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, everyone. Hi. This is my first time giving a talk at Green Gulch. Yeah. So it's always fun to... come to a new place, and the forums are a little different. At Tassajara and City Center, we only chant the opening chant once instead of three times. So perfect opportunity to not get stuck in habits, right? And I want to thank Latanto, Timo-san, for the invitation, and my old friend Cam, Reverend Zenju Osho. Good to see you. Some people that I have known for a while here.

[01:03]

And welcome to everyone who I don't know, and perhaps we'll get to know each other a little better for the favorite part of the whole thing, right? The tea and cookies. And hello to those of you online. There's a camera right in front of me, so... Yeah, so I just returned about two months ago. I left Tassajara Zen Mountain Center where I had been living this time around for 27 months. So I have come and gone quite a bit at Tassajara since I first quit my job in 2008 and went to Tassajara. So I was just there for these 27 months, and I left on December 18th, so it's almost been exactly two months. And of course, people have been asking me, you know, do you miss it?

[02:04]

And I would say yes and no, right? There's many ways that it's difficult or challenging to live in that kind of environment. And for those of you who've never been to Tassajara, it's a beautiful mountain valley. just about an hour outside of Carmel, oh, 45 minutes outside of Carmel Valley Village over this steep, windy, unpaved, mountainous road that occasionally washes out and gets too muddy to drive over or too icy. But I think what I miss most is, of course, the quiet. And at Tassajara, there's this wonderful creek that goes by. It's almost always running. I think I'll only see in a few summers where it's gotten down to pools in different areas rather than a flowing creek. But that Tassajara Creek is this one continuous sound that is quite beautiful and relaxing, and it's easy to fall asleep to it. And now that I'm at city center, that river is a river of noise, right?

[03:07]

Dogs barking, people yelling, sirens, wayward car alarms. So it's been, you know, taking a little bit to get used to living in the city. And what I find really transformative about Tassajara, practicing at Tassajara for as long as I have, is there's so many opportunities, a lot of them unexpected, to study the self, right? So we're here staring at the wall, practicing seated meditation to become more intimate with what's going on with ourselves, right? Our psycho-emotional, physical landscape, if you will, right? We're taking that backward step. as some of you might have heard that phrase that A.H. Dogen uses, to look at ourselves, to investigate thoroughly, which is also a phrase that he really likes to use as well. So we're studying this person that I call Heather, right? That's my responsibility. And at Tassajara, like I said, there's a lot of opportunities to study this one.

[04:09]

Not only when I'm sitting on the cushion for all the meditation that we do there, but also just being immersed, in this natural environment. And I think that transformative aspect of being in nature for so long, and before these last two years or so, I've lived there before for about seven years, is that you start to feel a little more elemental, not so solid, not so separate from the creek and the trees and the birds and the flowers and the people that you meet on the path, whether they're there for guest season or they're your... Dharma friends, occasionally your Dharma frenemies, but you are immersed in this natural setting. And I have yet, maybe you all can come up with a new word with me, but that word environment feels like your surroundings. And I don't know, when I feel like I'm surrounded, that's like a defensive posture, right? So I don't like that word because it means surroundings, environments.

[05:14]

So I want a word that is more that I feel integrated in nature rather than surrounded by it. I'm a part of nature. And I think that that's what happens in our very modern, very busy society is we don't have an opportunity to feel elemental. And maybe some of you who live out sort of in the wilderness, and I'm from the Bronx, so this is wilderness, that we don't get to feel those elements, right? The air, water, the heat of our bodies, how we're just these bodies. And it's interesting, when I'm at Tassajara, I have a much higher tolerance for cold. And I remember one time when I left, I went to New York to help out at the Brooklyn Zen Center. It was this massive snowstorm that they haven't had in a long time. And I was all bundled up with my boots and my down jacket. But at Tassajara, when it's like 25 degrees, I'm walking around in my robes. And I don't know where that superpower comes from, but there's some way that my body is regulating itself.

