You're able to hear me okay? All right. Excellent. Thank you. So for those of you who might not know me, my name is Tenzin David Zimmerman, and I want to welcome again to another of our twice a week online practice sessions coming from Beginners Mind Temple here in San Francisco. So it's wonderful to be joining you in this way. Thank you. and to support each other's practice and encourage each other during these particularly challenging times, to have a foundation, a community that we're practicing with, we're connecting with, and supporting each other to embody the Dharma, I think is very important. So if you're new to these particular practice sessions, what we'll do is we'll start with a 25-minute period of zazen or meditation, and I'm going to lead us into the meditation with a few brief guided words for particularly supporting those who might be inured to meditation, and then eventually we're going to settle into silence.

[01:03]

And I'll ring a bell three times at the beginning to start the period, and then once at the end to end the period. And then after the meditation, I'll offer a Dharma or a brief Dharma encouragement. And then following that, we'll have some time to open up for you to all share anything that you're particularly practicing with or any questions that you might have about practice itself. And then we'll aim to wrap up around 6.30 San Francisco time. So I want to mention that during the Zoom session, all the microphones are going to be turned off until the Q&A, at which point Tim will identify people who would like to speak or say something and unmute them. And this session is also being recorded for anyone who didn't have a chance to participate today and would like to follow along later. So if you have concerns about being recorded, you're welcome to turn off your video and then just your name will appear in the actual video screen.

[02:10]

So, okay. So why don't we get started? We're just going to go right into the meditation. And I invite you to, again, find an upright, attentive posture, one that's going to best accommodate your body through this particular period of zazen. And throughout the meditation, give yourself over to both a physical and a mental posture that you feel is relaxed and attentive at the same time. So there's a sense of alertness that we're kind of bringing forward at the same time allowing the whole being to settle a little bit more deeply. So I'm going to ring the bell three times and as I do so allow your awareness to gently accompany the vibration of the sound of the bell until it fades away. Particularly notice what is it that remains once the sound has ended. So now allowing yourself to become aware of and connect with and relax into the present moment experience.

[04:09]

Gathering your attention from wherever it might be busy, whatever it's occupied with, engaged with, and allowing it instead to simply abide in the momentary experience of just being here right now. It might be particularly helpful to focus on the experience of being embodied in this moment. Let bodily presence be the prevailing ground of your experience. If it's helpful, you might wish to use the breath as a touchstone for this embodied experience. Noticing where the breath particularly enters into the body, how it fills the lungs, goes all the way down into the abdomen. Just feel that flow or breath, that natural rhythm of breathing in and out.

[05:19]

And allowing awareness to gently accompany this natural rhythm of breathing. The mind wanders for whatever reason away from the breath or away from this present moment, maybe distracted by our thoughts or attention or a pain in the body, or maybe a particular emotion, fear, anxiety, heartache. And suddenly you notice that this has happened. So presence is the willingness to come back. to come back to whatever we're experiencing and to feel it, to be with us. So again, not being in the mind, but being in the body, but the felt sense of the present moment experience.

[06:22]

So being right here, right now, an embodied experience. Letting go of what has passed. Letting go of what may come. Even letting go of what is happening right now. No need to grasp this present moment experience. Not trying to figure anything out. Not trying to make anything happen or to control or fabricate your experience in any way. You could say the instruction is simply to rest. Simply resting. Relaxing into the present moment.

[07:41]

coming to rest in a natural stillness and quietude. That's at the core of our being. And if you want, you know, bring your awareness into your heart, into that energy point, that still center, just a few inches below your belly cuts in and within. Just allow mind awareness to rest there. held by the breath, resting in the flow of the breath, resting and just being here. Recognizing there's nothing that really needs to be accomplished right now.

[08:56]

We don't even need to do zazen or meditation. In fact, we can't do meditation. Meditation is not something we do. It's what we are. Being, just being, presencing. Simply abiding. in the knowing of the present moment experience. In whatever way it's making itself known. So we're not doing presence, we're not doing awareness, but resting, resting in it, abiding in it. simply resting as this lucid, luminous, peaceful, spacious awareness, open, aware, luminous space.

