Thank you for making your way here for sitting here and if you can see if it is possible to listen not with your mind too much engaged more with your body so that You don't have to go in your mind kind of trying to verify what you hear or to gauge it against what you know, but to just let the sound come to you, the words come to you, and then see later what happens with it. There's a practice period going on here, which will end with a seven-day meditation retreat that begins tonight.

[01:14]

And the theme of the practice period was a fascicle by, or is a fascicle by Dogen Senji, the founder of the Soto Zen School, of which this temple is a part of, or an expression of, maybe better to say, and... The fascicle is called Genjo Koan, and the translation is actualizing the fundamental point. So many people have come to live here at Green Gulch to be residents for the duration of the practice period, which I don't know exactly how long it went, seven or eight weeks? I mean, eight weeks. It's two months they took out of their lives to come here and to practice. And they will sit seven days in this space. All day long, sit and eat.

[02:16]

Have a little bit of rest time after each meal. Sit from early in the morning till nine at night. Actualizing the fundamental points in their lives. Here's a poem. by Adrian Rich. Either you will go through this door or you will not go through. If you go through, there is always the risk of remembering your name. Things look at you doubly and you must look back and let it happen. If you do not go through, it is possible to live worthily, to maintain your attitudes, to hold your position, to die bravely. But much will blind you.

[03:20]

Much will evade you. At what cost, who knows? The door itself makes no promises. It is only a door. Can everybody hear me? Thank you. So today I would like to talk about being present. We could say that the aim of Buddhist teaching and the aim of Buddhist practice and Zen practice is to help us to be present, to be awake, to live, not to be lived. We are all visible, visibly present here.

[04:23]

If you look around, you see all these other beings in this room. We all came here By our attention, we either walked across the cloud hall out here or drove up here, or we came pulled by somebody who said, well, why don't you come along? This is an interesting place. Come and check it out. But we all got here. We all are here sitting. But are we really here? Are we really present? Or are we somewhere else in our thoughts, either in the past thinking over something that happened a while ago, a long time ago, or in the future thinking what we're going to do next or what's going to be for lunch? I hope I like the soup today. I hope there's no fruit in the salad because how can they make fruit in the salad?

[05:30]

Or I hope there is fruit in the salad. I don't know exactly the number I read once, but it's way over 90% of the time we are in the past or in the future. And maybe 0.02% we are actually in the present of our lives, and that's quite shocking, I think, to think of that. Because our lives will sometimes come to an end in this form, and then we have... spent 90-some percent not being here for it. So being present, living, what stops us from being present? Thich Nhat Hanh calls it habit energy, and he tells the story of a an old story that goes around of a man riding on his horse very quickly somewhere, and another person on the road calls after him, where are you going?

[06:42]

And the man calls back, I don't know, ask the horse. And he says, that's how we usually go through our life. Driven, moved, by the energy of our habits. And our time is really particularly particularly helping our habits. We have a time where everything has to be, every time moments we have, we have to be filled with some kind of useful, purposeful activity.

[07:44]

Either we work, or then we work out, or then we have to get, you know, this done and that done. And Thomas Merton actually wrote something that always impresses me, and he says, He died in 1968, so I don't know what he would write now, today. There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence, and that is activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. the Russian pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything,

[09:00]

is to succumb to violence. Isn't that amazing? Even to commit oneself to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. So we have these vows which we say every day, beings are numberless, I vow to save them. And then, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. So how do we help them? If we don't go, well, this is true, and, well, he doesn't get it, right? This is just not, you know, if he knew our vow, he wouldn't write something like that. That is habit energy. That will be hearing something And it conflicts with something else, and then our mind goes immediately, well, only one of the two can be right, very often.

[10:08]

And of course, the one is right that I lean toward, or that what I've already thought myself. And the rest is just forget it. I don't have to concern myself about that. That's habit energy. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work because it kills the root of our inner wisdom which makes work fruitful. being present versus being moved around by our habits.

[11:08]

Being present is an activity. It's not activism, it's an activity. And it means basically to... Learn to let go of our habitual energies, habitual tendencies, and surrender to the moment. So I would like to do a very brief guided meditation, if you would indulge me. And I would like you to just take a position where you're comfortable with so that wherever we came from, we can actually arrive at the seat we are sitting on right now. And turn your attention to sensing your body.

[12:22]

Just know with bare attention, not putting any values on it, no good or bad or anything. Just note where there is maybe tension, where there is maybe relaxedness, Or there may be differences in temperature. Not looking for something particular, just sensing through your body.

