This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Thank you everybody for making the trip today out to Green Gulch Farm, Green Dragon Temple. And welcome to everyone. online or in the future. Tell us how it went. Just this turning towards our life together, this effort of taking a perfectly good day and spending it by coming to turn for a little while towards the Dharma.

[01:01]

It is a beautiful and inspiring thing. And that's the main thing we're doing here this morning is just being together, turning towards our own life, turning towards this fact of being alive, ungraspable, and subtle fact that we're here. I'm feeling this morning a little bit shaky, which is interesting to notice a little bit. So I wonder what I am protecting.

[02:06]

So I wish it were just in front of a bunch of people that I feel fearful. I recently had another of these moments, which I hope you've had now and then, a moment of quiet and clarity and this feeling that Like catching a glimpse of this subtle fear that is always pushing my life. Some subtle protectiveness or resistance. maybe a kind of withholding, some little something between me and the fullness of this moment. Have you ever seen such a thing?

[03:11]

In a way, maybe the kind of flares of fear are good because it's like, okay, follow that thread down to the bottom, to that root that's the runner, you know, that's underneath all day, just a little bit like, not sure why, but I think there's some reason not to be just totally surrendered to this moment. Some reason to not totally just be myself, completely where I am, how I am, with who I'm with, feeling how I'm feeling. Something like, I'm going to wait and see. I'm not sure this is okay. Maybe you have some other word for it, but this morning I'm thinking of it as, kind of enclosedness or protectiveness or fear. And I'm curious about it. Like I've picked up the scent, you know? I want to kind of track this. Because my feeling is, and actually my experience, there's something relieving about seeing it.

[04:22]

There's something in the way of me living fully. There's a little... And you might think, well, why would you want to know that? Why do you want to look at that? But when I see it, there's some feeling like, oh, I don't have to be loyal to this. I didn't sign some contract with this thing. This is just habit, mind, body, energy. And it somehow can be flowed around rather than pushing from the back where I can't see it. The Buddha, when he awakened, the teachings say there's like a hundred different things he said. So I don't know. There's a grab bag of things that you can say that the Buddha said when he awakened. But one of them is something like, Oh, house builder, you are seen.

[05:29]

You shall build no house again. anything to say when he woke up. Part of his waking up is seeing this house builder and addressing it, talking to it. I see you, house builder. So you can't do your thing anymore. The thing you were doing depended on me not seeing you. House builder, this enclosure, this builder of enclosure and protectiveness. That's how I'm seeing it this morning. I see you. You don't have to do that anymore. See this constant subtle withholding and protection and fear. And say, oh. So then the Buddha says, you know, never again.

[06:31]

Shall you build a house? It's a very dramatic moment. And apparently when we all achieve Buddhahood, which is in our forecast, I don't know if it will have occurred by the time those future folks are listening, but all of us are going to achieve Buddhahood. And when we do, we'll see it so thoroughly that it will not be able to build any enclosure anymore. That'll be... then I guess as bodhisattvas, then we'll kind of go back into an enclosure so that we can interact with other enclosed people offering teachings and support. But anyway, in my experience, you know, I can't quite say, I see you never again shall you build a house. But like I see you and right now that I'm seeing you, I'm not pushed by this fear, by this protectiveness, by this withholding. Okay. So some of us here at Gringold have been studying the six paramitas or the six perfections, which is one of the lists, a kind of outline of Buddhism of the aspects of the path that can be cultivated or that are cultivated through our practice.

[07:54]

And one of these is the perfection of generosity, the virtue of generosity. And in the teaching on this practice of generosity, there's various kinds of gifts that are named for us to reflect on. Oh, could I give that? Could I give that? And also various ways that we can give, like basically half-hearted or wholehearted, the main options, or self-concerned or less self-concerned. So there's all kinds of teaching about what to give and how to give. But one of the gifts in particular, of all the gifts that you could imagine giving, one of the gifts that's named in the tradition is this gift of fearlessness. You all heard of this? The gift of fearlessness. This is kind of a standard teaching of what Dharma practice, what Buddhist practice generates is fearlessness.

[09:01]

And that that's a gift that that we give to each other as practitioners. As we practice, you know, breathing out completely, letting go of our doing and noticing that we're receiving life, then naturally our kind of trust starts to grow. That I don't have to be doing this. I'm receiving this. Or as Suzuki Roshi says, we're in the lap of the Buddha. We're being held by something that's greater than our own effort or our own self. So we let go and we feel we can trust or entrust. So classically, the way this is expressed is that the gift of monastics is fearlessness.

