This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. So welcome to the fifth day of Sashim. Maybe you're tired of us all counting it down for you. I'm wondering if anyone is thinking some version of, what am I doing here? Why did I leave my perfect life to come to this machine? Or, I can't wait till this is over so I can get back to my... ex-life, to share with ex-person all the things I've realized or other things I hated about this machine.

[01:07]

I, of course, have not had any of these thoughts. So you may think that you left some life to come here and will return to another life. But welcome to the fifth day of Sishin and to your life right now. In fact, if anything, the fifth day, Sishin in general, but on the fifth day, we really get to see how maybe what we always have, wherever we are, magnified. this body, this heart, this mind. Wherever you go, it's always with you.

[02:09]

You know, people often talk to me about how a seven-day sashim seems like a long time, and beginners are really afraid of seven days. I personally would prefer not to do anything shorter than a seven day, because my experience, and I think most people experience, is that it takes at least three or four days before you settle. Your body generally takes that long. It's like yesterday, as I was leaving the bathroom, I thought, wow, do my knees hurt less, or am I just more relaxed in the fact that they hurt? Do you understand the distinction? So I'm hoping that here on the fifth day, you begin to relax.

[03:24]

And if you don't, that's OK. This morning, I think it was because I was relaxed enough, tired, very tired, and therefore perhaps relaxed. When the three clackers happened, I just knew it was time to put up my hands for the morning cook to do her bow. And I also was relaxed enough to feel the gratitude of the effort that was put into that meal. I was relaxed enough to taste the tanginess of the orange, the crunch of the apple. that squeaky crunch that comes when you bite on those little seeds in the strawberry, I think those are seeds, right?

[04:33]

Or the individual burst of those sections of that blackberry and the tanginesses that went down my throat. And not to romanticize too much, I also felt the pressure of the gas in my stomach, and the way it pushed itself up into my esophagus, the pressure as it expanded, and the way it pushed up, and I felt it at the back of my throat, and the burp came out of my mouth. Welcome to the fifth day of Sushin. Welcome to your life.

[05:37]

Here's the place, here the way unfolds. The boundary of realization is not distinct from the realization, excuse me, for the realization comes forth simultaneously with the mastery of Buddha Dharma. Do not suppose that what you realize become your knowledge and is grasped by your consciousness. Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be distinctly apparent. Its appearance is beyond your knowledge. Obviously from the Genjo Koan. like to focus on two lines. Here is the place. Here the way unfolds.

[06:39]

Here's our life. And here's the Buddha Dharma. They're not separate. And they're unfolding continuously. And I'm going to do that by leaping off of the story of Kweke. Now, some of you in this room know, who were in, is Rachel here? Where is Rachel? Well, I was in this Sangha leader, Zen Sangha leader training called SPOT last year. And the story of Kweke came up twice. And I've heard this story before. but hearing it really made him alive for me. And the main story you hear about Kweke is that he wanted to practice the Bodhidharma, and Bodhidharma refused.

[07:50]

So he stood out in the cave, outside the cave of Bodhidharma, overnight, and snow started to fall, And he stayed until snow came up to his waist. And then in the morning, Bodhidharma came out. I'm paraphrasing. What the hell are you doing still here? And he said he wanted a teacher to open the gate of the elixir, or universal compassion to liberate all beings. Bodhidharma refused, saying, how can you hope for true religion with little virtue, little wisdom, a shallow heart, and an arrogant mind? It would be a waste of effort.

[08:53]

This is from the Thomas Cleary translation of Kezon's, Transmission of Light. So at this point, Huike cut off his left arm and threw it in front of Bodhidharma as a token of his sincerity, at which point Bodhidharma accepted him as a student. Now, in this version, it says, Without realizing he had just self-amputated his left arm, Hui Ke screamed in pain, and the exchange went as follows. Hui Ke said to Bodhidharma, My mind is anxious. Please pacify it. Bodhidharma replied, Bring me your mind, and I will pacify it. Hui Ke said, Although I've sought it, I cannot find it. There, Bodhidharma replied, I have pacified your mind.

