This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzz.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. Paul says, take a piece of paper and a pen and write your thoughts on three questions. Just avoid picking and choosing. Then it will be the way it is. The third question picks me. What have you learned about love in these past couple of days? I have learned that it can be quiet as a flickering which rises up when the sun heats the dew, releasing a thousand California tortoise shells

[01:01]

from their numb slumber, up and down and round and round. In love, they sweater and spin and feed the ground squirrels and blue jays who love them too for the meal they so generously provide. So what have I learned about love? The way it is, is just that. The question was, what inspires you? My answer was, The natural world, people who devote their lives with humility and compassion to making the world better for the environment, for non-human animals, and for human animals. Bravery, people who change for the better, people who acknowledge their shortcomings and mistakes, people who lead through encouragement and peace, beauty, skill, virtuosity, kindness, faith, and love. What I was reminded about love was to ask for what you need.

[02:05]

And it emerges more simply when you've been fed. What has softened me during this workshop was the many gazes that met me so directly eye to eye. Time to read and naps. I am inspired by the devotion and kindness as long as. What have I learned about love? It takes self-love to love. What have I learned about love? Love splits me open, breaks my heart, and my self-trust is only true when said it in the last breath. And love is kind, forgiving, unruly, beautiful, complicated, and simple. Love resurrects, evolves, expands, and highest. Love is forever patient.

[03:05]

Love creates opportunity to grow and grow and grow. Thank you all very much. For those of you who don't know, my name is Paul Arush and Paul Heller. And I'm here at the moment teaching a workshop called The Path to Wholeness. And that illustrious row of exquisite writers is part of the workshop. And one of the last exercises we did about two or three hours ago was taking up some questions that were crafted by a wonderful anthropologist, Angelis Aryan, who went around the world exploring the wisdom traditions of the world, of all sorts of environments, and then looking for the overlap, looking for the commonality.

[04:24]

And those three questions came out of her deciphering the overlap. And so for no good reason, at the last moment I said to them, what about if you all stood up and read something from which I had earlier assured them was completely private? And for reasons best known to themselves, they agreed. That workshop is a whole variety of things that are presented in terms of modalities, and one of them is writing, with some lead-in to the writing, and others are mindfulness, zazed.

[05:41]

We even include those kinds of boring things. some Zen koans, some poetry, some questions that go back and forth between two people. And part of what prompted me at the end was to say, well, what if you stood up? Because I thought, well, that's a pretty scary thing to do. After you've just been sitting, in the cozy safety of a group that you've been working with for the last couple of days on the intimate topics of the heart. And then stand up in front of a scary bunch of strangers and read your secret writings.

[06:44]

Part of what prompted it for me was I was thinking of this. There was an aviator, Amelia Earhart, who became an aviator at a time when it was strictly for men only. She perished trying to travel around the world solo. But she wrote this poem. This is part of a poem she wrote. is the price that life exacts for granted peace. Unless we dare, each time we make a choice, we pay with courage to behold the resistless day and count it fair. Courage is the price life exacts for granting peace. In this workshop we were looking at the affairs of the heart, the affairs of the mind, and the affairs of the deep sensibilities of being alive.

[08:05]

There's a Buddhist teaching that says there are three kinds of consciousness. In Sanskrit it's chitta, Hridhaya and Vridha, which, chitta, more or less, ordinary mind. You know, the mind that's thinking and judging and engaging in a cognitive way. And then Hridhaya is the Sanskrit for heart. Wholehearted. taking it to heart. Not simply emotion, but certainly including emotion. It's something of the passion of our life, as it's felt.

[09:09]

And then Vrita is kind of mysterious. In its essence, it's what's learned from experiencing directly. Maybe we could say it's experiential learning. And then these three consciousnesses are there rumbling around within us. They're helping us negotiate, navigate this human life. And I called all that the path of wholeness. The word marga, the word for path, it carries a double connotation. One aspect of it is this path that the great sages followed and have offered us the benefits of their experience.

