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. Thank you for coming on this sunny Saturday morning and choosing to spend it with us and sharing the Dharma. How many people are here for the very first time? Wow, a lot of you. Well, welcome. We're glad to have you come and join us. My name is Marsha Angus. My Buddhist name is Dainin Ganyapu. Great patience, inconceivable leap. The first part is my teacher gave to me as a, to help me.

[01:06]

Great patience was to help me. And the inconceivable leap, I think, was something he saw about me that I don't get either. Here I am, and I'm a lay and trusted teacher. I'm not a priest. I'm someone who's been practicing here and there. I started in 1974 and practiced at Green Gulch. I moved to Muir Beach and practiced there for eight years. Then I moved to Mill Valley and had sort of a householder practice and then came back to the center over the last 10 or 12 years. I've been practicing more intensely with Michael Langer, my teacher, who gave me this, entrusted me to be a lay teacher, which for me is a great privilege and opportunity because I get a chance to share my enthusiasm for practice, and in particular, householder practice, lay practice, commuter practice.

[02:25]

And... and to encourage you in it. That's sort of what I get to do. So today, what I want to talk to you about is that right now we're in the midst of a winter practice period. And for those of you who are new, a practice period, we divide up the year in these kind of 10-week modules in which we focus our attention on a sutra or in this case it's on the bodhisattva Samanta Bhadra as our mascot, the great activity bodhisattva, shining practice. And so for 10 weeks people join, people who live outside and people in the building make a commitment to sort of practice a little more intensely and to focus around the theme of the practice period.

[03:26]

So our theme is aligning all activity with the heart of Buddha. Not too ambitious. Aligning all activity with the heart of Buddha. That includes your breath. All activity. Even just when we sit. and we're in a calmer state, that is an activity of the heart of Buddha. So you're manifesting and expressing your Buddha nature just by sitting zazen, flashing it into the universe. So when I think about that, this This practice period is also based on the premise that the heart of Buddha is present everywhere and in everything. So Dogen made this interesting distinction.

[04:32]

There are koans that say, does a dog have Buddha nature? And Dogen wouldn't say the dog has Buddha nature. Dogen would say the Buddha is, the dog is Buddha nature. is a very different way of thinking about your Buddha nature arising and becoming more evident in you. So the more we have that intention to align our activity with the heart of Buddha, that makes us, it makes it becomes, how would I put it, becomes clearer. that cultivating that kind of presence and awareness, openness, mindfulness, kindness, connection, it's not bound by particular circumstances or any environment.

[05:32]

This aligning our activity is regardless of the situation, regardless of the causes and conditions that might be arising in this moment. And that's what's so exciting to me about Buddhist practice is that it's so portable and you can do it anywhere under any circumstances, and it's always useful. So aligning all activity with the heart of Buddha. When I think of that, I think of resounding congruence, which is something I learned as a mental health professional was kind of mental health, but actually it's health. It's just plain old health because when you become, when your feelings, your activity, your expression, and your intentions are all aligned and they're all going in the same direction, that's health.

[06:37]

That's just plain old health and that is going to be an alive feeling. When we don't have that, of course, then we're having inner conflict, and we have stress, and we get cranky, and we get into tremendous feelings of separation from each other. We don't feel so connected. So when we extend that into including our ethics, our values, makes us happier, generally. makes us more lighthearted. And when we get to that place where we've managed to develop that level of congruence, we're in a position that we can then extend that health beyond what I call our personal mythic belief that we are separate, independent individuals. We think we arise separately and

[07:44]

I'm in my own body, it belongs to me, and I did it myself, and I did it all alone, I did it all by myself. Americans love to say, I did it all by myself. So when we include all beings, when we recognize that, of course, we can't do anything all by ourselves, we wouldn't even, you know, just driving down the street, we're just really counting on everybody to stay on the right-hand side. I mean, I just find that, you know, a tremendous leap of faith that everybody's going to agree to keep driving on the right-hand side. And great speeds, too. So we really do rely on each other. So it's important that we include all beings in our hearts. as part of how we make decisions in our life.

[08:45]

Because whether we do it consciously or not, our decisions are going to affect all beings. So it's kind of cost effective to consider all beings in the decisions you make in your life. That you realize there are people around you when you're standing in line in the Safeway or when somebody's driving in what you may think is too slowly in front of you. It's a great opportunity to practice generosity. I was just talking, we have a class for this practice period about aligning all activity with the Heart of Buddha. I was talking about how these kinds of frustrations that come up when people cut in front of us or drive too slow or butt in line, just do rude things, that instead of trying to resist our judgment of them, because that just gets us into a stop it kind of mind, one of the jokes we have around here is to consider it another practice opportunity.

