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. Can everybody hear me? The sound is good. Good. Is there anybody here that's new today? Yeah, Mark. You're always a beginner at Beginner's Mind Temple, Mark? After 40 years, still a beginner? Yeah, I'm very impressed. Well, welcome, Mark and the other beginners to Beginner's Mind Temple this morning. Happy to have you all here on this beautiful day. So this morning I'm going to talk about a famous case, a koan.

[01:08]

These are these stories from ancient China that Zen is famous for. And this story is about being busy. In fact, it's a story about being too busy. So although this story was famous in the ninth century China, somehow I feel it's still relevant in our time. I don't think we've solved the busy problem yet. In fact, my guess is that... I think maybe the most usual comment I hear when I talk to somebody is, they say, how are things going? Well, somebody might say, good, but I'm a little busy. Or... well, I'm pretty, really, I'm very busy, or don't talk to me, I'm too busy. I don't know if any of you can relate to any of that, especially if you're working in one of the many exciting high-tech industries that we're in here.

[02:11]

So I think maybe we know too much, right? Because we know that we should be working on ourselves, we should be working on our... physical body, so we should do at least some yoga and a half hour of exercise every day. And then we should be working on our mental exercise, so we should be doing a half hour zazen and maybe some therapy. And of course, we have to work on our relationships with all our friends, so we've got to spend a lot of time talking to them. And then we have our work, which is another 40 to 60 hours a week. And... Then, of course, there's the entire world situation, which, as we read the New York Times in the morning, we realize, well, I should be helping there, too. So by the time we get through adding up all these things we should be doing, by the end of the day, there's no way we can feel like we got close to dealing with everything that our hopes and aspirations might want us to do. Hence the feeling of being too busy and not having enough time to do everything.

[03:17]

So now I'm going to read you the case. This is a fairly famous case. I'll say a little bit about the two players in this case. One is named Yunnan, and one is named Dawu. And they were late, 764 to 841 was Yunnan, and Dawu was a little older than he was, like about 15 years older. And they both studied under the same teacher, who was quite a famous teacher in the lineage, many years, probably two decades at least, so they were good friends, and there's many stories about each one of them individually, koans in the koan collections, and there's many stories about the two of them. So they're one of the couples for which there's a lot of fun stories. Dawu was the older one, so he was kind of like the older Dharma brother of Yunnan. Yunnan, of course, his main disciple was Dungshan, who was the founder of the Soto sect in... China, so these are important players in our lineage.

[04:20]

Anyway, I just thought I would share one of the other koan stories so you get a feeling, because you may have heard this one. This one is Yunnan's great compassion. Yunnan asked Dao Wu, what does the bodhisattva of compassion do with so many hands and eyes? You know the bodhisattva of compassion has a hundred hands and eyes to help everybody. And Dao Wu said, it's like someone reaching back for the pillow at night. And Yunnan said, oh, I understand. And Dao Wu said, how do you understand? And Yunnan said, all over the body is hands and eyes. Pretty good answer. And then Dao Wu said, you said a lot there, but you only got 80%. They had this kind of relationship, a kind of competitive thing back and forth in order to figure out what's really going on here. And so Yunnan sat back, well, what about you, elder brother? So wise elder brother. And Dawu said, throughout the body is hands and eyes. Anyway, I'm not going to go into this case. That's a very famous case about, you know, compassion and where does compassion flow from us throughout?

[05:27]

Does it come from our entire being? And anyway, it's a discussion about that. But today we're going to talk about busyness, so let's go to that case. So Yunnan was sweeping the ground outside the temple. And Dao walked up to him and said, too busy. And Yunnan said, you should know there is one who isn't busy. And Dao said, if so, then there's a second moon. And then Yunnan held up the broom and said, which moon is this? So this is a very short case, right? But lovely. So let's... So, you know, I love this. This image of sweeping the temple grounds is used in a lot of stories in China. And in China, they had these massive monasteries with great courtyards between the buildings and beautiful cypress trees.

