Good afternoon. Today's title is... opening your heart. Again, this is the title of a chapter from Karagiri Roshi's book called You Have to Say Something. And the chapter might be just a little long to read the whole thing for the purposes of this short talk.

[01:01]

edited out a couple paragraphs or so. For anyone living a spiritual life, the most important practice is open-heartedness. But dealing with life with compassion and kindness is not easy. We tend to live in terms of me. But if you're interested in the spiritual life, you will have to consider more than just yourself. Whatever the future brings, we have to continue to seek a world based on the practice of openness of heart. Perfect openness of heart brings into life flexibility, tenderness, and magnanimity. This can't be fully explained conceptually. You can't put your finger on it, but you can feel it. To live this way is what you're really looking for.

[02:03]

Usually we live our lives only in terms of the world we can see. We place the I first. Even when we take up the spiritual life, we place the I first. In other words, we pull everything down to the level of our personal views and feelings. We never forget ourselves. That is why, at bottom, we're often irritated or uneasy. And the more we place the I first, the more irritation, uneasiness, suffering, and fear we feel. What we tend to ignore is the world that sees us. This is not the world you think you see or hear. Nevertheless, you are supported by this world. It is actually the world as it is before you are conscious of it, before you form some idea about it.

[03:06]

If you emphasize yourself, you will completely forget this world that sees, holds, and sustains you. We all have memories and habits and patterns in our lives, and sometimes they don't allow us to open our hearts. Intellectually, we know we should, but emotionally it seems like we can't. Still, you can do it. Strictly speaking, openness of heart is beyond all speculation. It is the total picture of your life as you live it from day to day. You can't judge your life just in terms of what you can see, that is, from your ego-centered perspective. You must practice patience, calmness of mind, and mindfulness. If you don't confine yourself to just your own view of these things, these things come up naturally.

[04:09]

When you just sit down in Zazen, you can feel something, even though you don't know what it is. It just arises right here, right now. Compassion is like spring water under the ground. Your life is like a pipe that can tap into that underground spring. When you tap into it, water immediately comes up. So drive your pipe into the ground, tap into the water of compassion. We can't conceive of what real compassion and openness of heart are, but if you tap into them, you can feel them. If you learn to deal with your life with compassion, magnanimity, and flexibility, you will become very tender, generous, and kind. This is all that is necessary. We do not need an explanation. No matter how long we ask about why we are so egotistic, we will never find a clear answer.

[05:13]

Nevertheless, right in the middle of this no answer, your life goes on. Even though we don't understand, we can all take a deep breath. We can all practice forgetting ourselves. Forgetting yourself does not mean destroying yourself. Forgetting yourself is just to see yourself from a different angle, the way the world sees you. Then you will not just see your little ego self, but your true self, your big self, which includes all beings. When I was 14 years old, my mother died. The world seemed completely dark. I felt there was no hope for me. Day after day, I cried in my bed. It seemed that the more I cried, the more I tried to reach for her, the further from me she became. So I cried even more. I cried constantly. But all of the sudden, I stopped crying. I felt my mother had come into my heart.

[06:16]

I can't explain it in words. But there was no longer any separation between me and my mother. She was in my heart. This goes for you too. There is you and there is the world. If there is even a small gap between them, we fill it with thought. As long as we create this gap, we will never understand. But in truth, there is no gap between you and the world. become one with your object is true openness of heart. This is why we do Zazen. So, for anyone living a spiritual life, the most important practice is openness of heart. So, that's... us, that's what we're doing, we have become interested in practicing spiritual life.

[07:26]

But dealing with this life, this life that we're living right here, right now, with compassion and kindness is not always easy. because we tend to live in a world called me. It's a world called me that's very strong, working very strongly all the time. And of course, a spiritual life is about a life that is about something different than just what we understand about me. And we don't know what it is, really. Actually, it exists right here, right now. But we don't know what it is. We don't even really know what this moment is that we're living in.

[08:33]

We have all kinds of explanations for it, and it's in our consciousness, We have a conscious way of describing the world because we want to, we always have a desire to understand what it is. A deep desire coming from our life to know what this world is. So we have all kinds of words and symbols and names that we call it. Two basic words are you and me. I look out and I see you and I see me. That's a very kind of fundamental understanding of the world that we see out there. And we have all kinds of other words. There's lots of them. Lots of them. But it's all an attempt just to describe, to keep us some picture that we have about what living in this world is about.