[06:21]

Obviously, I know being out in those kinds of conditions are, you know, out on the mountaintop would be life-threatening. But just walking through the valley, feeling like I'm part of, because I am, we are, not separate from... what's going on, and somehow our body regulates itself. And you're also, when you stay for a year or two, you're in rhythm with the seasons, right? You feel the seasons inside of you, right? You feel these seasons. We all have our own internal seasons. Like for me, the summer, I get really irascible when it's hot. Just saying. And for those of you who survived my irascibility at Tassajara, maybe Cam a little bit, and Kiko was there as well, I don't like hot weather, so there's a part of me that comes out in really hot weather that maybe isn't always so friendly. It just wants to get cold and stay in the creek and feel comfortable, right? We like comfort. So these opportunities to study, the opportunity to study myself is everywhere at Tassajara, not only obviously in the interactions with my fellow community members, but also with the natural environment.

[07:31]

And one of those occasions was when I went and hiked the Tony Trail, which if you've been to Tassajara, it's one of the steepest trails. And on my way down, I was feeling really kind of proud because I'm a little bit of a, as my spouse likes to say, she calls me a seal. I just kind of like to lie around. So I was feeling really proud that I had gone up the Tony Trail and down, and I was making my way through this knee-high grass, right, kind of reed-like grass. all at once, or I don't know, in such rapid succession it felt all at once, there was what? The rattle his coil of death. So I say I, but it didn't feel like I. I just rattle his coil. I didn't really see the rattlesnake, and I just heard it first, and then this body just jumped as far away as possible, right? And then I could see it over there, It was very thick and dark brown.

[08:32]

And I was like, whoa. And it was still hissing at me. So immediately what happens, right, is I did this, like, there was this, I guess I would say, an automatic body scan. All of a sudden, you know, I felt my thumping of my heart was still going, all this adrenaline rush. And, you know, if you've ever been in a situation like that, your senses really come online and you're just searching your surroundings. And I'm in the high grass. I'm still looking for another rattlesnake. And so it was going back to the creek. There's parts of the creek that have maybe less of this tall grass for a rattlesnake to hide in. But there's also a lot of poison oak, which I have never gotten living there. And I didn't want to get. But for me, I... just went through what may have been poison oak because I knew that rattlesnakes don't go in the water. And I was trying to perhaps escape the rattlesnake or the rattlesnake's friend or if there was another rattlesnake.

[09:34]

So I just went into the creek through maybe what was poison oak and just went across and then went back to the main grounds of Tassajara. It was a day off. So I just got my picnic lunch. And I went to the lower garden, and everything just seemed so vibrant, right? Because there was just this experience of, whoa. So I sat there in the lower garden, and I just marveled at how incredibly beautiful the Mexican sage is. It's just, I love purple. One day this will be purple. I just love purple. And so there was this gorgeous Mexican sage there, and I just ate my lunch, and I just was really grateful for being. I mean, I know... It's rare that somebody gets bitten by a rattlesnake. I think it's only happened once in like 50 years in the vicinity of Tassajara. So it's not something that happens a lot. So later that evening, of course it's a great war story.

[10:37]

There's lots of war stories at Tassajara. But later in that evening I was reflecting on this event where I jumped completely out of the way to get away from this rattlesnake. And it reminded me of some of those stories that I would hear, these awakening stories that I heard when I first started practicing Zen in Austin, Texas back in 2001 or so. Right where the teacher hits somebody with a kotsu or a whisk or they hear a sound and all of a sudden they're awakening, they had great kensho and they're a completely different person. So one of those first stories that I heard was... about this teacher, Kyokin Chikan, and he lived in the 900s, the Tang Dynasty, in China, and he taught on Fragrant Mountain, and they say he had over 1,000 monastic disciples. But although he was a very skilled scholar, he had all these volumes of the sutras that he would study, he had not yet realized enlightenment.

[11:45]

And one day his teacher... offers him this koan, right? Koan is one of those paradoxical anecdotes that confound our logical mind. What was your original face before you were born? I've also heard it. What was your original face before your parents were born? So, of course, being a scholar that he is, he rushes to his books to see where the answer is, right? He's looking for the answer. not trusting this, looking for knowledge in his intellect. Because he's not able to find the answer, he burns all of his books and he decides, he leaves his teacher and he decides to go traveling. And he builds, of course, a grass hut. And he plants bamboo to keep him company. And one day, right, he's sweeping, right, one of those daily activities that we do quite a bit at all three temples of San Francisco Zen Center.

