This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Morning. Morning to the folks here and to the folks on Zoom who are represented only by a white dot. But I know you're out there. And can you hear me okay? And is this the right volume and electronic connection? Okay? Okay, good. I feel that practice, our Zen practice, Our Zen way is a big help to us in our life.

[01:06]

Offers help. And that's what I want to speak about this morning. How our practice helps us. The way that it helps. And also kind of... Excuse me. kind of where it helps us, the location of our practice, which I hope will make more sense to you as I speak more about it. So that's what I want to talk about, but I recognize or think, feel, that there is that the kind of help practice offers is not what we may think it is it may be different than our usual idea and it's definitely different than the usual idea of zen in our mainstream culture you know where we have in zen

[02:27]

Zen perfume, you know, Zen perfume, perfuming the flavor of practice, and so on. I think one of the ideas that's generally associated with Zen is that... If you have some difficulty in your life, then by your practice, that difficulty will end, will be over. If you have some suffering in your life, that by your practice, you'll be able to end suffering. Suffering will come to an end. Either because circumstances of suffering are Don't arise. This is, I'm elaborating the idea that I think is out there.

[03:34]

Circumstances of suffering won't arise. Like many years ago, I was going with a friend. I was going into San Francisco to go have dinner. And the person said, my friend said, Well, because you're Zen, we'll get a parking place, you know, very close to the restaurant. Things will work out well because of your Zen vibration, maybe. Yeah, I'm not sure. That actually happened. Yeah. No, what I mean is he actually said that. We didn't get a good parking place. A really good Zen parking place is very far away from the restaurant in the rain without an umbrella.

[04:37]

That's how our practice helps us there. So either suffering won't arise or if suffering does arise in our life that somehow we won't feel it so much or it won't We won't experience it as suffering. It will be at some remove. But I don't think so. I hope not. Because our suffering is part of our humanity, a part of being a human being on the planet. An important part. i was thinking about this for this talk i was reminded of a story a zen story involving the zen master banke who lived in the 17th century in japan and i i first read this i was i read a number of books that quoted banke's teachings

[05:50]

many years ago, and this one really, really stayed with me. It was so wonderful and somewhat humorous. So a student, a bank case, says to him, you know, during a Q&A, asks him, says, I've been studying very, very hard. I've been practicing hard for many, many years. practicing assiduously for many years, and yet, wild thoughts constantly arise in my mind. How can I eradicate them? So I think this student, a sincere student, a sincere practitioner, had that same kind of idea in mind, that Zen, through Zen, you were going to end wild thoughts.

[06:56]

We don't know exactly. He doesn't say, he doesn't say what his wild thoughts were, you know. But I was, I was thinking any of us who have sat Zazen for any length of time are very familiar with wild thoughts. Because they do constantly arise in Zazen and outside of Zazen all the time. We don't know what those wild thoughts were. Maybe some fantasy of exquisite pleasure or some horror of imagination of some harm or some suffering. Maybe wild thoughts is suffering. How can I end them? How can I eliminate them? He wanted to know. And he thought that was the point of Zen and that Banke would tell him exactly that.

[08:01]

How to do it. The methodology of practice. And Banke said... To think of eliminating wild thoughts is a wild thought. That was what I enjoyed about Banke is that he would turn things in that way. But I think he meant it. I think he meant that is not the path we're talking about. We're not talking about the path of eliminating wild thoughts. That would be in some way some kind of direct approach. And if you try that direct approach, not only will it not work, but it's just more of the same.

[09:04]

It's more of the same stuff that you're seeking relief from. You know, and how shall I say, for many years, especially in the first years, these days, having reached the age I am, I now usually talk in decades. You know, somebody says, when did that happen? Well, it was a couple of decades ago, you know. In the early decades of my practice, I ascribe to this very same idea. I thought the idea was you do it really hard. You practice hard. And actually, I think the reason I'm sitting in a chair is because I think in those first decades of practice, I wrecked my knees.

[10:13]

That was one result of my... You know, assiduous practice. The wild thoughts kept coming, but the knees, the flexibility of the knees went away. Anyway, I thought, practice hard, attain enlightenment, and then after that, I think this is kind of the mainstream culture idea. You do that thing, and then you get, ah, you know, enlightenment. And then after that, it's just smooth sailing. No problems after that. You're just sailing along in the breeze, enjoying the sunshine, even when it's not sunny. So that's my theme. That is... My feeling of practice being a support and a help to us, a resource in our life.

