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. Good evening. As I was bowing, the thought occurred to me, I thought... beautiful evening, still some warmth left from the day, sign to the creek, and I'm going to spoil it all by talking. Isn't that large? Here at Tassahara and in most Zen temples, every day we chant something called the Heart Sutra.

[01:04]

And at the heart of the Heart Sutra is this phrase. And the Bodhisattva is immersed in Prajnaparamita and the mind is no hindrance. So that's what I'm going to talk about this evening. And it's very interesting because Well, it's very interesting to me. I hope you find it at least passably interesting. What the Heart Sutra is identifying with that phrase, in the mind is no hindrance. In the etymology of the hindrance there, it is barrier or obstacle. and the mind has no barriers. Or as one translator likes to translate it, and the mind has no walls.

[02:06]

No hindrances, no barriers, no walls. And it has the same, that notion, when translated into Japanese, was called Shoshin. which Suzuki Roshi translated as beginner's mind. So, very interesting connection. And then that part of the Heart Sutra goes on to say, and the mind has no hindrance, and since there's no hindrances, no fears exist. In the absence of fear, no delusions. And the bodhisattva, turn it up.

[03:10]

And the bodhisattva dwells in nirvana. Nirvana being... It's not too loud? It's kind of scary hearing myself. Recently someone came to talk to me and they wanted to talk about their relationship. And they said, I'm not sure whether I should just call it quits and leave, or whether I should make more determined commitment to work through the difficulties. And in good Zen fashion, I said, why don't you do both?

[04:20]

And this is the heart of Prajnaparamita, which literally translates as wisdom beyond wisdom. But what it's getting at is it's getting at the human impulse to create division. Black, white, you know, good, bad, success, failure, worth staying, should leave. What if you look What's leaving about and what's staying about? And how can they coexist and not be just in endless opposition, endless struggle?

[05:21]

What is that state of being? And what helps us see the way we create divisions? What helps us see the way in which, in a very elemental way, we're motivated by what we want and what we don't want. And we want what we want and we don't want what we don't want. And in the service of that, I have a poem and a story. Here's the poem. It's called Romeo and Juliet. And the Eno reminded me, I read this 10 years ago in Ireland when she first came on retreat.

[06:29]

So here it is again. It's not a crime. to be Romeo or Juliet. It's not a crime even to die for love. What cuts is whether you can be a Romeo or Juliet. I mean, it's all a question of your heart. I mean, it's all a question of your heart. The word Shoshin, it means responsive, resourceful, adaptable. Suzuki Roshi described it as soft mind. Your attitude, your way of being has a fluidity, an adaptability to it. Your mind is not setting up barriers and boundaries.

[07:35]

If my partner does not do this, I am going to leave. Or if they do do this, I'm going to leave. Or maybe the problem's me and I need to work on myself. Divisions, boundaries, separations. What has our heart to tell us about that kind of rigidity, that kind of fixed attitude? It's all a matter of the heart. You fell head over heels in love with the world, but it doesn't love you back. It doesn't know you're alive. You don't want to leave the world, but it will leave you.

[08:45]

I mean, just because you love apples, do apples have to love you back? I mean, if Juliet stopped loving Romeo, or if she never loved him, would he be any less a Romeo? I mean... It's not a crime to be Romeo or Juliet. It's not even a crime to die for love. Maybe the poem's saying, it's not a crime to want what we want and to not want what we don't want. Bodhisattva is immersed in this non-dual, fluid, adaptable, resourceful way of looking at life, looking at the affairs of the heart, looking at relationships.

[09:54]

And what goes on in all of that isn't something we should go to a Zen monastery and purify or escape from. It's saying something in some ways much more radical, that within us there is a capacity to relate to this in a way that lets our life flourish. And that when we start to do that, the fears that arise, maybe I will never get what I want. Maybe I will live a life stuck in what I don't want. something can shift in us, the brittleness, the duality of that starts to soften.

