Good morning. Good morning. Here in the world of... city center, Zen center. This is the last day of a seven-day shashin, which the majority of the audience know only too well. And the seven-day shashin culminates a period of intensive practice of two months. And then in the culmination of today, there will be a ceremony in which Tim, will sit pretty much about here, maybe a little bit more here, but he'll sit here and everybody will ask him a question.

[01:09]

All the participants of the Shashin and all the other people who've trained and practiced in the way he has. And he will answer. Hopefully he will answer. We'll find out. Who isn't confronted with their life? Who isn't asked to answer, respond to the life they're living? Who isn't challenged with the question, what are you doing? What do you want? How do you suffer? So in a strange... And I hope helpful way that was the hidden theme of this practice period, this two months of intensive.

[02:20]

And I'd like to come at it today with the poem from Mary Oliver called, What I Have Learned So Far. Personally, I appreciate the so far part. Otherwise, it might be a little dangerous. Meditation is old and honorable. So why should I not sit every morning of my life on the hillside looking into the shining world? Because This is how we get ourselves into trouble. Because. We have an answer to our own question. Let's hope we're not thoroughly convinced by it. It's just the answer so far.

[03:26]

Because properly attended to delight as well as havoc is suggestion. The light as well as havoc is suggestion. That which you yearn for, that which is going to fix everything, that which is going to fill you up with whatever it is you think you need to be filled up with. And havoc. Ah! have you ever lived when every detail of it happened exactly as planned? What five minutes have you ever lived? That every thought and feeling that went through your body and mind was exactly as you planned. Because properly attended to delight as well as havoc is suggestions.

[04:35]

Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime and the holy, and yet commit to no labor in its cause? And what about this world? Is the appropriate response deep contemplation? standing in the middle of the road, stopping the traffic with a placard in your hand, bringing to light, bringing to attention some savage injustice in our world. Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime and the holy, and yet commit no labor to its cause? I don't think so.

[05:38]

gospel of light is at the crossroads of indolence and action maybe to say that in the last seven days a group of us have been luxurating in indolence of course when you're in it It doesn't feel like luxurating. And despite our best efforts to just be what is and let it float through, let it arise and pass away, and just see it as the reverberations of being alive, it stirs up a lot. but in our lives, what is appropriate response?

[06:53]

I read recently that there's a design to create a super-fast, because it's no longer a railroad, a super-fast passenger transportation between LA and San Francisco. theoretically would go at 800 miles an hour. Such is our world. Is this the final solution to all our problems? Or is this another one? Part of the text I've been offering up this week in particular has a beautiful title of Genjo Koan, The Koan of Life.

[08:03]

For each one of us, what is that balance? What is that combination, that interplay, that synergy between contemplation and action? If we just act and never think about what's going on, what's prompting the attitudes, what's prompting the priorities of my life, we're sort of stumbling in the dark, you know? If we devote our time entirely to contemplation, What are we doing, to quote Mary Oliver, with this one wild and precious life? The methodology of Zen, in some ways, is to make matters worse.

[09:12]

Other formulas for the human condition are about, well, here's the solution. Here's what it all means, and here's how to resolve it. Then is more. Here's the problem. Here's the question. You thought it was this size? No, it's this size. Everywhere you turn. Even your own internal being is asking a question. and requesting a response. The people of your life are asking a question, hoping for a response. The priorities of your life. So this teaching, the history of this teaching is it was written by Dogen Zenji, the Japanese finder,

[10:19]

of this style of Zen practice 800 years ago. He had come back, he'd gone to China, been extraordinarily influenced by a Chinese Zen teacher he met there, and felt like he was coming back to Japan Suzuki Roshi said once, the founder of this center, said once, my practice is more fundamental than Zen. This is the feeling Dogen Senji came back from China with. I feel like I've been taught something fundamental about being alive. And he wrote this essay. And right in the middle of it, he says this, when you find your place where you are,

[11:20]

practice occurs. Practice being this active, conscious interplay between contemplation and action. And how it presents itself all the time. When you find your place where you are, So foolishly, a group of us have spent the last seven days sitting in one place and trying to be there and discovering how elusive that is and how all-inclusive that is. You sit there

[12:24]

and you discover there's no boundary between here and everything else. You sit here and everything comes here and happens here, literally. The story of your life plays itself out right here, in today's version, in this moment's version. You find your place you are, Practice occurs actualizing the fundamental point, the fundamental point of being alive. Wow. When you find your place, actualizing the fundamental point, the place, the way, is neither large nor small, neither yours nor others.

