The stories, the karmic formations of there and then start to subdue, start to lessen. And now, starts to become more vivid, more energized, more apparent. And then usually a significant part of now is me. And the thoughts and feelings and memories of me. And then Sometimes some of those details are a rude surprise.

[01:06]

I think one thing that happens as you continue to practice. Maybe they're still as rude, but they're not so surprising. Is that really me thinking that? Yep, that's you. And something in the process of giving over, giving over to the chanting, giving over to kinhing, giving over to eating lunch, giving over to walking mindfully from your cabin to the bathhouse, giving over to posture, giving over to breath, something in that giving over can have an influence of loosening and lightening, lightening up the weight of me.

[02:15]

And then occasionally, just to keep things interesting, it seems to work in reverse. Me can become more adamant more powerful, more convincing. As some set of circumstances bring forth some often psychological issue that takes hold of a current or past experience or even an anticipated future and infuses it with passion. Desire, aversion, take your pick, and you will. And then sometimes settling.

[03:19]

The play of me, the drama of me is lighter, looser. Becomes almost quaint. Really? Is that how I feel about that? Sometimes it becomes malleable. In the noticing, in the contact, letting it go with the exhale seems possible. So in this Sashin and in this practice period, I've been emphasizing ordinary mind and this very mind in the context of open awareness, sometimes called objectless concentration.

[04:39]

The notion is quite simple. Meet whatever arises without preference and the full range of activity that's arising out of our karmic formations is being drawn into consciousness. So whether it has serenity or wrestling with passionate difficulties and issues of our karmic life. Either way, meet it for what it is. And of course, for what it is, is a study. Alternatively, which I haven't emphasized so much, is more dedicated, more directed attention that holds fast to the object and sheds off extraneous arising.

[06:05]

And both these ways have their merit and their difficulty, their deficit. In this staying open to whatever arises, keeping the mind, keeping the attention anchored in the here and now, is usually more challenging. In the bearing down and directing, usually that can bring in a kind of struggle, a kind of intensity. Like we're trying to achieve something, have something happen, have something not happen. But as we settle into Shashin, and we're not so caught up in the extraneous karmic formations, it's helpful to remember that as we settle

[07:44]

we become more susceptible to some of our karmic formations. Psychologically, we could say that as we start to settle the psychological defenses against feeling and thinking certain things that we'd rather not think and feel, the defenses against them diminish and they can come forth more readily. As we engage the discipline of attending to what is, well, if an unbidden karmic formation is what is and it's attended to, often that makes it more vivid, more potent, more intense. So we settle with periods of unsettledness.

[08:49]

So if you find yourself suddenly gripped by something, so be it. And this is the benefit of open awareness. What it does, it tends to bring a quality of balance. Okay, so this is mine now. This is what's arising. notice it acknowledge it experience it in the light of awareness quite literally we start to see this is an arising this is a dependent colorizing this is impermanent

[09:57]

comes into being and it goes out of being. This has no independent self. We see the particulars of shunyata, emptiness. And in the process, often we can also see the particulars of our own psychological makeup. Some of them. So settling, settling into unsettling, or unsettling in the middle of settling, It's starting to develop something that's called purification of view.

[11:12]

In simple terms, it starts to become more evident what's happening. What's happening is not so dictated or influenced by the preferences and biases of our mind. It starts to become more matter-of-fact. And this is one of the fruits of open awareness, of meeting each thing as it arises. And as I said, it's not something we make happen.

