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 crowd. Well, as I promised my GICO, this is not a Way-Seeking Mind talk. This is a talk... that developed from a conversation I had with Tayo Lipscomb over lunch about four years ago, in which the conversation evolved into describing the Zazen that we're doing now as old person's Zazen, the ancient person's Zazen. Tayo Lipscomb has been around Zen Center longer, than I have.

[01:00]

Oh, good. I love Wednesday nights on Page Street. I first met Tayo in 1983 or 1984 when I did my first practice period here at City Center. It was a practice period that was not particularly well attended. It sort of was the phoenix that rose out of the ashes of that time. Reb Anderson led the practice period, and he was dynamic, energetic. He energized everybody, and it was great. It was a great way... for me to segue my practice from five or six years of practicing a Rinzai style, Sasaki Roshi, and come to Zen Center.

[02:10]

And I was just knocked out. Paul Disko was his Jisha. And I didn't know the pattern of bells and Han for keeping time. And it would seem like all of a sudden Paul and Reb would mysteriously energize themselves and pop up in the room. I didn't even see them come in. I didn't hear them come in, but there they were. If you all know who Paul Disko is, he was around Zen Center. He was a Zen Center priest around Zen Center for a long time. He's still a dear, dear friend of Zen Center. is probably one of the best Japanese carpenters in the world, and I'm sure the best outside of Japan. He built Larry Ellison's spectacular home down on the peninsula. Also in that practice period were Barbara Cohn, who was a great leader for Zen Center, and she was later to be one of the

[03:22]

incredible leaders of Zen Center. She was responsible for getting a lot of stuff back up and running when it needed to get back up and running. And her husband, Jim Jordan, who was a real, real genius. And Paul Haller had just come back, I think, from being a forest monk in Southeast Asia. And Michael Wenger was a lay teacher. And he spent most of his time in lumberjack shirts and a sort of tattered blue raucousel. And on the Tantotan, we were assigned seats. And on the Tantotan, there was a few people and then Tygen Dan Layton, who... has now the abbot of the Chicago Zen Center, and a magnificent translator and lecturer, translator of Dogen, lecturer of all kinds of stuff.

[04:34]

He always has a new book coming out. And then me, and then on the end of the taan, right where the hole exists for you to tumble down into Lily Alley, sat. Tayo Lipscomb. So I sat in between Taigen and Tayo. And they weren't priests yet. It was before they were ordained. And there were so few people in that practice period, even though I've named a lot of people, there weren't very many others. And there were so few people in that practice period that we were able to take tea in the abbot's ante room upstairs. I don't know how many people that would fit, but I'm sure it's not more than 20 if you put them in with a shoehorn. And I became friends with Tayo after I saved his life. He was magnificent. I'd seen sleepers at Mount Baldy.

[05:36]

Anytime Sasaki Roshi began a lecture, by the third syllable in Japanese, people were spinning. But Nobody had there had it on Tayo. Tayo went to sleep before the bell rang. And he had a great posture in which he could rotate and rotate and never tumble over or tumble into the wall. But one morning, he must have been dead asleep, and he was fixing to tumble down into the darkness pit there down into the stairway that leads down to Lily, the fire exit. And I reached out and grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him back, and that woke him up. And he immediately bowed. And we've been really good friends since then.

[06:37]

He's just great. I didn't see him much in his middle... period at Green Gulch when he had lots of students and he was ordained and then he got Dharma transmission. But I started visiting with him more after he fell in love again. He found a woman that he had gone to high school with. I'm not sure if they were high school sweethearts or not. Do you know, Jeremy? But they did know each other in high school. And I know that he always held the torch for her. Whether it was just a torch that was unrequited or if it was a torch that was relit, I'm not sure. But he moved in with her into her condo in Port Enrichment. And he began taking these magnificent photographs.

[07:38]

And at one point I saw a photograph that he had taken of... San Francisco taken from the bay with the Dolphin Club and the South Bend Rowing Club, an aquatic park there, and the pier that comes out. But it's taken from the bay. And because my beautiful wife, Heidi, who's over here, we just had our 50th anniversary last night. But I gave that photograph to Heidi. I bought it from Tygen. And that was the reason we were having our lunch. He takes wonderful, wonderful photographs. And since then, he's moved to Asheville, Ashton, Asheville, North Carolina. And he is living there happily and taking pictures and having his latter-day romance. It's really, really sweet.

