This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. So good evening. So I really want to thank senior Dharma teacher Paul Holler for this opportunity, and also the tanto, Rosalie Curtis. And I also want to thank my first teacher, Josho Pat Phelan, and the many teachers and friends who have supported my practice,

[01:08]

for a number of years. So one of the earliest teachings of the Buddha is called the Eightfold Path. I think probably a lot of people have at least heard of the Eightfold Path. and it's sort of divided into instructions on right speech, right view, right practice. And I'm actually not going to talk about the Eightfold Path tonight, but this word right, it's translated in English as right, right. For years, I just assumed it was right in terms of right and wrong.

[02:15]

And then I heard a teacher one time who had sort of researched the Pali word and the way it's been translated and came up with this really... long and involved explanation about how, what the word actually really means is kind of in tune with. Um, so if somebody's playing a musical instrument and you, um, pick up a, you know, a guitar or something and join in, it's very clear to the ear if, um, the sound that you're making with the instrument you're holding kind of syncs up with or corresponds in some way with the music of the other instrument. So this instruction, the Eightfold Path has something to do

[03:32]

not with right and wrong, at least in my understanding, but somehow being in tune with. And I think that's what I would like to talk a little bit about tonight is this sort of way we can see and experience our practice as kind of tuning our instrument what are we tuning to and how do we tune? When I was about 19, I had the good fortune to go on a sailing trip for about three weeks and we lived on this boat and it was about a 27 foot boat and there was no

[04:35]

cabin, so there was no kind of enclosed space on the boat. It was basically a large rowboat. And it had two masts, but it also had four sets of oars. So when the wind didn't blow, we took turns rowing wherever it was we were going. This was in the Florida Keys and the Everglades. So at night, when it was time to go to bed, we basically laid the sets of oars out on the seats of the rowboat and bunched them together. And I think we had like a little thin maybe yoga mat that we laid on top of that and we slept on these wooden oars. And if we were expecting rain, we could...

[05:36]

sort of lash a tarp between the two masts of the boat to cover this area that we were sleeping on. But most nights, you know, we didn't and we just slept under the stars basically. And what was most kind of, what I most remember about that trip is that is this experience of being under an open sky kind of constantly for three weeks and how I noticed a kind of a sense of wonder build in me as I kind of felt I was in sync with or kind of understanding That, you know, yes, the sun rises over here and then it tracks a certain kind of arc across the sky.

[06:43]

Or, you know, at night, if we live in a city, we walk out and we look up and we say, yeah, there's the stars. But the experience of being outside all night with no kind of blocked horizons is that, you know, the stars are constantly moving and you kind of, you get to know the arc that they... crack across the sky. And you can kind of, you know, after a few days or a week, you sense where they're gonna be at a certain time. And I think what this wonder was, was this sense that like this is a natural rhythm, you know, cycle of day and night that in, you know, in modern times we're kind of a little cut off from. We don't get to experience it in that consistent way. And somehow we miss it, or some part of me felt like I missed it.

[07:51]

And I only realized that when I had the chance to experience it. Some of you know, in the last few years, picked up the sport of surfing and it's become kind of a passion of mine. And, um, what I was surprised about when I kind of got into it was I didn't realize that most people who surf are also kind of avid weather watchers. Um, that, um, They're always sort of tracking when the swells are and when the tides are and what the winds are. The more I surfed, the more I realized that it made perfect sense. In a simple way, we're all kind of looking for the perfect wave or something as close to it as we can find where we live and we get to sort of

[09:03]

understand what conditions might create the perfect wave. And in that process, there is kind of a sense of wonder that develops that it's so ever-changing and so, so many different factors are involved. Certainly, you know, whether it's low tide or high tide or mid tide and the... what direction the swell is coming from, you know, thousands of miles across the ocean, this sort of wave of energy. How the moon is affecting the tides. Is it, you know, a super high, high tide or is it just a regular high tide? What the winds are doing, what the wind direction's doing to create the wave or disrupt the wave. So I think there are these patterns or rhythms that are all around us.

[10:11]

And maybe one way to view practice is that we're kind of finding some way to come into alignment with those rhythms. How do we do that? So I think the very most basic instruction of most forms of meditation is to just follow your breath and experience your breath, kind of get to know what your breath feels like in your body in a way that maybe you weren't paying attention to before. And of course this makes perfect sense in a way because what the breath is or what the heartbeat is, is a kind of a natural rhythm that's occurring right here where I can kind of experience it.