[13:26]

The place, the way, is neither just carried over from the past or simply arising in the moment. So seven weeks prior to this Seven Day Sashin, I taught a class. I quoted things like this and all sorts of other things. It had its own trajectory. It had its own path. It had its own signposts along the way of life. There's initiation, intention, the motivation. Often that happens for us Someone was telling me recently they were in the throes of their career. Successful.

[14:33]

Working extremely hard. The pressure of working hard, they cracked. They did something quite inappropriate that actually obliged them to resign from their job. and that reveals something to them. This life I've been living with all its determined, directed effort, its ambition, its agendas, its priorities. Something about it, you know, ran into a wall. And who I was in that moment was not who I want to be. It didn't express the values, the way of being, the way of relating to others that I want to be. And, in fact, it caused its own chaos, its own havoc.

[15:40]

And so from that, he asked himself, well, what is important? What do I want? And what do I want to not do? You know, they both have their place, you know? I don't want to be working 15 hour days till I'm one so tight I behave in a way a year later I'm still uncomfortable with. That's what I don't want. I want to be living according to the values that I know. I don't want to be so busy I forget them. Motivation, intention, setting us into something, initiating something.

[16:48]

And then what's initiated? How do we engage it? We engage it with an inner and outer alignment. Who do I want to be? I want to be a person of integrity, a person who doesn't attack the world but more engages it skillfully and compassionately, a person who balances their priorities and knows that even though pretty soon we may be able to travel at 800 miles an hour, being able to walk slowly barefoot in the grass is also a really valuable speed to be able to go at. Maybe more valuable than 800 miles an hour.

[17:49]

Maybe. An inner alignment. And then the outer alignment, well, how does that reflect in what you're doing and how you're doing it and what your priorities are? And of course, both this inner and outer alignment are the work of a lifetime. You can't simply say, okay, created the perfect manifestation of these values. Even if you have, does it still hold true tomorrow? This is it so far. This beautiful notion. It's always a work in progress.

[18:51]

Initiation, alignment, and then discovering, in Buddhist terms, the capacity for awakening. And in Buddhism, not so much in Zen, but in Zen they're implicit. In Zen we offer the ferocious notion, sit down, pay attention, and discover for yourself. And then when you do that, you discover it's a ferocious notion. When you start to pay attention and you see what goes on in your thinking and feeling, in your memories, in your anticipations. But the heritage of the wisdom of others, which is abundant in our world,

[20:01]

It's in every indigenous culture. It's written in every language. And the prescription I offered, not so much a prescription followed this as... What is this in your life? The first one is... trust, confidence. How does your intentionality find its ground that you can engage your one wild and precious life in it? Then the second one is engagement. And it has, along with engagement, it has a quality of perseverance.

[21:17]

Don't engage it for a couple of minutes. Actually, in Zen we would say, engage it every minute for the rest of your life. Because it's a work in progress. And then, openness. Don't let your own conclusions narrow your definitions. Don't let your own conclusions limit your willingness to learn. What I've learned so far. And then a deeper attentiveness, a deeper connection. in the workings of our own capacity to notice and attend what's happening now, and now, and now.

[22:24]

You know, that these things can... That even the roar of the truck... teaches something about life. And then the fifth faculty is insight. What have you learned so far? And it's interesting. When we engage these thoroughly, I would say, they are... enlightening. They're creative. It's not that our mind feels like, our being feels like it's being put in a limited box.

[23:30]

You know, okay, you should be like this, think like this, feel like this. No. It opens up a world of possibility. And then what do we meet? We meet the stuff of human life. We meet our own hesitancies, our own reluctance, our own confusions, our own yearnings. But how do I know I'll get what I want? How do I know I'll be safe? That I'll be loved? that I'll be able to express who I am. And so for good measure, I presented a list of those two. Only in five. And truth is, we could all write, you know, a list of about a hundred or so, if we had the patience.