[09:35]

And to live the spiritual life means we are fundamentally going to make our best effort to go someplace beyond just this world that we understand, right here, as we understand it now. And when we do so, there will be pain. I'm sorry to say, but it's the truth, based on the little bit of experience I have. But I get affirmation from other people who have more experience than I do, like my teacher. So I feel, I can feel his difficulty here, even in his own practice, because he says it's not so easy. In fact, he said that many times. Many, many, many times he would say, this is not so easy.

[10:40]

Not so easy. That doesn't mean it's really, really hard all the time. It's just not so easy. Not so easy. So, he says, but if you are interested in the spiritual life, and that is our situation, you will have to consider more than yourself. So it's like we don't have a choice. if we're interested in this life, we have to consider something more than just ourself. And we don't have a choice about it. Perfect openness of heart brings into life flexibility, tenderness, and magnanimity. This can't be fully explained conceptually. You can't put your finger on it, but you can feel it.

[11:40]

To live this way is what you're really looking for. So, it's quite apparent that in the practice you're doing here, there's quite a number of forms that we follow. You agree? So, in my place, Ho Kyoji's place is just four of us. We have quite a few forms. In fact, sometimes the other three people complain about our forms. There's too many. But in our case, it's about one-tenth as many as you... Maybe one-one-hundredth. I don't know. Not exactly. But the point is... we have these forms that we follow. And we're quite precise about how they should be done.

[12:45]

However, if we really practice these forms for a long time, not just a short time, a long time, what we experience is a great amount of flexibility within this very structured For instance, if you're just learning the forms, they might seem pretty overwhelming. However, if someone teaching you these forms, if they've done them for a long time, you might get a very sense that they're teaching you with great tenderness how to do these. It's a very tender feeling and very flexible. So we... And we learn very well from that kind of teacher. On the other hand, if we haven't learned them very well and they're not kind of thoroughly in our bodies and minds, we might feel some irritation if they're not done perfectly.

[13:55]

Have you ever experienced that? I have. I have. And it's not so pleasant. We don't have a pleasant feeling. So we have a great flexibility if we practice these forms for quite a long period of time. For instance, at a neighboring monastery to where I live, I live close to the Minnesota border, close to Iowa, like 500 feet from Iowa, and a couple miles from Wisconsin. So you might say I'm right in the corner. of the state of Minnesota, southeastern corner. And if you drive a car by road, you can go 22 miles and come to another Zen monastery. If we had a helicopter, we could go 12 miles. So only 12 miles away, there's another Zen monastery.

[14:55]

And they built there, my Dahmer brothers built a very beautiful expression of a Buddha Hall and Zendo and Shuryo and Kuen almost replicated like a model from Japan. And so we had the opening for these buildings and a lot of dignitaries from Japan came and they were having this very big ceremony for us, a couple hundred people, it was a huge ceremony. So the Japanese monks were doing most of it, except for Shokan, the abbot. And anyway, they had lined up and rehearsed this ceremony, and they're all lined up to do this very nice ceremony. And the monk, they're all lined up, ready to go, and the monk's holding the coral with the incense, the red box up in there, holding it.

[16:04]

And then he stumbles just a little bit. And all the ashes and the whole thing goes right on the floor. That's how the ceremony, the opening of the ceremony. So basically they were kind of like stunned for a second. And then just very basically and just sort of gracefully they just went on. knelt down on the floor, sweeped up the ashes, put it all back together, and then continued on with the ceremony. So it was a huge ceremony and lots of stuff were going on, but that's what I remember. That's the part I remember the most. It's like how they could deal with that situation that's completely unexpected. So that's where there's great flexibility.

[17:06]

We can adjust. We can meet that situation under all circumstances. That's what we cultivate by doing these forms over and over again. Why is it we can do that? Because there's sometimes in your life, if you do them for a long period of time, When you love these forms, you just love them. Maybe not very often, but sometimes you really love them. And there's other times in your life when you hate them. You just hate them. But the point is you're working yourself through all your love and your hates. Love and hate, you're working. And so you're meeting everything you love with equanimity. And we don't get too infatuated with how much we love the forms. Because if we do, we will get some indication from somebody pretty soon that we love them too much.

[18:13]

Right? Either directly or indirectly. Because if we have a conversation with someone, like Oryoki Mio... You all know, everyone does oryoki here. Maybe, I don't know if everyone. But anyway, so if we love, if we love it, and we go out and say, I just love oryoki, I just love oryoki, we don't, we get tired of the conversation. Oh, okay, that's good. And if we hate it, well, that's okay too. But the point is we're meeting all of our love and all of our hatred right in the middle of just doing it over and over. So by that practice of doing those forms, it's the same way we meet everything in our life, just by practicing the form.