[12:50]

And a piece of tile, and I'm not sure where the tile came from in the middle of where he was, but maybe it was a pebble, pebble, tile. It hits a bamboo stalk. And he had this experience. He had this kensho, this dropping of body and mind, this great awakening, they call it. And he composed this verse of understanding, right? So if you've ever read koans or studied koans with a teacher, the person would, the student after realizing, or the master would write a verse of their understanding of that koan. So here's his understanding of the koan about what was your original face before your parents were born. So Chi Kahn writes this. One hit. And I lost what I know. I won't be training myself again. Action and repose given over to the old path. I won't be sinking into worry.

[13:53]

No traces wherever I go. Deportment beyond sound and sight. Masters of the way in all directions. Masters of the way in all directions. We'll call this the highest faculty. So after this unexpected event, he no longer needed to train himself by cultivating his intellect. And he had already burned all of his books. Because he knew the thick weeds of these concepts obscured his original face. They covered the old path. The old path of the original face. Buddha nature is another way that we often refer to. This mystery of life. And so... In the middle of this everyday activity, and as for those of you who come to these temples often and maybe have your own practice of meditation, part of this tradition is bringing that zazen mind, the cultivation of concentration, mindfulness, stability of body, stability of mind to our everyday activities.

[15:02]

And so perhaps because he was so focused, this undivided activity of sweeping, when the tile struck the bamboo, he had this awakening. Realizing that his thinking mind, all the words and phrases in all of his books and all of his thoughts were not going to give him the answer to that koan. But because we're so identified with thinking mind, and for those of you who have been meditating for a while, or maybe those of you who have just started, maybe this is part of the inquiry that's come up for you. is who is the one that is thinking? What are thoughts? When I first started practicing Zen all those years ago, A, I never thought I'd be here. I just wanted a relief from suffering, and no one ever said anything to me that I wasn't my thoughts, I wasn't my emotions. I was raised very Catholic. Well, my father was very Catholic. I was just raised Catholic, but I never really resonated with that religion.

[16:06]

So this is a process, again, of studying ourselves, right? Studying ourselves to see what is this one? What is this one? But because we get so identified with our thinking mind and when we're meditating, we can see some of that, right? If our body and mind slows down still, we can start to notice some of these thoughts that might be arising, notice what is going on in the body, too. And for me, with the situation with the rattlesnake, I think part of the inquiry that came up for me was, well, it didn't seem like there was a lot of thoughts when I heard the rattle and the hiss and the coil. I just moved out of the way, right? There was this instinctual response or reaction. And so the question was, well, you know, who's perceiving, right? Who is perceiving when it doesn't feel like... there's a heather there perceiving what's going on, or there's not these volitional mental formations.

[17:12]

So these volitional mental formations did not seem to arise from the time that that sound was heard, those sounds were heard, and I jumped out of the way. So when one of our five sense organs makes contact with a corresponding sense object in its sense field, we have what we call contact, sensory contact. So in this case, the sound of the rattlesnake, this raspy hiss, I heard it, and because there's hearing consciousness, that's the sense field, there was a reaction. So these volitional formations, or samskara is one way, maybe some of you have heard of that, it's the fourth aggregate out of this paradigm of five aggregates that the Buddha put forth as one of his teaching, one of his main teachings of how to understand, how to study this body, this body-mind.

[18:13]

And I'm going to talk a little bit about each one of those. So these mental formations include psycho-emotional, this is the fourth aggregate, but I didn't talk about them in order, so just heads up for you linear people. So mental formations include psycho-emotional processes, if you will. I mean, we would call them nowadays emotions like joy, anger, confusion, concentration, equanimity, and in this case, fear. And these are all dynamic, right? They're processes. They're impermanent, and they're also impersonal. And if you know the three marks of existence... There is suffering, right? This dukkha, this dissatisfaction. When we cling on what's arising and make it into a me, we take things personally. That's one way that we can feel we can suffer. And then there are also impermanent. So the rattlesnake, fortunately the rattlesnake didn't follow me around everywhere hissing and coiling.