[06:29]

And so, in my imagination, I mean, he could have been sweeping in front of the doorway to the temple, but I had him sweeping in one of the courtyards with a big cypress tree over him. And Dawu, who was always wandering around trying to needle him a little bit, comes up and And apparently Yun-Yan is looking kind of distracted or a little busy. You know, you can't imagine what. Maybe Yun-Yan was, this was his time to sweep the courtyard, and he had a lot of sweep the courtyard. Maybe there were a lot of leaves that day. Maybe the abbot's assistant came up and said, Yun-Yan, you've got to come help with some tea with some strangers. You've got to get to the abbot's quarters in 10 minutes. And so he's feeling rushed. Or maybe the dog stole his slippers in the morning, and he's just feeling, you know, distracted. You know, who knows what he was feeling. But obviously, Dawu thought he wasn't. like being zen, cool, sweeping the courtyard. Right? So he says, too busy. And I thought Yunnan shot back pretty well here with, you should know there's one who isn't busy.

[07:30]

Right? You think I look busy, but actually, inside here, I'm like calm, composed. That one... The one who isn't busy is right here in me. So Dao, that's a pretty good answer, but Dao is not buying it. He says, so then there is a second moon? Well, we know there's not two moons. So basically what he's saying is, you're telling me there's two of you, one person who is... looking very distracted and busy, and one who is completely calm and cool. I don't get it. There's only one. There can't be two realities here. There's not a reality of you being totally distracted and a reality of you being calm. And so Yunnan holds up his broom and says...

[08:37]

basically demonstrates the fact that he is actually not too busy at this moment, even if he appeared too busy. That was what he did when he held up the broom. So I think the fundamental, let's start with the fundamental issue that's laid out here. You should know there's one who isn't busy. That's the case that's being put forward. No matter how busy you feel, no matter how distracted you are by the life you're leading, you are actually not too busy. In fact, you're not busy at all. In fact, you are actually totally calm and composed. In this moment, in this very moment, you're always not too busy, no matter what you think is going on. In fact, I have a friend who claims that the entire universe in this very moment is not busy at all.

[09:44]

It's going along with its business, creating galaxies and stars and evolving and doing all kinds of things. But actually, in this moment, this actual moment right here, no busyness. This idea of busy and unbusy is just some construct in our mind, right? So I'm going to just float that out there. you guys to think about the fact that you are always essentially not busy and all you need to do at any given moment when you're feeling or thinking that you're busy is just go, oh, well, I must be mistaken. I'm actually not busy at all. So that could be the end of the lecture. But how long have I been here? I don't think that's going to do it, is it? So we're going to talk some more. So, as every good koan has, there's some Chinese guy that's made a commentary to the koan.

[10:48]

And then I'll get to comment on the commentary, because that's how we do these things. So, first comment that comes in the commentary is, without upset, there is no solution. Without struggle, there is no expression. Without upset, there is no solution. Without struggle, there is no expression. So already we're copying to the fact that being a human being and doing things, you're upset and struggling. That's the nature of what it means to be a human being. That's the nature of how it goes as a human being. You've been assigned a job by your boss. You've got to get the job. And then, you know... Some other guy comes along and says, not only do you have to do that, but you have to do that, and it has to all be done by 3 o'clock this afternoon, and it's all very important, etc. So if we're feeling rushed and hurried and harassed and distracted, that's okay.

[11:54]

That's the human condition. That's what this sentence is saying here. That is what we're dealing with here. Also what it's saying is there's a solution. That is, part of being upset and struggling is that you're trying to solve a problem. You're trying to get something done. And that's what we're always trying to do in the world. We're trying to get something done. We're trying to get it done in a, you know. And so this is an opportunity for growth. Because why do we feel too busy? That's a question I'd ask you. Do we feel too busy because... Well, I'll just float one thing out there.

[12:55]

We feel too busy sometimes because of the way we were raised. My father raised me to always do everything really well and do lots of it. It's called the Protestant work ethic when I was brought up. You've always taken on more than you can do, and you've got to do it really well, and so you feel very busy. Well, you could examine the part of your personality or brain that is putting all this pressure on you. The second reason we sometimes feel too busy is we've completely lost perspective. How often do you end up... You're supposed to drive to a meeting that's a very important meeting that you have to be at at X time. And just before you leave, a very important phone call comes in that you have to take and deal with. But you can still make it right on time because it only takes 23 minutes to get there.

[13:58]

You've done this before. But unfortunately, you've run into traffic and you're going to be late. and you feel anxious, right? Because you're a busy person, this is a very important meeting, you're going to be late. And what do we do when we're feeling that anxiety in the car that's going on? That feeling of that too busyness. Well, one thing to remember is, of course, you're going to get there when you're going to get there, and it's not, you know. And the second thing to remember is, I mean, I have... Well, I'm... probably older than most of you, so I've had more experience in this area. I've been in that situation lots of times. Got to get to the airplane. The airplane doesn't take off because of the fog. I'm late to a meeting in New York. All this nervous busyness going on about all this. I can't actually, and I've gone to a lot of very important meetings, think of a very important meeting that made one difference.