[19:15]

And we meet every situation in that same way, even if it's something we love or something we hate. That's what... what category Roshi means here by being open-hearted to everything. Even when we take up spiritual life, we place the I first. So even though we become, maybe we have some enlightenment experience and we decide that we want to join a Zen group or something, Still, just because we do that, our I doesn't disappear. So we're still the same person all along, no matter what kind of life we choose to live. We still have to deal with the strong conditions called I. It's always here with us.

[20:20]

That is why at bottom, we're often irritated or uneasy. And the more we place the I first, the more irritation, uneasiness, suffering, and fear we feel. So, I'd like to return to that point at the end of the talk, because that might take me somewhere else. At the end of this passage. So we all have memories and habits and patterns in our lives, and sometimes they don't allow us to open our hearts. Intellectually, we know we should, but emotionally, it seems like we can't, but still you can do it. Strictly speaking, openness of heart is beyond all speculation. It is the total picture of your life as you live it from day to day. So this

[21:27]

group of conditions called ourself is just a conglomeration of habituated patterns, in a sense, from our past. All of the conditions, physical conditions that make our physical body, and patterns, mental patterns from the time we were just forming, making formations. And basically, that's what we have with us right now, right here. That's what's arising, just those patterns. In our practice of Zazen, we are trying to see more deeply, become more aware of just what those patterns are. patterns are because they've been formed for a reason we need them we need them to survive and they're kind of a lot of them are just based on kind of a flight and fight to survive it's a very deep inside of us to fight or flee under conditions of which something feels threatening

[22:58]

And that's for all of us. So Buddha discovered that, and he said, this is the human life. It's why we're here also, because of those accumulated conditions. It's allowed us to become, survive as a species. However, also, it... Buddha realized that these conditions also create suffering for us. So at a certain point in our life we can look at those conditions and say, well, maybe there can be another way than just fighting or fleeing under some kind of threat. So, That's why it's hard for us to open our hearts to everything, because there's a basic fear, fear of annihilation of this personal soul.

[24:10]

You must practice patience, calmness of mind, and mindfulness. if you don't confine yourself to just your own views of things, these things come up naturally. When you sit down in Zazen, you can feel something, even though you don't know what it is. It just arises right here, right now. So we have to practice patience and calmness in mind, and mindfulness, because we don't know what's going on. So we... Basically, in the community I live in, not so long ago we had a pretty big argument. It was quite shocking for me. But it was pretty intense. And we have to be careful with that. Because when our speech... In other words, we can feel very, very terrible inside and feel like we need to lash out to protect ourselves.

[25:33]

It can happen. But we have to be very careful about that. Because once we do it, we can't take it back. We can't take it back. And it's never forgotten. It's like we can do thousands and thousands of very wonderful things. But if we do one really inconsiderate act, it's just not forgotten. We can forgive, but we still remember that someone lashed out at us. So we have to be careful. That's why we practice a patience even in the midst of a place where we feel we have no patience. My teacher's name was Dain in Karagiri. Dain means great. Nin means patience. His teacher gave him the name Great Patience. And he said, I hate that name.

[26:36]

Why did you give me that name? Because I'm so impatient. So as much as possible, even if we feel like things are just falling to pieces in our lives, we have to practice patience and calmness and mindfulness, bring ourselves back. And then under some condition, we can try to figure out what it is that's causing the trouble, speaking in a way that's considerate to all beings. So... Then he says, compassion is like spring water under the ground. Your life is like a pipe that can tap into that underground spring. When you tap into it, water immediately comes up. So drive your pipe into the ground.

[27:40]

So this is driving our pipe into the ground is the important part here. It means... Basically, how do you do zaza? How do you drive your pipe into the ground? Means how do you drive yourself directly into this moment? We have wells where I live. Is that where you get your water? Wells here? No? No? Okay. Anyway, first off, you do all your research. with your conscious mind about where to drive your pipe in the ground, right? We research it with all of our consciousness, everything we know, and we pick out the spot that seems like the best place, and we start driving it into the ground.

[28:43]

Now, we can't stop when we hit the first little something that gives resistance. Otherwise, we'll say, oh, let's go over there and drive another. This will be better over there. But we'll always meet resistance. So we have to find one spot where we keep driving it and driving it, driving it deeper. So actually, this one spot is Zazen. How do you find the one spot where you just go deeper and deeper into the ground of your life? into the being of this moment where you live. That's driving your pipe into the ground. And from that place, something endlessly comes up, spring water. We use that metaphor quite often in many different ways, like spring water coming up in your life.