[10:21]

And we, as disciples, follow their example, follow their wisdom. And then the other side of it is the essence of Zen practice is authentic being. Of course there's a tradition. We're sitting in the midst of one. the meditation hall in the middle of the mandala of the temple, and then extending out from the meditation hall the kitchen, the dining hall, the sleeping quarters, the laundry. But at the center, the meditation hall. This is the Zen tradition. At the center of our human lives

[11:23]

is this conscious being. Call it threefold, call it singular. It is conscious. And for each of us on this journey of a human life, may be rightly called the journey from birth to death. And sometimes in the Zen way, the life in birth, the life in death happening moment by moment, situation by situation, day by day. I would say the deep wish within us all to live fully.

[12:32]

And that we're making our best effort to do that. Although sometimes it doesn't look like it. Maybe sometimes it looks like we're making our best effort to avoid doing that. Maybe this question of courage feels formidable. And then how to communicate that, how to help create a relationship to that, a realization of that, One of the reasons I have a bunch of modalities is that I think we're all quickly bored. Anyone who sat in meditation for more than 10 minutes has witnessed themselves.

[13:46]

Maybe the challenge of meditation, of Zazen, is to engage it in a way that it's anything but boring. And so I was trying to make the workshop like that, to give it a flavor of like, well, what the heck is going to happen next? And that's part of what prompted me to say, well, what about this? So they could come to this talk, with some sense of apprehension, trepidation, and amusement. As we expect of ourselves aliveness, as we expect of ourselves a kind of an engagement where life is constantly teaching us,

[14:55]

We sort of get used to it. Of course, we would like security. We would like predictability. We would like orderly conduct from ourselves and from others and from our environment. And in the Zen world, we love orderly. We love to see the cushions arranged in a nice, neat, straight row. After you all leave, we'll make things as neat as possible. Because such is life. Some things you can arrange neatly and other things you just can't.

[15:57]

read you a poem, kind of a whimsical poem. I wouldn't stand by the psychological inferences, it's by Billy Collins. It's called The Night House. Every day the body works in the fields of the world, mending a stone wall or swinging a sickle through the tall grass, the grass of civics, the grass of money, and every night The body curls around itself and listens for the soft bells of sleep. But the heart is restless and rises from the body in the middle of the night, leaves the trapezoidal bedroom with its thick, pictureless walls to sit by herself at the kitchen table and heat some milk in a pan. And the mind gets up too, puts on a robe, goes downstairs, lights a cigarette and opens a book on engineering.

[17:05]

Even conscious awakens and roams room to room in the dark, darting away from every mirror like a strange fish. And the soul gets up on the roof in her nightdress, straddling the ridge, singing a song about the wilderness of the sea until the first rip of pink appears in the sky. Then they will all return to the sleeping body the way a flock of birds settles back into a tree, resuming their daily colloquy, talking to each other or themselves, even through the heat of the long afternoons. Which is why the body, the home of voices, sometimes puts down its metal tongs, its needle, or its pen to stare into the distance, to listen to all its names being called before bending again to its labor.

[18:12]

In some ways, there's many parts to us. depending on our mood, depending on the circumstances, depending on what aspect of being is being engaged, and how to have them integrate, how to have them be part of a wholeness. You know, in almost every language, there's a wisdom woven into certain words. Quit your belly aching. You know, that way, it would sometimes, when there's a visceral disturbance, it comes out our mouth in the form of complaints.

[19:35]

You're a pain in the neck. The anatomy of the body somatizes our experience. We get pains in our neck when we've been caught, often in sleep, in a particular emotional state. And I think the word whole, wholeness, wholesome, wholehearted, some of that flavor of embedded wisdom too. How do we make whole these seemingly disparate parts of our being? So we looked at that in our workshop.

[20:43]

We looked at the wonderful contradiction between what do you want and the opening line of the Xin Xin Ming, a Buddhist teaching. The great way is without difficulty. Just avoid picking and choosing. So is this the great battle between good and evil, in the hope that good will triumph? Is wanting always misguided, inappropriate, and leading us into trouble? Or is there virtuous wanting?

[21:53]

I want everyone in the room to be happy. To, despite my rambling words, to have some inspiration to awaken. Is that okay? And are we ever fully in control of our wanting? Once I was in a situation in Thailand and we only got fed once a day. And when all the food was laid out and each person had their portion, the teacher would sit there as if he'd totally forgotten that this was the one meal of the day and that beside him to his left was a row of ravenously hungry monks.