[15:00]

about whether I was late or not, in actual fact. Aside from my craziness about it, what I have noticed is the most important thing is what was I like when I actually finally arrived? Was I just in a state of hurried craziness, apologizing for being late, or was I just, you know, things happened and I'm composed when I arrive there and do the business I have to do? So I think it is worthwhile when we're examining the busy personality we have to think a little bit about whether it's all worth it in terms of that. And I suspect it's not quite so worth it. So anyway, but that is the nature of what we're doing. We're struggling with that because we have the personalities we have and the traffic jam comes along and that's just what's going on. Fortunately, these commentaries have suggestions for how to deal with all of this.

[16:03]

And that's the next thing. Good people, as you eat, boil tea, sow and sweep, you should recognize the one not busy. I'll read that again. Good people, as you eat, they don't say when you're on the iPhone or anything, because this is the ninth century. Good people, as you eat, not on your computer, you're not supposed to eat when you're on your computer anyway, right? As you eat, boil, tea, sow, and sweep, you should recognize the one not busy. Then you will realize the union of mundane reality and enlightened reality. In the Dung Shong progression, this is called simultaneous inclusion. No, simultaneous inclusion. That's a wonderful two-word comment there. So what does it mean that we got talking about simultaneous inclusion? So I was thinking about a couple of examples from my own life.

[17:06]

When I was in high school, I worked in an ice cream parlor. And on Saturday morning, usually Saturday was the busy day, so there'd be lots of people. And then all of a sudden, the entire baseball team would come in with a coach. And they had won. So they were all going to get Double-dip ice cream cones, all 13 of them. Very busy. Very busy and, you know... And it took me a while before I figured out that if I just buried my head and was, like, scooping ice cream, nervously, hurriedly, I would not be able to handle the situation. So I just looked out at all 13 of them, looked at them all, asked them for what kind of ice cream they wanted, and discovered that I could hear all 13 of them. I could organize... all of their orders in my mind, and I could go through the entire cabinet doing all of the orders and serve them, because I was including all of them simultaneously in my experience of what was going on, instead of just sort of like, what's going on with this one person?

[18:12]

I've got to get this done, right? I had the same experience later when I first arrived here at Zen Center. When I first arrived here, I told everybody I should go to Tassara. I don't know, for some reason they thought I was supposed to sit a sashin here and do a practice period before I go to Tassara. So I tried to convince them that I really was ready to go to Tassara, but instead they said, no, you have to sit a sashin and do these various things. So I got a job as a bartender downtown. I'm not sure that fits into right livelihood, but anyway, that's what I did. But it was a luncheon bartender, so I could go to Zazen in the morning and come home for 5.40 Zazen in the evening. But it was one of these restaurants that had this huge... Luncheon crowd, back in those days they did this where they would all rush in and get seated and then order drinks. And then there'd be a whole bunch of them that would land at the bar and order drinks. So you'd be making drinks for the people that were seated and you'd have to deal with all the people that were in front of you wanting drinks too. And it was exactly the same thing as the ice cream parlor.

[19:15]

Only, of course, the risk was higher because if you broke a glass and the ice was over with and the drinks were more complicated to make. But anyway, what I finally learned was if I included... all of this chaos. So as the waitresses were bringing the orders and as the people were coming in the door, I sort of visually greeted each one that came in so that they knew that, oh, I noticed when you came in, so I will deal with you in the order in which you've arrived at the, you know, that I could actually, and that I learned how to make the drinks without looking at my hands. You know, that is, by including the whole picture, I could get this done. And... I remember we had a similar experience when we opened Green's Restaurant. Does everybody know that we founded Green's Restaurant down at Fort Mason and that we still own and operate it? Anybody that doesn't know, please go down to Green's Restaurant. I'm not getting a commission. It would be just a nice thing. It helps Zen Center. Besides, they are the best vegetarian restaurant probably.

[20:19]

How far do we go? at least in the city, probably in the country. We were up for a James Beard Award this year. That's amazing, actually, 30 years of that restaurant. Anyway, when we first started the restaurant, we had, I diverted there a bit, didn't I? We had just lines out the door. This is a very fast restaurant town, so we never advertised, just word of mouth. You couldn't get a reservation in Greens for four months within two weeks after we opened the doors. And I was, I think I was president of Zen Center then, and I was, after the first month, I couldn't wait to see what the financial results were. Fantastic. I thought we're just losing money. And, you know, aside from a whole bunch of little things like not charging enough for coffee and paying too much for coffee and all, the main problem was we had all these people waiting in line and there were all these empty tables all the time. And the reason we had all these empty tables was because...