[13:32]

taking note, bare note of what you encounter. If there is pain somewhere, what kind of pain is it? dull, sharp, buzzing. And when your mind wanders off, just return to Really sensing, feeling your body.

[14:37]

The weight of it. Can you let what's under you support your whole weight? and trust that support for a moment. And then see if you can feel your breath coming in and going out, just on its very own timing. Can you rest, really rest deeply for a moment in that support that holds you, holds your weight, receives your weight, and in that life that just breathes you?

[16:25]

without you having to do anything. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. Just being here. in your awareness and feel all those bodies around you and that deep stillness that's in this space right now.

[17:45]

That stillness and silence that runs through all sounds and all activity. at the end point of each exhalation, there is usually a little pause when we are relaxed and rested. Thank you very much. So, what is needed to get out of habit energy?

[19:10]

And maybe you have experienced a little bit of it. Maybe it was not so easy to actually feel your body. Maybe it was not so easy to Get away from where your mind wanted to go. What just had happened maybe shortly before or something big that's happening in your life right now. Some worry, some joyful event, anything. So, to... kind of get to being present. To really being, and being present, I use today as equivalent to being fully alive, fully awake, and fully human, as Pema Chodron puts it.

[20:15]

And they're all activities. It's not once, We get fully alive, fully awake, and fully human. We can rest, and it's just a state. It's actually an activity. So I was at a talk that Richard Baker gave at Kawaiyo Point nine days ago. And I've heard him talk three times over the course of my life, once in Europe and twice here in the United States. And he talked... He gave a wonderful example of just a way of practicing, which I will repeat later, but I'll say it right now. He said, if we look at the tree and instead of thinking there is a tree, if we look at this as an activity and think tree-ing, this tree is tree-ing, and we start

[21:16]

looking at everything that way, it actually changes what we perceive. And we often perceive things as being static and unmoving, including ourselves. We carry an image of ourselves through our life that is completely static and unmoving. And we go, oh, yes, that's me. I remember that. I always was that way. And it's such a tiny little prison for that completely inconceivable, way beyond anything we can think of or put the name to, event that each single life is. And that is continuously living. Living, changing, evolving. I have a great example, Charlotte Selver, who...

[22:17]

She tried to help us get there with her sensing work, which I had the great opportunity to actually participate in a couple of her workshops and three-month study groups here at Green Gulch. Actually, she brought me over here, that she did this here at Green Gulch, which changed my life radically. And at the same time, that little box is still there and says, oh, it didn't really change so much. But she was presenting one day an experiment. And I was already living in Freen Gulch as a resident. I had been given permission to participate in her study group because I could arrange my work time so that I still would do the work I was required to do here and attend her classes. So one day I came to the class in a really, really bad, bad, bad mood for something I can't remember. And she presented the experiment. And for a moment I stood there and I could feel if I allow myself to actually enter the experiment in the way she asked, with that open-minded, open-hearted, not knowing ahead of time what's going to happen away, just surrender to the experiment.

[23:42]

I could just feel there would be experiencing leading to experiencing, leading to experiencing, leading to experiencing, just on and on and on, no end to it. And there wouldn't be any space for my bad mood. And like this, something in me just turned around and held on with all fours, like, you know, like, I don't know, like these animals that sleep on the tree, on the branch on their back. wrapping tail and everything around it to be safe, holding on to that very, very bad mood, like it was the most precious thing. Because there wouldn't be a space of that self-reflecting being that all the time tells me, I'm this, I'm that, they are... like this to me and they treat me badly and they treat me nicely and all that stuff.

[24:47]

It would just be one experience. It would be just experiencing with no end and no way to know where it was going. So one of her many questions she would repeat, one of them was, we were in the middle of an experiment and she would say, Where does it want to go? That would be the most frightening question in my life so far. Just to allow something just to go where it wanted to go, with no knowing where that would be, was absolutely terrifying. I just got blank. I couldn't feel, I couldn't think. It was so terrifying. So that's when Adrian Rich says, you may go through the door or you may not. But if you do, you may remember your name, which means you may find out and remember who you are beyond your ideas about yourself and other people's ideas about yourself.

[25:59]

And you can live a worthy life like that, and you can die bravely, but much will blind you. And you may not... know at what costs, and much will evade you. So habit energy is a set, a personal set, you could say habit energy is a personal set of postures and attitudes that are physical, mental, and emotional. We bring those postures, and it's interesting if we talk of posture, we also feel that's actually a body thing. It's not just a mind thing. We embody our positions, our attitudes, our ideas about ourselves and others and the world.

