This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. So let's start with a moment of Zazen. You could just sit exactly as you are and notice. Notice the experience of the moment. And notice any impulse to change it, to do it, get more or less

[01:02]

There's an early Buddhist sutra where it says, just notice. Notice what's going on. Notice whether it's pleasant or unpleasant. Notice whether it happens in the body. Notice whether it happens in the mind. Notice whether it happens in the emotions. Notice when it comes. Notice when it goes. Just notice, notice, notice. And then at the end of the sutra it says, practice can be maintained for seven days, something radically shifts. With the technology of neuroscience and other ways of examining our physiology, even what happens in the ventricles of our heart, the process of noticing influences the human experience.

[04:02]

Not because we make it influence it, not because it changes it in the way that we want it to, but the surrender to noticing, letting noticing become potent, letting it become primary. has a profound influence on the human organism, on human consciousness, human physiology, human neurology. So much the experience of being alive is held captive within psychological influences and impulses and agendas.

[05:10]

Then right along with that, this complex, intricate, always evolving and always arising expression of consciousness, right along with that is this radically simple capacity of to notice. It isn't trying to define the outcome, it's just to simply experience it. And the practice of zazen is to return to that radical activity. It's to return to that radical activity and to constantly be taught by it. Be taught how to return to it, how to be open to it, how to see the varieties of way consciousness, our psychology, our physiology, our cognitive process can influence it, try to take control of it, try to define it.

[06:17]

And the agenda of practice is just to simply sustain the practice of noticing. That's the first principle. That's the primary agenda. That's going beyond the scriptures. That's if you meet the Buddha, forget the Buddha, kill the Buddha. And that's the theme of this practice period. And the marvelous thing about noticing is it's endlessly adaptive. You can notice when you're concentrated and how that profoundly influences perception.

[07:25]

How when the mind becomes concentrated, the way the experience of the moment is apprehended becomes more tactile. It becomes more vivid. It becomes more present. We can notice when there is a dominant agitating emotion, how the physiology of the body changes. The breath changes. The heart rate often changes. The body can become shivering with fear. It can become hot with anger. All these extraordinary changes in relationship to emotion. We can notice that we can enter a room and if such is our agenda, notice whether or not a particular person is there.

[08:37]

And if we really want that person to be there, be entranced by their presence. If you have a profound aversion to that person, to feel somehow... compromised and agitated by their presence. So the practice of Zen is to wake up the conditioned existence. And the process of waking up is both initiated illuminated and actualized by noticing initiated illuminated and actualized and it's a both profoundly simple noticing the sound of a striking clock

[09:53]

Profoundly challenging to sustain. Profoundly challenging to sustain that level of simplicity. But it's very helpful to remind ourselves that it is indeed the organizing principle of our practice. as someone who has taught and led a lot of meditation and doesn't, it's always striking to me how when you say to the group, okay, now we'll meditate. Everybody starts, not everybody, but invariably the response is to do something. But the mind has a notion. that this experience should be different if zazen is going to be actualized, if zazen is going to be engaged.

[11:25]

And how to shift a little bit to rediscover how radically simple noticing is. to rediscover that the process of noticing brings forth the experience. In some ways, it challenges us. It challenges us to pause, interrupt the narrative that's flowing through consciousness. with its likes and dislikes, with its multi-layered experiencing. We're doing this activity, but at the same time as we're doing this activity, there's some narrative going through us, there's some response to this activity, positive or negative, attractive or aversive.

[12:45]

to notice. Rather than be defined by that narrative, somewhat conscious, somewhat unconscious, but to notice the whole process as best we can. Or more particular, to notice how in that moment all of that is being experienced. And Zen called directly experiencing Buddha. And this is Zazen. Just before I came down to give the talk, I was in the bathroom and I could hear the group next door.

[14:02]

And I think it's an Indian group called the Heart of Living, the Art of Living. And they do an audible breathing exercise. And they make a particular sound on the exhale. And then they do it in conjunction with a tape being played of the sound. And then the breath speeds up and then it becomes quite rapid and then it slows back down. So not to say that techniques, particular techniques, are misguided. Just to say that at the heart of the technique, to come into experiencing what's happening in the moment.