[10:05]

and an opportunity to discover something about yourself and how this particular condition, whether or not you want to give over your lovely state of mind into some sort of constricted, cranky state because somebody decided to do something unconsciously in front of you. So I always try to think of it, do I really want to give up my lovely state of mind that I'm having right now just because this person wasn't so conscious or I don't know, maybe something horrible happened and they had to do what they did. Because at the end of the day, you know, when you really think about it, when you think about how the ephemeral nature of it all, how everything's just kind of coming and going and look at the economy and hurricanes, we just don't know. There's nothing permanent. It becomes really apparent nothing's permanent. So all you really have fundamentally is your state of mind. So it really makes sense to me to want to cultivate what I call a decent state of mind, because that's what I got, and I got only so many breaths left here.

[11:17]

I might as well have them with a lovely state of mind, a calm, compassionate, joyful, inclusive, loving state of mind. I am a little attached. I do have a preference for that. I have to admit it. I do. And I think it's really worth the trouble to try and cultivate that. Because when we don't try and include everybody, that is how we create suffering for ourselves and others. It's just how it works. There's just no way. I mean, if there was another way, I would have found it. But the more you sit still and you meditate, you develop your capacity to have a stable, calm state of mind in which you can stay present for whatever it is that arises in you, whatever kind of kaka, yuko thing you don't like, whatever it is that arises in you, that you can just sit there and embrace it as, wow, look at that coming up.

[12:30]

I wonder where that came from. What's that? Oh, there it goes, and here I am on my breath. The more you do that, the more stable you are, the more you see that there really isn't any other option. Nothing else really works than kind of doing something like, we have all these lists, we have precepts. We have the six paramitas, which are, I think, of like kind of training wheels to help you develop a decent state of mind and reveal to yourself and the world your Buddha nature, which is always there, which has always been there. And as Katagiri Roshi used to say, you're already Buddha. You're already Buddha. You just have to realize it.

[13:31]

And that, and I used to say that to him too, to his face, so. It's to tease him. And it's really true. You're already Buddha. You just have to realize it. And how do you do that? Well, we have all these ways. We have all these lists. And today, the list I'm going to use is the six paramitas, the perfect activity, perfect wisdom, Paramitas, Prajnaparamitas, six of them. And the thing that's interesting about these practices of generosity and ethics, and I'll get into that in a minute, but if you really penetrate any one of them, you find yourself bleeding into the next one. They're of each other. We really can't We have to talk about them because we have this English language. So we have to talk about them separately.

[14:34]

But actually, if we could, if we could talk about them all at once, that would actually be more accurate. Because there's a kind of... It's false to separate them because they're so of each other. They're so a part of each other, just like we are. So we have these... ways that we can discern that we're separate and at the same time we're not. And so we're constantly developing our capacity to live in the crack of this paradox. That's another one of those things, there's no way around it. So that there's birth and death and then there's no birth and death. But that's another lecture. So let me stick to the subject here. So we're talking about aligning all activity with the heart of Buddha. How do we do that?

[15:37]

How do we do that? Well, we could use various lenses that over the thousands of years have been developed to practice with. And so one lens or one motivation is generosity. That's one of the paramitas. And the essence of generosity is really unconditional love, where your generous regard, it's not about evaluating whether somebody's worthy of your generosity or they deserve your generosity. You're just indiscriminately generous. you're generous with whatever arises in front of you. That kind of generosity really helps undercut any kind of puffed-up stuff we have a tendency to get into, like, I was so generous, I gave all the... It's not that kind of generosity.

[16:45]

It's the kind of generosity that doesn't require any gratitude, any reciprocity. It's the generosity that comes out of your zazen when you realize that to do other than to be generous is you yourself to suffer. You yourself end up with stingy, sphinctoid, tight. It's not... And you don't even realize it because some of these things that we grew up with, they obscure our capacity to see how things actually are. We have these habits and that's why we sit. So the practice of generosity really ends up being fun. If you really allow yourself to kind of, each of these practices, what they require is a kind of surrender. kind of have to leave your name at the door and just come in anonymously and do it.