[10:01]

Now, in the past, before this spot training, you know, I always focus on Bodhidharma's answer, which I think is what we're supposed to do, right? If you can't find your mind, then it's already pacified. But, for a year or so now, this character, Weike, has really stayed with me. Something about his story kept nudging at the back of my mind. Who is this person? What kind of person would stand in the snow, cold and shirring? What kind of person would cut off their arm? Sure, the account said that it's to show his resolve. somehow there seemed to be something more in it for me. And a couple weeks ago, in Genjo Cohen class, you know, I said, I think we need to settle into our delusions.

[11:16]

So I think this is what the story of Hoike and that cutting off of the arm is for me. about how is it that we have our stories, our delusions, and how are we with it? Because on the fifth day, probably a lot of stories have come up. And by being with a story, I do not mean the grasping of it and the justifying of that I'm right, they're wrong, I know what I'm doing. But more, how do we handle our story? The key being our story or my story. And by that, there's a reason our delusions keep coming up.

[12:19]

And at this point, you probably have a sense there's a pattern. While it's true that there are many delusions, each of us have some that keep repeating themselves. Maybe the faces change, maybe the circumstances change, but it's the same story. So how do we work with it? So here's the place, and here the way unfolds. Not long ago, there was a period of time in which I was very unsettled. I had talked to someone about spending time with this person. It was someone who was becoming important to me. This person had other plans at a time that I wanted to meet, but said, well, they might finish.

[13:25]

They had plans before, but they thought they might be done when I had time to meet. So I heard myself say, well, I'll go there. And if you're there, then I'll see you. And if you're not, OK. So I go to the place. I'm there for an hour and a half or so. The person never showed. The person never called. Now, rationally, I knew that I'm the one who said, if you're there, okay. If you're not, okay. But I was disappointed. But I didn't think I should be disappointed because I'm the one who put it out that way. So there's no reason I should be disappointed. And upset. And so I said to myself, I will not be upset.

[14:30]

And these lines of I'm not disappointed, I shouldn't be upset, kept going on and on in my head like an endless loop. I felt very irrational. And I didn't like being irrational. So here's the place. And here the way unfolds. So during this time, I felt really discombobulated. I felt off. I felt not myself, but at the same time, very intensely real somehow. I felt contracted, tight, and I knew I was constricted. I couldn't seem to stop myself, right? And these lines kept going. I shouldn't be disappointed. I shouldn't feel this way. And then, doing one of these loops of the thoughts, a voice in my head, almost like an afterthought, said, I'm needy.

[15:48]

Oh no, I'm needy. Other thoughts, of course, chased after that. I'm an adult. I'm almost a therapist, as in the shingle to hang out, right? I know how to self-soothe. I'm a Buddhist, for goodness sake. So with these afterthoughts, I ran figuratively. I got really, really busy. And during this busyness, I experienced tiredness. and inability to concentrate, guardedness, terse speech, constriction of the heart, and even my mind felt really tight, and I found myself frowning and scowling.

[16:52]

And the next time I talked to this person, I was very, very cool. So here's the place, and here the way unfolds. Now luckily for me, around the 24-hour mark, other thoughts arose. What if I'm a needy person? What would that mean? Aren't I the self-sufficient one? Haven't I survived a lot? Pretty well intact, pretty healthy? Didn't I work through all that in therapy? many sashims, many retreats, many periods of zazen, many practice discussions, and then some fundamental thoughts.

[17:54]

What if I don't get what I want? What if I don't deserve to get what I want? What if I die if I don't get what I want? And with these thoughts came a realization of a flush of sensations, heat radiating from the face and head, the roar of the pound of the heart, and the quickening and shortness of breath. I felt like I was dying, right, physically. Yet oddly, after those thoughts and then the sensations, my mind became very, very quiet. Katagiri Roshi said, you don't know real silence until you're boxed in the corner and can't move an inch.