[19:15]

So this was a momentary sensory experience, right? So it was impermanent. And then also there's this... Other characteristic of conditioned phenomena, which is everything in this room, except for space, but that's another talk. And that is that there's this not self-characteristic. So whatever's arising in our sense doors is not who we are. It's just passing phenomena. So the trunk of a banana tree is a simile that the Buddha uses to talk about mental formations. Talk about formations. And there's three types of formations. There's bodily formations, right? So body, we chant that body, speech, and mind. So there's a bodily form, volitional formations, verbal, speaking, and then also thoughts or these psycho-emotional processes. that are also part of this aggregate of formations.

[20:18]

So what we perceive with our eyes, right, our sense organs of our eyes, we see this banana tree, and we think, oh, that looks pretty solid. And I remember once when I was living in Louisiana, because I never saw a banana tree in New York, and we were taking care of this property, and we had to, my partner at the time, was taught how to prune it or trim it. I didn't realize that it was just all these curled, large banana leaves, and that's how it grows. The whole trunk are just banana leaves, and that's how it unfurls. So if you were to cut the banana tree and start looking for the center, you wouldn't see. There's no solid banana tree at the center like we perceive it to be. So it's a misperception to think that the tree is solid. Just like... It's a misperception to think that we're all solid, right, and that all this form is solid. And now that we are in some ways very advanced, in other ways we're obviously not very advanced, but we have all this scientific knowledge to prove this, that everything is in motion all the time.

[21:30]

We just don't perceive it in motion, right? So if we were to unpack the banana tree, There's no own being is another word you might have heard. There's no own being. There's no solid, independent, permanent existence of a banana tree. So this, what we perceive as solid, this form, right? This is the first aggregate. And the Buddha uses a simile, a lump of foam, right, to describe form. And when you're living at Tassajara or anywhere in the natural environment here, you have those ponds down there. where you see a puddle and there's a little bubble on top. So we get to, I know you're going to say, Heather, this is obvious, but really there's something about intellectually understanding impermanence, intellectually understanding, oh yeah, I'm a lump of foam, or there's no center. And then when you're feeling more elemental, or some people would say feral, atasahara, if you're there too long, you can feel the insubstantiality of this body-mind.

[22:33]

You can look at that bubble on the creek, and be like, oh, wow, yeah, a lump of foam. These aggregates are not solid. So this lump of foam, this form, is the first aggregate. And in this particular instance, the lump of foam that I call Heather met the lump of foam that we would call Rattlesnake. Of course, Rattlesnake doesn't have a name for me. At least I don't think it does. And then also... I'm sure the rattlesnake probably experienced me as threatening as well, which is why I coiled. That's a defensive posture of a rattlesnake. And even though they don't have any ears, they do have, they take in sensory vibrations through their body and their tongue, is what I read about. So the sensory contact with the raspy sound of the rattlesnake's hiss and the rattling... leads me to the second aggregate, right?

[23:34]

These feeling tones. Now maybe in Zen we don't talk about the feeling tones in the same way that like a Theravadan teacher would or a meditator or Vipassana. But these feeling tones are not emotions. They're just physical sensations. And they're either pleasant, right? I love ice cream, potato chips, right? So it's easier to stay away from ice cream at Tassajara. Not so much potato chips because... They don't melt like ice cream does. So there's this pleasurable aspect, right, to our human existence. So there's a feeling tone that arises of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. We don't even notice. So in this instance, quite unpleasant, right? Hearing the rattle, the hiss, the coil. It was very unpleasant, and I took it as life-threatening. So this process... So the other aggregate that comes up here is this conceiving or naming or noticing.

[24:36]

This is the third aggregate, the process of conceiving. So this is when a sense object, in this case the rattlesnake's sound, is brought into our consciousness. Now, had I not heard the rattlesnake, I would have just walked along and that was it. There would have been no contact with the rattlesnake sound. And what I find really curious and mysterious in a way, I mean, I know it's not super mysterious because we've tried to investigate everything and have scientific proof about everything, but it was a little mysterious at the time. I mean, I was so shocked and frightened. I put shocked hyphen frightened when I heard the hiss that there wasn't any labeling of rattlesnake in the grass. There was just, right, just an immediate... reaction, an appropriate response, which is, threatening animal, I can die. Boom. Again, that didn't even show up.