[27:08]

And we bring these postures and attitudes to every situation. And they do shape what we perceive. Life, this universe, is an incredible mass of energies that are just flowing and being there. And we cut out shapes. The way we perceive is cutting out shapes. And then we train ourselves to call shapes the same way. So when a child says, oh, look, dog, someone goes, no, that's a cat. Until the child learns to distinguish between a dog and a cat. A cat and a dog probably don't see a tree as we do see a tree. We don't know what shapes they see and what shapes they relate to.

[28:15]

So we... have a cultural training of what we see, how we perceive, what we name what. We name a table a table and not a chair, and a shower a shower and not anything else, you know, like a house. And if we do, we are put in a health care unit because we can't function anymore. So it's important that we learn those things, but they trap us. because then we see them as solid, even though physics tells us a table is actually more space than material. In this phenomenal world, it has a solidity to it, and when we bump into it, it hurts our bones. So there is a solidity and there is spaciousness, and we can't see that anymore, and we don't relate to it that way. So I have my own sets of postures and attitudes.

[29:20]

Each of you have your own set, and that's how we walk through the world, and that's habit. And that kind of explains how in Buddhism they say, actually the world we live in, we create each one of us on our very own. We are 100% responsible in the world we live in. Isn't that kind of amazing thought? But if we think that everybody else is as much responsible, then we can start to kind of actually relate to each other. And we so often want to show off that responsibility, like, for example, for the economy. Now, please, Mr. Lubano, would you fix it for us? And we don't have to do anything. Too bad if you don't fix it immediately. We'll be mad with you.

[30:23]

Or something like that. So we have so much tendency to try to not be fully responsible for our lives or for our responses to what arises in our lives. So habit energy or those... ideas and positions we have and views we have are also we could call attachments. And in the Genjo Koan, it says, in attachments, blossoms fall and weeds spread. And blossoms could be looked at as, you know, flowers that lead to fruit, that lead to new life, seeds that need to root. new life, and on and on and on. So they fall down. And weeds, when we want to have vegetable in the garden or flowers, we need to weed. We have to say, well, you're a worthy plant, but if you're here, actually this plant can grow, so I would like you to turn it to compost rather than smother my flowers.

[31:35]

So when we want to And we could say weeds are those habits. We practice our habits every day, 24 hours, you know, even in our sleep. So do we want to shift to practice something else? If we're already practicing all the time, we can maybe shift what we practice. So there also are... they also create preferences, likes and dislikes. And it says in one of the very early texts that came from, I can't remember who it was from, Faith in Mind. Anyway, it says, When the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion.

[32:43]

And don't we go through every day just going from like to dislike, like to dislike. And particularly once we started noticing something that we dislike, mostly we then have that lens and everything that we dislike starts popping up much more through the day. So I was working as a physical therapist and psychotherapist in a psychiatric clinic, and we were a team, and in the morning we would have coffee together before we went to work. And we noticed that if the first person that spoke at breakfast said something about a bad thing that happened, that she saw in the paper or something, or was upset about, everybody around that person started remembering bad things too and shared those. And we were going to the day, and the whole day was filled with things that didn't work.

[33:48]

So after a while, we noticed that, and we just decided we will not, even if it happened, we will not talk about bad things that we can't do anything about, that we just get upset about. talk about positive things, what we appreciate, even if it's a small thing. Our days were filled with things that worked. It goes instantly. And it takes an intention to shift or to notice, oh, I have my bad lenses on, which is shape my perception, and I can shift that. I can take those off and put on lenses that make me notice what can be appreciated. A person at the cash register that's kind, a person that's smiling at you, the sun shining, the rain raining when it was raining and we needed so much water.

[34:59]

I can say, oh, it's raining, I'm getting all wet and isn't that awful and I'm going to get cold. Or I can say, oh, it's raining and actually we need the water and how lovely it's raining. And maybe the farmers down in the Central Valley can actually still plant something because they might get some water this summer. For some things, some they already couldn't plant because they didn't know if they were... They didn't think they were getting water. Maybe some they can still plant. So practice energy versus habit energy. Practice energy takes intention. It takes an effort to shift. It takes, and the first thing we have to do is actually to stop it. To notice when it's running us and stop that horse.

[36:04]

So one great way of stopping when you're running in your mind or in your body from place to place is to just sit down. Look for a chair. Sit down for a moment. And just do what we did before, just for five minutes. Feel your body. See if you can really let what you're sitting on carry you completely, your whole weight, without slumping, you're not going to sleep, but really giving it over, feel your breath, and just rest for a moment. That's a great interrupter of habit. And you can do this on the bus, you can do this in your car after work before you start the car, you can do this at work. when you change from one work topic to the next.