[10:02]

It's just a knowing field. Allow yourself, give yourself over to this knowing awareness that comes from the center of our being and resting there. Continue resting now in awareness and silence for the rest of this period. Thank you everyone for sitting together.

[29:00]

And for today's Darnet, what I thought I'd do is extend the exploration of cultivating presence that I started or offered last Thursday. And I thought about offering a few thoughts on how to find a deeper sense of rest during this time of heightened distress. I recall that a couple of practice sessions ago, or maybe it was just last week, some of you mentioned how you're experiencing the need to, during this time, to either keep busy while sheltering at home, or that you can't get your mind to shut off at the end of the day, that you're waking up sometimes. Someone said, she wakes up three o'clock in the morning, think about everything that's on her to-do list. And maybe, you know, maybe if you're like me, you initially had the thought that... being forced to stay home, you would actually have all this extra time and space to attend to other projects and tasks.

[30:02]

Either things related to work, because I thought, you know, I'm going to be less interrupted at work. I'll have more time to get things done. Or that I thought I'd have this free time to get to projects like cleaning out the closet or something like that. And I don't know if you're having that experience, but what I'm starting finding instead is that it's actually very hard for me to of focus these days, and particularly when it requires a kind of extended or sustained period of concentration to work on a great project. So is anyone else having that experience? Good, I'm not the only one. So I had this in mind when I read yesterday in the Washington Post online, there was an article that spoke to this. So I felt somewhat reassured that I wasn't the only one going through this. And The article was titled, Don't Feel Like Getting Things Done. It's okay not to be productive during a pandemic. And the author is Susan Fitzgerald.

[31:03]

She writes that, as we stay at home in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, we are being inundated not only with the storm of anxiety-inducing news, but with an onslaught of suggestions for making the most of our alleged extra time. There's a huge push of people thinking that because we are home right now, we can be productive and that we're all going to be able to stay as focused as we were a month or so ago. And that's just not the case. And then she goes on to suggest that we're all going through a kind of a collective trauma experience due to the upheaval, fear, grief caused by a COVID-19 pandemic. And as a result, many of us are feeling more anxiety, depression, and a sense of disassociation. So from a productivity standpoint, in terms of trying to get things done, it's actually challenging to go about our usual patterns and habits of getting things done, being productive, getting through our to-do list, because we're navigating these huge emotional problems

[32:20]

hurdles with an uncertainty that most of us have never really experienced in our lifetime, right? So most of us haven't had this much emotional weight coming down at us and collectively together, which is really disorienting in many ways. She goes on to write that the brain can only do so much when our attention is absorbed by the coronavirus. we will have a harder time concentrating on anything else we're trying to do in the moment. Right now, we're expending a lot of time and energy on adjusting our entire lives to this new normal. So in other words, this is not the time to be worrying about kind of being extra productive in most cases or doing more, unless maybe you're directly on the front line of dealing with the coronavirus. you know, in healthcare, trying to make masks, take care of ventilators and other healthcare equipment, but actually to give yourself permission to kind of step back and find a sense of rest and ease where possible in order to be able to kind of digest and be with this traumatic experience in many ways for us is what we're experiencing.

[33:39]

So what I'd like to propose is that rather than give into our usual habit patterns, coping lessons of when we're feeling distressed in some way, of being busy or trying to do something to put things into control. I have this tendency when I'm feeling kind of agitated, if I can just organize my closet or my desk or clean the house, put things in place, then I have a better sense of I'm able to control my environment in some way and that I have some sense of agency in the situation. even though I may still not have addressed the underlying cause for the anxiety. So the suggestion is give ourselves permission to actually do less when and where possible, right? And a great place to explore and take up this doing less, or I might call it a practice of non-doing, is in our zazen or meditation.

