actually when we settle down or open down into our own being.

[06:38]

Part of the genius of Doris Doherty is that she'll take a profound topic and she'll also make it humorous. So this little clip that the person sent me was profound, and humorous. The scene was this. This young German girl, looked like she was about 22, had come to Fukushima to help, to explore. And in this scene she was having tea with a Japanese lady, probably 40 years her senior, who was also a Japanese tea teacher, a style of drinking tea that's quite prescribed both in its detail, in its attitude, and its aesthetics. And needless to say, this young German lady was not aware of any of the three of them.

[07:55]

They said, She serves her tea, the young German lady lifts it, takes the lid off, takes a gulp. And then she slowly and painstakingly says, let's rewind that again. And goes through the precision of it. Here's how you take the top off. You do not set it down like that. You turn it over and place it. Here's how you lift a cup. Here's how you bring a cup up to your face. Here's how you engage it. Here's how you smell it and appreciate just holding it. Here's how you bring it to your lips and taste that first taste. When you hear that description, it sounds a little somber or authoritarian.

[09:07]

But the genius of Doris Dorey is that she makes it kind of quirky. Like they start off the conversation and the young German girl says, oh, you're so elegant. And she says, and you're like an elephant. So big and clumsy. Just this odd, quirky exchange. Choose your sides on that one. Then it continues like that. And then right at the end, in an utterly unstated moment, very brief, after going through all these details, And the Japanese lady says, in good Zen fashion, and in that moment, there's nothing but tasting tea, and there's no pain.

[10:14]

And that phrase, in that moment, there's nothing but tasting tea, the unresolvedness, the impossibility. How the heck do you make a life in Fukushima that's been devastated by the spread of radioactivity? I have a friend and he and his wife live in Japan and they have two very young children and they moved very south, to the south, because they were concerned about the spread of radioactivity. And then they decided to come to the States for a while because they realized that the radioactivity was, you know, getting into the atmosphere and affecting the food that was being grown. In the middle of this impossible life, with all

[11:23]

It's challenges. How do we find the moment of just this is enough? Just this is completely what it is and in that moment completely acceptable. And then that interplay between the impossibility of a human life. There's a phrase in Dogen Zenji, the finder of this style of Zen, he wrote a koan called The Koan of Being Alive, the Genjo Koan. And in it he says, and when you're fully present, you can sense the incompleteness of life.

[12:28]

It translates. That's my own adaption of it. It says, when Dharma fills your body and mind, you realize the moment is not complete. And the very interesting thing about practicing zazen, awareness, is that the more thoroughly you engage it, the more thoroughly you start to sense that state of being. The more thoroughly you can see the mind can move in a fraction of a second. It can generate a thought, an image, an accompanying emotion that was not intended, was not even predictable.

[13:35]

It has its own tenacity for being alive. This is what we're made of. And then the great koan, the great challenge of Zazen, is can you, can each one of us, can any one of us sit in the middle of that? Can we sit and be willing to be the conditioned existence that arises under this set of circumstances? And I would say the very interesting notion, the very interesting particular, is that we can, in that moment, in that moment of just being, we can be what is.

[14:47]

And whether you want to call it yuttori or sattori, is a... is something to reflect on. And how those two interplay. In the 8th century, one of the finders of this school of Zen that Dogen started in Japan, one of the finders in China, Sekito Kisen, he wrote a poem. on how these two interplay. This momentary presence and this existence in which, you know, sirens go off and race up and down the streets. We are all sitting here in the midst of being the amazing...

[15:58]

accumulation of thoughts and feelings and concerns and hopes and regrets that we are. And then from a Zen perspective, what is it to realize for ourselves what's being asked to just sit in the middle of it? And then the other challenge is, what is it to live it? What is it to enter into your life just as it is in the context it is, in the relationships you have, in the yearnings and fears you have, in the hopes, in the challenges? In other way, we could go back through those particulars that I googled on the internet. It was a psychological article in which they took different sectors of the population of Japan and then measured them against these eight factors.

[17:10]

I didn't read the whole article. I thought just the eight factors was enough for me to ponder on. but how in a way each of them has its expression in our own life. Do I have enough time to not only get through the demands, the necessities, but to save her being alive? Do I have sufficient material goods to to not feel squeezed or trapped in some sense of impoverishment. Even though I live in the heart of the city, do I have enough connection to nature?

[18:15]

Do I stop often enough and look at the vast empty sky? in my own sense of competence, the capacity to meet the challenges, to meet what's being asked of me. How do I relate to that? Contentment. Where do I find the nourishment, the sense of being... that stimulates some contentment?