[37:07]

You can do this when you go for a hike. And it takes the courage to to be still and kind of enter the unknown, where you don't know where it's going, what actually is happening. That you have that attitude, I know what's happening, I think I know what's happening, I call it this and this and this, and then you go, oh, maybe so, let's see what happens. What happens when I just wait and see, instead of me going out and saying, this is this and this. And this is so familiar.

[38:10]

So, because if we name everything, we don't really relate to what it is. We don't even relate to our experience fully. We are not fully present with this moment. Wherever you are is called here, and you must treat it as a powerful stranger, must ask permission to know it or be known. This is out of a poem by David Wagner that's called Lost. Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost. Wherever you are is called here, and you must treat it as a powerful stranger, must ask permission to know it and be known.

[39:15]

The forest breezes. Listen, it answers. I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back again. Saying here, no two trees are the same to raven. No two branches are the same to wren. If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, you are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows where you are. You must let it find you. In the Genjo Kwan it says, when you hear sounds and see forms, or when you see forms and hear sounds, fully embracing body and mind, you grasp things directly, or you experience things directly.

[40:25]

So we need to engage body and mind. We need to give time and space to wonder, and to stand still and let things find us. Because everything knows where we are. We are lost because we have our attitudes and positions and postures. So we need to stop and we need to rest. And Thich Nhat Hanh says, practice in a way that does not tire you out. So we can't make practice just another activity with a goal, like workout, losing that much weight, or getting that good.

[41:28]

It's also not a competition. It's actually a stepping back, being willing to show up, for whatever presents itself to you in your experience, with an open heart, an open mind, and with tremendous kindness. Pema Chirchan says, to be kind to ourselves is important. Learning to respect ourselves is important. Respect comes from respectare, which means respect. to look back, to look again. So not to go, oh, this is this, and move on, but to actually stop. So sitting still is helping us to just be still with whatever presents itself to our consciousness, to our physical experience.

[42:35]

be it pain, be it mental suffering, be it emotional turmoil, we sit still, that's the outward, that's the outward posture of that practice. We say open, kind, respectful, inquiring, curious mind and heart. Chinese character for mind and heart is actually the same character, which is quite interesting. Because in our culture, we think these are very separate events. Learning how to be kind to ourselves, learning how to respect ourselves is important. The reason it is important is that fundamentally, when we look into our own hearts and begin to discover what is confused and what is brilliant, what is bitter and what is sweet.

[43:40]

It isn't just ourselves that we're discovering. We are discovering the universe. So all the particulars of our lives are the elements medium in which, or the ingredients which help us be alive, be awake, and be human. It's not somebody else's life. They are what we work with. We create our universe. That's what helps us wake up when we can start seeing that. And when we start seeing that, then we can see through it, we can see how interconnected we are. So in the Genjo Kahn it says something like, I'm paraphrasing, I don't know the exact wording, Buddhas are greatly enlightened in the midst of delusion or about delusion, and sentient beings are greatly deluded about enlightenment.

[44:57]

So it's actually our habit energy. If we step back from it, it teaches us. It's the door we have to step through. But it only becomes a door if it's not the horse. As long as it is the horse, it keeps us blinding us and keeps us trapped in that little box. If we stop, the horse turns into a gate. We can step through or not step through. And when we didn't step through last time, we can step through this time. It's not going to say, well, you didn't step through last time. I'm not going to let you through that now, forever, anymore. It always is there. The possibility is always there. It's never too late to wake up. It's too late to have babies.

[46:00]

Maybe it's too late to have a career change. There are certain things that are too late. But it's never too late to start practicing. It's never too late to wake up or to step through a door and then maybe step through another door and then maybe step not through this door but through that door. So it needs kindness. It needs a way that doesn't tire us out. So it's not another item on the agenda. It's the agenda. Because you can take practice into all of your everyday activities. So how many people in this room have a sitting practice? So you already have started sitting down.

[47:15]

For all of those who do have practices, you had to practice your professional skill, you had to practice bike riding, what you like, scuba diving, I mean driving a car, so you all have practice too. And I think what you, if you're interested, could do, you know, one of the great things is about learning about your own habits and that energy that comes with them and how not easy it is to kind of disengage from that energy. One way of finding out more about this is if you would take on slowing down just a fraction. Just enough so you notice that your pace is a little slower than usual, habitual. And just see and then be really aware what happens.