[10:13]

So the truth is all of us are practicing and sharing with each other through our practice, the letting go that manifests as fearlessness. What does letting go look like? One of its qualities is fearlessness, not protecting, entrusted. So in this old image of the Buddhist Sangha, the way that different people are supporting the whole Sangha is that the lay people are offering contributing material and the monastics are contributing fearlessness. The practice is adding fearlessness for everybody to eat and enjoy. And why do monks offer fearlessness? Monks have fearlessness because monks don't have anything. They don't have anything to protect, so what are they afraid of? So, of course, for those of us practicing deeply having nothing, we're practicing noticing that we don't actually have anything, that nothing is under our control, nothing can be relied upon, nothing is owned.

[11:30]

So we also can feel, oh, there's nothing to protect here. And as soon as we feel that nothing to protect, then we're offering fearlessness to each other. So there's a set of, I think you're with me. Are you with me? I guess the main question I want to explore today is, what are you protecting? What am I protecting? Why am I withholding from just complete surrender to any moment of my life? What's that little film in between? So there are these practices of letting go that I wanted to share today that have been turning in me, inspiring me. And these are supportive of fearlessness.

[12:39]

And they're the practices of wonder or wonderment or doubt. I want to say a little bit about wonder and wonder practice. The main feature of wonder, in the sense that I mean it, is not knowing. When I first encountered Zen, I remember hearing this doubt about practice, like, why would you want to not know? We have all this capacity to know. Why would you want to not know? That's a good question. There's a certain kind of not knowing that's just blank, like, I don't know. I don't know. That's a kind of, in the tradition, that's called some stillness. without brightness. In our tradition, the stillness and the brightness are always together.

[13:41]

When there's stillness without brightness, it's like, I don't know. It's a blankness, a dullness. So that's not the, I don't know, the not knowing that the wonder is pointing to. Maybe that's what's so nice about the word wonder is that it's a kind of not knowing, but it's not like, I don't know. It's like, I don't know. Wow. What is it? What is it? And I haven't known this whole time. And I'm not going to know. What am I protecting? I don't know what's inside. I don't know what's outside. I don't know what's before. I don't know what's after. What am I holding back? So we have this expression that we use a lot here, which is not knowing is the most intimate. So that's the sense of not knowing. Not knowing is the most intimate or the closest.

[14:44]

The most intimate way to live is to not know what's going on. Then we're wide open and we're using our body and our intuitive embodied presence. And we're not trying to grasp hold or get hold of anything. So when we're using the mind to know something, we're relating to a thought we have or a view we have about what's happening. When we invite the not knowing, those views and ideas can kind of soften. But it's not just a negative thing. They soften, and then what comes into the foreground is the kind of embodied being here. not knowing the way our body is not knowing and not grasping, not trying to get a handle, but tolerating the openness, the mystery. I think that's part of, you know, I think in this protectiveness, there's my knowing.

[16:01]

I hope that that's clear. I know what the world is. I know what I have to lose. Things are going okay. It's because I'm making them go okay. And I need to not stop making them go okay. But if I really don't know, then it's more like entrusted, entrusted to the out-breath, receiving the in-breath. I don't know. what I need to protect. So how about just completely be in this moment that's here now? So this wonder also, you know, also has a feeling of marvelous.

[17:08]

subtle, wondrous. It's a word that comes up a lot in our practice, in the teachings. And there's, I guess it's wonder like a state, but it's also wonder, the sort of verb, the question, the wondering. And of course, the wonder can be very intense in a kind of awe, or the wonder can be subtle and quiet. So there's these practices in part of the Zen tradition, these practices of cultivating, generating, and abiding in wonder, in questions that open wonder. And I've gotten interested in this kind of practice. It's present in some of the Japanese Zen traditions and more so in

[18:10]

the Korean and Chinese traditions. These practices of generating wonder and doubt. And a main way that this practice is done is through this practice of huato. Some of you have heard of huato or maybe practiced huato. So huato means like critical phrase or key word. And it's a pointed question that a meditator reflects on or concentrates on. You kind of have this question and you concentrate on this question in order to generate doubt in the sense of doubting what our life is or doubting what we know, what we think we know. Doubting that we need to be protecting ourselves, that kind of doubt. So these questions that open into the wonder and the doubt. So recently I was in Taiwan and China talking to different practitioners and a number of people that I met were practicing with versions of these questions and many of them end up being a version of the question, who am I?

[19:34]

Who am I? It's an excellent question. Remember, you probably have asked yourself this question. And we usually ask it and we think of, you know, maybe our identity comes to mind. We ask this question, who am I? And it's like, well, I'm someone who likes music or something about ourselves. But in the huato, in the spiritual sense, in the existential sense, in the Zen sense, the question who am I is not about who do you think you are or who does someone else think you are or who are you in relation to anything, but just who, what is this? What is this situation that we have found ourselves in? So first we doubt that we know what it is. Because first we think, well, yeah, it's just called being alive. It's all me being you. I've been doing it for a while. I know how it goes. So first we kind of start doubting that. And then we ask, who am I?

