Good morning. Good morning. I couldn't help but smile coming up here and seeing this copy of Zen Mind Beginner's Mind lying here. I thought it's like checking into a hotel where they always have Gideon's Bible. Here, wherever you go, there's a copy of Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, but very sweet. Welcome to the San Francisco Zen Center. I'd like to talk this morning about a big topic, the secret of Zen practice. But it's one of those secrets that we all know. It's like selling water by the river kind of secret, secret that's already in our bones. And I want to begin with a poem called The Secret. And this poem is by Denise Levertov.

[01:02]

Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry. I who don't know the secret wrote the line. They told me through a third person. They had found it, but not what it was, not even what line it was. No doubt by now, more than a week later, they have forgotten the secret the line, the name of the poem. I love them for finding what I can't find and for loving me for the line I wrote and for forgetting it so that a thousand times till death finds them, they may discover it again in other lines, in other happenings, and for wanting to know it, for assuming there is such a secret, yes, for that most of all. Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry.

[02:05]

I, who don't know the secret, wrote the line. They told me through a third person. They had found it, but not what it was, not even what line it was. No doubt by now, more than a week later, they have forgotten the secret, the line, the name of the poem. I love them for finding what I can't find and for loving me for the line I wrote. and for forgetting it so that a thousand times till death finds them, they may discover it again in other lines, in other happenings, and for wanting to know it. So he's saying, I love them for wanting to know it, for assuming there is such a secret. Yes, for that, most of all. Let's try something. I'm going to have all of you speak, but I have some instructions before that.

[03:07]

I'm going to ask you all to get into pairs, not yet. And the questions I'm interested in you talking about are, in what way does this poem, The Secret, resonate with you or not? And how might you practice with it? How might you take something from this poem into your life? Those are my questions. But the way I want to suggest doing this, I want you to assume that you know the secret to the poem. I want you to speak, to try to speak with a sense of confidence. A comma is almost like speaking from Buddha, not with arrogance. But see what it's like. So don't think about it so much. Just see if you can trust that you can, in this moment, you can speak to one other person. It'll be a secret. Nobody else has to know what you say. So the other instruction I have is when you're not speaking, try listening.

[04:15]

Really try listening and not preparing what you're going to say. And the last instruction is everyone needs to speak really, really lowly. Otherwise, I have done this before, and I know that it'll get really loud in here. So just turn to someone next to you. Find someone. Yes. Sure. I'd be happy to. All right. Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry. I, who don't know the secret, wrote the line. They told me. They told me through a third person that they had found it, but not what it was, not even what line it was. No doubt by now, more than a week later, they have forgotten the secret, the line, the name of the poem. I love them for finding what I can't find and for loving me for the line I wrote. and for forgetting it so that a thousand times till death finds them, they may discover it again in other lines, in other happenings, and for wanting to know it, for assuming there is such a secret.

[05:29]

Yes, for that, most of all." So this isn't meant to be really clear and obvious. That's the whole idea here. So just try it, just as an experiment. And when you're speaking, You don't need to try and be impressive or even have it together. Or you're not going for your PhD dissertation here with this poem. Just explore. See in what way this poem resonates with you. And be honest. If you hate it, tell the person, I hate this poetry. What is this? Reading this poetry? Whatever is real. Whatever is real for you. So find someone. Turn to someone. And we're just going to do this for, like, each person is... I'm not going to... Each person should just speak for a minute or two and make sure both people get to speak. And we'll ring a bell, okay? Okay, if we can all please finish up. If you can thank your partner and come on back.

[06:34]

despite the doubts, it seemed like people had things to say. In preparing for this talk, I was struck by how often Suzuki Roshi talked about the secret the secret of practice, and how often it seemed to be coming up in my life, either in situations, this idea of the secret. And usually, it's kind of a funny word, and it could almost substitute path or mystery for secret, because secret feels like something that we don't know, but this is not that kind of secret. There's a quote, one of my favorites from Suzuki Roshi, talking about the secret, in which he says, so the secret is just to say yes and jump off from here.