[08:41]

But we were sitting in the sushi bar. What else do I eat but sushi? We were sitting in the sushi bar and we started talking about old persons, Zazen, how we approach Zazen. It wasn't that formal conversation, but that's what it was about. How sitting at our exalted age was a little bit different from the way we approached Zazen when we were younger. it may be that they turned the dose of testosterone down. I'm not sure. Someone out there is in charge of that stuff. And I don't know. I don't know. But I do know that it's much easier. And it's much more full of humor. I mean, I remember...

[09:42]

When I was younger, if I would find myself like this all of a sudden, or would doze off, I would really reprimand myself. Oh, you stupid. You're moving, or you're sleeping. And now I just go, oh, okay. Wow, sleeping. Another big mistake. We don't take it as seriously, but it's still of utmost importance. of the things that one needs to concentrate on, especially when you get older, is your posture. Because we all start to break down a little bit, you know? Our knees, our hips, our back. I've had one back operation. I'm sure everyone else here can complain about some kind of injury. I sat with a dear friend who's still

[10:45]

using the corner cane during the last sashim. The corner cane chair. Yeah, everybody gets something. You don't get away free. But it's really, really important that you keep your spine straight during zazen, even though things are sort of falling apart. Keeping your spine straight is one of the maybe the three keys that I have to offer when I'm giving zazen advice. You can't pay attention. You can't be self-aware. You can't follow your breath if you're not keeping your spine straight. So if you have to sit in a chair, if you have to lie down, if you have to sit this way or that way, half lotus, Burmese, whatever it's going to be, Make sure that you keep your spine straight.

[11:48]

Lift yourself up from the chest and push yourself in from your lower back if you're sitting, whether you're sitting in a chair or you're sitting on the floor. You just want to lift yourself up. And that keeps you attentive. And once you're attentive, you want to keep your eyes half open. my mistake tends to be closing my eyes. And I am now haunted by Keith Whitley. How many people here know who Keith Whitley is? Not a one. Keith Whitley was a wild man in Nashville who wrote songs and sang them and was married to... I can't remember who he was married to, but she was real cute, and later was with Troy Aikman, if you know who that is. But Keith Whitley had a hit song that goes, Don't close your eyes, let it be me.

[12:56]

And so as soon as I start closing my eyes, Keith Whitley is singing, Don't close your eyes, let it be me, to me every time. So I offer that to you. You can go and... download Keith Whitley's Don't Close Your Eyes, and that can be a help to you when you find yourself falling asleep, and you just crank it in, you know, you just crank it in your brain. So you got, you know, two things happen when you close your eyes. One is you fall asleep, and we already know that you end up at the bottom of Lily Alley if you do that. But Fu Schroeder said a wonderful thing to me that made so much sense. Closing your eyes is inviting the cave of demons. And what she meant by that was that if you close your eyes, you will have tons of more random thoughts.

[14:03]

Strawberries, the giant starting lineup. How can you con somebody into helping you sow your rakasu? It can be almost any theme, but you will be visited by these kind of thoughts more and more if you close your eyes. So keep your eyes open. The third really important thing is your breathing. No matter whether you're... sitting in a chair or lying down or sitting on a cushion, you should try to breathe from your hara. That hasn't been too emphasized in Zen practice in the last 15 years. But when I first started sitting Zazen, whether it was here or... and Mount Baldy, or with the International School of Zen, those crazy Kendoists.

[15:09]

Everybody said to put a lot of emphasis on your hara, and it was really, really important. That's the area between, say, your pubic hairline and your belly button. And if you put your strength and your emphasis there, your breaths will be full and long, and you'll... gradually move down to where you're breathing five, four, three breaths a minute. And those are long and steady breaths. And when you're breathing like that, your concentration level really, really improves. So you can access Zen practice much easier. Those are the keys, really, that I use. Breath, posture... and eyes open. And then, what do you do once you get there? Well, there's a koan that I like.

[16:17]

Koan 80 from the Blue Cliff Record. I can't remember exactly how it goes, but it goes something like, a monk asks Joe Shue, does a newborn baby have the six senses or not? And Joshu said, it's like a ball on the rapids. Oh, okay, like a ball on the rapids. So the monk didn't get it, and I didn't get it either. So the monk goes and asks, Tosu, what the heck did Joshu mean? And Tosu said, phenomena after phenomena, Phenomena after phenomena. It's very clear in describing how one deals with zazen. Here we have vroom and blah, blah, blah, blah. And those phenomena just go endlessly through the day, through the night.

