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. And those of you who have come from outside of Greenwich, it's so nice to see you. I hope you're happy to be here. We're happy to have you. Thank you. And for those of you online, good morning. So the talk, or what I want to talk with you about today is rest and relaxation. Wonderful.

[01:04]

Yes, yes, yes. And the theme, in preparing for the talk, usually in the weeks, couple weeks before the talk is to happen, things come forth and speak to me. other Dharma talks, something on the radio, what a friend sends me, sometimes dreams, sometimes questions. So this talk really flowed from a number of questions and themes around rest and relaxation. and very synchronistically. It came up again yesterday in a doksan with someone, the importance of rest and relaxation.

[02:12]

So I feel like it's kind of a really important part of our practice that perhaps gets skipped over and not talked about that much. And I want to do it justice, but I won't get to the bottom of it. There's really a lot there. But I wanted to start with two stories from the Buddha, one from the Buddha, and one story about Suzuki Roshi that I heard. So the story about the Buddha is the Buddha had... back trouble, and I don't know if you know this, he had different pains in his back, had to take care of it during his lifetime. And one day he was lying down, and it was like the middle of the day, like, you know, noon time or something. And Mara, this is, Mara is a kind of archetype of

[03:24]

Mara is often called the evil one. Mara is the evil one. But also, Mara is like a kind of a noble friend who brings up difficult things and tries to urge the Buddha in one way, which forces him in another way, or allows him to strengthen and go another way anyway. We know the story about Mara with the Buddha under the Bodhi tree, but this is another story. So Mara comes along and says, sees the Buddha lying there. What are you doing lying there? The sun is high. You should be out on all these rounds or teaching or doing something there. You're gold-breaking. I don't know if Mara said gold-breaking, but the sun is high. What do you think you are? And the Buddha said, The gist of what the Buddha said was, out of compassion for the many, I take my rest.

[04:31]

Out of compassion for the many, I take my rest. So this is from Pali Canon. It's a very 2,500-year-old story, or at least teaching story that's been handed down, which points to combining compassion, compassion practices, taking care of others, and taking care of yourself as inextricably as the same thing, really. Out of compassion for the many, I take my rest. So you can imagine if the Buddha didn't rest and was maybe hurting himself by trying to continue certain kinds of practices or walking around or I don't know, even maybe teaching, that he could have damaged himself further or not been able to, responsibly, with a soft and flexible mind, because he needed to rest.

[05:40]

So that's the first story. And I find that there's a way in which one might have a misunderstanding of our practice and think rest is like lower down on the importance list because we've got to, you know, really make effort, which we do, and I'll come to this a little later, how effort and rest are also inextricably together. The other story is a story about Suzuki Roshi, which I wasn't there, so I ended up telling it with my own embellishments. This is a story where Suzuki Roshi was working at Tassahara in the

[06:52]

a garden that he created, the Rock Garden, with a couple, I'm not sure, two or three maybe, of his disciples who were young or in their 20s probably, strong male, identified as male, students who were helping him. This is how I understand the story. And they worked in the hot sun, moving boulders and large rocks all day. By the end of the day, Suzuki Roshi seemed to have energy. It was perky. And the guides, the students, were kind of wiped out. They'd been working on this all day in the sun. And one of them said to Suzuki Roshi, how come we're so much younger than you And we're so wiped out, and you seem to have a lot of energy after working all day like this.

[07:58]

And Suzuki Roshi said, or I heard that he said, I rest in each moment. I rest in each moment. So that's been a teaching story for me, a koan in some ways. What does it mean to be resting while fully exerting? Aren't those, isn't that an oxymoron or something, but actually full exertion and relaxed, and a resting, relaxed body, body-mind go together? I remember I was at a party in college, this was a long time ago, maybe in 1967, and this group of people was sitting around.

[09:07]

One person said, relax, to me. And another person said, she's relaxed. And I remember thinking, Not relax. How would I know? I didn't feel tense, but why did that person say relax? What? And right now, am I relaxed? You know, I have certain physical signs, like my cheeks are really red, but I don't feel tense, but am I completely relaxed? That's a question. And of course, if someone says, relax, it's very hard to relax. So rest and relaxation are part of our practice of great compassion.