[12:28]

We simply devote dedicated effort to the practice. And what arises, arises. And often as we continue, especially over a longer sitting, which we're going to have, This is why, especially in a longer sitting, it's skillful to emphasize initially this open awareness because we're setting the grind of balanced mind. The power of purifying view is that it helps us just see and to see through oh okay that's what's coming up it helps us to see oh this is working with conditioned existence

[13:54]

constantly coming forth from this individual consciousness or actually this experienced as individual consciousness and as we start to see that then kusala and akusala what's skillful What helps to support and sustain energy in the body? What helps to support and sustain tension and brightness in the mind? And we can start to study, we can start to look at

[15:00]

We can start to inquire, explore, not so much from the perspective of mind figuring something out, but more from noticing the experience and letting the experience inform the effort. This is one aspect of purification of view. That we go beyond what we want, what we don't want, what ideas of practice we're holding on to, that we're picking up. Bodhidharmas don't know. Nothing to know, everything to learn. This is the mind of inquiry.

[16:13]

This is the mind of corn. And this aligns with one of the intrinsic attributes of mind. We hear a sound and without intending Most of the time, almost always, the sign is given name. We see something, and without intending, the sight is given name and form. For this very same quality to be used as an ally, rather than an enemy, Normally we see, we hear, and we recreate an old story. What is it to create a story original to the moment?

[17:26]

I suddenly had the thought, I hope this is not becoming too abstract or esoteric. We're in the throes of this all the time. And one of the primary challenges of practice is shifting from being inside the world according to me to seeing the world according to me. This is one of the primary challenges. The sitting zazen, the mind wanders, go inside, become part of some activated expression of the world according to me. then awareness arises and it's like, oh, and here and now reappears.

[18:48]

And as we continue to sit, those dreamlike aspects, those dreamlike occurrences of the world, according to me, because they're being energized less, because they're being activated less, become less attractive, less compelling. But it's a tricky proposition. And I think part of the trickiness of it is pointed out by Wallace's poem, where he says towards the end, And that blowing in the same bare place for the listener who listens in the snow. And nothing himself beholds nothing that is not there and the no thing that is.

[20:00]

So in some ways this poem points towards stop making up stories. But it totally leaves out something utterly and crucially important. That when we stop making up stories, the utter abundance of what is becomes apparent. The fact that it's dynamic, the fact that it's ever-changing, doesn't make it empty or barren. It makes it rich. It makes it abundant. It makes it more alive than the thoughts we have about it. Our separating from it is a diminishing of existence.

[21:14]

diminishing of aliveness but when when the world according to me is passionate and and thoroughly engaged it seems like well that's where the real life is here I am doing this austere be in the moment practice missing out on my real life Of course, going into our thoughts seems like an attractive proposition. Of course, from that position, as the poem said, why does this intimacy seem like enmity? Because when all we know is the world according to me, all we've got is the world according to me.

[22:16]

This is all I've got and you want to take it away from me? No way. But when we allow for open awareness, when we allow for things to come and to go, we get both a taste of the illusory nature of the world, according to me, And we get a taste of the unending abundance of now. It is called the Sambhogakaya. It is called the bliss body. As we give over to it, it charges our body and mind with energy. pleasant or in a more potent version, delightful manner.

[23:23]

But the shift, the shift is a challenge. As long as our experiences, the vitality is in the world according to me and the starkness is in the here and now. making the transition seems almost counterintuitive to our deep wish to be fully alive. So purification of view is to see this dynamic in play in the way experience arises and the way it's related to. a version of what arises is more attractive and more interesting than just this plain old here and now that's arising on its own terms just as it is.

[24:35]

Now the rest of the story is as we start to engage the here and now we see that what arises for us in individual consciousness is just part of it. It's actually only a convention to think of it literally as separate. But to watch as you start to become more attentive to the dynamics of your experience, to watch the way there is this propensity to return to the world according to me. Sometimes maybe as an active desire or aversion, sometimes as some uprising

[25:45]

some urgency of your psychological life that's demanding expression. Some calling from your past or the future, the anticipations of your future. To literally watch almost appreciating the attractiveness to do such a thing or the potency of the impulse to do it and to see it as such And as we start to explore that, we start to discover that to not give over to that, as the poem says, this intimacy, this staying here and now, has its own kind of disturbance.