[25:37]

But I remember, though, when I was jumping out of the way, I had this image, because I've seen lots of movies, or even if I haven't seen them, but this image of, like, a rattlesnake pouncing, right, and just sticking, you know, its fangs into my calf or my ankle. So the Buddha used a simile of a shimmering mirage to describe our perceptions of form, sounds, odors, tastes, tactile, and mental phenomena, right? So for the mind, so for the mind consciousness, for mind consciousness, the object of minds are these thoughts. But also the objects that come in through all of our sense doors are processed through mind consciousness, okay? right there, making associations, right? These mental formation shows up, images, emotions show up, and then I have an experience. Well, I have a very filtered experience of what's going on based on karmic conditioning, right?

[26:41]

So consciousness is the fifth aggregate, and it's the basis of all the other four aggregates, right? And the Buddha used a simile of a magical illusion in referring to these six types of consciousness. So like I said, we have the ear consciousness, eye consciousness, nose, tongue, body, and mind consciousness. So every sense organ has a consciousness associated with it. That's how we're able to hear, right, the sense field. And I want to just mention that consciousness is not an entity. It's a process. It's always in flux, right? Never static. It's a function. It's a function. It's not an entity. There's nothing static about consciousness. It's always changing. And of course, it's impermanent consciousness, and it also is impersonal.

[27:42]

Now, because as human animals, one of our most prominent senses is our eyes. Right. So we are usually visual animals. And I know we remind everybody that we are animals. I know I don't always definitely much more in touch with being an animal when I'm freezing or too hot at Tassajara. A complaining animal if it's too hot. But just say that I had seen this rattlesnake first. Right. And then I would have been like, oh, there's that rattlesnake. But wait a second. I thought I read in Wikipedia that this type of rattlesnake is not nearly as aggressive azurado snakes in texas where i used to live so it's probably just coiling to defend itself and it's not going to strike so i should be okay but maybe i should jump out of the way anyway right that may not happen when we come face to face with uh with an animal that is can kill us but we do that a lot when we see people we don't like right right there's all this confrontation all these stories can be created right there's story so

[28:50]

Had I seen that rattlesnake, maybe, A, I don't think I would have actually jumped as far as I could because I'm not really much of a jumper. So if I had said, okay, I need to jump as far as possible, maybe I wouldn't have jumped out of the way and it would have been able to strike me. Maybe I wouldn't have gotten that far because I'm not conditioned to jump far. But because if you say, in a way, there's this thicket of mental formations, I'm trying to figure something out, And that is causing me to hesitate. So in this case, I feel really grateful that I didn't see the snake. I probably would have even been more scared and maybe I would have turned around and gone back up the Tony Trail and just waited until I thought it was gone. I don't know. You can get kind of panicky when we overly think. So these five aggregates are what we usually call ourselves me. right, our psycho-emotional and physical, our psycho-emotional personality and the physicality of our bodies, right, this lump of foam that sometimes I perceive as solid, although I think the older I get, the less solid it feels.

[30:06]

The more in control it feels or the less in control I feel of this body and the less solid it feels. So these five aggregates this me, this lump of foam and all these aggregates. Another way to phrase it is also that this is the only way for us to experience life is through this pile of aggregates, right? This is the conduit by which we experience our life. And for most of us, these aggregates work the same. What's different, you know, depending on if we... can hear, if we can see, if we can taste, we can smell, we can touch, right? If we have those consciousnesses, is our karma, right? Our karma is different. And our thoughts, which while we're sitting zazen, we're letting go of the thoughts, we're practicing being bodies, becoming really intimate with what's going on here, which does include our thoughts. I feel like thoughts, some of them we don't really need to investigate.

[31:11]

However, others can really... reveal our karma because they are karma they are karmic formations so we can learn about ourselves for sure like what stories arise when we're in certain situations especially if it's a recurring situation or it's a recurring narrative it can be helpful to kind of unpack that to inquire about that with a teacher with a therapist with a good friend and you can explore some of the stories it's just that when we reify those stories and say this is who I am I am a person who can't jump and You remember, Heather, how you stunk on the basketball team in high school, which is true, because I can't jump and I really can't dribble, right? So, of course, I didn't think about that. If I had seen the rattlesnake, I'd say, Heather, remember you can't really jump. Remember you were on the basketball team in high school and you can't really jump, so you're not really going to jump really far, so, okay, right? So we get, right, we have associations based on our karma, or our karma is associations, right, or these filters that arise. And so these five aggregates, as some of you might know, sometimes they're referred to in the sutras as the five aggregates of clinging.