[10:13]

And in particular, I wanted to say something about The practice is called paramitas, the six perfections, which are giving generosity, morality, or ethics, patience. And the fourth one is called sometimes heroic enthusiasm or heroic effort or joyous effort. And there's a text written in the 8th century by a monk, a very, very strong practitioner named Shantideva, who wrote this work called Guide to a Bodhisattva's Way of Life. And it's all in verse except for the last chapter, which is prose. And he takes up each of the perfections. And when he's talking about joyous effort, he brings up

[11:18]

the importance of rest. And in the commentary on this, this rest is called the power of rest. So in the paramita of enthusiasm or joyous effort, there's ways and there are powerful practices to support that. One is your aspiration, coming back to your aspiration to live for the benefit of others, your bodhisattva vow, bodhicitta. Another is steadfastness, staying with your practice continually over time. The third power that supports joyous effort is rest. So rest means... in terms of what Shantideva says, and I'll read the verse.

[12:25]

The verse of Shantideva, sorry, rustling through these papers, is, this is Shantideva. If I become weak or tired, I should stop what I'm doing. and continue with it once I have rested. Very simple. And part of that also is not being attached to what we do, which is one of the reasons sometimes we don't rest, because we're caught up or attached to accomplishing and attaining and maybe expectation of gain. So we keep going beyond when we should stop or when we're tired or exhausted. So the second part of this verse is, when I have done something well, I should not be attached, but move on to what needs to be done, meaning what's the next thing?

[13:39]

So this is how we maintain and continue our practice over years and years and years without burnout, without exhausting ourselves, which, you know, meant we do this mudra. You can't do this at all. We have to have rest woven in. So yesterday, we had one day sitting here at Green Gulch, We used to say on a schedule, there'd be, you know, like after a meal, we used to have on a schedule in years gone by break. Like a break, which is often what we call at work. We say, I'm going to take a break, a break from work. I'm going to cut that and do something else.

[14:41]

But now, and for years actually, we've written at that place on the schedule Rest. So after our meals and after tea, rest. So rest isn't a break from our practice or from our one-day sitting. Rest is the practice of rest. And that might be different for different people. For someone it might be strolling down to the garden and back. For someone else it might be lying down taking a cat nap or taking a nap or doing a restorative yoga pose or for one day sitting up thinking these are possible rest practices and yesterday sitting together for the

[15:46]

you know, five in the morning till six, I have the sense of what a radical, rare, and amazing, wonderful practice that is to take a full day to not be productive, to not be accomplishing, to not... do our to-do list and get all that stuff done. It's a day to practice the Dharma gate of repose and bliss. Now, in our instructions for sasen, the universal instructions for sasen, there's a section where it says, Dogen Zetje, our ancestors' instructions for zazen, or admonitions, actually, after he's described certain things, he says, the zazen I speak of is not learning meditation.

[17:03]

It is simply the dharma gate of repose and bliss. the Dharma gate of repose and bliss. And this was one of the things that sparked me wanting to talk about this. Someone told me that they were asked this question about that line in the Universal Admonitions, where it says, the Zasana I speak of is not learning meditation, and it's simply the Dharma gate of repose and bliss. And the student said, but I... in repose and I'm not in bliss or ease and joy that's another translation of those two characters I think they're An and Raku ease and bliss or joy and bliss and they said that's not my zazen so what is our zazen which is the Dharma gate of repose and bliss

[18:08]

It's not the dark gate of accomplishing stuff and getting stuff and achieving and attaining stuff. It's the gate of repose and bliss, which is the practice realization of totally culminated enlightenment. That's the second, the next line. And in hearing those words, Whether, you know, for me it's whether coming to sit on my cushion for one day sitting, whether I actually experience my idea of repose and bliss or not, still this teaching that just sitting, taking our seat, sitting upright without grasping after things, without

[19:09]

pushing things away, that right there is the reality of our existence. And we can't grasp it. We want to. But I want to have that experience of repulse and bliss, whatever that is. But to step back, and whether we know it or not, actually knowing that, it's maybe imperceptible. We can't perceive it. But that's what the teaching is. There's a kind of, when I hear that, I feel like I'm just like in the ammonitions. My shoulders drop away from my ears. In another text I've been studying with Tenshin Roshi's senior seminar group, we came upon, this is what I mean about synchronicity, came upon this same phrase about repose and bliss, which had to do with the Buddhas waking up under the Bodhi tree and waking up

[20:46]

you know the marvelous wondrousness of his verifying and realizing the truth of not only his existence but all of our existence and the greater and nothing's left out this is the repose and bliss Sometimes those characters are said to mean nirvana itself, peace, letting go of grasping because there is nothing to grasp. Doka, as I said, offered to us these admonitions

[21:47]

the Fukasasaki, and in another Dharma talk, he said, just resting is like the great ocean accepting hundreds of streams arriving here. There is no forward or backward. Just resting is like the great ocean accepting. So this is a quote from another Zen master, that Dogen pulls from the Zen Master Hum Jir. So this just resting, and I picture that just sitting, just practicing sasa and allowing the myriad streams of whatever arises. The ocean doesn't reject anything. Hundreds of streams arriving here. No forward or backward. There's two other things I want to bring up with you.