[19:08]

Here's the place. Here the way unfolds. Now, in realizing Genjo Koan, Shohaku Okamura had these lines. Realization does not destroy the person as the moon does not make a hole in the water. Now maybe Dogen can say that it doesn't feel like realization. can annihilate you, right? Destroy the person. I wish Rachel was here. She knows what I'm talking about. But being needy, or that thought that I am a needy person, and not getting what I want, brought up a sense of extinction. Of course, Dogen is speaking about the absolute, right?

[20:14]

In the absolute, there is no I that is meaty, or no I that can be annihilated, right? But we mostly don't know that we live there, do we? And I'm going to repeat that. We mostly don't know that we live there, do we? Mostly. We live in the delusion that there is an I that can be needy, or whatever, fill in the blank for yourself, and one that can be annihilated. Here's the place, here the way unfolds. So I think this is what resonated for me about Hui Ke's story, he and his arm. He obviously couldn't hold it together, I didn't mean that literally, but... His distress at not getting what he wanted was put out there for Bodhidharma and other people who were walking by maybe to see.

[21:25]

Maybe he was saying, see me, I'm bleeding, I'm hurting, I need help. With his action, he expressed it. But intellectually, He didn't know it, because remember, this translation says, without realizing, he had just self-amputated his arm, like a scream in pain, and then the whole pacifying the mind happened. Isn't that like most of us? We're rather clueless most of the time. going on a merry way, thinking things should be different, preferably the way we want it or need it, or that we should be somehow different than the way we are right now.

[22:29]

I'd rather have a different delusion than the one that I'm needing. Self-sufficient would be nice, right? So what I'm trying to point to is, in general, we resist the sense of a self that we don't want or think we might be. And to borrow a phrase from Star Trek, resistance is futile. I think the Bork said that, right? So here's the place, and here the way unfolds. Luckily, however much we resist or run, we can't really get away from it. As Dovin's next lines, again in Shohaku's translation goes, the person does not obstruct realization, as a drop of dew does not obstruct the moon in the sky.

[23:37]

The depth is the same as the height. Especially during Sushin, our stories will come up. So how are you going to deal with it? Generally, you can either harden or you can relax into it. When I was at Hoshinji, there was this layman who would come come from Tokyo, which is, I think, like four hours away from the train, to practice with Sekia Hirata Roshi, or Dojo Roshi, we call him, the Roshi of the practice place, five days out of the week. He was in his early 60s.

[24:40]

He was a CPA that had his own company. you know, he came a lot, and I really admired it. And so one day, when we were outside weeding, yellow weeds, at the foot of a 10-foot kanon, or Avalokiteshvar, right, kanon. White 10-foot. So, His English was not that much. My Japanese was almost nil. But we'd been practicing for a while, and we had a sense of connection. So while we weren't supposed to talk while we were working, I asked him why he came and spent so much time with Roshi.

[25:45]

You know, it took a little while for us to get that across. And so we're outside, where we're reading, it's the gravel area outside the temple, right next to the jizos. And he picks up a rock about this big. And he said, I want to be like this. So why did he come to practice with Roshi? because I want to be like this. At that time, I go, okay. Later, I was thinking, you know, I'm for myself, not for him. I don't know, you know, I couldn't speak Japanese, so I couldn't really say exactly what he meant. But what I got out of it is that you know, is it that you want to be hard?

[26:46]

Is it that you want to be solid and hard? And I was thinking, it's much, much harder to be soft. And for me, my practice is to be soft. I'm pretty good at being hard. You could say causes and conditions created my life in which I had to be hard. to survive. You could say that. And I say it sometimes. So my practice is that it's much more difficult to be soft, to relax. So here's the place, and here the way unfolds. So Pema Chodron, in an article or excuse me, a chapter from The Wisdom of No Escape, which by the way, you know, I have two articles that I carry with me now for years and years.

[27:52]

One is from Bell Hooks, Contemplation and Transformation, from Buddhist Women on the Edge. And the other is this one called Taking Refuge, from Panma Chodron. And in it, she talks about taking refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and about how the part that I'd like to focus on today is about how we tend to have an armor around ourselves, right? You have an armor because, quote, you might have had some illusion that it was protecting you from something, only to find that actually it's shielding you from being fully alive and fully awake.