[21:21]

our busboys were bussing tables like they were in tea ceremony. Like, that's not simultaneous inclusion. You know, like, simultaneous inclusion is, oh, there's a whole bunch of people waiting to get into the tables. Maybe I could quickly pick up the things. and not make any noise either at the same time. There is a way that you can do these things. I'm sure there's many examples in your own life where you can think of things like that. I was very inspired by some young urban Zen folks. We have this group. I seem to be on a marketing kick this morning. Any of you that are under 35 years old, can come on Tuesday nights here. It's called the Young Urban Zen Group, and it's a wonderful group.

[22:22]

They sit together and they talk about all of the problems of being too busy when you're 30 years old and other things. Anyway, they've been going for three years, and a group of them went down to Tassajara for a work period in the springtime, and they chopped vegetables and dug ditches. for any of you that have been to Tassajara and tried to dig a ditch, that's basically just breaking rocks. I mean, it's basically a stream bed with a little bit of silt that's put on top, but after the first three inches, you're into rocks. And they came back and told me how fantastic it was to leave the computer, the Facebook pressure, and go down to Tassajara and just break rocks. So, That can happen whatever you're doing. If you're washing a pan, you can wash a pan in a way that that's all you're doing.

[23:26]

You're just washing a pan. And that can include the entire universe. If you become one with pan washing, rock breaking, sweeping, everything is with you. The whole universe is with you, and you are no longer busy. In fact, you can wash a lot of pans really fast if you want to. So that's the basic story of our approach here. In this moment, wash that pan, break that rock, sweep that ground, and do it with your entire being. And in that moment, all these other thoughts that create this sense of busyness go away. I wanted to talk a little bit about concentration.

[24:31]

So how do you concentrate in this moment? It requires a little bit of development because if you focus just On one thing, it's like too concentrated. I remember when I first learned how to look at paintings, I was here as a student, and they had a big Diebenkorn exhibit down at the Modern Museum of Art, a whole room full of these six foot by eight foot paintings. And I went into that room, because I was going for walks every day down to my bartending job, and I would whiz through it. I didn't get it. I didn't get it at all until one day I was actually looking at the paintings, and instead of looking at them, I was like, relaxedly seeing the painting. You know what I mean? I mean, the painting started to come forward to me, and my eyes were moving around the painting, asked by the painting where they should go.

[25:36]

This kind of concentration is a kind of concentration that's more panoramic, more relaxed, more open. This happens when you're listening to music too. You can try to follow a line in the music or all of a sudden you hear all the music. This is the kind of concentration in Zen that we try to develop and we do it fundamentally by sitting Zazen. When we sit Zazen, our effort is not I mean, sometimes we say, you know, pay attention to your posture, you know, see how good your back is. Obviously, pay attention to your breathing. So it's kind of like a golf swing. You're paying attention to your... But in the end, what you want is you want your consciousness to feel your whole body. And you just want to be sitting there experiencing being alive in a kind of wide sense. So... We spend a fair amount of time every day trying to develop this way of being able to be in the present moment with concentration, alertness, but in a kind of relaxed way.

[26:50]

So I was fortunate that I learned that lesson because a lot of times what I've realized is it takes a while to get that. So when I was in Paris looking at, there's a marvelous museum in Paris which has all of the water lilies of Monet in two big rooms, these big 20 foot long water lily paintings. And you'd find yourself sometimes sitting in the room, you could be there for an hour with like two or three people coming in and looking for 10 minutes and leaving because they've got to see 50 other museums in their day. If you just spend an hour waiting, eventually you'll calm down enough to actually be able to see the painting, have the painting come to you. I'm just kind of going on in this area because when I was young, I took two three-month trips where I traveled around the country going to all the national parks in the West, and I would go off and hike for a week. And when I first started doing these things, I was very excited.

