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. Good morning, everyone. My name is David Zimmerman, and I live and work here at City Center, where I currently serve as the program director. I will... first want to say welcome. Particularly, I'm curious how many people are new here today? Quite a few. Well, a particular warm welcome to you because I know how it could be a little intimidating to come here to this large brick building and see all these kind of strange statues. Some of these are really scary. All the black robes and so on. So don't be intimidated. It's just us all here together. So anyhow, welcome, and I hope all of you here today find something that nourishes you in whatever way that you need at this time.

[01:05]

So anyhow, you know, just recognizing that this is a Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Some of you might still be recovering from either eating too much or maybe from the family, you know, or whatever other circumstances you might have. And I've come here today for kind of a change of pace, but welcome. And I also hope that all of us have had a time over the last few days to just pause for a moment and kind of reflect on all that we have to be grateful for. And it's wonderful that we have a particular holiday to encourage us to remember this, but if there's a way that we could build this into our lives in every day, it will kind of nourish us at a much deeper level than maybe just once or twice a year. I also was thinking about gratitude in the sense that we often need to first clearly see what it is that we have to be grateful for.

[02:08]

I'd like to actually talk today about clearly seeing who we are. And I want to start off by telling you something about my father. So my father was blind in one eye. Around the age of 30, he had a construction accident. And at the time, I think I was eight years old. And I wasn't actually living with my father. My brother and I were in a children's home to circumstances I don't want to go into today. But he was helping his brother-in-law to remodel a barn. And he was hammering old rusty nails and pulling them out. But he wasn't using any protective glasses. And in the process, one of the nails broke and entered right into his eye, into his pupil. I think it was his right eye. And he wore an eye patch for some time after this particular accident. And I remember he came one Thanksgiving to the children's home to spend some time with my brother and I, and he had this eye patch on.

[03:11]

And I, not really knowing the seriousness of it all, thought it was really cool that my father had an eye patch. But he wore that for, I understand, I don't know, maybe a year or so. Once he no longer needed it, what I remember when I looked at his eye that was damaged was how the black part of the pupil looked like an egg yolk that had broken on one side and bled into the brown iris of his eye. And he told me later that with this damaged eye, he could still see some light and very murky, shadowy movements, but that was about it. And I realized over the years that my father's blindness became for me a metaphor for his own inability to see me. to see my brother, to see his wives that he had, and that, like for many of us, this feeling of not being seen by one's parents can stay with us.

[04:23]

as a particular wound which we react around. And as we grow older in life, we still keep constellating around this particular wound, wanting somehow for someone else, our lovers or our partners or still our family, to address this particular wound and see us in a way that we weren't seeing when we were younger. During my years of practice, I've come to understand my own proverbial blindness and how it affects the way in which I see others and I see the world. Like my father, I too have a limited, compromised, and somewhat myopic perspective of life. And to extend this metaphor a little bit further, I can see with my one eye my dharma eye, the eye of practice, how with that eye, my vision is clear, direct, vibrant.

[05:26]

It's inclusive. And then with my other eye, the eye, the capital I of self, my vision is murky, and I see endless streams of shadows and projections and vagueness, and often black and white. And that the black ink, leaking from the corner of my father's eye, came to represent for me the way in which we all leak our distorted views, our limited condition views, and then we act from these views. So the rusty nail in our eye is the sharp but unreliable sense of a solid self, which injures and clouds and distorts our ability to see our life and to see others. We need to learn the ways in which we are blind, the ways in which we don't see and don't want to see what is true in our lives.

[06:35]

And while our blindness may be conditioned and in some sense inescapable, we can find another way to see life, to meet life, with a vision that is direct, clear, inclusive, and compassionate. In the most recent issue of Buddha Dharma magazine, there's a quote by the Dalai Lama on the front cover, and I want to read it to you. The suffering and happiness each of us experiences is a reflection of the distortion or clarity with which we view ourselves and the world. I'll say it again. The suffering and happiness each of us experiences is a reflection of the distortion or clarity with which we view ourselves and the world. So our experience of life is a matter of perspective.

[07:38]

And as the Dalai Lama points out, we suffer in due proportion to the extent that we hold either a clear or clouded view of ourselves and the world. The greater the disparity of our perception and understanding is to the reality of the way things are, the greater is our mental and emotional pain. The closer we are to seeing things and accepting things in the way that they really are, the more harmony and ease we will experience in our lives. What distorts or clouds our lens of perception is usually our preconceptions, that is, the concepts, the ideas, and beliefs that together act as the viewing glass

[08:40]

of our minds. When we're able to see, when we are able to clear our minds of these distortions, when we're able to see things as they are without a filter of preconceptions, our vision becomes whole again. And the clarity and the brilliance of our true nature and the true nature of phenomenon becomes more fully evident. Nothing, nothing is hidden. We then experience our lives as illuminated. They manifest the natural illumination. We already are. And in this way, we are liberated from suffering. We are clear-seeing, peaceful, harmonious, and happy. We are enlightened. So enlightenment has been described as a matter of perspective.