[17:51]

Kind of random acts of kindness, sort of anonymous giving kind of thing. And you also need a mind that's into the inquiry, into discovery. I was at dinner the other night with another Buddhist... practitioner who said, and I was saying, yes, I think we need to have the, you have to have that, you have to be a way-seeking being. And she said, oh yes, there's a seeker born every minute. So, but actually when you think about it, I mean, it's kind of a rarefied atmosphere. I don't know, everybody is not as necessarily a seeker. So I think we're fortunate if we get to be born human beings. And then if we happen to be somebody that ended up in here or that have that kind of seeking, way-seeking mind, wants to get to the truth, to the heart of the matter, we are really lucky.

[18:59]

We are really, really lucky because we actually have that chance now to be free and to have what I call that good old decent state of mind most of the time. And anybody can do it. Everybody's included, and anybody that has the inclination actually has this capacity to realize their Buddha nature. And that's what I like about this as well, is that you don't have to be special in any way at all. So this is really good for my group, which is the remedial group. This is definitely a remedial practice. This is a body practice. We're embodying this practice. It's less about the intellectual, philosophical mind and more about your body and recognizing the wisdom in your body and embodying.

[20:05]

generosity becoming generosity not having generosity not be separate from you we have a thing called and there's a metaphor a skin muscled bone so when you understand generosity at the skin level you understand it intellectually when you understand generosity at the muscle level you know what the activity of generosity is. You know how to do it. You know how to act generously. When you understand generosity at your bone level, you understand that heartfelt intention that drives generous activity. This is the clincher. When you understand it at the marrow of your bone, Nothing arises. Your activity does not arise in a way that does not include generosity.

[21:09]

It's never out of you. I got it. That's too perfect of a segue. This activity, aligning our activity, this goes on all day, every day on each breath. So I have to tell you this story which is somewhat apocryphal about Suzuki Roshi. Many, many of you have heard it. And I'm going to tell you again. Suzuki Roshi, the founder of Zen Center, wonderful Japanese man, was walking through the building as he was wont to do and passed by the office and walked in as the phone was ringing and he beat the assistants to the punch and answered the phone and said hello. At the other end, the person said, could you please tell me when meditation begins, when zazen begins? And he said, it never stops. So that's what Buddhist practice is.

[22:16]

It never stops. It's on each breath. And our activity together and individually is to try and stay awake. which is really hard when you wake up at 4.30 in the morning. But we try. Anyway, we try and stay awake to our fundamental intention, to have an open heart and an open mind. So back to the paramedics. I talked about generosity. So the next, what that leads you into, when you get into the activity of generosity, it can lead you into your ethics. And ethics by ethics, it's a basic ethics we think of, you know, being honest, not cheating people, not lying, not stealing. And we start to realize if we sit zazen and we start paying attention, you start to realize it's not like it's a sin and you shouldn't do those things. It's more like realizing it just doesn't work.

[23:19]

It just creates a lot of tension and constriction and conflict. and distraction. It's very, very tangled to live in an unethical way. It simply just doesn't work. And we feel it. And that's why we call this a body practice. We feel it in our bodies. When we go against our own true nature, we feel it. We feel some constriction. Something happened. And if we're paying close attention, We have the training wheels in us. It's in our body. And developing your capacity to recognize the signals that your body is giving you, that you're going against being congruent with your own true original nature, your Buddha nature. And you can feel it. So...

[24:24]

But practicing that does require a certain kind of stability. And stability is created with patience and perseverance and concentration. Those are three more parameters. Patience. That's how I tell how long I've got. So patience. Patience is, that's my name, great patience. So understanding patience is difficult because to me I thought it was a kind of suppression where you don't act impatient. I thought that was patience. I thought it was really being patient if I just didn't try and hurry you along. And I thought that was really wonderful. But actually, it's really, again, when you see clearly with an open heart and a compassionate heart, and let's say you're waiting for somebody and they're tying their shoes and they're taking what you might think is too long, you actually see that that person is tying their shoes.

[25:49]

They're doing what they're doing. And that's the way it is. That's the way it is. So if you embrace it as it is, you don't have a problem. It's when you decide in your own special way that it should be otherwise. That's when you get in trouble. So I like to... I have a thing I've done where I kind of think of suffering having to do, there's two kinds of suffering. First kind of suffering is the way it is. You're going to die. You're going to get sick. You're going to get disappointed. Things are going to happen. It's just the way it is. The way it is for everybody. You're lucky enough to be a human being. You get to die, and you get to get sick, and you get to have problems. Then there's what I call number two suffering. Number two suffering is do-it-yourself suffering.

