This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Good morning. Nice to see all of you here. And the title of this talk, so we have the right title, is Awakened Heart. Awakened Heart. All of the images that have been coming up for me while teaching the Brahma Vaharas have to do with farming, fermentation, cooking, cultivation, ground water. So in that spirit, we're on day two of this sashin.

[01:02]

I hope you're cooking well, you know, that the karmic peas and the carrots of memory and the emotions and the aspirations are all simmering at a nice temperature. And this is part of how to train ourselves, you know, to be. uh, good cooks. And this big cooking, uh, extravaganza here is the hopes that Victoria and I and Aaron and Rosalie and, uh, Conan who are, uh, all holding this container, uh, know when to help move the lid off to the side to let some steam out and when maybe to enclose the lid again so that the temperature is even, you know? So, um, And hopefully after this practice period and after this sashin, you take a home cooking course.

[02:12]

You keep doing this. In other words, one of the things Wallace suggests in his book is contentment, is one of the conditions necessary for tranquility, to be content with what you have. He brings up, often in retreats he's gone on, people begin to speculate and begin to create new situations that they can, that'll feel more pleasant, that'll be more fun. And of course, this arises for us. But it's very helpful not to leave the pot too soon, to stay here as much as you can. And of course, you want to make the staying here conducive to the arising of wholesomeness. of some sort of production, of some sort of development for yourself. This is practicing Buddhism.

[03:14]

When I started, I realized on the first day, I always have, it's taken me 25 years, I always have what I call the dark truth arise. You know, I woke up on the first day, the dark truth, dark critical thing about myself arose and i used to sort of think i have to this is the truth i need to go deeply into this in this difficulty i will find some great meaning and not so it's not a wholesome provider it's not wholesome food now the information i usually find There's some information in there, but when it's too heavy, too dark, who wants to eat that? Who wants to even begin to work with it? Symptoms for me were always, I felt overwhelmed and powerless, as though something outside was going to provide me something.

[04:18]

When I work with it differently, I find that I can get information and actually use it. That's called wisdom. That's called insight. I'm not overwhelmed. I'm not frightened by it. I'm not pushing away from it. So for me, I find the Brahma Vaharas, which is a practice of compassion and heart, helps to reach out to this other, this dark angel, I could call it. That's a little dramatic. Dark voice. And soften it so that the mind field is activated correctly, so that the seeds that are produced can bloom. We're cultivating something here. So I find that very important for me. And other people have other things that they work with. In this pot, I'm an endless stream of colored karma, of affected dispositions going back countless times of...

[05:24]

fabrications, a way I'm disposed to act with things. And to actually stabilize and stay there and see it happening requires tremendous kindness, tremendous compassion for the difficulty of this situation we find ourselves in. There are many difficulties in this life. It's not easy. So I believe in cultivating these brahmovaharas, immeasurables of loving kindness, compassion, joy, or sympathetic joy, and equanimity as valuable allies, as valuable tools to develop this mental condition, this mental physical condition. I also feel less alienated.

[06:28]

When I'm overwhelmed, I'm alone. There's nothing to do. I become a victim. When I reach out in a creative way, then there's something I can actually undertake again. One of my favorite, and I've used it so many times, but I'll use it again, images of the Buddha is the earth-touching Buddha. Buddha in his enlightenment is questioned by Mara who says, who are you, you human pipsqueak, to think you could ever figure this out? I am eternal, you're mortal. Buddha on the ground of his mortality finds his equilibrium, finds his solution. Here in the difficulty he finds the witness to his enlightenment and he touches the earth and says, The earth, this very place, this entity that's now awake, is confirmed by being seated like this, right here.

[07:32]

He himself practiced ascetic rigor to the point of extinction. And then, in a moment of insight realized, with great heart and compassion and tranquility, while looking deeply, something could actually be accomplished. It was no longer a one-sided quest. So, in a sense, he becomes our great, great, great, great grand person. Now, it's important, Esho in his lecture talked about what we're doing here. And he used the phrase, I found that many of the lectures have been great. I'm quoting Ishos because I want to make a point. I could quote any of the other lectures. They all had wonderful points. He said, Buddhist practice is ontological.