[32:23]

But I want to let everyone know that they don't inherently cling, right? They don't inherently cling, which means they're like this. They're like an open hand, if you will, right? There's five aggregates, five fingers. So when we're not making... the sounds, sights, sensations, formations. When we're not making these sense objects, including thoughts and emotions, into a me, our hand can stay open and we don't react so much, right? So I like to use this example of a fist. So when we cling, right, to those aggregates, when we say, oh, here's all these aggregates. Heather can't jump. She's going to die. She sucked on the basketball team, right? All these ways in which I have ideas about my body and mind, this me. When that's really tight, then I experience myself as separate, right? From what's going on in the environment, right?

[33:24]

Then maybe I do feel really surrounded by the environment instead of part of the environment, right? I don't feel like the elements out there or the elements in here, right? So this fist, I call it like this fist of self. And then this is where suffering, this is suffering, right? And I have this, acronym that helps me sometimes which is this fist of self suffering ego limits our freedom right or separate ego limits our freedom the sense of a separate independent abiding heather this permanent heather and of course you know if we have our fist closed there's a lot of energy that takes to keeping your fist closed right there's a lot of energy that we can use inefficiently to keep those stories going, right? Stories about ourselves, story about life, story about the people you love, story about the people you can't stand. Those are the juiciest ones, right? So we have to watch when are those aggregates clinging?

[34:25]

When is there this aspect of consciousness that makes us feel separate, right? Makes us feel separate from people, makes us feel separate from the environment, which is really the only way when we feel separate that we can actually bring ourselves to harm other people and also destroy the earth, which we're very good at. So when we're able to experience ourselves more like a fluid, if you will, less permanent, more fluid, this can kind of sort of help with the not becoming, right? Not reifying that old heather... who was on the basketball team and couldn't jump, which isn't really a big story of mine, actually, at all. But because I was jumping away from Rattlesnake, I thought I would bring it up. Oh, yeah, that's right. I was not much of a jumper. So, yeah, so there's a way that we reify. We make concrete these stories of ourselves, right?

[35:27]

When we have these aggregates, when they're clinging, those stories maybe are clinging, especially the ones that have been with us for a very long time that cause us the most suffering. And also another way to look at this is also like a reference point. The more that this is a reference point of Heather instead of this flow of sensory experience, sensory perceptions, the more solid I feel and the more I take things personally, which we all do when we're in traffic. Unless we're the ones in the rush cutting people off, that's okay. But when someone does that to us, we can get very annoyed by it. So to use, you know, to use this phrase that I like that Dogen talks about, you know, the less that we feel ourselves are separate. And he says, you know, life must be the rattlesnake and life must be Heather. I mean, there's not, the rattlesnake's living its life.

[36:28]

Heather's living its life. We have this encounter in this moment. The rattlesnake is part of me. I'm part of it. We're both perceiving each other and everything else that's going on in this particular moment. And if I had had a previous experience with rattlesnakes, maybe it would have even been worse. Maybe I wouldn't even go hiking because I'd be like, oh, my God, there's going to be a rattlesnake. So there's this book that I highly recommend. It's called The Heart Attack Sutra by Carl Brunholtz. And I guess the legend is that when the Heart Sutra was first given as a teaching, many people, if not all of them, had heart attacks because it was so radical. And we chant the Heart Sutra, as you know, every day at the three temples of San Francisco Zen Center. So he, again, is a really brilliant book, and he talks about the processes of the five aggregates in this way. Not only is our perceiving mind, and I'm pointing here, but we know the mind's not really here.