[11:22]

Practice mind. Practicing mind. But not like that. Not that way. And I think the confusion in my own case, and I think in general, is at least... contributing cause of the confusion is that in the usual interpretation of a teaching called the four noble truths maybe you're all familiar with the four noble truths it seems to indicate an end of suffering so the four noble truths for those of you who may not be familiar with it is very, very, very rock-bottom basic Buddhist teaching, Zen teaching and Buddhist teaching. And its honored place as an extremely foundational teaching is evidenced by the fact that in the mythic story of Shakyamuni Buddha, this was one of the very first things that he taught.

[12:36]

in the teaching that he gave called the first turning of the wheel of the law. That is, this is how things are. This is the law. This is the way things work. In that very first teaching, he taught the four noble truths, which are brief review, suffering, Cause is the usual interpretation. Suffering is the first noble truth. Cause of suffering, second noble truth. Third, extinction of suffering. There it is. And the third noble truth in the usual way that it's discussed. If you look it up on Wikipedia, the four noble truths, that's what you'll find. I'm guessing. I don't know. I haven't looked myself. And the fourth one is path.

[13:40]

the way, which itself is divided into eight parts. In Sanskrit, it's dukkha, samudaya, nirodha, and marga. Sometimes, Shakyamuni Buddha is referred to as the great physician. As the great physician, he saw an illness, suffering, That's the diagnosis. And then the etiology, where the illness comes from, the cause. And again, in the traditional texts, the cause is, in Sanskrit, it's Krishna, which means thirst, which is metaphorically saying that the cause of suffering is grabbing a hold of stuff, being greedy.

[14:43]

I shouldn't say being greedy. I should say it's interpreted as being greedy, grasping, wanting, desire. And sometimes it's extended to that and its opposite. We're always grasping, grabbing a hold of something, a person, an idea. a temperature, and we're pushing away what we don't like, what we don't want. But I think this is an extremely narrow kind of idea of suffering. Yes, of course, we can be driven by excessive greed and certainly by excessive Hatred. Let me come back to that.

[15:47]

I want to get through the fourth, at least to the third. So the third is extinction. That's what it's called, which is usually understood as like a candle. Blow it out. No more. And what you're extinguishing is the cause of suffering. Traditional interpretations. the cause of suffering. You're extinguishing desire, and because you don't have desire anymore, you don't suffer anymore. Well, that may be true, but the problem is that you're not a human being anymore if your desire is extinguished. Desire comes with a package. It's a package deal. Of course we desire things. Of course we want things. Of course we're attached to things. That's good. And of course we suffer because of it. That's not selfish. We suffer because there's so many different reasons.

[16:54]

Because a loved one is ill or no longer alive. Because, you know, in the traditional teaching, the first few examples of suffering of dukkha, when it's kind of explicated in more detail, the first few are... It's hard for me to look at that bright dot. I'm trying to look at you folks on Zoom, but you don't feel human, so it's just this dot, you know? Anyway... The first few examples of suffering are old age, sickness, and death. So, yeah, those are suffering. Those entail a great deal of loss and pain and difficulty.

[17:57]

This is not selfish. So I'm afraid that that narrow definition of samudaya, of cause of suffering, especially for us, can drift into a kind of Judeo-Christian idea rather than a Buddhist idea of, you know, well, if I just wasn't so selfish, everything would be okay, like my grandmother used to say to me. She spoke not so much English, mostly Yiddish. She'd say, you selfish might. She'd say to me, stop being so selfish. I don't know what might means. I've looked it up. Which is very problematic to understand our suffering as being all bound up completely.

[19:08]

with such a thing. And then, nirodha, extinction, that our suffering is going to come to an end. And the fourth noble truth is marga, the path, which roughly means, well, this is the method to get to the extinction. So that's the, again, the doctor. There's the diagnosis, the etiology, the cure, and the medicine you need to take to be cured. It's a lovely metaphor. And in some ways, not exactly that way, but in some ways, to think of our practice as being medicinal, as good medicine for us. That's wonderful. That's good. So I want to talk about how and where practice is a help to us using a koan, part of a koan.