[23:04]

And I'm going to start with, of these two things, something that also came to my attention just last week. And it was a friend and student told me about a podcast that she had listened to at a time when she was feeling exhausted just with work and a non-stop kind of schedule that just didn't quit and also not feeling so well. And this was... an interview with a woman named Trisha Hersey. Now, maybe some of you know her.

[24:06]

I know one person is reading her book, and she's an African-American woman who was in a divinity school program, had a son that she was caring for, I think he was maybe in grade school, working two or three jobs, taking like three buses to get to school. She had a job working at school, then studies. She studied classes in the library till late, three buses back, and home at midnight and wake up and start all over again. And this was going on week after week after week. She felt, and this kind of amazing thing flowed from her, that she was damaging herself, living this way.

[25:14]

It wasn't sustainable, and not only that, it was killing her. It was unhealthy. And she had a kind of insight into, and this is in particular about African American people, the way the bodies were used, have been used over the centuries for work and productivity with no considerations for the preciousness of this human body and the care. And she was doing research at that time on reading enslaved people's narratives and so forth. And she, out of this, made this turn and decided that she was going to rest.

[26:19]

She was going to find a way. And she started napping. at different times, on a couch, in a chair, closing her eyes, resting at home. And out of this came what she calls the nap ministry. You can look it up, napministry.com. And she calls herself the nap bishop. And as I say it, it sounds... It might sound casual or something, or isn't that? How adorable, or something. This is a serious, serious practice, and her book is called Rest is Resistance, a Manifesto. And it's a resistance to our culture, what she calls the grind culture,

[27:28]

which we're all familiar with. We've all internalized it. Get things done. Do as much as we can. Produce. Don't take breaks. Guilty if we do. Take our full vacation. Go to work if we're sick. She tells a story in the book of being in a car accident, being in the emergency room, and calling into work, and her boss saying, don't you think you could come in and put in a few hours, you know? And realizing the damage, you know, this way of thinking and living has brought to millions of people, and it's universal, really, in certain cultures, I would say, are capitalistic,

[28:29]

profit-making culture. The dominant white culture has certain, you know, if you study it, there's certain earmarks, maybe. So she invites everyone, and I'm continuing to read her book, to kind of resist as a form of taking a stand for your own care and life and health. And when we're exhausted, when we're depleted, it is much harder to respond with kindness and compassion, to be able to even listen. You know, we have a short fuse maybe.

[29:31]

So these practices of rest and relaxation is not a kind of self-serving... It does serve this body-mind and this person. However, it doesn't end there. It's for the sake of compassion for the many. I take my rest to have this be part of our practice and let go of a kind of, for me anyway, I should say, kind of a misunderstanding, really. I remember being at Tassar being on a serving crew, serving an oreo-ki meal for a sashim, and one of the people on the crew, after we were done, said, I'm not going to take my break. I'm going to go right back to the center. What about you? I thought, well, gee, I kind of want to take my break. But maybe real students don't take their breaks.

[30:33]

They go right back to the Zen though. But I really want to. And I got confused. And I took my break. Then I thought, well, maybe that proves it. I don't have what it takes. Because if I have what it takes, I would like pound my bones, you know, the powder. Or something. We have these images and phrases even in Zen, which is why I want to bring up rest and relaxation is there too. So, Trisha Hersey, if you want to look it up. And it's... You know, there's all sorts of things that come up. What about making a living? I can't. If I don't show up to work, I'm going to be fired, right? I mean, there's all these stories of workers like in service industry and hotels and things where they take lots of ibuprofen and stuff for their backs because they cannot miss work.