[34:43]

I think of Zazan as this kind of radical act of relaxing, relaxing the body, relaxing the mind, simply resting as awareness. There's nothing you need to do in meditation. Awareness isn't an activity. It's what we fundamentally are. So how do we step back into this experience of simply resting as awareness? and allow ourselves to be held in that experience. There's a particular meditation teaching that I find helpful in this endeavor to relax the mind. And it's called Tolopa's Six Words of Advice. Sometimes it's also framed as Tolopa's Six Nails. And Tolopa was a 11th century Indian adept. And I often remind myself of this practice whenever I sit down to meditate. Although I also find it beneficial these days to, even throughout my day, to stop and reflect on his six points of advice.

[35:52]

And the teaching that's essentially being offered here is one of radical non-doing. Again, I wanna encourage that. Radical non-doing. So his six points are as follows. Let go of what has passed. Let go of what may come. Let go of what is happening now. Don't try to figure anything out. Don't try to make anything happen. Rest, relax right now, and rest. So those are the six points he recommends. And at the heart, At its heart, this meditation instruction is about using simple awareness to allow what is happening in the present moment to take place. So it's a practice of non-resistance.

[36:54]

Not pushing away, not grabbing onto, not doing anything with the present moment experience, but simply allowing it to take place, to notice it, to acknowledge it. So if you notice, the meditative activity is all a matter of non-resistance. or the endeavor to actively refrain from any activity whatsoever. So it's almost this kind of form of renunciation in some way. I'm going to go through these six points again and kind of unpack them a little bit more and maybe reframe them in some way. So again, the first one, let go of what has passed. So this idea is... in your meditation or even throughout the day if you want to pause, don't recall. Don't get lost in memory or stories about the past. Don't try to chase any past experiences, even insight experiences of any type. Don't think about how things used to be way back in the past or before the pandemic happened, anything of that.

[38:03]

you know, that nature, not going back, not even going back to a conversation you had earlier in the day. The second one, let go of what may come. So this is don't go into the future. Don't imagine, don't let the mind wander into imagination. Don't conceive of what the future might be like or of an alternative reality in some way. Don't get caught up in also planning for the kind of goals you need to achieve or your to-do list. And particularly something I've noticed that sometimes people are prone to these days is talking about what's gonna happen after the pandemic, post-pandemic. What is the future gonna be like then? So not even thinking about that, but just letting go and staying right here. And then the third point, let go what is happening now. So in other words, don't think. Don't go into any kind of thinking or labeling mode.

[39:04]

Don't label the present moment experience in any way. So you don't need to necessarily name it. Some practices, some meditation practices do say and do suggest, go ahead and name your experience in some way in the present moment. And in this advice, it's actually saying, don't think about it. Don't give it a label in some way. Just let it be without naming it in some way. So this is a little different than the Theravada and the Vipassana tradition in some cases. And then the fourth one, don't try to figure anything out. So in other words, don't examine. Refrain from analyzing, assessing, or diagnosing how your zazen is going, you know, not trying to measure it in some way of where you're supposed to be in your practice or what's wrong with it. Again, just sit. Allow it to be what it is. So if it's messy zazen, there it is. It's messy zazen. If it's sleepy zazen, okay, noticing that's what's happening.

[40:08]

If it's kind of alert, awake zazen, okay, noticing that. So don't examine it. Don't unpack it in some way. And then the fifth one is don't try to make anything happen. So don't control. Stop trying to fabricate a particular experience during your meditation. or change the reality to fit what you read about how your meditation is supposed to be in a certain way. So this is not trying to induce a certain kind of experience. It's just noticing directly what is the experience that's happening now. And then the sixth one, rest. Relaxed, rest now, and rest. Relax right now and rest. So rest. come back to a sense of ease, to the sense of a settled mind, a quiet mind, and allow the mind and body to kind of settle into expansiveness in some way, right?