[20:35]

Koan, for those of you not familiar with them, are It's really just, you could say, short Zen stories. That's what they are. And they're often dialogues. They're often like two people talking. And in fact, the one that I'm about to quote is such a dialogue between a teacher and a student. And this was in the 8th century, a long time ago, 1400 years ago. In China, The teacher's name in Japanese, the teacher's name is Nansen. In Chinese, Nanchuan. And the student's name is Joshu. In Japanese and in Chinese, Jiaojou. And Joshu, Jiaojou, both of these were great Zen teachers.

[21:37]

And Jiaojou was like really a great Zen teacher. one of the top guys in the Zen teaching pantheon, as it were. Many people feel that way. And it says he lived to be 120 years old. Not so sure about that. That's what it says. But this was when he was a student. Maybe he was a student. He was 60 years old. He was a student. It was Joshua as student. Maybe he was 20. Joshua as student and Nansen as teacher. So the koan goes on for a ways. I'm just going to talk about the first four lines of it. I'll tell you what they are and then I'll talk about it some. That's a way of of explicating this idea of the help practice gives us and where it is that it helps us.

[22:50]

So let's see, here it goes. Nansen, no, Joshu starts with a question. Often that's the case. So the... The dialogue is just Joshu asks a question, Nansen responds. Joshu asks another question, Nansen responds. Joshu says, what is the way? Nansen says, everyday mind is the way. Joshu says, can I approach it directly? says he could have said that could have said that yep but in the story what he says is if you approach it directly you're going in the opposite direction so

[24:06]

comment a little bit. So what is the way is how this begins. So this is not a small question. What is the way? What is the way? What is our way? How do we make our way in the world? Often it entails getting out of the way. Getting out of the way of the way. The way is, I think most of you, I'm guessing, are familiar with this. The way is Tao. T-A-O. Or D-A-O. The Tao. The way. Like the Tao of De Jing. You know. book of wisdom and divination in classical Chinese culture.

[25:09]

The Tao is the Way. Very interesting historical fact is that Buddhism moved from country to country. It began in India, then it went to China, and from China it went to Tibet and to Korea and Japan, and now it crossed the Pacific Ocean and came to the United States. as it moved from one place to another, it changed, or it, what should I say, it kind of melded with what was going on locally. And what was going on locally in China for probably, I don't know how long, maybe a thousand or a couple thousand years, was Confucianism and Taoism. So Indian Buddhism, to meld it with it and in fact the way in in chinese buddhism and zen is the equivalent in in indian but it became the word for bodhi b-o-d-h-i the way the dao became the word that was used for bodhi for awakening a bodhi is awakening

[26:41]

It comes from the same root as Buddha, B-U-D-D. Bodhi is awakening and Buddha is the awakened one. And our practice is awake-ism, wake-up-ism. B-U-D-D is the root of all of those. Buddha, Buddhism, Bodhi. Maybe you can tell the flavor of awakening, which is still used, of course, still used in teaching, is somewhat different than the flavor of the way. Awakening is like, you wake up, you're asleep, now you're awake. Whereas the way is much longer, you know. It's a way like a path.

[27:45]

So had Joshu been an Indian practitioner of Buddhism, he would have said, what is awakening? What is bodhi? And Nansen said, very importantly, Nansen said, surprisingly, he said, everyday mind is the way. Everyday mind is the way? What could he possibly mean by that? He meant everyday mind, like your mind right now, you know? Like what you're thinking right now is the way. Me too, you know. What you're thinking, you know, like 10 minutes after you woke up this morning, is the way.

[28:53]

I realized that 10 minutes after I woke up this morning, I was thinking, oh no, I've got to give a dog a talk today. Oh gosh, oh no. That's what I was thinking. So how I understand it is, and there may be different ways of understanding it, but one way that I think it makes, one can grab a hold of it a little bit more readily, is that everyday mind our everyday life and our everyday mind, including our wild thoughts, including our suffering, including everything, is the location of the way.