[09:45]

It's not about having far-out spiritual visions, and it's not about accomplishing esoteric practices of some sort, like levitation. I don't know anyone who can levitate, frankly. And it's also not about this kind of being an unfeeling, stoic, blissed-out zombie of some sort. It's about being here. clearly being in our lives and seeing what is. So a Buddha, an awakened person, is someone who just clearly sees. There's someone who does not confuse conception with perception. As the Buddhist teacher Stephen Hagen points out, I read something from him, What most distinguishes a Buddha from an ordinary person has to do with the matter of just seeing. There's no difference between the perception of a Buddha and the rest of us. How about that? The difference lies in how a Buddha deals with the concepts that naturally arise.

[10:53]

A Buddha doesn't confuse thinking with seeing. And neither does a Buddha let a thought or concept override So there are a number of ways in which we view ourselves and the world in a kind of distorted, confused way. And the primary way, however, is perceiving substantiality where there is none. We imagine things to be solid with the defined substance and parameters. And then we believe... that the sense of solidity is inherent in the thing itself. So notice the Buddha on the altar behind me. Solid, hard, definite. It's there, it's really there, I know it's there, I can touch it, I can feel it, I can move it around. Now this Buddha was once a block of stone. And with my limited understanding of geology, what I understand that at some point this stone was mere sediment.

[12:00]

and organic matter that due to pressure was formed together, pressed together, and became stone out of which this was carved. And then before the sediment was sediment, it was liquid rock. And before that, gas. And before that, the light of the stars. So now physics tells us that the particles that make up this statue out of a molecular effect molecular level, are in constant motion. Can you see the motion? And these particles also have great distances between them. And therefore, this illusion of solidity is just that, an illusion. We are fooled by appearances, taken in by our limited perspective to see this, as something solid. Now, should this statue someday shatter into a thousand pieces, like the statue at Tassajara did, which is kind of the sister statue to this in the 1977 Zendo fire there, then we will see the more composite nature of this particular object.

[13:21]

We, too, are like this Buddha. Elements and conditions coming together to temporarily form our minds and bodies and beings. And these conditions will at some point disintegrate, and we will die, and all these conditions will change, and something else will be here in a different way. Suzuki Roshi, the founder of San Francisco Zen Center, said that we should give up. our preconceived ideas of existence, including our ideas of substantiality. It's these ideas of substantiality and our preconceived ideas of existence on which we base our actions and our choices. They are the springboard for our behavior. And of the preconceived ideas of existence, the most difficult to give up is

[14:27]

the I, capital I. At the root of all our suffering is a very powerful clinging to this sense of I, to this sense of something that's separate, inherently real, solid. If we want to be free from the miseries caused by our self-grasping, then we need to change our perceptions of ourselves. Notice that I said we need to change our perceptions of ourselves. I didn't say that we need to get rid of ourselves. We can't really do that. And that's not what practice is about. Our sense of self is very helpful, and it's very necessary for us to just engage the world, to live everyday life. We need that self to orientate through life. However, Buddhism teaches that this self doesn't exist in the way that we think it does.

[15:30]

This statue doesn't fundamentally appear as we think it appears. And actually, the sense of our self is conditioned. And we, like all phenomena, are dependently co-arisen. All of this coming together at once is us. It's you. It's this building. It's our life. Just here in this. All of it. The whole universe. Zoom. Here we are. And we can't tease it apart at a fundamental level. There is no one and no thing that we can truly grasp and say is me or not me. So when we cling to our perception of an independent, autonomous self, then we create a profound sense of separation in which we make a stark distinction between ourselves and others.

[16:45]

It is in this space of a perceived separation that the emotions of desire and aversion arise. Out of our mistaken, deluded, clouded perspective, we see a world apart, a world out there, a world for or against us. So it's in this way that the world and others become for us an emotional canvas or a Rorschach test of sorts. If we see With hate, we will experience hate. If we see with greed, we will experience greed. If we see separation, we will experience and act from a place of separation. And if we see connection, we will experience and act from a place of connection. And if we see love, we are love.