[07:56]

Then there is no problem. It means to be yourself in the present moment, always yourself, without sticking to an old self. You forget all about yourself and are refreshed. You are a new self. And before that self becomes an old self, you say, yes. And you walk to the kitchen for breakfast. So the point of each moment is to forget the point and extend your practice. See, it's that easy. And actually, a little context, this comes from a story that Suzuki Roshi tells where he's down, I believe, kind of reading the newspaper. kind of doing his morning routines. And his wife is upstairs making breakfast. And she calls to him. And he notices that there's some resistance in that moment. He's resisting. Like, why is she calling me for breakfast?

[09:00]

I'm down here reading. And in that moment, he says, so the secret is just to say yes. The secret is to not be resisting. Particularly in this case, this is resisting someone's generosity. His wife was making him breakfast. So the point, the secret, is to express ourselves fully, express ourselves fully in each moment. I also found from a... an older talk by Suzuki Roshi, where he says, the secret of all the teachings of Buddhism is how to live on each moment, how to obtain absolute freedom moment after moment. And then he goes on to say this practice does not mean some particular practice.

[10:03]

When we say Zen, Zen includes all the activity of our life. So this what looks often like this mysterious, difficult, secretive Zen practice is really just code for our lives and code for the activities of our lives. And one of the secrets that I've noticed is to live and act both with humility and with confidence. And this is... It's really... quite a challenge to find both real humility. Humility comes from the word humus, means of the earth. It means simple, not pretentious. It also means realizing our own blind spots, our own defects, our own patterns. So humility is seeing and admitting and working with our own patterns.

[11:05]

And confidence is affirm belief and trust, feeling certain. And it's not arrogance. It's not arrogance. But we somehow need both. And I've noticed, in some people, I'd say there's a tendency of people who are drawn to Zen practice, if we were to do a study, I could be wrong about this, but my observation is, people tend to be pretty good at the humility piece and not so good at the confidence piece. Not always the case. So it's interesting to know what your own tendency is and what you need to practice with. I do a lot of work in the business world where I find people are very confident and there's often not so much humility. There's a very interesting piece in yesterday's

[12:07]

New York Times, by David Brooks, where he talks about leaders. And he quotes a study by the writer Jim Collins, who wrote a book, a best-selling business book called From Good to Great. And in this book, he talks about that there are really excellent leaders, and that the old model of leadership is this kind of charismatic, confident, person, I think maybe, there's many examples you can think of of these very confident, charismatic people. But he's saying these are not, and he's done these vast studies and research saying these are not the kinds of leaders that are leading the most successful companies. That the particular quality that separates the best leaders, what he calls level five leadership, is humility. And In this column, it's interesting just some of the things, the name of this column in yesterday's times is called The Humble Hound.

[13:15]

And he says, along the boardroom lion model of leadership, you can imagine a humble hound model. The humble hound leader thinks less about her mental strengths than about her weaknesses. She knows her performance slips when she has to handle more than one problem at a time. In short, She spends a lot of time on metacognition, thinking about her thinking, and then building external scaffolding devices to compensate for her weaknesses. She knows the world is too complex and irregular to be known, so life is about navigating uncertainty. She spends more time seeing than analyzing. More time seeing than analyzing. It sounds a little bit like zazen practice. Zazen is the practice, this practice of being completely with our bodies and mind where we are seeing. We're seeing whatever comes up, and we're not judging, we're not analyzing.

[14:19]

And this is a way of training. Zazen practice is a way of training our minds to become leaders or to become skillful at being in relationship or become skillful at whatever... training our mind to be present and to be able to see more. I recently had a ceremony in my house. This was a recommitment ceremony that my wife and I had, having been together for more than 30 years. we had a wonderful group of friends, people who've known us in our relationship. Many people actually knew us even before we met out at Green Gulch. And we posed a question to this group of people in the room, many who were longtime Zen practitioners, many Zen priests, and many people have been in couples for a long, long time.