[23:04]

And he would talk about anything and everything. And we'd look at the food longingly. And then after a while, I would sort of give up. And it seemed to be The very moment I gave up, he'd say, oh, let's eat. And then the next day we do the same thing. Is that the recipe that we should use to approach wanting? So in the workshop, blatantly, we explored, what do you want? I want this. What do you want? I want that. What do you want? I want more of that. Ruki said, I want too much.

[24:08]

I think I want everything. Shall we just burn the Shenzhen Ming that says, just avoid the picking and choosing, the grasping of this or that, wanting this and wanting to avoid that? Or is there a way these two can be friends, the wanting and the going beyond wanting? I think we've all experienced when wanting becomes frenetic. You want, you want, you want, and then you get it. And then you gobble the ice cream down without even tasting it.

[25:11]

And as you're gobbling it down without tasting it, you're thinking, I want seconds. There is no satisfaction when wanting has turned itself into a frenetic desire. There is indeed a healthy appetite for life that can nourish us. How do we discover such a thing? How do we integrate those two? How do we integrate the many emotions that come up for us? The many aspirations that are evoked by different moods or sensibilities of mind.

[26:23]

holding them all with some of Billy Collins' whimsy. Is that so? No. Yes, there's that and there's that and there's that. How amazing it is to be a human being. How amazing it is to be so multifaceted. How amazing it is there's a simple practice of sitting down and paying attention and not only bearing witness but actually experiencing the passion of the multiplicity of our being. And in that experiencing, in that paradox of letting each thing be itself and be experienced fully, experience after experience, there's an integrating.

[27:34]

Rather than these being at odds, oppositional, contradictory, they become the facets, the intriguing facets of being a human being. And in this way, we become whole. And we start to learn something about wholeheartedness. Because when we feel fractured, okay, well, I want to do this, but I also want to do the exact opposite. I want to live in Manhattan. And I want to live at Tassara. But as we integrate them and somehow discover that they're all facets, they're all aspects of wanting to be fully alive, then as we

[28:59]

get in touch with what that asks of us, then wholeheartedness can flow forth, express itself in a variety of ways. There was a great Zen teacher, Hakkawan, Quite early in his practice, he became obsessed and deeply upset by the notion of dying. This is a very interesting thing if you pause and think about it for a moment. It is upsetting. to think that we're going to die.

[30:01]

And yet, right now we're alive. And it makes, in some ways, it's common sense to think that then we should live, while we're living. He was obsessed with it. It drove him into a very distracted and fractured state of mind and heart. And then he went through a deep healing. And then after it, he became this extraordinary Renaissance person. He became an extraordinary popular Zen teacher. He's quite a gifted artist. He wrote the most innovative and insightful commentaries on the different Buddhist teachings.

[31:16]

He had the capacity to teach not only Zen students, but Pure Land students and other kinds of students too. he reorganized some of the processes of the Zen sect that he was part of. So when he was fractured, there was agitation, there was distress, there was hopelessness. When something was integrated, the energy flowed forth. in a wonderful variety of ways. And who's not capable of that? Cold-heartedness.

[32:23]

And wholesome You know, I think we all know what it takes to be wholesome. Doesn't mean we do it, but we all know. More or less, you know, we should eat healthfully. We should exercise healthfully. We should work healthfully. All these aspects of our life. Even our relationships, even our place in society, even how we engage the environment. Something in us knows.

[33:31]

doesn't mean to say it isn't sometimes and maybe persistently in some ways obscured by other more agitated states of being preoccupations in our agitated desires or aversions and in some teachings it says First of all, establish the sila. Establish the discipline. Establish the appropriate conduct, the wholesome conduct that enables that awakening. It's like working from the outside in and then sometime from the inside out. Sit down. Experience as intimately and exactly as possible what's going on.

