This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. conduct and observance of precepts. Ceaseless practice.

[01:02]

To my mind, there's something instructive about the range that those two translations cover. I think... from prohibition, restraint, non-attachment, and in ceaseless practice, just this is it. How could whatever manifests be something other than now? something other than just this how could any moment not raise the Dharma banner of what is it to practice with us and then is the strength and prohibition is that the beginning practice or is that the practice

[02:23]

those terrible worldly people and just this is it the practice of us exalted monastics so skilled in the ways of human existence I think most of us find out that we're a combination of both both practices have their place strength the prohibitions I watched the other day as Tanto closed the door and says oh now you're late just wait there for a few minutes and then in a moment Hankin will let you in how it's hard not to have that moment be something awkward something

[03:32]

and in that moment I felt for the tantrum and I thought playing the disciplinary the role of the disciplinary I will tell you what to do it's such a no-win situation somehow in that moment Probably just my imagination, but I felt that the Tanto felt some kind of awkwardness, some kind of discomfort. No. You're not okay. Your mind is not a very mindful girl. You're right.

[04:33]

At that age in territory, the prohibition restraints come into play. And we can't watch ourselves. There's some part of us just not notice. There's some part of us filled with shame. I said to myself, never again will I do that. And then on the next break, I went and had another cigarette. Shameless. I am indeed, and I can't be gone. yoga, chara, buddha, it created a whole cosmology, a whole timeline for what it took to get fully enlightened.

[05:45]

And it's a long time. I mean, on average, if I remember it correctly, it takes three of the super long kelpas. You know, you It's like the equivalent of the universe expanding contractive. And as if that wasn't bad enough, then there's some people, even that's not long enough, you know. I was reading that and I was thinking, That'd be uplifting for anyone. But for you, it's going to take even longer. You're super bad. Or maybe it's a great relief.

[06:51]

Okay. No, no. No. It looks like when you start to practice and you start to meditate and you're thinking, I hope my mind... You're starting to meditate and you're thinking, I hope my mind doesn't wander off during this period of something, you know? And after a while you realize, no way, your mind is going to wander. practicing with that is how we cultivate presence. It's how we create this continuity of practice. So we cover the full range from prohibition and restraint with all its edgy awkwardness.

[07:58]

Really in our California Zen, is there a place for no, don't do that? Is there a place to close the door and say your lip? Or is there just this reassuring notion. Every moment is Buddha. Every mind is Buddha. Every action is the flower as the unfolding of karma, upholding the flower of suchness. So the territory of Goji, Gyoji, Can it be restraint refraining that's not simply dualistic based on good and bad?

[09:23]

Can it be acceptance of whatever arises that carries in it the precision of justice This very breath, this very sound, this very touch of the foot on the floor. And I would say, what is it to practice? What's happening in what is it to practice with it? that it's both all-encompassing, that's the nature of ceaseless practice. Whatever's happening is the suchness of this moment.

[10:34]

And there is the precision. Being lost in thinking, being caught up in some story, being projecting, concluding, being caught up in setting up high and low, good and bad. They're all distractions. In the next moment, they can be seen for what they are, yes. But in that moment, they assert some karmic influence, and that karmic influence perfumes the next moment. So this is the territory of practice. The all-encompassing and the specific. And then what is that mind?

[11:48]

What is that disposition? What is that? commitment to engagement that has the versatility, the fluidity to meet the arising experience. And I would say this, as we enter that territory, and find that engagement. Being alive becomes intriguing. Even those moments that psychologically we might call a regressed step, for those who aren't familiar with that term, it's when you're fully stuck in your own stuff.

[12:50]

And while your conscious intelligence is saying, no, no, no, don't do that. You're right in the middle of doing it. Your rational mind is saying, no, no, that's not appropriate. It's... The Tandu didn't say you're the worst person in the world. He just said, you know, you're like... You don't have to hate him forever. LAUGHTER and start scheming on your plan of revenge. I will throw his shoes on a creek. From that place of entry, even that mind unfolds the Dharma. Hmm. So fierce.

[13:59]

So fierce in the service of what? Upholding what? What's the great violation? What's the great virtue that needs to be upheld? And not so much to get busy thinking, but more in the Hridaya consciousness. But what is the stuff that's cooking here in this heart and mind and body? Not merely arising now and not merely carried over from the past. And when we cling to it for a week, Each time we see the tanto in the distance, that contraction.

[15:00]

I still remember that cruel violence that he had perpetrated. Or has somehow the mystery of being alive sort of taken over. sense of wonder at the range of your own capacity. Tells you something about how you've related to authority figures. Tells you something about how you felt shut out, excluded. associated deep feeling that are involved in that.

[16:05]

So ceaseless practice, all-inclusive, this very mind exhibits the nature of conditioned existence. Knowing that the nature of our existence lives, when there is clinging and disturbance in consciousness, attending to the moment is an unattractive proposition. When the mind is more settled, more available, This attractive proposition, when the mind is quite settled, it tended to the moment. It's like an act of play.