[20:39]

So sometimes they ask, who am I? And you just sort of, I mean, honestly, drive yourself a little nuts with this question. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Or what is this? What is this? That's a little more open than the who, because the who is already like, you're pretty sure it's a person. But the what is this? What is this? There's one, you know, many of, in Buddhist temples, many people are reciting the name of Buddha. It's homage to the Buddha. I entrust to Buddha. And so then one of the questions that, practitioners who have practiced for a long time in that way ask is, who is reciting the name of Buddha? Who is that who is reciting Buddha's name? Who am I? One that surprised me by how somebody said it and I thought that's interesting.

[21:42]

And then people kept saying it, which is, who is it? dragging this corpse around isn't that an intense question i mean these are provocative you know they're supposed to be poking they're supposed to like poke through something poke into the doubt who is it the first is like well who are you calling a walking corpse you know who are you calling a corpse a corpse and then that's exactly the question it's like okay what is not a corpse about you Everything you can point to, really, everything tangible is a corpse. So who is dragging that around? What is dragging that corpse around? Anyway, once you get over being a little bit offended by it, it's a wonderful question. What's the difference between this alive body and dead body? It's like, gets right at this ungrasped, the most obvious thing that's happening in the whole universe.

[22:44]

And the most... easily missed and ungraspable. What is it to be alive? So our practice is just to stop and sit with that for a little bit now and then. So just this morning, by chance, I came across a story I wanted to share from the Ehei Koroku, Dogen's recorded sayings. Dogen Zenji, our Soto Zen founder in 13th century Japan. He's telling an old Buddha story, and I'll just tell part of it. He starts many of these in the same way. Here is a story. The seven wise women were all daughters of kings of great countries. During the season of praising flowers, that is spring, a hundred thousand people all wanted to go to a resort,

[23:47]

to enjoy themselves. Summer vacation. 100,000 people want to go to the resort to enjoy themselves. Among the seven wise women, one woman said, sisters, you and I should not go to scenic parks to partake of worldly entertainments like those people. Instead, let us go together to enjoy the charnel grounds. The other women said, that place is full of decaying corpses. What is such a place good for? The first woman said, sisters, just go. Very good things are there. You know, this is maybe a certain cross-section of the world when it comes to a Dharma talk. So maybe there's a disproportionate number of people in this hall who have been that person.

[24:50]

I said, yeah, you know, how about we go to the charnel grounds and like contemplate birth and death rather than go to the resort. Or maybe you know someone like that. I have an idea. Let's come to Green Gulch instead of the champagne brunch. Let's go to the charnel grounds. But that is a delightful translation. Sisters, let's go together to enjoy the charnel grounds. It's really a wonderful line. Because there's something very good there. There's something very, very important and good and satisfying there. So when they arrived in the forest, the woman pointed to a corpse and said to the other woman, The corpse is here. Where has the person gone? The women witnessed the truth and realized the way.

[25:54]

When they looked up at the sky, heavenly flowers fell around them and a voice praised them saying, excellent, excellent. In other words, everything came to life. Everything came to life. The whole field of light and sound and sensation became falling flowers. as they saw life itself. This difference between being here alive and the corpse. So that's the kind of question that these sorts of practitioners take up and get rather intense about. Who is it dragging this corpse around? they generate this kind of wonder, like I really don't know. I really don't know. And this doubt, like anything I think I know about that, I don't think that's it.

[27:00]

I'm doubting everything I think that being alive is. But as I do, I'm touching more and more directly the embodied direct feeling of being alive. This. This. So that kind of practice is part of a system that's a little bit different from our system of practice, and it's kind of tied in with other parts of the practice that may or may not align with what we're teaching here in the Soto Zen lineage. But this kind of effort to be in a question, to be with a question, to have a question in our life, is very inspiring and is very much also fundamental to our Soto Zen practice. Letting some kind of question or curiosity or wondering be present in the posture, present in our bones, really, whether it's we ask ourselves a dramatic question or not, just that we are wondering.