[30:04]

It's where the way arises. It doesn't arise because get rid of all of that stuff, now you go to this really nice place where, you know, enlightenment land exists, you know, where you're not bothered by all of the usual everyday concerns, everyday upsets, big, small, medium, and large. What is a Starbucks-sized grande, bent day, Never keep track of the Starbucks stuff anyway. So that is the location of our awakening. That is the location of the way. That is the location of the help our practice can give us. That is where we practice.

[31:06]

We don't go away from there. So this means, in terms of the first noble truth of suffering, this means that rather than, that we turn toward, we turn toward it. Not like Banke's student, how can I exterminate it? How can I end it? How can I get rid of it? How can I go somewhere else where, you know, I won't have those problems and I'll get good parking places, etc. And turning toward our suffering is, I feel, one of the deep virtues of our practice. Our practice encourages us to do so and in some sense supports us.

[32:08]

To turn toward. By turn toward, what I mean is, neither ignore, get rid of, exterminate, pretend it doesn't exist, avoid, minimize, or everything will be okay. Nor does it mean just be totally, I would just say totally acting in the suffering and acting out the suffering. Neither of those is turning toward with our practice mind. Turning toward is the opposite of those. Namely, Not ignoring, denying, avoiding, minimizing, and also not totally sunk.

[33:15]

But rather, turning toward our suffering with a compassionate and benevolent attitude. Now some folks are leaving. I wonder if it's the kitchen crew. I think it might be the kitchen crew leaving. So just as a flower or a vegetable out here at Green Gulch, needs soil and air and water and what else does it need soil air water sunshine just as a flower needs those things so the flower of our way the flower of the way needs the soil and air and water and sunshine of

[34:34]

our daily life and rain and clouds and all of those things of our everyday mind. Then we get into methodology. What is the way? Everyday mind is the way. then Joshua asks a very essential methodological question. Can I approach it directly? And again, these stories, one reason they're so rich is because they're, what's the word, liable? They're sensitive to many different interpretations. So what I... What I think he may mean, or one thing that he may mean by can I approach it directly is, it's a kind of echo of what Banke's student was saying.

[35:40]

Can I approach it directly means, well, can I just take care of it? You know, suffering, bam, take care of it, end of suffering. And a nonsense answer is, Nanjuan's answer kind of echoes Banke's answer. He says, if you try to approach it directly, can I approach it directly? If you try to approach it directly, one could even say, if you imagine that there is a direct approach available to you, if you try to approach it directly, you're going in the opposite direction. So at some point, oh yes, I'm remembering, I had also wanted to mention about Norman Fisher. Maybe I'll do that in a moment.

[36:44]

So at some point in studying this koan, again, many years ago, a couple decades at least, I came upon somebody who knew 9th century Chinese, and actually said that what Nansen actually says is an image. He actually says an image, a metaphor. What he says is it has to do with cart tills. You know, like a cart. This is the cart, and here are the tills, and the horse or the donkey is in between the tills, and the tills connect, and that carries the cart. What Nansen actually said is, if your cartels are pointing north, your cartels are pointing south. It's a wonderful kind of very earthy metaphor, which we understand to mean, if you think you're going that way, if you think you're going that way, you're actually going that way.

[37:54]

Suzuki Roshi, I don't know if he ever spoke about this, but one way that he described practice is, so what Nansen was saying is the no side of things. If you think you're going that way, you're going that way. In other words, don't go that way. Suzuki Roshi said it in a different way to the same point. He said, Our practice is like... It can be a humorous metaphor. Our practice is like walking in the fog. He meant it positively rather than just that we're in a fog, we don't know where we're going, which may sometimes be the case, no doubt. But what he was emphasizing is... That if you're going from here to there, you're going from here to the grocery store, and it's really foggy out, you just go to the grocery store, but then you find in the grocery store that you're soaked through with water from the fog.

[39:17]

But you didn't realize that that was the case. You thought you were going to the grocery store, but actually you wound up completely soaked through. Our practice is like that, which is, come to think of it, a way of describing practice as, no, it's not amenable to direct approach. It's more long-term and absorbing and living, living through. practicing through our life. So I think that partly one way I understand what Nansen was saying is that if you think you should try to be getting somewhere else,

[40:30]

I think that's what direct approach means, getting somewhere else, like that place on the other side of the fence where the grass is greener. If you're trying to get to where the grass is greener, that's not going to turn out well. It's not going to be very fruitful for you to do that. And I also want to mention, maybe I should see if I can come to a, I can't end the suffering, but I can end my talk. I just throw only within my power, and I'll try to do that to allow some time for some discussion. But I did want to mention the great Zen teacher, the great Zen master, Dogen, Japanese Zen master of the 13th century, in two places.