[17:26]

It used to be, and they've taken away the phenomena of bibu, bibu, bibu. A friend of mine once wrote a poem about bibu. You know, there's a very famous poem by a very famous poet, a haiku poet, old frog jumps into pond, or a frog jumps into old pond, plop! And my friend wrote a poem. It was before the bus routes were changed. Paid Street bus turns right onto Paid Street. Be-boo, be-boo, be-boo. And when they turned right in the old days, they would always make a sound to warn the pedestrians. That was the sound they made. So what I'm pointing to is that you go right to the phenomena before you name it. before you characterize it, before you categorize it, you go straight to a feeling.

[18:37]

I can't mimic a feeling for you, but you can do it for yourself. Whether it's pain or tension or grief or sadness or happiness... those all manifest themselves physically in your body. Allowing those to be phenomena after phenomena endlessly is one of the keys of Zen practice. Phenomena after phenomena. Very similar to what Joshua said about the newborn baby. I was listening to Radiolab about a year ago and they had a pediatric... psychologist on, a British guy, and he was pretty cool, and he was hypothesizing that a newborn baby does not think, just like Joshua's newborn baby.

[19:43]

Why does a newborn baby not think? Because a newborn baby does not have language yet. So, the newborn baby is totally experiencing phenomena after phenomena, like the ball on rushing rapids. So you just eliminate language while you're sitting and just allow phenomena to occur. Am I done yet? Okay. I told Michael Wanger, my dear friend, ever-patient teacher that I was going to be talking about zazen today, and he said, don't forget to tell him about effort. The truth is, I don't know what to say about effort. I can quote a whole bunch of people. Yasutani Roshi said that you need to put effort into your zazen until you sweat.

[20:47]

And Sojin Mel Weitzman said, kind of retorted to that and said, that's not like any kind of zazen that Suzuki Roshi ever taught any of us. It's a very gentle, present zazen. Suzuki Roshi said about effort, when you hear the bell, go to the zendo. That's You know, when the inquiring mind inquires, answer. It's just natural. I think early in my Zen sitting, I learned how to respond to the bell, but what's more difficult is responding to the alarm on Clipper Street, which is where I've always billeted.

[21:53]

during my almost 40 years of Zen practice. But, I know so many of you have found the same thing with your Zen practice. Over a long period of time, you keep coming back. You just keep coming back. It's very difficult to find the middle way, especially if you live outside of the building, and to get You can either crunch down on yourself and, oh, I'm going to go every morning no matter what. And the alarm goes off, whether you've been up all night or whatever, or you've been working on a real estate deal, or you couldn't sleep. It doesn't matter. You go to the Zendo. But you have to really tighten yourself down to do that. And it's also easy for you to make the mistake of just, oh, I'm going to sleep through it every morning. What's really difficult is for you to come over and over again after you've failed.

[23:01]

That failure does not become an impediment for you to be consistent or to find the middle way or to practice. Because we all fail over and over. We all make mistakes. What's really, really class is if you can just ignore your weaknesses and just come. Come to the Zendo. I have a note here to talk about faith also. You know... Most of us that come to this practice have a reaction to faith. As soon as somebody says faith, we go, oh, that's not part of Buddhism that has to do with faith.

[24:08]

But faith is really important. Faith, if you have faith, it can... Reinforce your effort, especially when your effort has resulted in a series of mistakes. But you have faith that the process is going to work. It's going to help you. You know, one of my friends, I'm not sure this is exactly right, but I do like the imagery. One of my friends said, faith in Zen Buddhism is... knowing that from seeing the horns behind the fence, the whole bull is there. So you can make that jump. And knowing the whole bull is there gives you the impetus to come back and keep doing it.

[25:18]

I was in the bank today and I saw all these people passing up the opportunity to practice and return to their true selves because they were busy texting in line. You know, there are so many pieces of Mara out there to pull us away from our practice, but there's just as many pieces of Buddha out there to pull us back. You can sit, you can practice anywhere, in any position, in any place. I used to sit between soccer games at the corner flag. Other people have sat in airports in Midland, Texas. but you don't actually have to sit on a cushion.

[26:25]

You can do that in a chair. The only place that I've found it difficult to sit is on an airplane because the seats are kind of awful. They're kind of like that. You're just sliding backwards or forwards the whole time. I can't do it on an airplane, but just about any other venue, there's a time and a place for practice. Okay, well... That's all I have, but if anybody has any questions, I'm glad to answer them, or I'm glad to attempt to answer them. Yes? Old person's Zen? Yeah. New person's Zen? Yeah, same thing. Yeah, same thing. Yeah, no difference. You know, it's just, I like to use the old person Zen because that's where I am right now.