[27:59]

I'd get my maps out, and I'm going to go climb that 14,000-foot mountain, go over here, and I would rush up to the top of the mountain, rush down. After a while, I started thinking, well, like, what's going on here with all of this rushing about? I mean, I'm on a vacation, supposedly, and here I am trying to see 49 different parks and 18 different mountains, you know. So I just started waiting to see what the mountain was asking or talking to me. I'm going to include the mountain and the weather and the sun and the clouds and everything else that's going on in this day in my hike. And eventually my heights changed entirely into meandering. Sometimes the meanderings took me to the top of a peak. Sometimes they just had me sitting in a meadow with butterflies floating around or whatever. But it was a relationship with the mountain. That is, there was no separation in some sense between me and the mountain.

[29:05]

No separation between me and everything else. There's a beautiful... I guess is what it's called, that Dogen has to express the reality of the individual person, your unique individuality, and the universality, the interconnectedness of us. And he says it's expressed as a drop of water is the individuality and the universality is moonlight. So in even the tiniest drop of water, you can see the entire moon. So this is the reality of our life as an individual and universal. The vast boundless moonlight is reflected in our life. The entire universe is pouring through our little tiny dewdrop life all the time. And if we can keep that, be in contact with that at the same time that we're taking care of business, we won't be so busy.

[30:15]

The entire moon is reflected in even the smallest dewdrop. I'll give a little quote from Suzuki Roshi. When your mind is wandering about elsewhere, you have no chance to express yourself. But if you limit your activity to what you can do just now, in this moment, then you can express fully your true nature, which is the universal Buddha nature. This is our way. Okay? Same thing, but said beautifully. But if you can limit your activity to what you can do just now, in this moment, He used to also say, you will always have problems, but if you become one with your problem, then the problem is no longer a problem.

[31:30]

That's one of those you can run around in your head for a while with. I'll leave you with that. So, of course, I've been around long enough to know that we're not always converting every moment of busyness into a transcendent pulling together with the universe of our life, So we need to do some other things. So I would just also recommend that you take a break at work, you get some vacation, maybe go to yoga after work. That is, you have to sort of look at your life and organize it in some way that you give yourself some chance to be in contact with something bigger than the mass of problems that are coming at you during your daily life. Take a walk, do various things. I recommend making sure that you organize your life to give yourself some of that space. What I was thinking about talking about this morning, but clearly I don't have... We have about five more minutes, is that right?

[32:33]

Anyway, so I think I'll leave it to another lecture, which is the whole question of, well, how did we get ourselves in this situation where we've got so much work we're doing and maybe we don't like the work we're doing? Or maybe we don't like the boss we've got. That is, how do we determine what work we should be doing? Should we be doing any work at all? What's driving this enormous amount of activity that we're doing? How do we find the right kind of work that speaks deeply to our heart? that responds to our deepest intentions so that when we're doing it, even if we're busy, we feel like we're doing something that's meaningful and important in our life. I've been reading the Vimalakirti Sutra

[33:41]

How many people are familiar with the Vimalakirti Sutra here? The Vimalakirti Sutra. Vimalakirti was the only lay disciple of the Buddha, and he was considered the wisest disciple of them all. And I love that because he was a lay person. He was a politician, a businessman, very wealthy, a gambler. But he was also... the wisest of them all, and his wisdom came from, I'll just give you this one sentence, because he asked it of all the gathering disciples. It's a long story about how this came here, which I will go through at another lecture. But it is, what is the Bodhisattva's method of entering non-duality? What is the Bodhisattva's method of finding this interconnected, bigger space that we can bring into our life that will help us with our busyness? And there were many brilliant bodhisattvas there who gave lots of complicated, wonderful answers, which are great to analyze.

[34:50]

But Bhimala Kirti gave one answer, which was he was silent. And aside from the fact that we could do sort of an analysis of that, it reminds me of the importance of silence in our life. You know, there's... How much silence do we get in our life? How much quiet silence is there? And I'm going to leave you with this marvelous poem by K. Ryan called Shark's Teeth. Everything contains some silence. Noise gets its zest from the small shark's tooth-shaped fragments of rest angled in it. An hour of city holds maybe a minute of these remnants of a time when silence reigned, compact and dangerous as a shark.

[35:52]

Sometimes a bit of a tail or fin can still be sensed in parks. I'll read it again. Everything contains some silence. Noise gets its zest from the small shark-tooth-shaped fragments of rest angled in it. An hour of city holds maybe a minute of these remnants of a time when silence reigned, compact and dangerous as a shark. Sometimes a bit of a tail or fin can still be sensed in parks. So I think in addition to the practice of simultaneous inclusion, we should find a little silence in our life. Walk in a park. and find some place to rejuvenate your life with some silence. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[36:58]

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.

[37:21]

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