[11:16]

As the poet Nassim MacMeth says, it's all a matter of the heart. Okay. So hold that in your heart. And here's something for your mind. There's seven prisons, actually there's five prisons in California that now have a program called GRIP, Guiding Rage into Power. It was started by a wonderful practitioner, Jacques Verdun, in San Quentin. It has proved so extraordinarily successful that the governor decided to spread it to the other prisons. There have been 166 graduates of the program and not one of them who have been released.

[12:27]

And not one of them has been back in prison. The usual recidivism right is about 80%. So to have not one is literally unbelievable. And someone's recounting to me recently about, and then they have a number of facilitators who guide them, and this person's a facilitator. And he said, Well, the group that I guide is called Tribe 625. And there's 20-something members in the tribe. And 625 is their accumulated years of service, of prison, that they all have to... And when you add the amount of years, each one of them has to serve...

[13:32]

add them all together, it adds up to 625 years. And the facilitator was telling me that given their situation. That the literal walls of the prison are not going to come down. That they have chosen to take down the inner walls. Or they've chosen to try to discover what that is. And over the 25 or so years, Jack's been able to Jacques has been creating the program, he has crafted an extraordinarily potent thing.

[14:37]

They're asked to delve into the crimes. And as you can imagine, to accumulate 625 years, the crimes have been serious. Murder and many other things. But as they delve into it, as they do the painful, difficult work of acknowledging what has happened in their past, what they perpetrated, what the consequences of it, some of them have connected to the families of the person they murdered. And they literally established a relationship. They come and they visit them. They've grown to know each other well. And they go through an inner journey, the men do.

[15:51]

They look at that. They look at who they are. There's part of the program that offers them particular kinds of notions, you know, that I think amazingly every one of us could identify with. I'm not good enough. When I'm not treated well. I retreat. I withdraw. I separate. I'm not lovable. I don't need anybody. I can do it by myself. Doesn't sound so criminal, does it?

[16:57]

And they take this on. They explore the workings of the self. They explore how hardened by a whole variety of circumstances, they felt separate. They felt like they lived in a world of good and bad, where things were resolved by force. Sometimes they talk in terms of 30 seconds to commit the crime, 30 years to serve for having committed the crime. But as much as each of us has loved,

[18:09]

yearn for love, to be concerned about love. Who hasn't felt angry, annoyed? Who hasn't pushed away, separated? And the marvelous thing about this program is somehow their incarceration becomes almost monastic. You know, Tassajara is a wonderful place to visit. But let me tell you, there's some winter mornings when you're getting over 340 and the temperature's in the low 20s.

[19:18]

It doesn't feel so heavenly. But in a way, there's a deep request in all of our lives, no matter how we live them, to live the life we're living and to meet the circumstances and to meet the structure of who we are. And this is what zazen is. Zazen is... Can you just be fully present and meet exactly what happens? A couple of years ago, I drank up the phrase, experience the experience that's being experienced.

[20:28]

Meet, experience what's already being experienced. And zazen, in the formal sense, constructs a particular environment and disposition, physically and mentally, to engage in that way. But zazen, in an informal way or a formless way, includes the entirety of our life. What moment of our life is not asking us to meet it, to be it, to live it, to engage it? It's what it is to be life. And as we do it, one of the things, there are many things we discover.

[21:41]

You mean a marvelous question to ask yourself. Especially if something happened in your life that your mind is just rattling around, criticizing, regretting, asking itself, should I stay or should I go? In addition to doing both, asking yourself, what am I learning from this? What am I learning about myself with this? What am I learning about how I relate? What am I learning about what patterns I approach others with? What are my habitual expectations from others? And as we enter these waters, I use the word immersed, which is at the heart of Zen practice, immersion.

[22:59]

Experience the experience being experienced. Do what you're doing. Feel what you're feeling. And as we do this, we discover the extraordinary number of ways we don't do that. We space sight. We avoid. We become more interested in our reaction to what's happening than the experience of what's happening. And it asks something of us to keep coming back. It asks us to tap into something.