[27:25]

It's just a coloration. It's like using pink in a coloring book. I could have just as easily used blue. But I do want to warn that I was a little bit crazy in my first years of Zen. I was so tight and I wanted enlightenment. I wanted something I could put on my head and wear around. instead of just accepting everything that was. And there's something about my mellowing in my later years that's allowed me to accept just this. And just this is enough. Miguel. Miguel. Well, you have to think about a strategy.

[28:30]

First of all, you have to identify what the pain means. Pain is a message. Sometimes the message is a very loud messenger with much ado about nothing, and sometimes the message is very subtle and it's a warning. I sat two sashines in South America in 2013 with incredible back pain and forced my way through it and ended up with a back operation. On the other hand, I've given up several sashines in my life because my foot went to sleep too much. So you have to be able to have the skill to tell the difference. And after going through them both, I would say it's really important to be aware when you might be hurting yourself, and it's really important to be aware when you might be bullshitting yourself.

[29:39]

And use a professional. Go to the doctor. Go to an orthopedic. Go to somebody who really knows. There's really wonderful orthopedic people out there if you're having particular knee or hip or back shoulder pain. I'm a traditional medicine person, so I'm not so much chiropractor, acupuncture, blah, blah, blah, but that's just me. But do figure it out and then act accordingly. Somebody over here? No? You guys want to go home? Is there an ideal duration for which you should sit down? Five minutes is good. Fifty minutes is good.

[30:40]

I think, you know, you and I are living outside and with all the pressures that we have going on in ourselves, and we can't come here and answer the bell. I think coming here and answering the bell is the best thing you can do. If you can't do it, if your time aligns accordingly, for you to do that. But when you sit at home, one thing to avoid is looking at the dang watch all the time. People say they don't do it, but I used to do it after I'd been practicing for 20 years. Is the 20 minutes up yet? But you never would do that in a Zen doll. So take your watch and throw it across the room as soon as you start it. And then when you hear that beep, then you get up. to whatever time that you have prescribed for yourself. Because it's really difficult when it's just you. They say over and over again, don't make up standards on your own. Sometimes you have to do that when you're sitting by yourself.

[31:45]

You only have 10 minutes. And you know you have 10 minutes. And your teacher might tell you, sit 30 minutes every day. And here I am telling you, sit 30 minutes every day. But sometimes you only have 5 minutes. And 5 minutes is... infinite. It's perfect. Sit what you have. I would like if I don't have if you have unlimited ways to manipulate your day, I'd like to see people sit in the morning and in the evening and maybe half as long in the evening as they do in the morning. Something like that ratio. But you've got to make up that ratio on yourself. Time. Where? Tell me. Just point again. Oh. Oh! Outside of my peripheral vision. Sorry.

[32:46]

I have grandchildren that age. I get it. Go ahead. That's a great question. You've got to use what you've got. You can't get something later.

[34:17]

There's wonderful things that you can do in your 30s, 20s, 30s, 40s that I can't Those of us that are elderly can't do it anymore. Yaza. You know what yaza is? Yeah. Night sitting. After... When you're sitting on Sashin and after the last period, you know, it used to be de rigueur to sit all night or to sit as much... Take your rakasu off... put it away, and you go back to the zindo. And everybody was in there, you know, until midnight at least. And that was like, you know, there was a lot of competitive zin, too. Who can sit until the very end? Who's the last person to leave the zindo? Or in my case, even now, who's the first person to be in the zindo in the morning? Am I not always there when you get there, Alaria?

[35:25]

but I'm the first person in the Zendo. I had to work really hard to keep that title about two practice periods ago. I didn't come much, but when I came, I was the first person in the Zendo. And then, you know, you get, use that, use the energy that you have now, because later on you're not going to have it. But what you get in return for losing the energy is you get sort of a well-being that... You know, I want to caution you to be aware that I'm talking in sort of absolute dichotomies, but they're not. They overlap and things change, and then things change again. So what I guess I'm saying is bottom line is that you use exactly what you have on right now. Sometimes you're 25 and you're in the Midland airport,

[36:26]

And sometimes you're 65 and you're in the zindo. You just got to practice where you are over and over. Yes? I just wanted to give a plug for rest. So sitting is like the only time where I can just give my preconceived stuff. Good point. Okay. Thank you all. 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.

[37:28]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[37:41]

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