[48:16]

So if you move to your car, just walk a little slower. Or if you talk fast, talk a little slower. Or... Whatever you do, or if you do something always habitually very slow, speed it up a little. Just shift the pace. And because if you shift the pace, you're out of your habit and your awareness opens up. And often it's quite discomfortable and we want to go right back because it opens us up to things that are also held at bay by habits. Habits reduce our perception, reduce our ability to respond, reduce our aliveness, and they seemingly protect us. And a lot of them have been built around protecting from pains we've experienced earlier in life when we couldn't defend so well against them or didn't know how to respond because they were overwhelming.

[49:26]

And we still carry those defenses around. But survival doesn't equal living. Survival is just survival. So habit energy helps us survive, but it does not help us to live fully. And you can pause. Another possibility is you can pause. You can just stop for a moment before you change your activity. And just feel your breath, feel your body for a moment. Be curious about what state of mind are you in? Interested, eager, bored, scared, anxious, restless, driven. Not, oh, I'm driven, this is bad. Just, wow, driven. Wow, eager. Wow. Happy. Wow. Unhappy. Wow.

[50:27]

And then see what happens in your life. Or in eating, you could, for a few bites out of every meal, when you remember, kind of turn off the radio, put aside the paper, and really see the food in front of you. Not look at the food. See the food. is different than looking. Looking is an activity that goes out and grabs, that says this is a blue shredder and this is a blue rocoso and this is a white striped shirt. Seeing is letting it come to you. It's a receptive form. So let the color, the shapes, the forms of the food in front of you come to you. Taste it.

[51:30]

Taste the texture, the temperature, the consistency, the amount you're chewing, how much amount of actually energy is needed to eat that food. Because we don't often adjust our eating. the consistency of the food. That's why we eat rice and when there's a stone in the rice we break a tooth because we chomp that rice like it's a bone. So to start adjusting how you bite to how what actually is in your mouth is a really interesting thing to find out. And it brings you right to the moment.

[52:30]

You can't be planning something while you're trying to actually have a relationship with your biting and what kind of food is in your mouth. It just doesn't work. So it brings you into the moment. So these are little ways you can get yourself into the moment and see what happens in your life when you do that. And Eliot, yes, Eliot says, you know, practice is never-ending exploration, willingness to enter, to surrender to your experience and to be still in the midst of it and to not know, not know ahead. Let the knowing arise out of the experience. That's when Wagner said you must treat it as a powerful stranger. Wherever you are is called here. You must treat it as a powerful stranger, must ask permission to know it.

[53:37]

Isn't that a wonderful stance to have, a wonderful attitude? If you would every morning ask your partner permission to know who he is now or who she is now, wouldn't that change your life? Instead of saying, oh, here comes this old grump again, you know, in the morning. We... put each other in boxes. We are sure what we can expect, what we can't expect. So how about trying to ask permission, treat your partner as a powerful stranger every day, asking permission to know the person, how the person is today, and to be known. The interesting thing is that he says, When we ask permission to know something, we are in a much more humble, unknowing state, open state. Possibilities are suddenly there. Any possibility. And by that, we are known too.

[54:41]

Because we discover something about ourselves that we didn't know before. Even thinking... To do that with your partner makes you suddenly think, oh, wow, that's a different person than I know that would ask my partner for permission to know him or her. So it's a reciprocal activity that is happening. You ask yourself each morning, who is this this morning getting up? And who is this person going through the day? Ask permission to know yourself, too. T.S. Eliot says, we shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

[55:47]

So the more we practice, the more we surrender to our experience, the more we learn to be in present. That's not, that's an activity. That's a state of continuous responsiveness while being very still and quiet. asking permission, treating everything as a powerful stranger. We return to our deep life that's always there. But now we are in the moment we are present. We are not somewhere else 90% of the time, 90 plus percent. So am I going on and on and on?

[56:53]

I have no idea what to find. Wow. Stop. Let's see how do I end. Maybe I read the poem again that I read at the beginning. So I just want to say, so the people that are going to sit the sesshin, they step through the door for seven days to that gate. I'm going to sit seven days. And then every period of their sitting,

[57:54]

They have these choices. Do I step through? Do I not step through? Do I show up for my life? And that's very courageous. It takes courage because it leads you into the unknown. So either you will go through this door or you will not go through. If you go through, there is always the risk of remembering your name. Things look at you doubly, and you must look back and let it happen. If you do not go through, it is possible to live worthily, to maintain your attitudes, to hold your position, to die bravely. But much will blind you. Much will evade you.

[58:57]

At what cost, who knows? The door itself makes no promises. It is only a door. Thank you all very much.

[59:22]

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