[31:48]

They have to keep working. That mentality, and so this... Having this one day sitting yesterday, I felt it as turning the tide the other way, to take that kind of time to practice in this way for the sake of the world, and to help others to be able to do that as well. The last thing I wanted to bring up with you is a poem written by one of our ancestors that we recite when we list the ancestors in morning service, the male ancestors, male-identified ancestors. The ancestor Sekito Kisen Daeyo Sho, who wrote, the Sandokai wrote The Harmony of Difference and Equality, that poem

[32:56]

we know and chant regularly, once a week in either Japanese or English, and for Suzuki Roshi Memorial, and it teaches, it's, you know, the deep teaching of our school, you might say, Soto Zen, and Buddha Dharma. And he also wrote another poem, which, I haven't studied this poem deeply, But I've loved it, and I've loved it over the years. And it came to me in this, as I said, these last couple weeks, because I was terming rest and relaxation. Because in this poem, our dear ancestor Sekitoki said, Shurto Shi-chan, Chinese, who lived 700 to 790, And I thought, when I looked at those dates, Shantideva was 8th century.

[34:01]

Isn't 8th century too? Isn't the 700s the 8th century? And I thought, how great Shantideva, Gaida Bodhisattva's Way of Life, and Sekito Gisen, one of our, I think of him as a grandfather, lived at the same time in India, China. Anyway, this poem that he wrote, It's a little bit long, but I'm going to just read excerpts. It's called Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage. And it starts out, I built a grass hut where there's nothing of value. After eating, I relax and enjoy a nap. That's how he starts off. Just picture that.

[35:02]

And he did. He lived in a little hut. This is not just a referee. And taught there. I built a grass hut where there's nothing of value. After eating, I relax and enjoy a nap. I highly recommend this. You know, sometimes we say, oh, I'm going to relax, and we take out our phone and do all the stuff we do. Or another screen. This, you know, the amazingly smart minds of this century have gone, come together to work out ways that you will not put that phone down, you know, so that you'll keep going. And even fool yourself to say, oh, I rested when actually... All sorts of other things are going on.

[36:02]

And I know for young girls in particular, after watching Instagram and different things, they feel worse about themselves and depressed. And still, even knowing that, continue and go back, which is kind of the definition of addiction, right? Continuing to do something that we know is not beneficial for us. So, you know, just after eating, I relax and enjoy a nap. Then there's, it's a wonderful poem. When it was completed, fresh weeds appeared. Now it's been lifted, covered by weeds. The person in the hut lives here calmly. not stuck to inside, outside, or in between.

[37:06]

Places where worldly people live, he doesn't live. He's talking about himself. Realms worldly people love, he doesn't love. Though the hut is small, it includes the entire world. that is, I would say, that's not hyperbole or image, just metaphor, image. It includes the entire world. Just like when you sit on your seat, the entire world is there. And you're sitting with the entire world. You're not sitting with Your sitting is the entire world. I'm going to skip down a little bit.

[38:12]

Just sitting with head covered. It's interesting, because with our windows open, we've been wearing head coverings. And not hot, it's chilly. And Bodhidharma also, you see him, he had kind of a you know, something to cover the head and the ears when it gets chilly, windy. Just sitting with head covered, all things are at rest. Thus, this mountain monk doesn't understand at all. Living here, he no longer works to get free. That also, that line, it's like, ah, dropping the shoulders, no longer working to get free in a particular way. Not that joyous effort is left behind, full-on joyous effort, but a kind of, let me out of here, freedom.

[39:28]

Misunderstanding. I'm going to just skip down to this last part. Turn around the light to shine within, then just return. The vast, inconceivable source can't be faced or turned away from. It's you. Meet the ancestral teachers. Be familiar with their instructions. Bind grasses to build a hut. You don't give up. Let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. Open your hands and walk innocent. thousands of words myriad interpretations are only to free you from obstructions

[40:52]

I'll read the last line, which is my least favorite line. If you want to know the undying person in the hut, don't separate from this skin bag here and now. I find unpleasant associations arise with that line, with that auditory hearing it or reading it. But that's what it is, right? So I think that is what I wanted to offer today with a wish for us to include rest as one of our main practices. Not as a, maybe if I get to it, or being embarrassed or guilty that we're trying to find a time to rest, but have it really just woven into our daily life and practice for the sake of and for compassion for the many we practice like that.

[42:29]

So I think we're going to chat after the Q&A. Is that true? So if anyone has a question you'd like to bring up or say anything, and if anyone online would like to ask a question, I think we have some time. Yes, Larry. I have a question. Yes. This morning, I checked in with someone who signed out a couple, a decent amount of times as rest from the practice field schedule. I was under the impression maybe the person signed out a little bit more than they needed to. You were under the impression that said again? I was under the impression that the person maybe signed out a little bit more. It took a little bit more rest than I think. They need it. Of course, that's my very subjective perspective.