[15:31]

And we asked each person to speak to the question, what is the secret of long-term relationships? What is the secret of long-term relationships? And there were many, many wonderful answers, but the one that was most memorable to me, and I don't think I can say who this person is, but it was someone who's been practicing Zen for most of her life, a woman sitting next to her husband, who also happened to be a Zen... a Zen teacher. These were both very known, well-thought-of Zen teachers. And the woman, without hesitating, answering this question, turned to her husband and said, the secret of long-term relationships is to constantly lower your standards. And she went... And actually, I think... In some way, I think she meant that in a very radical way.

[16:35]

Because I think that is the secret of all good relationships, is to let go of our standards, to let go of our judgments, and really see the other person. She went on to say that the other part of what she thought was the secret of long-term relationships is including including in love things like disappointment, and even hate, and all of the negative things that you can think of, that there's nothing harder, maybe, than being in a long-term relationship. And this idea of, and it takes great confidence and humility to be in a relationship. great confidence and humility to sit zazen practice, to practice this practice.

[17:36]

One of the vows that we take regularly is that beings are numberless. I vow to save them. So the beings are numberless part, that's very humbling. Beings are numberless. I can't even count them. What could be more humbling? But then in the next breath, I vow to save them. This requires confidence. This requires some sense of being willing, being willing to fall short, being willing to make mistakes, being willing to look dumb. This is real confidence to be able to actually try to express ourselves fully. confidence of expressing ourselves in all situations and listening and being and wondering you know what who who am i and what are my own tendencies and and knowing what our own tendencies are and moving forward with a sense of of confidence i was recently with

[18:53]

This was a few weeks ago, a man named Walter Blum, who died, I guess, just a few days ago. When did he die? Last Sunday? A few weeks before he died, I went to visit Walter, and when I walked into his house in Sebastopol, and I looked at him, I thought I was too late. I thought that he had already died. He looked... I wasn't sure if he was breathing, but I went up to him and I noticed that, yes, he's breathing. And I just sat with him for some time, maybe an hour or so. And he would, every once in a while, he would kind of come out and kind of start speaking gibberish. And you could tell he was very, very confused and disoriented. And his daughter was there trying to comfort him and trying to relocate him. And he would go back to sleep. And then he would come out and then he would go back to sleep.

[19:55]

And I sat there kind of watching this. And at some point, his eyes opened and he looked at me. I was sitting there next to Walter. And he looked at me and he reached out and he touched my face and he said, Mark, I love you so much. And then he went right back to sleep. And then this went on maybe for another 30 or 40 minutes and then he again opened his eyes, reached out, looked at me, and he said, Mark, what are we doing in this crazy, mixed-up world? And then he went back to sleep. So I felt like he was asking me the secret. And I was glad I didn't have to answer him. But I felt like his being and our connection was the answer there was so much love and connection in the room and in that moment walter is someone in his 80s who i've i've known for 30 something years and we we've gone hiking together and have studied together and and we're he's a dharma brother but it was quite spectacular in that in that moment there's a there's a zen story

[21:23]

That also feels like it's a question about the secret. The story is a student asked the teacher, how do you avoid the discomfort of hot and cold? Which is kind of code for what's the secret of finding freedom? What's the secret of always resisting? How can we not resist? And the teacher said, go to the place where there is no hot and cold. kind of a trick answer, as though there's some place. So the student says, where is that place? And the teacher says, when you're hot, be hot. When you're cold, be cold. Some translations say, when you're hot, die from heat. When you're cold, die from cold. And one of the translations that I was reading of this particular koan is by

[22:24]

a Zen teacher, Jerry Shishan Wick, who also happens to be an oceanographer. And he was describing that he was kind of studying this koan, and he happened to be doing a test in which he and a whole group of other men and women were to jump into frigid ocean water. And they were all wired up to see... what their body temperatures were and other regulations, and they were testing how people accommodated to being in cold water. So Gary jumped in, along with a group of other people, and within a few moments the others all jumped out. And he was just hanging out there, thinking of this koan. And apparently his body temperature hadn't changed at all. He was down for like 20 minutes and someone, I guess he was hooked up to a walkie-talkie and someone said, Gary, what are you doing down there?