[19:19]

How do I allow for appreciation, gratitude in my life? How do I have enthusiasm to take on challenges? and stretch, and learn, and discover? And how am I not simply trapped in what to do? Someone told me recently, they were asked to write their ideal job description. Someone said to them, okay, we'll just write your ideal job description. They couldn't do it. When they told me that, I thought, yeah, well, it's probably a muscle you haven't used too often, you know? Much more, what do I have to do? What needs to be done? In fact, sometimes the muscle, like, well, what do I not want to do?

[20:22]

What do I not want my job to be like? You know, we're more practiced in that. So Sekito Kisen, he wrote this in Japanese, it's called Sandokai. This text, this long poem. How did these two, these moments of singularity, these moments of now, beyond all the judgments we place upon it. The way we strived to change it or resist it. The moment of simple being. And then all these ways we can engage our life and the challenges that it offers us.

[21:25]

How do they... What's the expression, what's the lived expression of them being in harmony? So the sandukai roughly translates as the harmony of singularity and complexity. And needless to say, I'm going to give you my own shabby version of what that might look like. But I'm looking to see if I brought a particular poem. And I didn't. Amazing. It was a poem by David White.

[22:27]

It's called Waking. Unfortunately, I can't quote it. Towards the end of the poem, he says, in those moments, hearing something that feels like it kneels down inside of you, and in that stillness, it whispers, You had everything you need the moment before you were born. For those of you who don't know, there's a famous Zen koan where this scholar comes to the Zen teacher and whatever the Zen teacher says, the scholar wraps it up inside

[23:33]

an intellectual understanding. So the Zen teacher asks him, what were you before your parents were born? And of course he offers, apparently, the story goes, years and years of answers, intellectual answers. And then, like a good story, eventually he drops them all and has that You have everything you need the moment before you were born. In that moment, in that pause, where we stop demanding something be different from what it is, when we stop holding away our own sense of the burden or dissatisfaction or even animosity of being alive.

[24:42]

That moment where yuttori and sattori come together, where they are in harmony. And I hope this makes some sense to you. This is the deep request of zazen. This deep request of sitting upright and attending fully to what's going on. So fully that we, in that moment, we be what's going on. We be the experience. We're not so separate from it and trying to manufacture something according to our own agenda.

[25:49]

And I would say to you this, and I'll talk a little bit more about this, the particulars, the details that bring us into that state of being they have a skill, they have a wisdom to them. Having the body be upright, having the body have a sense of balance. Sitting there and engaging the body, the breath, the mind, the emotions in a way that gives them all permission to be exactly what they are. It's like the tea teacher teaching the German students. Okay, here's a whole bunch of details. And what do they create? They create a moment of simple presence. With the other factor being a deep willingness to be open to what we might call

[27:05]

the impossibility of being alive. Of course I have all sorts of judgments and yearnings and aversions, but that will not manufacture the perfect life. But of course I have them. And sitting zazen is not going to alleviate the fact that this existence it's a dependent arising. It's dependent upon a whole bunch of conditions. And it happens in a fraction of a second. So the interplay of attending to the details of being skillful and this expansive permission and acceptance just as it is

[28:06]

sit in the middle of it with this unreserved acceptance that includes all the turmoil that arises in the human life. And then to follow that thought a little bit, I would say, in the practice of Zazan, we attend to the details, not only to start connecting, to create the capacity to be present, but to open to the experience of the detail and move towards being what is. And then this quirky thing of human consciousness, as you give your consciousness complete permission to be what it is, in however it is, it invites, sadly.

[29:24]

But not linearly, you know? I mean, if there's something deep there that's just waiting to come to the surface, it'll come to the surface in that spaciousness in its own good time. But something is also settling. In some way, the harmony of these two factors is starting to come into play. And we can see its interplay throughout how we are. You know, we can see it when we're asked, write your perfect job description, and we find out. Alluring as that is, and potentially wonderful as that would be, I'm kind of stumped, you know?

[30:34]

Maybe I have to start over here with what I want it not to be, you know? So the process of being what is, is almost inevitably a messy one. Almost inevitably, as we attempt to be what is, each of us will engage some sense of trying to control, some sense of trying to suppress, some way of being hopelessly distracted, some mysterious way, as we start to settle, we get more in touch with our unsettledness. We might turn it into an exercise in conformity.