[41:12]

A sense of rest as a sense of spaciousness, the spaciousness that we fundamentally are. So that's a kind of another way to unpack and reframe this. And these six very short lines of instruction that only shows us how to settle or in some case you could say kind of place the mind, you know, but also highlight all that we as meditators need to be careful of as we cultivate our practice, the ways that we start getting busy in our minds in some way. So he's showing us how we can nurture our practice while simultaneously deepening its meaning. Okay, so these two are not mutually exclusive. And I like to think of these instructions, they're called nails, right? Tilopa six nails, because of the fact that they emphasize a fundamental not moving.

[42:15]

Not moving as if you were kind of nailed down in the very place where you are, the mind and body just right here, not moving. You weren't able to go anywhere or be anywhere else but right in this present moment, right? Fully attentive to things as it is, as Izuki Roshi would say, in this moment. So when I was going through this, I was thinking, well, you could think of it as being kind of self-quarantined to the present moment, right? Stay home in the present moment. Don't go anywhere. The safest place to be is right here in the present moment. So, and isn't this the kind of the true aim of the Zen student to always just be right here, not wandering off into the past, the future, or thoughts? My teacher, Chia Strozer, she adds a seventh nail, a point to Lopez's six points, which is stay awake.

[43:22]

stay awake and notice what is always in every experience. So in other words, the only activity, if you even want to call it that, is simply abiding as awareness itself, as awake presence, or simply presencing. So the insight teacher Tara Block has this to say about the fundamental nature of the sorry, about the nature of the fundamental effort that we should make in our lives. She says, effort is always towards presence because everything that matters to us arises through presence. Again, effort is always towards presence because everything that matters to us arises through presence, right? So in my experience, presence comes about not by striving to be present, but by allowing myself to be open to whatever the experience is happening, you know, in the present moment, right?

[44:32]

So again, not resisting. If I'm feeling resistance to it in any fashion, it's really hard for me to be present. But if I'm able to relax and let go of my preferences, ideas about how things are supposed to be, right? Or could be otherwise, then I... A deeper connection is made that is beyond anything I can create through the usual vigors and discipline or concentration kind of often associated with either controlling the mind or focusing the mind or even in Zen training. So in other words, you don't create presence. You can't get there. You can't get to presence by doing something. Presence or awareness is already always here. And well, you could say in the present, right? One more quote, Zen teacher Tony Packer said that we may think that effort is the source of awareness.

[45:35]

So effort, for example, in our meditation is the source of awareness. But in presently awareing this thinking, there is no efforts. It's just happening. Listen. For example, listen to the sound of the rain, listen to the wind, listen to your own breath, right? We hear it clearly, don't we? Was there any effort needed? So no effort is required to allow the world to come to us. As Dogen said, allow the 10 things to come to you, and then you have the whole world right there, okay? So I hope these six nails or six words of advice by Tulopa offer you some guidance and encouragement in your practice in the coming week. And what I'd like to do now is ask Tim to help with seeing if there's anything in particular that you would like to share during this time, either in reflection on the meditation, something that came up for you during the meditation,

[46:46]

questions that we might have about this particular practice. And I think you may know, Tim has put a little note in the chat box about how you can raise your hand in order to ask a question, and then he will unmute you. So what have you kind of, what's come up for you during this particular practice today? Navid. Hi. Hello, Navid. Hi, everybody. So I'm new to this sangha. So I just want to say hello to everybody. I've been practicing Tibetan Buddhism under the Kaju tradition for about six months. Are you familiar with the Lopas? Yes, yes. That's great. And I just thought it was interesting that we talked a lot about presents today, especially because it was Ram Dass' birthday.

[47:53]

I just thought it was very helpful to talk about presence in a time when I was constantly thinking about the future. My girlfriend constantly talked about what we're going to do when COVID-19 is over and all the plans we're going to make. I just thought it was very helpful, everything you were saying. I really appreciate it. I'm very grateful for the Dharma talk. Welcome, Naveed. Good to have you join us today. Thank you. Jody Green. Hi, thanks for your talk. I really appreciated something you said, like pay attention to the physical experience or something like that when you were doing the guided meditation. And just that simple phrase was enough to... take me away from the idea that it was mine.