[26:56]

Do-it-yourself suffering is kind of an optional suffering. An example of do-it-yourself suffering is, why me? Or it's not fair. They shouldn't do that. I was supposed to get the red one. That's number two suffering. That's when you're arguing with how it is. And when you start doing that, when you hear yourself doing that, you know already that you forgot number one suffering the way it is. It's the way it is. What it is right now is how it's arising. Can you use your skillful means, your open heart, and your stable, flexible mind to embrace how it is and find a way to move in accord with it instead of arguing with it. That's patience in my mind.

[27:58]

That's patience. And that requires a certain amount of what I would call continuous effort. Perseverance. Don't give up. Don't give up. I have a little thing here to read about that. The Dalai Lama has a great little thing he wrote. Never give up. No matter what is going on, never give up. Develop the heart. Too much energy, and he's talking to Americans, too much energy in your country is spent developing the mind instead of the heart. Develop the heart. Be compassionate. not just to your friends, but to everyone. Be compassionate. Work for peace in your heart and in the world. Work for peace, and I say again, never give up. No matter what is happening, no matter what is going on around you, never give up.

[29:01]

That's very encouraging. Never give up. I mean, you're only going to be here for so long, you're going to get old anyway, right? if you're lucky. You're going to get old anyway. So you might as well make some effort towards a decent state of mind and awakening yourselves to be fully alive. What else you got to do, fundamentally, really? Get famous? Get rich? So, okay, moving along here. There's... There's that perseverance, never giving up, not getting sidetracked. It's really easy to get disillusioned and drop things. Let's say you're just starting to sit and you're trying to count your breaths there.

[30:06]

And if you were like me, I was supposed to count my breath in groups of 10. I would go into the Green Gold Zendo, and I'd sit there, and I'd go. And then if you think of something, you're supposed to go back to one, right? Just focus on your breath. So I'd be focusing on my breath. I'd go in my head, one. And I'd go, oh, one. So it took me several months before I got past one. I just started going in-out. That was sort of where I... So it takes some commitment. But what this does is develop a fair amount of self-reliance that allows you to develop your capacity to practice and to be conscious of your intention no matter what.

[31:10]

And that leads us into one of my favorites, since it's one of my great challenges, which is concentration. And that's kind of the heart of zazen is developing your concentration. So that you think your thoughts instead of having your thoughts think you. You decide what you're going to run in your head instead of finding yourself. having little thought loops running that either make you feel bad or make you feel, compare yourself to other people. I mean, we all have our favorite little thought loops that we learned growing up from our parents or somebody. And we run them. We don't even try to run them. They don't even go through central. They have their own little something happens. There's some kind of a trigger. Somebody uses a certain tone of voice. or they look a certain way, and then we just click. Oh, here comes my favorite thought loop.

[32:14]

You know, you're not good enough, or you're better than everybody, or whatever your favorite is. And then it runs you, and then it influences your activity, and it influences how you regard everybody else. And you're not autonomous at all. You're the product of your habits. So it's really quite humbling when we realize how much of what we're doing is not by our own intention, but out of an automaticity that came out of growing up. And by the time we realize it, we're already brainwashed. Because our neocortical functioning doesn't really complete fully until we're 27. Did you know that? That's why you don't have really good judgment until then. I mean, if you think about it, I mean, all the crazy, wacko things you did, you did in your 20s, right?

[33:20]

Or most of them. Anyway, maybe you still, you know, I'm capable. But developing your concentration and really seeing how empowering it is to actually have developed the mastery to decide what you're going to run in your head instead of have it just run on its own indiscriminately by what somebody else told you or what you were taught. I mean, that, if you want to feel confident and you want to feel... I mean, I think it's a very stable, confident, it builds confident feeling. And trust. Trust in your capacity to not be blown away by whatever it is that's going to arise next. Definitely cost-effective effort, worthy effort.

[34:23]

And then the last paramita is wisdom. And that's the one... That's probably the hardest one, wisdom. Because it's the full realization that you're not a separate self, just trying to do good. It's really experiencing that it's... It's the natural expression of an awakened heart is to have embodied all these paralegions. It's how you actually deeply, fundamentally, truly, truly, truly, how you really, really are. And discovering how true that is, is really an act of love, not only for yourself, but for everybody around you.