[17:51]

My own perceived ideas of who I see in front of me and who I am affect each other. If I desire to see someone in a particular way, am I seeing them or am I seeing a phantom of my projections? Who am I seeing? Who is it that is before me, free of the cloud of my obscuring, obscured vision? Of course, we're always going to have our personal biases and our particular desires and irritations. But we don't need to make these biases the truth about ourselves or about the world or about others. And we don't need to expect them to fulfill those particular truths. Can I recognize this and not believe what I think I see in another person? So let me give you an example.

[18:58]

I lived at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center for eight years. Tassajara is our monastery down in Big Sur in the Ventadon Wilderness. And the whole time that I lived there, most of the time I lived there, there was someone else there who I had lots of difficulty with. Just the sight of this person set off all kinds of alarms for me. I was constantly alert to where this person was in the room or perhaps in the valley at some point. And I was also trying to often read them in some way for signs that they were about to attack me or do something that would be offensive to me or some way do something to belittle me or whatever. Just the sight of this person often made me anxious, sometimes even fearful. And with this rose feelings of aversion. However, during one Sashin, a one meditation intensive, I had a very interesting experience.

[20:03]

I came out of the Zendo and I was walking on the path to the stone office. And suddenly ahead of me, there arose a series of shapes and colors and motion. And I didn't perceive at first more than just this. I didn't even quite distinguish the colors and the shapes. I was just seeing the scene. And then after a moment or two, I recognized this aggregate of colors and shapes and motion as a person walking. I could actually see as my mind applied to the color and images in front of me a familiar concept called person. It's kind of like in the early animation where they used to use layers of film and they would paint on different film and they would put these layers on top of each other to create an image.

[21:05]

That's what it felt like was happening in this particular experience. So a moment later, suddenly the concept of woman was applied on top of this other concept, a person. And then with that came other layers. hair and shape and height and clothes. And then the next additional layer was that this person, this was a particular person with a particular name. And it was with this next additional layer that the feeling of separation arose and consequentially dread. Suddenly, this aggregate of color and shape became someone I didn't like. And with this feeling came a very strong thought. I am other than that. I am not that person. So what was startling for me to recognize in this experience was the initial sense that the composite of color and shapes in motion was without emotion.

[22:22]

feeling. It was neutral. It wasn't until I, or more specifically, my conditioned ego self, pulled from my selective memory bank that this color and shape and motion was similar to a color and shape and motion that I had experienced in the past, and that experience was something negative, and thus to be feared and avoided. So I was no longer actually seeing the current image or person in front of me, but rather an imputation, a projection. I became blind to this person. Not seeing them, not empathizing with them as a human being. Someone else who wanted to be happy, who wanted to be free of suffering. Someone else who was just like me and deserved to be met and seen with compassion. I only saw the past pain which I had felt and for which I blamed her.

[23:28]

In fact, I turned away from her on the path just so I didn't have to see and experience this anymore. In turning away from not seeing her, for not seeing who she really was, I was also turning away from not seeing myself and who I really was. The moment I experienced this visual image as a separate thing, as something solid, and other than just a mere perception of color and shape, in that moment, a conditioned response of aversion arose, and in that moment, my suffering began. But before that, there was just the sense of perception, just seeing. So humor me for a moment. Take a moment and look around the room. Maybe look at the person next to you or in front of you.

[24:33]

What do you see? It's okay, I give you commission. It's okay. They won't bite, believe me. What do you see? What are your first impressions? Do you notice colors, shade, movements? Maybe if you're looking at the person, you'll notice things such as skin tone and hair, body shape, facial expressions, maybe gender signifiers. Maybe a name or a label is going to flash up in your mind's eye for a moment, and you'll recognize this person as so-and-so. Or there'll be a particular feeling that comes forward when you look at this person that maybe comes from out of nowhere. You don't know where that feeling comes from. But suddenly it's applied to the person in front of you or next to you. And maybe you see them in a negative light or a positive light based on your conditioning in some way. So how does it feel to actually look at them?

[25:37]

You feel maybe a little silly? Maybe you feel a little vulnerable. Maybe you feel a little exposed yourself. Maybe you're a little afraid that they actually see who you are. Now, we always say we want to be seen by others, and yet oftentimes we really don't. So we kind of constantly are negotiating how much we'll let others see or not see us. And then we have these arguments about, well, you're not seeing me. And they're like, well, you're not showing me who you are. How could I see you? But how did this all get confused and mixed up? And suddenly we actually don't see and connect the Buddha that's right in front of us, right next to us, and also right here. So how do we respond to these distorted thoughts and concepts in our consciousness? How do we respond to these?