[11:27]

It's not something I'm totally in control of. I can't tell my body when to eat its heart and when not to. So I think from one of, I think Paul's most recent talk, he offered a simple practice of experiencing the breath. And that is to kind of experience the different parts of it. So there's the in breath, you know, what does the in breath feel like? And then, you know, the longer we're kind of practicing with or aware of our breath, there's, we start to notice there's actually kind of a pause, like a slack tide, you know, between the in breath and then the out breath. So what does the pause feel like?

[12:34]

What does the movement into the out-breath feel like? And this is actually pretty subtle. This isn't something that's always very easy to touch or experience. I think one thing Paul was mentioning is we can try and practice noticing how each aspect is a little bit different, like how the in-breath feels somehow palpably different than an out-breath, you know? So maybe on a physiological level, like the in-breath is, you know, bringing oxygen to our body, you know, it's, it's kind of invigorating. It's like awakening. And the out breath is kind of releasing maybe the carbon dioxide that we've processed and it's actually relieving.

[13:48]

It's like a kind of a sense of relief as we breathe out. I definitely encourage everyone to see what that feels like in their body. What does the in-breath feel like? So one of the... One of the teachings that we've been studying during this practice period is a fascicle by Ehe Dogen called Vendawa, and specifically a passage from Vendawa that's called Jijuyu Zamai.

[14:50]

And we chant it for noon service, so there's a 10-minute chanting service before lunch, and every day for this two and a half months, we do the same chant. So the word Jew, the Japanese word Jew, in Jijuyu, is translated as, one translation is receiving. So G is self. Ju is receive or accept. You can mean function or use.

[15:55]

So one translation of the whole phrase is self-fulfilling. Samadhi is the second word which is meditative concentration or absorption. I think Paul often uses the translation continuous contact. So engagement with what's happening in a kind of ongoing way rather than just a fleeting moment. So self-fulfilling or self-receiving. So there's also a practice of breath awareness practice that I learned from Paul as well of kind of with each in-breath kind of using the single word phrase, single word receive or accept and with the out-breath release or let go.

[17:17]

So the act of breathing is sort of like taking in and letting go. And I think the attunement of this is that there actually is some kind of balance, some sort of balance in our own body and outside of our body of taking in and letting go. And I think we often, there's a sort of inherent way which we kind of lean towards one or the other. You know, kind of the acquiring mind, like I wanna take in as much as I can of life or, I guess what would letting go look like as a,

[18:19]

So both receiving and letting go are kind of a, an act that we participate in, you know, in our lives. And sometimes it's helpful to know, like, I'm the kind of person who kind of leans towards receiving, like wanting to bring in. So can I explore what letting go might look like in my life? Or, I'm trying to let go of everything all the time.

[19:23]

I'm trying to maybe not accept what comes in too. So there's this aspect of our own ability to receive Sometimes when we feel full as people like I have too many emotions or too many thoughts, we want to kind of stop the influx of more. So the practice can be, how do I, how do I let go in an act of wanting to receive or knowing that that this flow, this sort of rhythm kind of needs my help to kind of stay in balance.

[20:26]

So this is a quote from Suzuki Roshi. He said, so we say true understanding will come out of emptiness. When you study Buddhism, you should have a general house cleaning of your mind. You must take everything out of your room and clean it thoroughly. If it is necessary, you may bring everything back in again. So he's kind of offering us both here. It's like, take everything out, let go of everything in a way that it's actually able to be examined. And then if it needs to come back in, it can come back in, which has a really different feeling than everything that I know, everything that I am, I'm kind of holding in, you know, like I'm holding on to. So Jakusho Bill Kwong, who was a student of Suzuki Roshi's, wrote a book called No Beginning and No End.

[22:15]

And in it he says the word Jukai, which is one of the words that's used for the ceremony of lay ordination. So when you sow a Raksu... This ceremony is called Zhukai. And he says, the word Zhukai is very interesting. The Chinese character that we pronounce Ju implies the act of receiving. This is such a simple word, but in order for us to receive something, we have to be both present and empty. It's like this glass that I'm holding. It must be empty to receive the water, and I have to be empty inside to be filled by the water as I drink. So this is very typical Zen in a way.

[23:32]

So the word receive implies letting go too, like being empty is part of receiving. So another famous Dogen, A statement that is really well known in Zen circles, certainly, is that Dogen said, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by the myriad things. So in preparing for this talk, it kind of suddenly stuck out to me that the second and third lines of this are kind of speaking about this principle.