[35:26]

So that you begin to realize that, as Arshu So said in her Wayseeking Mind talk, the wheel that is giver, receiver, and gift are all one. So the one who is serving, the one who is being served, and the service itself is one activity, is one thing. So it doesn't matter whether you're the giver, whether you're the receiver, or whether in fact you're the gift. Your experience in an embodied, fully realized state is the same. It's complete. There's no separate self or ego. There's no separation. It's profound intimacy with everything and everyone. It's like being in love.

[36:31]

Very cool. And all it takes is a little effort on every single breath. What else you got to do, really? So, what else did I want to say? Is there anything else here? I don't want to read that. There was another thing I wanted to say. I want to end. I think I'm out of incense. That's about right, isn't it? About one thick of incense per lecture. We're about there. I just want to read this. This is a piece of just a few sentences from a lecture that Suzuki Roshi gave in Palo Alto to a bunch of housewives in 1966.

[37:36]

When we sit, we feel very calm and serene, but actually we don't know what kind of activity we are taking inside our being. We don't know. But because there's complete harmony, In our physical systematic activity, we feel calmness in it. So this is another way of saying aligning yourself with the heart of Buddha. So even in our calmness, that's a manifestation of your Buddha nature, and it's an activity in the midst of your heartbeat and your breath that is still. It's a stillness that arises in the midst of the activity of your heart rate and your breath and all activity. And it's always there and it's always there and it's vast and it's endless and you can always touch it.

[38:41]

So... when you do fix your mind on this kind of activity with some confidence, the quality of your state of mind is the activity itself. Quality of your state of mind is the activity itself. So generosity. It's lined up. It's congruent. So what you do, what you think, What you intend is your state of mind. And that's what you have. That's your life, is your state of mind. If you really think about it. I don't want to shock you. So I'm going to... Do I have time? How much time do I have? Do you know what? Okay. So... There's another, I want to read another poem to you, and it's by Jane Hirshfield.

[39:48]

It's by, Jane Hirshfield is an old, old friend of Zen Center. She's been practicing as part of this community for decades. She lived at Gringold. She lived at Tassajara. She's a very well-known poet. And this poem I'm reading because I feel that it is a really good explication of somebody speaking in a way where they get out of the way entirely. There's no self in this poem. And it gives you a taste of what I think is an expression of Buddhist practice. The tongue says loneliness. The tongue says loneliness, anger, grief, but does not feel them. As Monday cannot feel Tuesday nor Thursday, reach back to Wednesday as a mother reaches out for her found child. As this life is not a gate, but the horse plunging through it.

[40:53]

As this life is not a gate, but the horse plunging through it. Not a bell, but the sound of the bell's shape. lashing full strength with the first blow from inside the iron. Read that last sentence again. The abbess is requesting. I can't refuse her. The tongue says loneliness, anger, grief, but does not feel them. as Monday cannot feel Tuesday nor Thursday reach back to Wednesday as a mother reaches out for her found child. As this life is not a gate, but the horse plunging through it, not a bell, but the sound of the bell's shape lashing full strength with the first blow from inside the iron.

[42:02]

You can't think this poem. You can just... Don't think this poem. You can only absorb this poem. It doesn't go through central, and that's what I love about Jane's poetry. So if you want to get Come Thief, it's in there, and just read it out loud a bunch of times, and you'll have a different experience of it. So I'm going to give you an easy poem to end. Because Christina, the abbess asked me, she said, you have to give them something to practice with. So this is something to practice with. And it's a poem by Donna Fowles. When I can be the witness, which is what you develop, all manner of miracles occur. Old wounds heal. The past reveals itself to be released. Present dramas play themselves out without sinking emotional talons into my soft skin. Present dramas play themselves out without sinking emotional talons into my soft skin.

[43:12]

The witness welcomes truth and dares to meet reality on its own terms. It is the ground in which the seeds of transformation take root and finally flower. When the witness is awake, The lake of mind is still. And in that mirrored surface, I see my own true face as spirit smiling back at me. So develop your mindful heart and with an open heart and an open mind every day. You can start your day and remind yourself to have an open heart, open, generous, compassionate heart, and an open mind. And then, before you leave, say, don't leave home without it. So thank you very, very much for your attention and for allowing me to encourage you, and I hope I have.

[44:17]

Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. 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.

[44:43]

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