[48:55]

I think when I'm thinking about it being my experience, it gets caught up in the story of me. But just the way you framed it freed it up a little bit. So, yeah, that was great. Thank you. You're welcome. I find it very helpful to remind myself I'm not the one meditating. I can't do meditation, right? I'm just allowing awareness itself to do me, right? And so to rest into just the awareness of the bodily experience, and particularly now I find it's very helpful to come back to awareness of the body to ground me at this time because I'm so, my kind of energy wants to go up into the head to kind of figure things out, right? It's kind of, I think it's hardwired into us. You know, it's part of, in some ways it's part of with a trauma response, right? For humans, you know, we go out of our body into our head as the tool to kind of work out the problem, to get away, to fix things, right?

[50:01]

But the energy, it's still stuck in the body, right? So if we get out of the head and into the body and be with the energetic quality of our experience, and bring awareness to it, shine the light of awareness on it, then that energy is more able to release, and it doesn't get caught in the body in the same way as it would if we tried to think our way through it. So really, I find myself encouraging, coming back to the bodily experience, just being aware of being embodied. Thank you, Jodi. I see more hands. Let's see. Nazi, Nazi, were you asking a question? No. I have to go through the chat here to see.

[51:03]

Okay, Terry Baum. Hi. Thank you, David, for doing this. It means... It's wonderful what you're doing. I'm really getting so much from coming to all these different events online. I'm concerned about the political situation and what I or anybody else should do about it. So very hard for me to relate. what you were talking about, you know? I mean, how does that fit in with activism? What you were talking, the six nails.

[52:05]

That's a great question. How I approach this is that I actually feel I need to have a clear mind and a subtle presence before I can kind of appropriately discern now what do I need to do given the situation? So it's not about denying the situation. It's a practice of how can I clearly discern what's happening? And if I'm up here churning in the mind and get lost in the fog of myriad ideas and not be grounded, I'm going to probably act out or react in ways that aren't so helpful. But if I could first ground in the presence, be settled, have a clear mind, and then clearly choose what's the most important thing for me. What do I most want to convey? And how can I use my energy, my limited energy, in the most skillful, appropriate way?

[53:10]

So rather than yelling at the TV or the computer or the newspaper every time you hear here's something a politician is saying you're doing that you don't like. You can realize that that energetic output isn't so skillful and helpful, and it just kind of gets, you know, gets us more agitated. But if we can actually say, you know what, I want to write a letter or send an email or do some other activity that is focused, that's clear and intentional, that has a... it's directed specifically to somehow offering a change and communicating need and change, then that energy is skillfully directed rather than kind of flailing. And we also don't burn out as quickly. If we're kind of rushing around trying to take care of a thousand fires and letting the flame or agitation get kind of too hot, we're going to kind of burn ourselves out.

[54:14]

in a sense of distress, overwhelm, overwork, over effort. So not burning out, be able to sustain this effort as long as we need to, to convey what's important to us. So that means you may need to step back occasionally and resource yourself. Come to stillness, come to subtleness, come back to your heart and body and ask yourself, What is the most important thing? And what do I want to dedicate my energy? What's the one thing right now that I can dedicate my energy to in a focused way? Allow yourself just one thing. Don't try to do 50. So just one thing. So I always start with that foundation. Then I can act more skillfully. I can talk, I can write speech. I can be more skillful in my speech. and my relationships with others in trying to convey what I feel would be beneficial action at these particular difficult times.

[55:21]

Is that supportive of it anymore? Yes, it is. It's very, very helpful. Thank you very much. Thank you, Terry. And I see there's a few more hands. there's questions just uh appreciation may and carol so may and then carol hi everyone um very nice nice to be here and um this is a new saga to me i i normally practice at a kennel yes and actually david i i sign up your your tasakara uh sessions on may I think actually my retreat started right now. I don't mind. And so thank you so much to talk about that. I think the sixth point, it just happened to be recently, I was reading Diamond Sutra.