[41:38]

One place in a work called two essays. He wrote many, many essays, which are called fascicles. And in one of these essays called the Fukan Zazengi, which we're very familiar with. We recite it all the time here at Zen Center. The Fukan Zazengi means... instructions for how to practice zazen. And characteristic of Dogen's writing is that not everything, but many of the things that he wrote, some of the things he wrote, combined very, very specific, practical details. Like in this work, the Fukan Zazengi, about how to do zazen, he talks about you put your left foot, your left foot on your right, thigh and your right foot on your left thigh I can't do that anymore but you know exactly how to do it you know your nose should be in line with your navel your ears should be in line with your shoulders which I don't think I'm very good at but you know I try so he combines those very specific instructions with very kind of big teachings

[43:00]

about the nature of practice, the attitude of practice. And in the Fukanzazengi, he says, why leave the seat that exists in your own home and go aimlessly off to the dusty realms of other lands? This is a rhetorical question. He's not actually saying why he's saying don't leave the seat that exists in your own home don't leave the seat that that is don't leave this seat that the your life our life to go off to some imagination of some end of suffering or some some place where things will be a heck of a lot more pleasant always don't do that practice here Here is where we practice, and in fact, in another word of his, Genjo Koan, which in English means actualizing the fundamental point.

[44:14]

So in an essay that he wrote about actualizing the fundamental point, he says, when you find your place where you are, practice occurs. actualizing the fundamental point. When you find your way at this moment, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point. So where our practice takes place is when you find your way in this place. Our practice takes place here, in this place, and at this moment. Not some special moment that we get to by virtue of our concentration or this moment.

[45:23]

Like nonsense every day. everyday mind, everyday life. Maybe in closing, I want to at least mention fog attitudes. Attitudes one gets soaked into like getting soaked by the fog. A dear friend and Dharma practitioner of many years,

[46:30]

said to me a long time ago that she noticed a dear friend and a Dharma practitioner of many years, not my wife, who is also a dear friend and a Dharma practitioner of many years, but not my wife, someone else, said to me, she noticed that Suzuki Rishi's teachings often was not about the technique of practice. They were not technical in a certain sense. But rather, it was more like attitudinal, the attitude of practice. And the attitude is something you soak in, like the fog. The attitude of practice. Specifically, so that's what she said, and then I specifically wanted to mention what I feel are two very core attitudinal teachings.

[47:32]

One is beginner's mind, and the other is big mind. These are attitudes. These are ways of turning toward our life and turning toward our suffering. That help us. Not because they end the suffering. But they help. They help strengthen us in the face of it. Somehow. And what does that mean? Beginner's mind and big mind. That would be a. separate dharma talk many dharma talks our constant dharma talk maybe but uh very very simply and um i hope practically beginner's mind is just means being open means not being shut into not being shut into the prison of our habitual thinking and our habitual understanding

[48:49]

And not being shut in the prison of our... Not being caught by things. Even our own ideas. That's beginner's mind. And it turns out that's also big mind. But also big mind has that sense of... friend of mine who's not a zen practitioner just i was talking to yesterday someone i've known for many years he lives in iowa we uh every few months we zoom and what did he say to me he said something like well i just keep in mind that i'm here for a while and soon won't be and uh which i thought was a very nice summary of things, you know.

[49:54]

And I can't remember exactly how he said it, something like, I know that I don't understand the vastness of, you know, the vastness of human life, the vastness of life. I know that it's way, way beyond. It's big. Suzuki Roshi, one time in a Dharma talk, this was a technique. You could say it's technical. He said, when you do zazen, when you breathe, you count from 1 to 10. Count the exhalations from 1 to 10. But this is not a mathematical exercise. It's not like practicing your counting from 1 to 10. He says, when you count, the entire universe counts with you. What does he mean? That's big mind.

[50:58]

That's the evocation, the evoking, the invocation of big mind into our everyday life. That it's the whole universe. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[51:46]

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