[37:32]

So not only is our perceiving mind dynamic, changing moment to moment, but so are the objects that it's perceiving. So it's not like, this is solid, it's not moving. No, this is changing as well. I'm not able to perceive it as changing. Phenomena, everything's phenomena, cannot be defined by themselves. The rattlesake doesn't exist outside of Heather. This doesn't exist outside of Heather. This collection of people is this particular collection of people. We're not existing outside of each other. We are interdependent. We're perceiving each other. Rather, we can only talk about them as, it's kind of a long phrase here, complexes of mutual relationships. So this complex of mutual relationships is complex of mutual relationships, complex of mutual relationships with other phenomena, right? Other phenomena is also complexes of mutual relationships with other complexes of mutual relationships.

[38:35]

And perhaps he phrased it all this way to help us not try to grasp onto it, like the complex of mutual relationships. Everything is always relating, right? It's not a relationship. You could say maybe a relationship-ing. It's not consciousness. Maybe it's a consciousness-ing. We can change our language a little bit, not when we're around English teachers, of course, but to reflect the fluidity, the flux of this karmic being right here and all of you as well. So had I taken this situation with the rattlesnake personally, I could have... Mental formations could be something like this. I can't believe that sneaky rattlesnake hit itself in the grass waiting for me to return from my triumphant hike up the Tony Trail and scare me to death. It's such an evil creature, right? Serpents we know are evil. Such an evil creature and it deserves to die for making me feel so vulnerable and so frightened.

[39:36]

I'm going to come back with a few bodhisattvas and teach it a lesson, right? Now, it's funny because we know rattlesnakes They're not like, I'm just going to sit here and wait for Heather or any other unsuspecting hiker. They're not operating that way. So this is kind of ludicrous, but we do this a lot on everything, everybody, all the time. All this, what the Buddha would call, papancha, this mental proliferation, mental elaboration, where the rattlesnake's just being a rattlesnake, Heather's just being Heather, whatever that is, whoever I am, and that's it. without taking this sense object of a rattlesnake personally. It's so much easier, although I'm sure there's people out there who would take the rattlesnake's actions personally. It's so much harder to do that when we're interacting with other human animals. We impute on them a solidity, a reification. I like to call it like we make people into statues. But if I'm making someone into a statue, then I make myself into a statue.

[40:41]

And then it's just like... I know who that person is. They're going to be this way. And I think we can see that writ large, right, in our society, how polarized it's become, right? So before, this was my first encounter at Tassajara with a rattlesnake that was coiled and threatening me. Me! Threatening me, damn it. But I have seen rattlesnakes like on the path when they're just chilling out, getting some sun, but I've never seen one coiled and hissing and rattling. at this lump of foam. So since that was my first experience, it does leave this sense impression, which is also one way to look at these samskara, these formations, like a proclivity in our body-mind that can get reinforced. So say every single time I went out, I saw a rattlesnake and scared the bejesus out of me, every single time. Well, then I would have this

[41:43]

story in my body as well right this trauma of always being scared by a rattlesnake i'm always going to meet a rattlesnake and i'm sure that we know that stories for ourselves right we keep reinforcing making real these stories that sense impression would be reinforced so it's another transformative aspect of meditation especially when you live in sangha and maybe somebody who a few days ago you didn't get along with now all of a sudden you're sick and they're showering you with kindness and you're like why don't you just be mean to me because I don't like you and now you're being kind to me so you're shaking up my story of you but that's great and when we're in community all the time and we cycle through all these roles some of which we're not so great at we get to just be with the people and ourselves in different roles and we get to see this fluidity of the person and it takes a lot of effort to keep our fists closed right, keep our hearts closed when we're in continuous sangha and we see people over and over again.

[42:52]

We see all aspects of them. We don't make them into the statue. So fortunately for the rattlesnake, it can't ruminate, right? Probably after our chance encounter, I'm sure I didn't write a Dharma talk, but probably felt, like I said, threatened and probably just slithered off into the grass, found the rodent, ate it, and then just hung out in the sun, right? Took a nap. That was its verse of understanding, just going back to being a rattlesnake. Well, it was never not a rattlesnake. So here's my verse of understanding. One hiss, and I lost what I know. No more deceiving myself. The ancient path unearthed, shining forth beneath my feet, jumping like a stone woman. landing on the wild reeds, swaying in the wind of no mind. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[43:55]

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 Dorma.

[44:15]

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