[34:39]

Let it teach you deeply. Let it teach you not simply on the level of citta, ordinary mind. Let it teach you on the level of heart. And maybe even more mysteriously, let it teach you on the level of vriddha, on the level of the visceral experience of aliveness. And then that starts to influence and perfume how we engage the aspects of body, of relationships, of the environment, of money. All these things. Sometimes outside in, sometimes inside out. In all these rambling examples, to sort of set the stage and illustrate the inquiry that life asks of us,

[36:00]

that inquiry in the world of Zen is called koan. Koan means inquiring into the obvious. Maybe we could say the existential koan is what is it to be alive? But wait a minute, we're all doing it all the time. Anywhere you look, When you look at human beings, they're answering that coin. They're expressing it directly. And yet, there's a mystery to it. What is it to be alive? The inquiry, if it's just cognitive, if it's just what your mind can understand or create, the other layers, the other aspects are neglected.

[37:13]

There's a lot to be learned by letting ourselves feel what we feel, both emotionally and from our deeper-seated, more visceral feelings. As we sit in Zazen, allowing and releasing the breath of life. And learning from allowing and releasing the breath of life, allowing and releasing the rhythm of life, the likes, the dislikes, the modes, the emotions, the perspectives that occur to us, the conclusions that occur to us.

[38:20]

How tedious our practice would be if we thought it was about neutralizing all that. Don't ever have any opinions, any conclusions, or any anticipations. that's what we're made of. To sit and experience all of that as the energy of life. To be instructed in the experiencing of it, of what it is to live of how to gather up all of this into wholeheartedness.

[39:27]

Whether or not it makes sense to ourselves or to others. I was hoping some of the statements that would be made would be a little more incoherent. But then they read them and I thought, well, That's kind of lovely and it makes sense too. There's a way when we delve deep into ourselves. This is one of the gifts of sitting in extended meditation. All sorts of thoughts and feelings arise. Sometimes your body feels like it's lighter than air, and you're just floating on a cloud called your cushion. Sometimes your body feels like it's heavier than lead, and you're sitting on a bed of jagged rocks.

[40:41]

It's the same body, it's the same cushion. capable of all sorts of experiences. How to let them be just what they are. How to let them carry this moment's expression of aliveness. How to let them call forth to let them teach deeply within the cognitive mind, within the heart mind, within the mind of experiencing.

[41:46]

And with one more poem, if I brought it. Okay, I did. Be a person here. Stand by the river. Invoke the owls. Invoke winter. then spring. Let any season that wants to come here make its own call. After that sign goes away, wait. A slow bubble arises through the earth and begins to include sky, stars, all space, even the outracing, expanding thought. Come back and hear the little sound again.

[42:57]

Suddenly, this dream you're having matches everyone's dream. And the result is the world. If a different call came, there wouldn't be any world, or you, or the river, or the owl's calling. How you stand here is important. How you listen for the next things to happen. How you breathe. So I hope that doesn't make too much sense. Just in case you thought it did, I'll read it again. Be a person here. Stand by the river. Invoke the owls, invoke winter, then spring. Let any season that wants to come here make its own call.

[44:03]

After that sign goes away, wait. A slow bubble rises through the earth and begins to include sky, stars, all space. Even the outracing, expanding thought. Come back. and hear the little sound again. Suddenly, this dream you're having matches everyone's dream. And the result is the world. If a different call came, there wouldn't be any world, or you, or the river, or the owl's calling. How you stand here is important. How you listen for the next things to happen. How you breathe. How you listen.

[45:13]

How you breathe. How you experience the experience that's being experienced. flickering energy of being alive, making itself evident. And the great koan, the great inquiry of what is it to let that innate knowledge, that innate light guide and illuminate living this life? What is it to sit still and sit upright and allow it to reverberate through being?

[46:23]

Stafford says in his poem, how you stand is important. How you sit is important. How you walk is important. How you relate to others is important. is important. How could you possibly get bored with all those things to preoccupy yourself with? Just think of when you were a child, you know. And you so wistfully said, can I go out and play? Yeah. To hold it all lightly.

[47:37]

maybe even amused by ourselves, taking ourselves so seriously. And yet it's all we've got. When we stop breathing, we're dead. When the mind stops being the mind, we're dead. When the body, the heart, stops beating, The body cools down. This great matter of life and death. Please enjoy yourself in your explorations. Thank you. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

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