[15:07]

So as we begin the practice period, to remind ourselves, okay, what is the heart? of practice, to wake up, to be the moment, to notice how it arises, to notice how it falls away, and to let that noticing unfold the human experience, to let that noticing illuminate the human experience. to let the process of noticing profoundly influence the mechanics of the human organism. So here's how Dogen Zenji talks about it in one of his essays called Continuous Practice. On the Buddha way of the Buddha ancestors,

[16:24]

There is one always unsurpassable practice, continuous and sustained. Between aspiration, practice, waking up and nirvana, there is no gap. Continuous practice is the circle of the way. The process of waking up doesn't change. The content of what's experienced endlessly changes. But the process remains the same. Each one of us in our moment of waking up, whether it's half a second

[17:28]

that fleets through without really noticing, or whether it becomes a profound influence and the rest of our life is changed forever. It's the same directly experiencing the moment. What changes is the fullness, the degree of immersion within it, and the length of it. If it's half a second and it's fleeting, then it may have an imperceptible influence on who we are and how we are. If it's profound and long enough and utterly committed to, for three seconds.

[18:29]

for ten seconds then something fundamental about our being is starting to shift to notice this process and to let the noticing become a theme that we carry with us, that we enact repeatedly. So that the interrupting of the narrative is frequent enough that the narrative becomes less authoritative, that the story we're telling ourselves about reality is interrupted enough that we start to introduce some element of doubt about the absolute truth of the story.

[19:38]

That it's interrupted enough that the way the narrative structures reality is not so locked in place. It's not so compellingly so that an alternative can't arise. To interrupt the narrative enough that the ability to notice that we're putting together a narrative starts to become... evident. And each one of these is like a not exactly a stage, but it can be like a significant event in the process of practice.

[21:01]

It's not unusual that as you diligently interrupt your narrative that there's a kind of uncomfortable psychological feeling. It's like that narrative entails an expression of your life that's profoundly significant for you. If you look at it psychologically, those daydreams, those rants about the person you don't like, those grateful thoughts about what you have a deep appreciation for, they all hold a psychological significance. And when you start to interrupt them rather than just say,

[22:07]

live them as the truth, as you start to interrupt them and just see them as the consciousness of the moment, it's almost like there's a psychological dilemma. But I have to infuse them with full authority or I won't be me. And in a way, it's true. If you don't infuse them with the psychological authority, it won't be you. So a kindred aspect of practice, as we engage in that way, is bringing about A grindedness.

[23:10]

A grinding in the moment. So that as we start to poke at the world according to me as the definitive expression of reality, there's literally the capacity to hold that... that arises for us as we start to loosen it up, the world according to me. So, as we begin the process, as we sustain the process of noticing, noticing, noticing, to hold it in a way that recognizes this is not an easy process for a human being.

[24:17]

This is not an easy process in contrast to sustaining me. So to create that grounding, to come at it with the understanding that this may be so. Now, confusingly, as we also do it, in that moment of noticing, when it has some connectedness, extraordinarily, it has, along with its immediacy, it has a sense of validation or authority. As we enter the moment, something in us knows that this is so.

[25:25]

It's like when we look at a beautiful sunset and the majesty of the moment draws us into deep connection. As if something is affirmed. not because we're getting what we want, but something in the nature of being in the moment has its own affirmation. So this too. So this strange mix that can arise for us. It was the Tibetan teacher, Chogram Trungpa, and he said, it's a little bit like being under a shower of really cold water and a shower of really hot water. It's like this deep affirmation and this deep unsettling. And sometimes it may be singularly one, sometimes it may be singularly the other.

[26:28]

And a lot of the time, some were in between, some variation on a thing. But to sit down and commit to the process of noticing, to sit down and acknowledge that this very experience called me is somewhat of a mystery. And then as you study, bring forth the presence of noticing, you discover that there's much more mysterious than your first thought. The more you pay attention and you watch the flickering, the movement of thought and feeling, that even in the midst of sincere

[27:47]

intentional involvement, all sorts of stuff happens. And the process of noticing is not so much to kind of like try to focus in, but to actually open up. And even though within that wide field of noticing. There may be presence in our physical being. There may be staying aware of the flow of breath. There's still this wide willingness to be whatever arises. So each time we sit, it's like this rediscovery, it's like this reconnection, it's this recommitment to this process.