[26:40]

How are we to observe phenomenon then? So Suzuki Roshi gave us some advice in Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. He said, I have discovered that it's necessary, absolutely necessary to believe in nothing. That is, we have to believe in something which has no form and no color. Something which exists before nothing. all forms and colors appear. This is a very important point. This is Suzuki Roshi's way of encouraging us to see things, what he called, things as it is. To see with a mind free of preconceptions and ideas, a spacious mind. A mind like a clear sky in which our thoughts are merely constantly shifting, passing clouds without any substantiality.

[27:45]

Suzuki Roshi's things as is is another way of saying that form is emptiness. The things and things as it is is duality. The many phenomenon in each particular expression of existence. And the it of seeing things as it is, is non-duality. The emptiness that is not non-existence, but rather complete, full boundlessness. But it's a great challenge for us to see things as it is. Our fundamental blindness is our ignorance. And it's not so much an ignorance about having knowledge but more of an ignorance in the sense of ignoring, of not seeing with a deeper knowledge that comes from letting go of concepts and agendas and desires and allowing the will to come forward towards us on its own accord, and then seeing our true place in this midst of coming forth.

[29:00]

So to be free of ignorance, We need to learn to see in a new way. We need to go back to the basics, before our preconceptions, before our thoughts. We need to develop a knowing that comes from actual, direct experience. To develop a sense of seeing not based on the mistaken sense of separation. So how do we learn to see as a full-bodied experience and not by our mental process alone? The Buddha gave us very simple instructions for how to perceive the world through our six senses. There's a well-known sutra called Bahiya Sutra in which a layman Bahiya persistently begs the Buddha to tell him the most direct, immediate way to be enlightened.

[30:07]

And the Buddha's kind of like, now's not the time. It's time to eat. Just eat. We have to take care of other things. But Bahia continues to persist. And finally, the Buddha relents and says, okay, you've asked me three times. I'll tell you the most direct form of practice. And this is what he says. In the scene, let there be only the scene. In the heard, let there be only the heard. In the sense, let there be only the sensed. In the cognized, let there be only the cognized. Thus, you should see that indeed, there is no thing here. That is how you should train yourself, Bhaiya. So, the Buddha is instructing us to let colors and shapes just exist. big colors and shapes without adding an extra layer of labels upon them?

[31:08]

What is it to see the color blue without the label blue? Look for blue a moment in the room. Can you see the color without thinking blue? It's kind of like saying, can you see the pink elephant in the room without thinking about a pink elephant in the room? Can you also hear sounds without adding another layer? Can you feel the vibration that is sound without actually applying or trying to define what that sign is, that sound is, I should say? Can you feel sensations, perhaps pain, without labeling it as pain? Just the sensation, what is it? How is that coming up? What's the actual experience of that? And can you also let thought just be thought without clinging to it, without reifying it? When we can do this, we will see the insubstantiality of phenomenon in ourselves.

[32:16]

We will see with the eyes of direct, immediate experience. So the sutra continues. When for you, Bahia, there is only the scene in the scene, only the heard in the heard, only the sensed in the sensed, only the cognized in the cognized, you will see that there is no thing here. And then you will not be reckoned, meaning defined or measured by it. When you are not reckoned by it, you will not be in it. And when you are not in it, you will be neither here nor there nor betwixt the two. This. Just this is the end of suffering. So what does the Buddha mean that if one practices in this way, one will see that there is no thing here? He's talking about the realm of the object.

[33:20]

It implies that we recognize that the scene is merely the scene. That's it. That there are forms, colors, shapes, and so forth, but again, there is no thing here or there. There's no real substance, no solidity, no self that exists independently. All there is is the quality of experience itself. Just experiencing, no more, no less. There is just seeing, hearing, feeling, sensing, and cognizing. And the mind naming it all is also just another thing to experience. The mind perceives we're in the Buddha hall, David's voice. Am I understanding this? And then another thought, am I not understanding this? All this is just passing through our minds.

[34:23]

There is what is seen, heard, tasted, and so forth. There's no thingness here, no solid independent entity that this experience refers to. So now as this insight develops, not only do we realize that there's no thing out there, we also realize there's no solid thing in here. There's no independent, solid entity that is the experiencer. And that's talking about us. And this is the realm of the subjective. So at some point in our practice, if we practice long and diligently enough, we will actually perhaps have this experience of our insubstantiality and the insubstantiality of all things. And that insubstantiality is all of us coming together in this moment with a free, creative, vital expression of life.