[56:29]

And then, you know, they talk about the mind of the mind of future, the mind of past and the mind of present. So this is kind of like, I said, whoa, bingo. Actually, I, I don't quite understand because I constantly, because of the profession and also myself is used to be a risk management professional, you know, and I, my job is about forecasting. You know, my job is about data. Oh my God. You know, I just, you know, my mind is just go every possible way and then to have a picture. I can't help. Right. And then now it's like, okay, what does it mean by, um, don't have the mind of the future, right? And then it's really hard because that's my nature. I've been trained to do this way. Exactly, yeah. But of course, you know, everything we do that then is against, you know, against whatever we train, you know, it's the opposite. So, but thank you for just speaking out in this very, very clear way.

[57:35]

I've been pondering this recently and then past, I'm okay. Present, I'm okay. But future, you know, especially this world, this country, you know, we're working in Silicon Valley and everything is about future, right? And we're on the edge of the next wave of new technology, you know. I truly don't think we're truly living in the present moment. We forgot, right? We just like Elon Musk, you know, I think our money is Mars, right? So like, so actually I'd be very grateful that we have this time. And then maybe I also heard you talk about this kind of like a collective trauma experience, which is, wow. I think I trust that there's a huge door open for everyone. And so I'm really grateful to hear a lot of things from you.

[58:37]

Thank you. Thank you, Mary. Good to have you here. Thank you for joining. So Carol Ann. Hi, David. Hi, Carol Ann. So I feel like a big burden has been lifted off of me, really huge from something you said tonight, which was bringing up the Washington Post article. It's been weeks now that I've been home and haven't tackled anything like your closet or all my myriad stuff that should be organized and isn't and all of that. And haven't gotten to it. And I've been doing things that I think are productive and hopefully helpful here and there what I can do. But... you know, like getting these back tasks done. And so I'm really looking forward to looking up the article and I feel relieved by that you brought it up. And I thank you very much for it. You're welcome.

[59:40]

Yeah, it's really this permission not to get things done right now, you know, and to go against the grain, you know, and really find a different way and find what's essential to you. really identify what's the most important thing in this moment that you want to give your energy to. And I know it's not cleaning my closet. It's right. It's getting lost in the past in a way. Don't let too much of yesterday take up today or something like that. It's like a Sabbath. not do anything you know some spiritual traditions the sabbath is you don't do anything yeah that's right yeah right so to honor the sabbath in that way thank you thank you carl so i don't know was there we're coming up on our time was there someone i missed make sure tim help me i'm scanning through uh one more message

[60:45]

No one else. Okay, great. So you're all very timely. So thank you again for joining today. I wish you well in your practice of non-doing, radical non-doing. And really, again, every time you sit down for your meditation, notice where in the body and mind is there that impulse. You can feel like an impulse kind of rising up, wanting to kind of grab or... change your experience in any way. And I notice often as kind of tension points in the body, holding on saying, not this, or wanting to like get off the cushion and do something else. So just noticing where in the body mind, you notice that kind of initial impulse. And then rather than act it out or do anything, just bring awareness. Like the spotlight of awareness. Just shine a light on it and just say, there it is.

[61:46]

Okay. But not acting it out. It's kind of like watching. If you watch a river and you see a little eddy appear in the flow of the water, just don't put your finger in the eddy. Don't try to agitate the water. Just let it spin around a little bit. But just observe it from the bank. Just watch it do its thing. And in time, it's going to kind of, you know, dissolve in its own accord. Don't energize the Eddie in any way, right? And then again, finding how can we rest more deeply in the body and find practices that support you to do that as well. For example, yoga, you know, or our other body practices that allow those tension points to settle a little bit more deeply and allow the mind to kind of be grounded right here in direct experience in some way, so. I want to thank you all very much. Please take good care of yourselves. And I hope to see you next week on Tuesday.

[62:49]

Or unless I'm actually, I'm giving the Dharma Talk at City Center on Saturday. So maybe I'll see some of you for that as well. So, okay, my Dharma friends, be well. Thank you. Thank you, David. You're welcome. Take care. Thank you, David. Thank you, David.

[63:16]

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