[24:44]

So to study the Buddha way is to study the self. And in a way that's G, that's of G-G-U-U-Z-A-M-I. So G is the self receiving. which is also big self. It's like the self that includes everything. But then these next two lines, so to study the self is to forget the self. So that's the dropping, the letting go, the cleaning out of your mind. And then the next line is to forget the self. So once we've let go, is to be actualized by the myriad things. So then we receive. So actualized by the myriad things.

[25:46]

So that's this attunement with the... these larger cycles outside of us, the universal kind of aspect. When that comes to us, rather than us kind of reaching out to influence or understand, when we kind of let go and we forget ourselves, it kind of comes into us in a way that we can study or feel or experience. So how are we doing for time? It's 8.50? 15.

[26:48]

So I'd like to share a poem. This is a poem by Galway Canal. He said, the bud, the bud stands for all things, even for those things that don't flower, for everything flowers. from within of self-blessing. Though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on the brow of the flower and retell it in words and in touch, it is lovely until it flowers again from within of self-blessing. So one of the translations for Jiju, Yu, Samai is self-receiving and employing samadhi.

[28:26]

But another is like self-receiving and enjoying samadhi. So there's some feeling of, I don't know if pleasure is exactly the right word, but for some reason this word that Galway Canal uses of self-blessing. Feels like that kind of receiving. I guess I'm wondering if there are any questions?

[29:30]

Thoughts? Yes, Jeff. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and your practice. Let's return to the boat for a moment that you started with. What's happening to you there? So the question is about this experience of sailing and what it felt like or what it meant to me to be kind of just outdoors 24 hours a day for some weeks. I think the first thing I'll say is that it wasn't just me. It was kind of fascinating to me to see this reaction in all of the people I was on the boat with that we started talking about like big main points of conversation were like the colors of the sunset tonight versus last night or like the certain shades of you know hues that were

[30:55]

passed by the sun and we would talk about certain constellations and kind of the stories of them and learn them and they became our sort of companions on the trip, you know, we're kind of following along with us and so it's, it's this feeling of belonging in a way, belonging to the universe, belonging to, where we are, that I think sometimes we feel cut off from in our busy modern lives. Thank you. Yeah. Mary, thank you too. When you were talking about Suzuki Roshi's story of bringing things out of our mind as a cleaning process, I had this sense of there is like a care for each thing as it comes out and kind of like taking care of each thing and not just like, oh, I'm throwing this away right now, but like paying attention to it and having kind of paying attention to it and examining it and then also bringing it out in a gentle way.

[32:20]

So I'm wondering if you could say anything else about that. Yeah, thank you for sort of fleshing that out. That's sort of my sense too. So this Suzuki Roshi quote about... So when you study Buddhism, you should have a general house cleaning of your mind. You must take everything out of your room and clean it thoroughly. If it is necessary, you may bring everything back in again. So it's that last sentence that I think is this sense of... that this process isn't about getting rid of. It's not about... throwing things away, as you say.

[33:22]

So caring for all of the aspects of our mind and our heart. I think that's kind of what Suzuki Roshi meant as well. So mind and heart are actually the same character in Japanese. And that's, I've kind of tried to quote this quote to people for years, and I always say, that Suzuki Roshi said, zazen is a spring cleaning of your heart. And I looked for that quote, you know, in a number of his books and I couldn't find it. And then I was like, oh, it's actually, he said mind. But, you know, that's the way that we make practice our own in a way, because what it feels like to me is kind of being okay with some feeling I have physically in my chest in kind of examining it. And then if it's felt and kind of experienced and acknowledged in a careful way, like you're saying, sometimes it will just sort of dissipate.

[34:34]

And then if it doesn't dissipate, you know, if it doesn't, we can't force that. So then we just say, okay, it wants to stay. And we put it back. Yeah. I like how you talk about emptying and receiving, really going hand in hand, being part of the same process. I wonder where you think giving fits into that. Because I understand the emptiness and all that, but sometimes I feel like the giving piece is a little bit obscure to me. The first two make a lot of sense. How does the giving arise from that?

[35:37]

The first two in the gift and... The emptying and receiving. You can really see how when you're empty, you're able to receive. But then, do you think the giving arises naturally out of that? Or where does that fit in? Hmm. I think the letting go feels like an act of giving too. So I kind of more associate it with that. Like if you give something precious, you're genuinely letting go of it. But this idea of letting go and receiving as being a cycle It feels very similar to the three wheels of giver, receiver, and gift. So all three are necessary to have a gift or to have generosity. They're kind of all part of the same thing.

[36:42]

Just like the letting go and receiving are kind of all part of the same thing. Thank you all for your kind attention and for being here this evening. 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, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[37:29]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_88.01