[29:45]

It's kind of an endless supply. So we don't need an explanation. No matter how long we ask about why we are so egotistic, we will never find a clear answer. So this is like Buddha, when he told the story of the person who had been shot by an arrow that had poison in it. He said, person needs to do is just let the doctor take out the arrow. He says, what do you think, monks? Would it be wise for that person to say, oh, don't take that arrow out. I want to know who shot me first. And I want to know what the arrow was made out of. I want to know what kind of poison it is and all that before you take the arrow out.

[30:49]

This is like us. asking ourselves, where does our ego-tistic world arise from before we actually want to understand it, before we practice it. So basically, we have to practice this before we understand all the answers. So, I'd like to now just read something from the Nicias, too, that if we... For me, what's always been helpful, as something very concrete, is to think of this passage. This is a passage that Molgayana...

[31:52]

Friends, though a monk asks thus, Let the venerable ones admonish me. I need to be admonished by the venerable ones. Yet if that person is difficult to admonish and possesses qualities that make the person difficult to admonish, if the person is impatient and does not take instruction rightly, then the companions in the holy life think that the person should not be admonished or instructed. They think of the person as a person not to be trusted. Conversely, friends, though a bhikkhu does not ask, a monk does not ask thus, let the venerable ones admonish me, I need to be admonished by the venerable ones. Yet if the person is easy to admonish and possesses qualities that make the person easy to admonish. If the person is patient and takes instruction rightly, then the companions in the holy life think that the person should be admonished and instructed.

[33:01]

And they think of the person as one to be trusted. So this is what we desire. And so if there's something ever not clear to you about how to practice, this is what I believe is the most essential thing How do we be a person? How do we turn ourselves into a person who no other person would have any trouble coming to us and telling us a problem they might have with us or a problem that we're creating for them? How can we be a person like that? That it would be so easy for anybody just to come to you and tell you, what they think your faults are. How can we make ourselves into that person? So that's kind of concrete. We don't have to wonder about that too much.

[34:05]

It just means we're always kind and generous and the person doesn't have to worry about what our response will be. We won't fire back something in their face. Now this was like 2,500 years ago. So when I read these stories, I can sense there's really no difference between the Sangha that the Buddha had and the Sangha we have right now. And for me, that's very encouraging because there's something that always wants to believe things were different in those days. They had some kind of possibilities we didn't have. Either they didn't have so much stuff, so somehow or another they can attain higher degrees of this or that or the other thing. But it seems to me they're still struggling with the same basic things that we do.

[35:10]

So we can receive great confidence that this is the same practice that everyone has done at all times. everywhere. Well, I wanted to just, I want to save some time to not talk and have you talk. But I was going to, yeah, maybe what I'll do is just go back to this one passage for a few minutes and then we'll about where he says, what does he say? Where he says, at the bottom, we're often irritated or uneasy, and the more we place the eye first, the more irritation, uneasiness, suffering, and fear we feel. So we talked a little bit about fear yesterday, and I wanted to go back to it again, because I think

[36:18]

I feel like this is a very deep part of ourselves that's working, whether we realize it or not. For instance, right now, at this moment, I'm not sure I feel such terrible fear. Maybe I did one. I don't think so. Not terribly afraid. It doesn't seem that way. But we may not know everything that's all the way inside of us. So, and when I read stories of people who we look back on a thousand years ago and we recognize that they had some exceptional insight into what it is to live this life and what they taught, about it, I feel some connection because they talk about fear.

[37:29]

So this is what Huang Po says about fear. Ordinary people look to their surroundings, basically, I'll add this in, for security. For security. while followers of the way look to mind. Capital M-I-N-D means enlightened. But the true Dharma is to forget them both. The former is easy enough, the latter very difficult. People are afraid to forget their minds, fearing to fall through the void with nothing to stay their fault. They do not know that the void is not really void, but the realm of the real Dharma. So this is like when we sit sazen. We notice that we have a habituated pattern of thinking.

[38:31]

So our practice is to just look and see that thinking and become aware of where does it begin. Where's the part? place where it first begins. And in becoming aware where it first begins, we can find a further place back where it first begins. We keep practicing, just practicing, trying to find the place where something arises called our thinking. When we can go back and back like that, it opens the opportunity for things to come up from ourselves that we are not aware of. Because we're not imprisoning ourselves just by our thought processes. Because usually our thoughts become our reality. So, by seeing just where we start to think, we can see where we start to create reality.