[23:27]

He said, nothing. So they pulled him back up. But this story, I think when you're humble, be humble. When you're confident, be confident. When you're angry, be angry. When you're sad, be The sense of being, it isn't always about being nice. We can be calm even when we're angry. We can maybe be calm even right in the midst of whatever is coming up for us. And Suzuki Roshi also says the secret of Zen is just two words, not always so. This is another famous line of his, the secret of Zen is just two words. And he laughs as he says this, because apparently he was thinking in Japanese, his native language, and in Japanese, it's not always so, is two words, but very funny.

[24:36]

So another time where he uses, talks about the secret. And I was also thinking of a time in which when my daughter was... a young girl, and I used to read to her every night in bed. One day, as she was falling asleep, actually often it was kind of embarrassing. I often would fall asleep before her. She would elbow me awake. I would start speaking in gibberish. But this one time, as we were both reading, and she looked at me, and she said, Daddy, what's the secret? When we die, Is it like in a board game, like can you look on the back for the answer? When we die, will we know the answer? What is the secret? And this was a tough question even for a Zen student. And the truth is I don't remember what I said.

[25:39]

I know what I wish that I had said. I wish that I had said that we don't need to wait. Please don't wait until we die. The secret is being awake and present and meeting with love, fully, right here and right now. The secret is living in a world, making our worlds alive in a way outside of our usual dualistic habits and finding real calm and real freedom. each moment and in each meeting. And again, this is the practice, this is the secret, the way of meditation practice, of zazen practice. I'm actually right, I'm in the middle of a five-day sashin right now, in which I'm sitting with Michael Wenger,

[26:45]

senior teacher, Dharma teacher here, and a group of seven of us have turned my living room into a zendo. I've noticed I've been referring to it as a zendo. It's kind of cute, what used to be my living room. And there's something really spectacular about doing longer sittings. I highly recommend both a regular sitting practice and that you look for opportunities to do a one-day sitting, and if possible, to do even longer sittings. There's something very powerful about the way in which... I know for myself, I'm so stubborn. It takes me more than a period, and usually more than a day, to get sick of myself, to get sick of my own tapes, and to see my own patterns, and to go very deep into my own patterns, and to actually... even touch up against loving my own patterns, right, in the midst of the painful legs and difficulties.

[27:55]

But there is this love and joy that seems to emerge through long meditation practices, zazen practices. And we get a taste of this through sitting every morning. It's... right in the midst of all of the boredom and difficulty. And the Dalai Lama said, the secret to being happy is to practice compassion. The secret to being happy is to practice compassion, to care about, notice, notice feelings, notice how other people are feeling, and being able to fully meet. yourself and find real freedom in each moment. So there's no need to look for a secret. Just see and feel with your whole mind and body.

[28:59]

The word mindfulness practice gets bantered about a lot. But this is actually what I would say is a good definition of mindfulness practice. No need to look for a secret. Just see and feel with your whole body and mind. To be able to be present without, to be able to more seeing and less judging. More seeing and less analyzing. More real being. And using being as a wedge and way towards even more doing. And This mindfulness practice, this is what I think is meant by wisdom. And this wisdom isn't about learning something or adding something. This is the wisdom of having a mind that's ready and alive. And I want to end by just reading a few words.

[30:07]

I wrote this book. This is a book called Less. accomplishing more by doing less. And yes, my name is Mark Lesser. And this book actually, it's the secret of not being busy. This book is about antidotes to busy, busyness. And of course, I've been very busy out promoting the book and talking about the book. It's kind of ironic. So I have to pick it up and remind myself that I should be I should be paying attention to this. And here's something I picked up this morning that I thought, oh, I should pay attention to this. The practices presented in this book are ways to increase your awareness and support your ability to make choices. Choices that allow you to move into your authenticity and real power so that you can accomplish today that which you most hope to achieve. in the larger context of your life.

[31:12]

In this regard, work and career, title and promotions matter a lot because they offer goalposts and a sense of movement and progress. But ultimately, success in our work and in our life does not rest with external rewards or achievements. What matters most is how much love and goodness our existence has added to the planet, how effectively we have engaged with the people we cherish most, and how much we have been able to locate our own sense of deep composure right in the midst of the messiness of life. Thank you very much.

[32:05]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.57