[28:59]

And the nature of human consciousness is, because of our propensity towards thought, of constructing reality, It's like we forget. We forget how to be aware. So each time we sit down, it's about rediscovering what it is to be present. And then as we carry it throughout our day, it's the same thing. It's a rediscovering what it is to be present and experiencing what's happening right then. And so this is the theme of this practice period. We study it on our cushion, we carry it into the myriad activities of the day.

[30:13]

It cracks something open. It teaches us about non-grasping. It teaches us about experiencing what's already present. And it starts to undo the constructs of our personality, our psychology, of how we formulate the world in this service of our own agendas and how to let them become our teacher to let the moments of connectedness teach us about connection to let the arisings often the complicated and unsettling horizons of the self, let that teach us too.

[31:23]

And Dugan Zinji says, it's like a circle. It's like we bring forth noticing, the whole dynamic nature of existence is noticed, and it returns us to noticing. Or more usually, something arises and it takes us on a journey. And then in a moment, in many moments, we return to something fundamental, something about just noticing the experience of the moment again. And Dogen says, This is the way of practice. It's the way of practice that all the great teachers and ancestors and Buddhists practiced.

[32:28]

It's initiated through aspiration. It's engaged through practice. It's expressed through awakening. and it gives, it brings into being non-grasping liberation, nirvana. And then Dogen says, and these are intertwined without a gap. In that willingness, in that moment of volition, to experience. Something is experienced. The experiencing awakens. And in that non-grasping awakening, something's allowed to flow.

[33:41]

Something's liberated. So this process, that each time we sit down, we rediscover, we remember, we re-enact, we realize. That we don't turn it into some lofty aspiration that we're going to do we don't turn it into something that isn't already happening in this this is you know part of our remembering don't substitute doing for being

[34:47]

Not to say don't find within being uprightness. Not to say don't allow attention to breath to sustain the activity of noticing. Just to say don't do breath. Don't do posture. Don't make it into something that has to be asserted that isn't already there. How easy it is for the mind to relate to posture and think, oh yeah, if my hips were a little more this way, or if I could move in a way that that sensation wasn't there. From inside, noticing, the body finds the body.

[35:57]

The breath breathes the body. And consciousness experiences the content of consciousness. something in us profoundly knows that this is so. Because we're alive. The challenge for us is can we return to this being frequently so that something of the intrigue of the psychological agendas of our life are not so compelling as to rule out direct experiencing of the moment.

[37:21]

Can we return to awareness? Can we return to noticing on a consistent enough basis that those psychological intrigues loosen up enough to allow direct experiencing to have some expression, some engagement. We can do that through a disciplined, asserted effort. It is possible. And that's usually where we all start. We bring in deliberate, intentional activity. And that deliberate, intentional activity

[38:25]

If it's mechanical, if it's not done with full awareness, if we're just kind of mindlessly going through it, it has no potency. So, as most of us know only too well, we make a big deal at little details. Because in making a big deal out of the little details, we support consciousness to experience, to notice. In our formal practice, of course, this heritage of a big deal out of little details is abundant. But then the interesting challenge is how do you carry some of the flavor of that into your own life?

[39:33]

How do you do that while you're sitting at your desk or emailing or answering the phone or the numerous activities that happen throughout your day? How can you bring forth that commitment to attending to detail, to particular? How can you bring it forth? How can you enliven it so that it draws consciousness back into this activity of noticing? So that's what I would suggest, that you explore that question. And I would add, not to explore it in some ponderous, solemn way, but to think of it more as a game.

[40:38]

I'd like to remind myself that in any moment, in any particular behavior, in any particular expression of our being, we're all making... Our best effort to be happy and avoid suffering. Even though it might not appear like that to others. Or even to ourselves. In some way, that's what we're doing. This is my momentary expression of trying to be happy and not suffering. How extraordinary it expresses itself just like this. Can we be intrigued about being me? Can we be intrigued about what it takes to wake up to this flow of activity called me?

[41:49]

Can we remind ourselves that that waking up can be enormously helpful? It will indeed, in a profound way, help us to suffer less and to cause other people less suffering. that kind of playful, kind spirit explore, okay, what would it look like? What kind of details, what kind of strategy would help bring awareness into my life? Our practice becomes inquiry.

[43:08]

Our practice becomes a kindly curiosity. Our practice has more to do with undoing than doing. More to do with not knowing than knowing. helps us hold it lightly. Thank you. 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.

[44:13]

May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[44:15]

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