[39:34]

And If we can see that and become aware of it, we can see there's a whole reality going on right here in this moment that we aren't aware of. But there's a place when we become very quiet and we feel afraid. So what do we do? We immediately start to think about enlightenment. When we become very quiet, kind of quiet to a degree that we may not have experienced before, we go, uh-oh, what's this about? Maybe, maybe it's about enlightenment.

[40:37]

But, Huang Po knows that creating that thought is about fear. It's about being afraid of that place where there's no thought. So that is our greatest desire, is we want to seek and experience realization. Whether we realize it or not, this is our greatest desire. And if we read the Zen teachers, we will see they're always speaking to this point about where our greatest desire is. Because

[41:37]

we're afraid that if we just leave it alone, it won't be there for us. We can't believe, it's hard for us to believe, that ourselves, just as we are, are perfectly enlightened beings, and we don't have to do anything or seek anything. Well, maybe that's enough for a little bit. So we have a few minutes more. Is there any comments or questions? Could you say something more about the experience of keeping forms and the life of four monks together?

[42:49]

Oh, challenging. Well, I lived there by myself for, like, I saw that yesterday. I lived there by myself for, what was it, seven years, something like that, seven years. I shared yesterday that it's never been my vision or the board of directors' vision that I just lived there as a hermit. That has no appeal to me. So I kept imagining. And then, of course, we're always making a vision, you know, a vision. And so I remember a few years ago when we first... when Hōkyō-ji was first created as its own entity, which was 2008. I lived there five years before that time. But anyway, so we created a vision, and we said, what do we envision? Well, the first vision we had was have a core community of about five.

[43:54]

About five. That seemed like the right number. Well, now we have four. And I had a discussion with one of the other residents the other day, and we discovered, no, we need more than four. We need more than five for our next vision. It's got to be at least 12. You know, to have balance, you know, it's like we need people that's kind of spread out over the spectrum, you know. I'm kind of introverted, so I don't talk a whole lot, so... But some people are extroverts, so they need other extroverts alone. You just can't have three introverts and one extrovert. We have one woman and three men. A woman needs another woman to talk to, so we need gender balance. We need people of different races, people of different sexual orientation. We just need a whole kind of pool of people

[44:59]

that we balance each other out. So on my next, we haven't had a board meeting since I had this last discussion, so I have to create a new vision for the board. No, it's not, we're not aiming for five anymore. We're aiming for 12 as a residential community. But you say the forms, your question was about forms. So how we hold it together? Well, I'm acquainted with most all of the forms you're doing here. I practiced in a trained monastery in Japan. So I know I'm familiar with them. With just four of us, we can't do as many forms as you're doing here, or we would just all be running around. That's all we would be doing all day long. So we have to modify and just keep... some basic ones. And then as the community grows, we need more structure.

[46:03]

We have to have more and more structure. Am I getting close to what your question was? Well, yes. I think so. That's a thank you for the picture. Especially for the picture of the support for the growing. You do what you need. that what you can do that supports the group that you have. Yeah, right. And then... Right, right. We select out the most basic ones that we can reasonably do and do them the best we can. Thank you. You're welcome. Yeah, Brad? I've been thinking a lot lately about what is the value of what you do or what Zen does. to the wider world, especially as it concerns things like what you're talking about, forms and things. You can't expect all the residents of San Francisco to start practicing our forms.

[47:11]

But I've always thought that if there's any real value to the practice, it has to be valuable that goes out to the wider world who are not necessarily interested in. So I don't know if that's not much of a question. Yeah, well, it's always a question because really everything we do... I had my 60th birthday about a couple weeks ago. So anyway, I don't know what that means, but it means something, but not a whole lot. But anyway, it does mean that And I don't have kids, or I'm not married. So what appears to me is that the only thing where my life has any value whatsoever is what can I do for future generations?

[48:17]

What can I do for the future? In other words, something that's not me. What can I do that has some value that goes beyond just myself? That's the only thing that really creates any, I have any interest in. So, actually, I'll just go back a second, because in my editing, I did edit out this line. But even one person practicing love and compassion is a great source of peace in the world. So, we practice here in this place, but this place... is not just Tassajara.