[17:15]

It's like a little game. Unfold the arioche. This is what playing house. Say, look, here comes some food. Yeah, let's keep the game going. Let's do a little chanting. Have something to eat. And each of us moving back and forth. Maybe not so caught up in violation or maybe not so playfully involved in the joyous sparks of momentary experience.

[18:21]

Maybe not, but maybe some. And that mind of ceaseless practice has its own immersion and of course in that immersion we can say oh today is whatever it is you know Saturday the fourth day of Shishin the two hundred and twenty-first day of practice period whatever reference we get you know maybe so maybe that is Maybe it is Friday or Saturday. Who knows? But even so, in the great ocean of ceaseless practice, that's just another wave.

[19:34]

that's one way to name reality maybe as appropriate as any other and in this whether you realize it or not A sense of opening to what is. A sense of letting go of what it's not. This discrete human intricacy. what we move towards and what we push away there's this deep sense of just this is it in its endless forms this acceptance of what is and that nothing falls outside of it even grasping and pushing away

[21:08]

are part of it. The sense of ceaseless practice. Not to say it doesn't have its particularity. And to be in that particularity, some things assert. He wrote these two poems together And they're called uncoupled. But listen to the particularity of each one. And then listen to how the mind gives it a context. It plays a great trick in them both. It's just and vignette a very specific, detailed instance.

[22:15]

And then the mind says, oh, you know, probably this is what was happening or that was what was happening. Who is this? Not much higher than the cattle working his way towards me through the pen. His houseplant in one hand lifted and pointing. A stick of keel in the other. Calling to where I'm perched on top of the shaky gate. Waving and calling something I can't hear. With all the bawling and roaring, worries readily at the far end of the yard. The dealers shouting among themselves and nod at him. So that his eyes leave mine. And I know the pain of loss before I know the time. moment of existence, intense, detailed, textured in its own being.

[23:20]

In what moment it's not that way? the year in the middle of work period and the task at hand has its particularity it invokes for you a reference an association a value each moment is about itself Will we make associations with it? Seamus Heaney grew up in a family of farmers. And they also cut turf. A peat substance in Ireland is usually in wet bogs because it rains a lot.

[24:39]

extremely hard work to dig out. And in his illustrious career, he was invited to teach at Harvard, Oxford at many high-ranking academic establishments. He won a little valprose. And he could weave all that into talking about what happened on the farm. Ceaseless practice because everything's interconnected.

[25:43]

And ceaseless practice because this moment of being is precisely itself. It has its own before and after. And how amazing Most of the time we seem to discard the richness of the moment in the search for before and after. Nishajima's translation of Doge. He says, this is ceaseless practice, actually, he says, this conduct and observation, observance, this conduct and observance is not loved by worldly people.

[26:59]

Ah, those worldly people. When will they ever lie? Conduct and observance is not loved by worldly people, but it may be the real refuge of all human beings. genius of the wordsmithing of the poet. Yep. I've done lecture series at Oxford. I've been professor in residence at Harvard. But taking refuge in the cattle yard.

[28:03]

Yeah, we have endless forms and details. I just want to say about, I talked yesterday that when I was talking about religious traditions, I hope it didn't seem like I was trying to raise one above the other, or even diminish the incalculable merit of our morning service. by saying it fitted between Zazen and breakfast. What is not the real refuge? And yet, what is it to let it be realized as such? Each of us here, our lives unfolding in the way they unfold.

[29:28]

This morning I was thinking, I was always preparing for this talk. Well, Achan Phong. Achan Phong was an eminent teacher in the 50s, 60s, and early 70s. Here's the story. You can't decide yourself if all these details are true or every single one of them is fancy for imagination. Achen Fung lived in a cave for 25 years. For the first 10 years, he shared the cave with the tiger. I don't know if, like, this is your half and this is my half, but you're... I didn't know how to keep up. He shared the cave with the tiger. And then, I don't know, for some reason the tiger left. He just kept sitting.

[30:31]

And then he had six students. And they sat all night, every night. On the hour, each hour through the night, each one of them had took a sign and told them how their practice had gone from the previous hour. And then one day he said to them, you better all leave now, because they practice more or less obscurity. You all better leave now because I'm going to become famous and this place is going to become a madhouse. He did become famous. And even though they were up on the mountain, a road was built the whole way up to the cave. And outside, from the cave, they built kind of those kind of cantilevered roofs. And they built a big concrete plaza, a pavilion, whatever you might want to call it.

[31:39]

And when I got there, Hundreds of people would come every day. And Achan Phun would give out medallions. And if you got one of Achan Phun's medallions, you were set. Because this could protect you against anything. So, he would give a talk. Usually... who came and were a wonderful mix of people and he wouldn't talk very long five ten minutes and then he'd say anyone want a medallion and they would literally storm pushing each other aside and get a medallion and then late in the evening

[32:43]

they'd all be gone. And Ajahn would sit by with the monks and berate them for their full practice. It was great. Yeah. You know, when someone tells you you're absolutely useless and hopeless and a hypocrite and you're just here for the food, And your meditation's awful. You relax like, oh, okay. I've heard the worst. It's kind of true after that, whenever I would imagine some kind of criticism, I think. Yeah, okay. get up at four.