[35:34]

That's what led life flows, the insubstantiality of life. We are just a field of changing experiences. It's almost like we are kind of flickering insubstantial light molecules. kind of roaming through an empty space. And that sooner or later, these land on a surface, maybe such as a screen. It's almost like becoming a movie on a screen. And then we call this movie My Life, The Life of David. So Suzuki Roshi actually refers to this metaphor of life as a movie. He says our everyday life is like a movie playing on a wide screen. However, he said, to have a pure, plain white screen is most important. This white screen is not something that you can actually attain. It is something you already have.

[36:36]

The reason you don't feel you have it is because your mind is too busy. Once in a while, you should stop all your activities and make your screen white. That is Azen. That is the foundation of our everyday life and our meditation practice. So sometimes when I'm in a movie theater and I'm watching maybe a film that I'm particularly uncomfortably caught up in, for example, a horror film, I will deliberately turn away from the screen and look at the audience in order to break the spell. So When I do this, I step out of the drama that's in front of me and I see what really is. And also at the same time, the anxiety and fear that I'm experiencing or whatever emotion that's coming up, that I'm caught up in, is suddenly broken, free of, and relaxed.

[37:40]

And my heart rate slows down and my stomach not unleashes, relaxes, unclenches. and my mind becomes more open. And this is similar to what we do in Zazen. We break the spell of our internal movies and drama and dialogue. We stop for a moment, turn our gaze inward, and drop our preconceptions as we attend to each breath. We clear our minds by shifting our perspective away from our stories that we have going on in the eternal screens of our minds and instead explore what's actually happening in the wider realm of our six senses. We attend to the senses and to the non-dual world of the seen in the seen, the heard in the heard, the sensed in the sensed, the cognized

[38:44]

and the cognized. However, in Zazen, our objective is not to turn away like I did in the movie theater, but rather to stay present, still, and attentive, and doing so to see through the projections and the light show to the bare screen beneath on which all this is appearing. Of course, it takes great strength and courage and perseverance to actually stay and watch our internal movies, particularly those that are really uncomfortable, those that I am not good enough, or someone hates me, or whatever it is that we feel really tight around. It's hard to stay with that and watch it and perceive it and see how that arise. Can we watch the movie without getting caught up? can we only see it as a play of energy and emotions?

[39:44]

Can we see it as just an apparent reality? So what we need to do in our practice is cultivate a mind of readiness. A mind of readiness in perceiving, and this mind is called beginner's mind. A beginner's mind is basically a blank screen, ready to receive the world without adding anything extra to it. But course, sometimes as conditioned beings, we already have a screen that is, if you will, kind of slightly mucked up. We've got our flaws and our blemishes and our wrinkles and all that. This is fine. This is our conditioned karmic self. This is what we have to work with. We've got to work with that particular screen. And the point is to do away with this screen, do away with ourselves. That's not the point of practice. As long as you are in the theater of being human, the movie of the South is always playing in the house.

[40:48]

You might as well try to enjoy the show from your particular seat and with your particular screen that you have. We don't need, however, to let ourselves be fooled by the light show in front of us. We can see the movie for what it is. We can let the movie play without grasping and grabbing the images on the screen. We can simply let the lights and the images come forward. And in this way, let seeing just be the scene. And we need to study our minds intimately and to see how our sense of self arises and how we get caught up. And how we actually believe that the person we see on our mind screen is us or is another. We know that life is not like the movies that we see in the scripted version that happens.

[41:50]

Life is never like we see in the movies. And yet, if we act as if it is, we become deeply disappointed. And this disappointment is dukkha. This is the realm of suffering. And when we project onto others our particular dukkha, our particular vision and images of them, our concepts, then we are also creating the conditions for their suffering as well. So can we do them a favor by letting them be who they are, being this full expression of existence, just arising as it is? without making them into something other than who they are? Can we drop believing or grasping our concepts of self and other and just see with direct experience, just being awareness? Can we just be awareness, seeing, awareness?

[42:55]

What is it to be awareness, seeing, awareness? Perceiving awareness. This awareness, seeing awareness, is the intimacy that we deeply yearn for. That we together recognize that we are undivided. Just direct presencing. What is it to meet each other in that way? So I just, in closing, want to acknowledge again my father and his particular blindness, both literal and also kind of the metaphorical blindness of self, because I have gratitude for him and for his particular experience, because it set me on the path here today as a practitioner to see my own blindness and how I see others. with a blind perspective, and how I can change that to actually see with eyes of compassion, with wide eyes, and eyes that are inclusive and take everything in just as it is, and therefore live a richer, more generous life.

[44:12]

So what I see before me now is a field of Buddhas, and it's very beautiful. So thank you for your presence here today. 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.

[44:51]

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