[24:37]

And then these beautiful blessings and these terrible curses, this archetypical notion of good and evil, and how we can battle with ourselves and battle with the world in service of this noble cause. It's so interesting when you look at the history of the world for quite a while and still today. We tear the place apart in the cause of good and evil. Of course, we are promoting good and other is promoting evil. That's a gift.

[25:40]

But internally too. How do we... rather than see this as an energy-draining conflict, how do these two have a creative tension? How do these two teach us to accommodate our humanness with compassion and invite the courage, the audacity of our potential? So this. And the methodology of Zen says, close attention. How will Tim, the Shusou, the head monk, answer all those questions?

[26:42]

Maybe if we give them to him in a week in advance, you know? Then he could go on the internet. He could go on Google. Let me Google. So what should I do with my life? He has about a half second to come up with the response. No pressure, Tim. Yeah, yeah, take your time. You've got a whole half second. Don't have to rush. So we pay attention and we discover

[27:52]

In endless, amazing and wonderful and terrible ways, life is putting us on the spot. And asking for a response. We can be intimidated, resentful, blame somebody else for getting us into this difficult situation. We can try to distract ourselves. Most of us have a creative genius in this regard. And we try them all. How does this work? Does this help? And interestingly, in the compression, in the contraction that they stir up within us, there's a way in which our resentment contracts us.

[29:20]

There's a way in which our... Self-criticism contracts us. And one of the things you discover experientially in doing extended meditation is you discover that within meeting and experiencing that contraction, somehow expansion, liberation, we start to discover something about it. full commitment when we sit here, stay here with whatever comes up. We discover something about being wherever we are. We discover the here of any place.

[30:21]

When we sit here with whatever arises, we discover something about giving each thing the time it needs. And why is that such an elusive proposition? Because to give each thing the time it needs, we need to be here with that task, whatever it is. Whether it's tasting the coffee you're drinking, whether it's having a difficult conversation, or whether it's engaging in something you didn't want to have to do in the first place. The world of action is saying

[31:28]

Give each thing the time it needs. Of course, maybe it's going to challenge you to consider, well, should I be doing this? Should I be giving it this precious time? Well, that's a very good question. Hopefully, it can be received more as a gift than some kind of annoying, uninvited burden. And as we give each thing the time it needs, it invites us into relationship. In that given, in that given time, in that given effort, And in the solitary expression of being here just as it is becomes the interconnectedness of all life.

[32:48]

hopefully in that interconnectedness, we can allow the multiplicities of ways of being alive. That my notion of virtue and purposefulness and appropriateness is not someone else's. But in relationships, we can learn. In relationship there can be a mutuality, the conflict, the deep visceral need to destroy something so I can live can be seen through.

[33:59]

Destroying that is diminishing this. Maybe we could be more fierce and say destroying that is destroying this. From the perspective of Zen, When that flourishes, this flourishes. I mean, our planet is giving us a very basic lesson on that. You want to flourish? Well then, guess what? I have to flourish too. So we went through those, some version of those ideas, possibilities in the class. And then in Shashin we live it.

[35:10]

We engage it as a way of being. We live it beyond the concepts. We embody it. We breathe it. we help it illuminate and formulate the structures of our being. What is it to think every day is a good day? What is it to live every day is a good day? What is it to think that welfare of other and welfare of self are mutually codependent. What is it to live like that? And in the process of Zen, we put ourselves in this such a world.

[36:26]

and we act like it's the most important thing. And then, after seven days, we say, OK, done. What's next? But whether we like it or not, something sinks into our bones. There is no next. There is only now. There is no there. There's only here. And wherever you go, here goes with you. And hopefully these lived experiences, what's been experientially learned, has become metabolized. It comes through your hands when you do.

[37:34]

It comes through your face when you meet, when you speak. But what you've learned so far guides your life. What I've learned so far, meditation is old and honorable. So why should I not sit every morning of my life on the hillside looking into the shining world? Because, properly attended to, delight as well as havoc is suggestion. Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet not commit to labor in its cause? I don't think so. All summations have a beginning. All effect has a story.

[38:40]

All kindness begins with the sown seed. Thought buds towards radiance. The gospel of light is the crossroads of indolence and actions. 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. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:28]

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