[33:53]

He'd sit for two hours. We'd all go off down the mountain to, you know, beg for food. He'd be, he'd sit there and he'd talk to people. He'd be lying to people. He'd talk to them from like after breakfast about eight until about six at night. And then he'd talk to the local farmers. He'd give them more. That's a hard time to Every night they were going to die. People during the day, he'd say, okay, we're going to sit for five minutes. And then he'd say, you were fantastic. You sat so well. Who wants them to die? There was an interesting point. He scared the daylights out of me.

[35:00]

He never did anything, you know, personally, except smile and say, how are you? But... I was terrified. I thought he was wonderful. I thought he was marvelous. living example of practice that he could see right through me and that that was reason to be terrified ceaseless practice you know any of those fantastic stories true? Apparently he did practice in that cave for 25 years. And he gave out a lot of medallions.

[36:04]

I saw that myself. Is that what a real practitioner looks like? Are we tawdry, flattened, pale intentions of what a true practitioner looks like? And of course when we put the question right in front of us, it has an impossibility How could any answer encompass all that's entailed in the realm of practice?

[37:13]

How could any judgment our mind comes up with be anything other than a contingency? In the great realm of uji, being time, lit is only a contingency of the moment. And yet, we assert, we uphold it. This is the nature of our practice. This is the nature of nimitsu no kafu, particular precise practice. Can this moment, can this engagement be experienced in a way that it opens the dark gate, that it reveals the nature of what is, that it shows us

[38:20]

how it's being engaged, appreciated, rejected, grasped. And how can we say for sure, this is a wonderful moment, this is a terrible moment. Now I'm truly in the way, now I'm falling back into my evil depravities. Those ideas mean anything other than just a mere conditioned convention arising in the moment. And yet, we bring forth the particular involvement that we bring forth in that moment. Directed attention. Miss Heaney, with his magic, just pins together six or eight details and says, you have an imagination, make up the rest.

[39:42]

And when do we not do that? When do we not just pluck out a few details and make up the rest? And should we suppress and contain and limit the mind so that it doesn't fall into such evil ways? Or can you appreciate it as it to be? That beyond the white knuckling of prohibition and restraint, there's the grace and the ease of non-attachment. So that's what's arising. And can we keep close directed attention that discovers that in its willingness to experience the particulars of the moment

[41:00]

raised to meet it. Presence is not the masterful product of directed attention. Presence is opening to what is, cultivating the availability for that. Whether that's a full gestalt of what's created by the mind in the moment, or whether that's the detail of attention to phenomena and discovering the nature of samadhi in that circumstance. It flows and invites us to flow with it.

[42:13]

This experience, this experience, this experience. I was with Mel quite a while ago now, but we were at Zen Center, City Center, and we were looking at the budget together. I forget what our roads were, but he was something and I was something. And apparently it was appropriate for us to look at a spreadsheet filled with numbers. So we were. And as happens in those circumstances, we were drawing conclusions. And then we were coming here to work on drama transmission. So we got in the car, and we drove here, and we stopped for lunch, and we got here, and we're in the abbot's cabin, and we get out our shiver gansos. And I turned it down. I said, isn't it amazing? A second ago, we were at City Center, looking at spreadsheets.

[43:17]

And now we're sitting here, looking at the Shilva Gensa. And he looked up, a little startled. Just going from one room to another. Just continuous practice. Just a spreadsheet of numbers. Now a page of paper with a lot of words. Just one set of ways of looking at the world, and now another set of ways of looking at the world. Each its own expression of interview. Each with its own energy, its own intrigue, its own particularities. And in the ceaseless continuity of Sashin, we can see, you know, as Dogen says in the Genja Kona, when you watch the boat carefully, you can see this is where the change is happening.

[44:53]

This mind, this body, the attentiveness, the perceptiveness, the arising of thoughts, always in a state of flux. And when we give over to this ceaseless continuity, without even realizing it, we start to invite non-attachment. start to invite not knowing not knowing what should happen but knowing what should not happen as Dogen's energy says we start to take refuge in now

[46:04]

our directed effort, our directed attention it's an open hand reaching out to connect rather than assertion of what should be and the prohibition of what should not be So in the immersion, to be careful because sometimes in the immersion, nothing special. We're not so wound up in our usual traumas, our usual assertions.

[47:24]

practice is going to save us from something mostly ourselves and the steady beat of meeting each thing with its particulars It's important to try to not do it. At least that's what we say. As a practice, it challenges us. Oh, I'll just do this before I go. Do it on the next breath. The restraint, the request, it invites us out of the usual patterns that have become ingrained.

[49:06]

And when the mind is soft, it feels more like the natural order of things rather than something they're making me do. But if the mind presents they're making me do this, enjoy that too. this discussion with the talk to him, tell him what a terrible person he is. We live our truth. And the way unfolds. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[50:19]

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, visit SSCC.org and click giving.

[50:35]

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