[49:20]

It's the whole world. So most of us won't be here forever. Yet the practice we do will carry somewhere. So it will carry with every person you talk to anywhere. So if someone is very upset in San Francisco where you're talking about something that's causing some trouble in the world. We can talk to them in a way that may be of some benefit for the whole world. But the only way they can receive anything is if we talk to them with a very calm mind. this is a way that we can touch people's hearts. Because this kind of peace, while we don't have to say, you know, we don't have to go out and say everyone should have the kind of peace that we have, still, we don't have to say it, but we can live that way and just be it, be that peace.

[50:41]

And maybe, There's all kinds of troubles in our world that we need to be concerned about. Yet, we first have to deal with our own troubles. If we do, we can affect other people who are working for very noble causes in this world and help them with their work. Or we ourselves can do it. We have that choice. Whatever it is that gives our life the deepest meaning. And sometimes those people who are working in very complex, busy, difficult circumstances that are working for noble causes, sometimes they need a break. So they may like to come to a place like this and just renew their... their energy.

[51:42]

So, we ourselves, if we're here, we have to keep working to give that person support for their work. So that's how it works, from my opinion. Does that speak to that? Yes? If you have a very open heart, do you still Well, I think that Private Wong Po was saying that you see. Well, maybe, you know, we never can know, you know, where the end of fear is, I don't think. Logan says too, he says, the Buddha way is basically leaping clear of the many and the one.

[52:49]

So that's sort of a way we're kind of conceiving the world. And then he says, yet in attachment flowers fall and in aversion weeds grow. So whether we do or not, we just have to meet it when it arises, if it's there. So I don't know where the depth or where my fear ends, but still the point is when it arises, we just let it come in. And when we let it come in, then it goes. So whether it's really there or not, I don't know. Because The more we actually just open ourselves up to it, the faster it goes away. I just have a couple minutes left.

[53:56]

I thought I would close on a... Well, I have a closing here. First, I'll bring up another Joshu story, just a little lighter, I think, in nature. So, like I said before, we're always concerned about, ultimately, about realization. So a monk asks Joshu, they says, what is the depth of the deep? Where is the very depth of the deep? In other words, he wants to know where's the deepest part of the deep. Joshu said, how long has there been a deep deep?

[55:05]

monk said, the deep has been here forever. So that's pretty deep. The deep has been here forever. Joshua said, well fortunately you have met me because you almost became someone who got deeped to death. What I appreciate about Joshu is never, ever any room to go speculating about something. We read the recorded sayings of Joshu, and it's in a book about 120 pages or so. And each page has usually about these three little paragraphs. They're all about that long. And they all have about this much space between them. So, one, two, three. So, if you really just wrote all this down, like in a book, without any spaces or titles to any of these little passages, you could probably put it into about 25 pages.

[56:23]

And you live to be 120 years old. So, these are the recorded sayings in like 25 pages. It's like, he didn't have a lot to talk about. Really. So... Any event. Okay. Two more minutes and let me conclude with one more passage from Huang Po. Someone asked, Huang Po, they say, what guidance does your reverence offer to us, those of us, who find all this very difficult to understand? Huang Po answered, I have no thing to offer. I have never had anything to offer others. It is because you allow certain people to lead you astray that you are forever seeking intuition and searching for understanding.

[57:27]

Isn't this a case of disciples and teachers all falling into the same insoluble muddle? So I think this is quite a wonderful passage. So when Huang Po says, I have no thing, and this is capital letters, no, and then thing capitalized, but it could be read nothing. I have nothing to offer. But yet... If we truly can offer nothing to somebody, I think, I think that's about the greatest gift we can give. It means we're not offering a lot of our preconceived ideas. We're just offering nothing.

[58:32]

Where's nothing? So that nothing is a pretty big gift. to be able to give. But generally speaking, we can get pretty confused, and teachers can too, because they might think that I have something. If we experience some, what we might believe is a remarkable degree of awareness, I might think I have a remarkable degree of awareness. And you don't. And I can maybe give that to you. So it's pretty easy. It's pretty easy for teachers to get caught by that. So that's why he says it's the case of disciples and teachers falling into the same insoluble muddle.

[59:37]

where we think there's something we have to get, something we have to attain. So really it's like watch yourselves during Zazen because this is a place where it's been handed down from the past where we can really find something out about ourselves. We need Zazen because we're not actually all as talented as we think we are. We have limited capabilities. So actually, people, if we do Zazen, we're basically recognizing our humility and that we need to take some time out to actually practice something very simple, like sitting down and facing a wall and not thinking. So that's a simple, about as simple a thing as we can do.

[60:39]

And yet we have trouble doing it. Even the most simple, let alone complex things. Okay. Thank you very much. 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, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[61:10]

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