[24:02]

And very interestingly, to tap into that which just keeps us coming back to being the person we are, living the life we're living, has more to do with our failures than our successes. At this time in being here, Mako and Zach and myself are going through maybe the most exotic Zen ceremony that we have in our Book of Exotic Ceremonies. But we have a lot. And in this one, Michael and Zach are copying documents printed on black, but they're not printed, they're handwritten on white silk with black ink.

[25:15]

documents are about six feet long you spend all day and of course it's white silk and it's black ink so it's really important that you never ever make a mistake despite your sincerity despite your dedication despite your diligence and perseverance. You do. And often the first one you make is a catastrophe, you know? It's like, okay, that's that ruined. Twenty years of my life down the drain. And then you just keep going, you know?

[26:19]

And it's a little bit like that person in the relationship. You have to leave. You have to leave behind your notion that you can make the world the way you want it to be. You have to even leave behind the notion you can make yourself the way you want it to be. And you have to persevere. You have to, even though you get that crushing information, continue. Keep doing what it seems appropriate to do. And discover in the perseverance, Shoshin. It's like Shoshin. Soft mind, adaptable, resourceful, responsive mind is nurtured by things simply not going the way we want them to.

[27:37]

And that shin is heart-mind. It includes the heart and the mind. It's not simply attitude. As Nassim Ahmed says, it's a matter of the heart. So perseverance. And then another feature that's asked of us in this endeavor is patience. Because as you proceed like this, you discover it asks something of us that we might call radical honesty. It's so tempting to distract ourselves with what should have happened or what shouldn't have happened. It's so tempting to create the allure of next time that golden dream will actually come true.

[28:46]

It's so easy in our lives to let our energy and attention go towards what should have happened and to miss what did happen. But the radical honesty of awareness is meeting what happens, acknowledging what happens. turning towards it instead of contracting, resisting, pushing away. But something softer, something more responsive, something more adaptable. Okay, this is how it is. This is what's happening.

[29:51]

Meeting that, staying with that. And then often it requires of us a patience. The turning towards the discomfort and allowing the discomfort to be experienced. It's not in the dilemmas of a relationship, well should I go or should I stay, that when you decide to stay and meet what's prompting you to go, it doesn't magically shift. Sometimes it does, for sure. But often, what it really does is it shows us, oh, there's something there to meet and acknowledge and to relate to. And it requires a patience.

[30:54]

It asks of a patience. And in the workings of that, Shoshin. And in the Heart Sutra says that when you engage life like that, the fear that it's never going to turn out the way you want it becomes less relevant. The delusions, the notions that it should be the way I want it, the daydreams I have about being the way I want it, the stories I tell myself to comfort myself against the notion that it's not going to be the way I want it, those delusions dissipate. And as the delusions dissipate,

[31:59]

A different sense of being. Nazingh Ahmed was born in Turkey. And he was very taken by the notions of socialism and communism. And he decided to go to Russia. the pure communist country. And he got to Russia. And it wasn't that pure. And so he was quite disillusioned. And he returned to Turkey. It's hard to find the pure land. It's hard to find the perfect self. Never mind the perfect other.

[33:04]

Each of us is challenged by this calling, this inquiry. So then what do you do? If that's the case, what is it to live a human life? What nourishes a human life? What brings forth the encouragement, the joy, that life offers. So let me read you the poem again. Maybe you'll find it more amusing this time. It's no crime to be Romeo or Juliet. It's not a crime even to die for love. What counts is whether you can be a Romeo or Juliet. I mean, it's all a question of your heart. You fell, you fall head over heels in love with the world, but it doesn't know you're alive.

[34:18]

You don't want to leave the world, but it will leave you. I mean, just because you love apples, do apples have to love you back? I mean, if Juliet stopped loving Romeo, Or if she never loved him, would he be any less a Romeo? It's not a crime to be Romeo or Juliet. It's not a crime to even die for love. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive.

[35:21]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

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