[28:18]

You know, another one of these paramitas, one of these perfections is patience or equanimity. And there's another sort of unusual teaching or oddly specific teaching, just like fearlessness is kind of an oddly specific teaching about what a gift would be. An oddly specific teaching about what patience is for, what equanimity is for, is to tolerate the question, who am I? is to tolerate the fact that that question has no answer. In other words, to tolerate emptiness, to have room. So when you first ask, like, I don't really like the whole corpse thing, and I don't really want to ask that question. There's some fear there, again. There's some fear. Like, I think I have something to lose by asking this question of who am I? So there's this... feeling of like yes please take good care of that so part of thinking about this there's time I can say a little more about it but I don't have to just these different lineages different traditions of teaching in this kind of intense way of generating wonder and really stepping into this intense doubt there can be a sense of kind of like push through that question push through that fear and just don't know who you are

[29:54]

And our way is a little more like, oh, you should take care of how scary that is. Make room. Be tender and loving and spacious as you invite this question of, who am I? What is this? We're not trying to break through anything. It's more like something melts away. We often use the image in our practice of Soto Zen. of walking in the mist, not noticing you're getting wet, but a few miles in, you're just soaking. So it's kind of like that with our approach to this sort of question too. It's like, yeah, who am I? Not in some way where I'm trying to create some dramatic encounter between me and existence, but just in the sense of, I'm always kind of wondering who I am. And after a few miles, you have the sense of like, Wow, I really don't know.

[30:57]

We don't need to push through or dive in. We also need to work on this tolerance to capacity. How deeply do we allow ourselves to ask the question? People say, as I said, it's kind of scary to let go of everything I think I am. So the main kind of lineages, this kind of different approaches in the practice go way back, I could say, to really early on in Buddhism. It's kind of different modes of how we do the practice with a certain kind of investigating. So the huato, this question is to be investigated, that side of the practice. And then the more... softening, opening, allowing in stillness side of the practice. And in our Zen tradition, in the 12th century in China, there were two great masters, Hongzhi and Dahui, were sort of the holders of these two lines, these two approaches.

[32:10]

Dahui saying, you need to generate this wonder and encounter directly and fearlessly this, your own, the who. And Hongjir feels more like, why are you being so dramatic? Just sit still in the wonder that's right here in the brightness of our still sitting. Just sit with your eyes and ears and heart open. And you don't have to generate anything. In fact, generating some feeling is kind of like our whole problem. of our life is that we're trying to generate something, we're trying to lean into something, we're trying to get something, and then we're suffering a lot and causing suffering to others. So Hongzhu, which is the approach, the Sotosen school is more like don't generate anything, just sit upright and still. Open your heart and eyes and ears and there is brightness.

[33:17]

And there's not knowing there and wonder. Hongjir says that this kind of practice of just sitting upright and still in the brightness restores wonder. He has that phrase. The thinking of our practice as restoring wonder. Why did you come to Gringos this morning instead of the champagne brunch? It's not to restore the wonder. So in his great poem on silent illumination, which is Mojiao, Chan, Mokushou, Zen, this silent illumination, which is our style of practice, Hongzhi writes, silent and serene, forgetting words, bright clarity appears before you. When you reflect it, you become vast. Where you embody it,

[34:22]

you are spiritually uplifted. Spiritually unitary and shining, inner illumination restores wonder. Or then in another phrase, which I've always loved, he says of our sitting practice, of our practice right now, being still and warm-hearted and attentive, awake, He says, with thoughts clear, sitting silently, wander into the center of the circle of wonder. Isn't that a beautiful expression? So Dahwe is saying, like, charge into the castle of wonder. And Hongzhi is saying, just sitting silent and serene, wander into the center of that circle. And that's sort of what happens. I'm soaking wet. I have no idea who I am.

[35:22]

I have wandered into the center of the circle of wonder just by sitting still and open. So we say, you know, Hongjir did this, Dahui did this. And in the Japanese tradition especially, they're like almost enemies. But actually, they were great friends. They're sending each other students and speaking at each other's funerals. One of them still get the others new. Thank you. They relied on each other, just like our practice relies on the question and the stillness. So it's not we just say, oh, we don't generate anything. We just sit. How does that not fall into, I don't know. I'm just sitting. I don't know. We need to be friends with that wonder. I'm just sitting.

[36:23]

I don't know. So Dahwe and Hongjir, this kind of intense investigation and this open sitting are actually intimate, supporting each other, meeting each other, including each other. They really did speak at each other's funerals because they mutually include one another. They're in each other. So just a last point, you know, I say that we just sit, not generating anything in the silence and stillness and brightness. This is our practice of zazen. And, of course, that's supported by a posture. So we sit in this upright posture and really attend to the posture and the breathing. It's not that we're generating anything. It's just we're taking care of what there is to take care of, which is this posture.

[37:24]

And we open our eyes and we open our heart. We try to figure out where to put our head and our hands. And part of this posture is a kind of wonder. The wonder isn't like some separate element that we then need to generate. The wonder is there in the posture. It's a point of posture. is kind of kneaded into the posture of our sitting. And I think we can knead it into the posture of our life. Just this subtle wonder. What is this, being alive? Grateful for your kind attention this morning. Thank you for coming. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[38:28]

Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org. and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[38:53]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_95.82