[27:09]

Can right view be associated with a quality of attention that's something quite different from determined effort to control? It's more a quality of Maybe it's a quality of compassion. That we see this endless impulse of the mind and heart to move a certain way. And as we start to see it, we start to discover there's something futile about it. It doesn't make us happy. There's something limiting about it.

[28:18]

There's some way in which it thwarts that deep wish within us to be fully alive. And yet, it arises, it arises, it arises. Can it be acknowledged with that kind of mind, that kind of tender response to the human condition. How persistent it is and how much it obscures about the moment and how much it exacerbates the grasping of our formations. is cultivating view purification of view this is the ripening of this very mind is Buddha this is allowing the conditioned nature and the attendant

[30:05]

impulses of conditioned nature to teach the Dharma. So we see both the particulars of our own stories, the stories we tend to bring up or that tend to come up and the attraction to hold them, to reify them embellish them and as we start to be able to create this view something about the path of practice, something about the request of practice, something about the effort of practice starts to become more evident, more palpable.

[31:29]

We can start to see how energy is engaged and the energy is moving in the direction of our stories and we're struggling to thwart it to suppress it then our energy is bound up when we just see that activity when we just see it as the play of the moment quite organically the grasping of it starts to soften not to say that it just wonderfully drops away but to say it moves in that direction sometimes it drops away

[32:43]

Sometimes we can find ourselves in the middle. We're not totally caught in it and we're not totally free from it. We're just somewhere in the middle sort of doing it and seeing it at the same time. And this is where open aware consciousness is so helpful. Okay, what's happening now? Okay, notice, let it register, experience. The workings of human consciousness are extraordinary complex. Each arising is like its own coin. It has its own, and what is it to practice with this? And I'm not trying to say we always go through a mental cognitive process.

[33:55]

Sometimes that happens completely experientially. In fact, as the mind settles and the contact is stronger, it will indeed be much more in that direction. When the mind deeply settles, it will be completely in that direction. But also when the mind's not so settled, the same process can help. Sometimes when the mind is quite caught in a story, going mechanically through the cognitive process is very helpful. Okay, what's happening? What's going on now? Okay, there's this story. Okay. And let that ripen from and noticing from a mental idea into the realm of experience. Can the accompanying emotion be felt?

[35:03]

Can it be experienced as a psychosomatic event? How does it influence the state of mind? How does it register in the state of mind? As this practice continues, it has an influence. We don't have to figure it out. We don't have to decide what the influence should be and then manufacture it. And that view instruct our practice. It's like the admonitions, the guidelines for practice will come out of our experience rather than some abstract imposition upon our experience.

[36:22]

As we shift from being story to being the moment this shift also happens in its own way for each one of us each one of us will manifest the workings of the Dharma the workings of the practice, according to our karma, according to the attributes of our own personality and characteristics of our own psychological life. Whether we like it or not, that's how it'll be. But for each of us, the principle

[37:29]

and the primary practice are the same. And out of that, the uniqueness of the one human life called me, the uniqueness of the Genjo Kahn, what is it to practice with this? That very inquiring quality of human mind. to create inquiry about the arising experience can be an ally. It keeps the mind bright. But it's different from running off and thinking. It's more based in experience. So this is what I'm asking your brain to the short tokusans.

[38:31]

What's arising? How are you practicing with it? And the marvelous thing, you can be obsessed with something embarrassingly trivial. Okay, so be it. So-called trivial. How do you practice with it? or you can be working on some quite concentrated experience. Okay. And in that state can the more subtle unfoldings of the Buddha way start to reveal themselves and everything in between. this very mind is Buddha however and whatever it presents with this attitude we sit on our cushion with this attitude we stand up and enter the world of activity can we become

[40:02]

so involved in it, in this machine, that we literally forget that there's another way of being. Can we just immerse ourselves in, okay, what's happening? Can the practice of now just become the same as breathing in and out? is the heritage of the Zen school. And we allow and bring everything to it. Every activity of a human life. Every state of mind. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[41:05]

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, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[41:18]

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