[31:38]

Okay? Well, I should be like that. And what happens as we continue to practice each and every one of those is its own Dharma gate. We see our unsettledness and we learn patience. We learn acceptance. We we see the limitation of trying to manufacture a particular sense of being. And this is why in the Zen world, we would describe it as a koan. A koan is something that challenges us

[32:40]

a look more deeply. I was talking to someone recently and they were bringing up the simple question of, well, what should I do with my life? And I could see the look of relief on their face when I told you, you know, there's no way I can answer that for you. And I was like, well, good. I might have been concerned if you tried to. But maybe I can offer you some ways to think about it. And I would say this harmony of yuttori and sattori, this harmony of singularity and complexity, as we engage the inquiry, we learn something of a kind of purposefulness.

[33:48]

Each of these realms of my life, free time, sufficient money, environmental immunities, functional competence, contentment, enjoyment, challenge, behavioral freedom, each of them Each of them has a relevance and each of them has a request for exploration. And then I would add to that, and I will never get them all perfectly in a line. But they're still worth a certain kind of endeavor. They're still worth a certain kind of exploration of discovery. in the poetry workshop I was doing with Naomi Shiavnai. She has a very subtle kind of genius, and that is she, most people, myself included, when we start to write poetry, I don't know quite what we're supposed to do, but whatever it is, it's supposed to be very good, you know?

[35:11]

It's supposed to be some exquisite masterpiece of insight and eloquence. And Naomi's genius is that first of all, she charms you out of that. Literally. She has an exuberant a very genuine, exuberant personality that finds the world intriguing and finds other human beings delightful. She charms you out of your own sense of inadequacy that needs to be resolved by writing the perfect poem. And then her other aspect of her genius is whatever you write, she finds genius within it.

[36:23]

The way you wrote that, the rhythm of it, the way you use those adverbs was so exquisitely illustrative. And you think, huh, guess it wasn't terrible. So in the midst of opening to the challenge, can there be benevolence? Rather than being your own most severe critic, can you actually appreciate the virtue of your own expression of being, the virtue, the sincerity, that indeed each of us does have a certain genius that was there the moment before we were born, as David White says.

[37:42]

And how do we sit in a way that allows, allows for a reconnection with that sense of being? Can we attend to how we're practicing and engaging zazen, that it's not simply an exercise in reinforcing our self-imposed description of limitation? I would say along with a radical willingness to be what is. Almost like a radical benevolence. It comes forth. And I did bring one quick little poem.

[38:49]

It's called False Spring. and it's made by Michael Hannon. Only one tree in the orchard is fooled by false spring, a profligate scattering its gifts to wake the winter heart. Envy this one, you sticks of caution. Inevitable way, each of us expresses the uniqueness of our being. So that person said to me, well, what should I do with my life? And I thought of Rilke saying, live into the question. Live

[39:52]

into the question of the life you're living. Realize that there is a virtue in those moments of lifting the top of the cup, placing it, lifting the tea cup with both hands, feeling the weight, the motion of bringing it to your lips, pausing. smelling the tea, admiring the cup, and that touch, first touch on the lips, and then that first taste that opens the world. that opens our life, that provides complete permission to be, that puts us in touch with what we were before we were born, that reminds us and demonstrates for us the genius of our own being.

[41:16]

It's not some kind of Our arrogance is just our defense from our deep-seated notions of inadequacy. They're just... But that moment... And then how, mysteriously, that moment is woven into all the moments of who we are and what we are as we go through our life. Dogen Zenji coined the phrase, Jiji Yuzamai. Zamai, attending continuously, contacting continuously the interplay of what's arising from the inside, what's arising from the outside, and that each moment it's flowering and blossoming.

[42:28]

And how, as we engage that, awareness is not some virtuous burden we want to impose upon our reckless being, but more, it's more of a... thoroughly organic expression of being alive. I said to this person who asked me about what to do with their life, I said, well, please look closely at the comparison between being awake and aware of what's going on and unconsciously falling into habit and having things happen to you that you don't quite know how they happened and you don't quite know what to do with them because you weren't so present when they happened. So that's the story I made up this morning.

[43:46]

maybe to think for yourself. What of all that resonates for me? What of all that touches something that I want to live? And I would say follow that and trust that and let what that brings up for you. And even if you say, none of it, then I would say, well then, okay, if none of that, what would you say? Sometimes that's how we get at our truth. No, that's not how I would say it. Okay, how would you say it? Trust that. Live that. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[44:57]

Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information please visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[45:19]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_96.38