[43:40]

Yes. And I think they agreed with that perspective. But I want to just ask, especially maybe in terms of practice, our schedule here at Zen Center, if you could speak a little bit more about that balance between taking your rest, resting, If I feel exhausted, I would like people to rest if they feel exhausted. And also to find, yeah, a little more about finding that edge. Maybe also not signing out if I feel like, I don't really want to go to the Zen room. Thank you. That is a perennial. Everybody in line with that? This is a very, it's perennial meaning. Over the years, I remember it got to be so prevalent. We said you're not able to sign up with REST.

[44:40]

It was like we banned the use of REST. For those of you who are online, there's a place where you can write down if you're not able to follow the schedule. Usually we'll send somebody if you're sick to write down, sick, going to Doksan, have to work, whatever. vacation or day off and rest sometimes people yeah so you know this is a practice for each person to be very upright about because the practice of I rest in each moment one can ask can I rest on my cushion is anything preventing me from you know letting go of a hundred years and relaxing right there or is it I don't wanna you know which is really different from coming to the end of one's energy body and feeling is a disservice to myself it's hurting myself if I were to go

[46:02]

So each person has to really look at that. You know, in the Joyous Effort Paramita commentary, they talk about laziness, using the word laziness. And laziness, there's several kinds. One is indolence. Indolence means no deloitte, no pain. I don't want to feel any pain. I don't want to make that effort. I just don't want to. So there's that kind of laziness. But you actually do, or you could. You have the energy. Another kind of laziness is self-denigration, which comes in the form of, oh, I just can't. I just can't get up. like that. It's different from I don't wanna.

[47:03]

It's, I'm so, it's kind of victim or I don't know. And they call it laziness, thinking in that way. Because why? Because each of us is, you know, has this precious human body to take care of and to practice with. And it's a kind of disconsolate, depressed maybe even. is unnamed kind of in this section around. And another is overdoing it, you know. One, it does it more than other people, or not stop work when the bell rings. Overdoing it. So it's called laziness, which we usually don't think about, that overdoing it is... And it's lazy because... Being upright and according with conditions is joy's effort and falling on either sides.

[48:10]

So I think you're right, having a conversation with someone and seeing and asking, is it true or is something else going on? Are you sad about something? Is it what's going on? And maybe we should use rest, for those of you in the practice period or here, really specifically for, you know, very depleted... We often need space sometimes if something's happening emotionally, or we're grieving, or there's been loss. We may need some space from the... of the schedule or so we can we could talk about that with somebody there's room for that there's room for all of it but in talking about rest and relaxation too to know when it really is rest that's called okay thank you

[49:24]

Thank you for this. Can you hear me? If you make it a little more horizontal. It's going to be hard to simplify this, but it occurs to me that Anharats is related to greed. You never used the word greed in your talk today, but I think it's part of the chain or whatever you want to call the trail of our lifestyle, let's say. I would like to just, could you use, could we identify some real, difficult, unrestful situations that people are in? For example, being attacked in a war, poverty, tremendous pain that comes with being ill, because those are difficult to rest in.

[50:36]

So can we talk about that a little bit? How do we rest? Yes, in those situations. So how do we find our rest in the midst of illness, old age, sickness, and death? War, oppression, violence of many kinds. And I think that's, you know, rest could take many forms. In this book by Tricia Hersey, she mentions her grandmother who would just close her eyes sitting on the couch for a while. And she had been through a lot. And when Trisha was a little girl, she would tiptoe around.

[51:39]

She wasn't sleeping around. She was resting and listening. And that can be done. And she would take strength from that and kind of talk. Trisha, right in the middle of difficulties, you can, even for a moment. And she found that also. on the bus to these jobs looking at the trees and feeling or hearing a bird. So nature, even from a bus, can meet us there. And I think we know, I mean, it just, Anne Frank just came to mind, you know, in her diary, she talks about nature that she could see from her window, you know. So And when people are dying or in hospice or ill, you know, sometimes they talk about great gratitude. They've let go of so much.

[52:42]

And one person told me she was in bliss. She died the next week. So rest is not owned by the privileged view. It's not a luxury. It's not only for those who can afford to go on a vacation to some island or something. Each of us, in each step we take, we can find. Lexa Segura, she said, I rest in each moment. How do we practice with that and discover for ourselves what that could be? And it's true, you know. oppression, violence. There are stories of people finding their rest in the middle of that too, actually, which I won't retell here.

[53:44]

So, it's not dependent on the conditions being just right. It's about our own capacity to discover it. It's there. Okay, thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. 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 Dharma.

[54:38]

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