[29:06]

So she says, taking refuge in the Buddha means I take refuge in the courage and the potential of fearlessness, of removing all the armor that covers this awakeness of mine. I am awake. I will spend my life taking this armor off. And we take refuge in Dharma. because the teachings of the Buddha are let go and open to your world. Realize that trying to protect your territory, trying to keep your territory enclosed and safe is fraught with misery and suffering. It keeps you very small, dank, smelly, introverted world

[30:13]

that gets more and more claustrophobic and more and more misery-producing as you get older. And you take refuge in Sangha does not mean that we join a club where we're all good friends, talk about Buddhism together, nod sagely, and criticize the people who don't believe the way we do. Taking refuge in Sangha means taking refuge in Buddhahood and sisterhood of people who are committed to taking off their armor. When we see each other collapsing or stubbornly saying, no, I like this armor, there's an opportunity to say something about the fact that underneath all that armor are a lot of festering sores, and a little bit of sunlight wouldn't hurt a bit.

[31:16]

That's the notion of taking refuge in sangha. She also talks about how we go out to fight dragons and monsters. And I've heard this from Jack Kornfield, I think it's in his book too, about how this woman has a dream for a series of night that she's running away from a monster and someone you know a teacher said to her well try to turn around to meet the monster so she could do it in one of her dreams and the monster collapsed when she turned around now i'm also thinking If the monster is our story or the pattern of our stories that keeps on coming up, and we keep trying to defend from it, which, by the way, often comes out as thinking it's other people that's making the patterns or situations.

[32:34]

So we can meet the monster, with resistance. We can try to push it away, but you know that when you push, you have to tighten. You have to tighten to push. Or we can meet it with softness. Maybe we can't quite embrace it, but maybe we can just hold our hand Open. And say, enough. Right here. Right now. I'm going to meet with you. Maybe it's just for a little minute. And that's okay. Maybe that's all you can do. Maybe it'll be longer next time. Maybe not. Here's the place. Here the way unfolds.

[33:38]

So by relaxing or settling into our delusions, what I mean by that, it's like you know how they say in the Genja Koan, the fish ground as water. That's from the class 2. The birds ground as the air. And I don't remember who said this, but that the ground that we human beings live in, is delusion. So we settle into the fact that we have them. And they're there for a reason. They're there for us to meet. And how we meet it is the practice. As you all know, on Saturday, we end in a little ceremony called the Dharma Inquiry Ceremony, otherwise known as the Shuso Ceremony.

[35:09]

And I was told a couple days before it was due that I had to make an invite for all the past Shusos. And I chose... Here's the place, here the way unfolds. And to me, you know, it was about right here and right now is where we practice with what comes up, which is illusion and enlightenment. So I knew I wanted this path, and I went through several versions, including some pictures of Shundo. And then I was, you know, at work, going through word, clip art, right? And I enter path, you know, in the search thing, right?

[36:12]

And I came up with this picture, which is an abstracted picture of a crosswalk. Now, I really like abstracted things. In fact, I used to be an artist and was an abstract painter. So, you know, and I used to be a designer, print designer. So I like the design, the asymmetricalness, the contrast. But I also really liked it that I got it out of clip art. It's very pedestrian, you know? It's ordinary. It's a crosswalk. You know. Anyways, if anybody wants one, there's a few left. And I think it, you know, points to the fact that our ordinary life is where practice is. Heike, later in his life, said, wrote, excuse me,

[37:17]

Originally diluted, one calls the many pearl a potsherd. Originally diluted, one calls the many pearl a potsherd. Suddenly, one is awakened, and it is recognized as a pearl. And wisdom are identical, not different. So my hope for you is that you settle into your delusion and your enlightenment. And you also settle into giving space for other people's delusion and enlightenment. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[38:22]

Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost 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 sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[38:42]

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