[08:35]

It's about being in reality. It's about something happening here on the ground of being. It's not epistemological. It's not theories of knowledge. You can go to the university and and acquire a theory of knowledge. And there's nothing wrong with the theory of knowledge, but it's not quite what we're doing. This is ontological. It's done on the ground of being itself. In the midst of being, we explore being. The more seated we're in this activity, the more information we're going to receive continually. It's also, I don't know if I'm going to pronounce this, I had to look it up, soteriological. It's a salvic or it's a practice of salvation. We're doing something here. We're not just acquiring knowledge to acquire knowledge. We're exploring being on the ground of being to be saved through our own efforts and the efforts of each other.

[09:38]

This is the wisdom of the Brahma Vaharas. It goes much, much... It's a wider field, although we have to start in a small field. It's a wider field that we cultivate. So this is about studying being with being in order to leave this realm of suffering or dukkha or agitation or crackers in the bed sheet or it's not going to work out, it never works out, to enter into the realm of what Buddha called nirvana or happiness and stay here. to be free. So this is a process that we're undertaking. He says, if you do these things, these will be the natural results. If the conditions are correctly established, which he called walking this path. It'd be better to say pathing. I like that better. You're not separate from the path.

[10:40]

You are the path simultaneously. So you can't separate from it. So you're pathing together. And pretty clearly, I think, there are a couple of choices. One leads to wholesome outcomes, and another leads to unwholesome outcomes. Great good, great evil. And in a sense, we enter this place by becoming part of the family of Buddha. entering the path is actually becoming part of a family. Gotra, it was called. You take on the family attributes now. And I vow to leave suffering behind and cultivate true happiness and to be wholesome. I work in this way. So, I think it's important to be clear.

[11:41]

I want to frame the Brahma-Vaharas, come as you are, in a context. This is... the big ontology, this is the big study that we're undertaking. We didn't just randomly come through this door because we picked up a book and we were curious. Usually there's something a little bit more compelling that brings us through the door, at least in my case. In my case, I wasn't writhing in suffering, but I realized suddenly at 39, I could never fix the deal. I couldn't seal the deal. I couldn't secure my own happiness. Something would fly loose. And as soon as I thought that, I said, I've got to go to Zen Center. And I just knocked on the door. I didn't even know what I was doing, but I knew I had to do something now. There was no turning back. So when we choose this path, we want to leave suffering behind and learn how to be truly happy in a mature way, we enter the family of Buddha, of Shakyamuni himself.

[12:46]

We become children, we say, of Buddha. And we begin to cultivate. You know, virtue is not something out here, a series of regulations. It's character. It's like what we used, you know, a person of good character would be a good translation of aria or noble. Are you a person of good character, good heart? Are you cultivating this? So this is what we vow to do. We vow to undertake this cultivation. The Brahma-viharas are an important aspect. If we were only cultivating wisdom for the sake of wisdom, it becomes quite restricted, quite closed off, quite insular, sterile. So by opening our hearts and practicing wisdom, this field now extends outwards and includes us in something a little bit bigger than we imagined.

[13:47]

Giving up the self, Dogen doesn't mean there's no self or you're dead. He means it's integrated. It moves over and is part of a much, much bigger story. An incredible story that we get to have a big take on. Upeksha is to take a big view. Big view. Doesn't mean you... Anything dies away. So to be a bodhisattva is to kill nothing, even your difficulties. You don't kill any of it. You cultivate all of it wisely. You look into it wisely, put it in the pot, let it cook wisely. It took me 20 years to work with my dark voice. But I'm faster now. Now I don't spend months on it. And I had a lot of help here from Victoria, from all of you, actually.

[14:50]

All of you. You don't know how much you help. We're not aware of what our presence does. So Buddha says, I commend you to Sangha. He means to be open to this situation. So come as you are then, come as you are not seen in that context could end in narcissism or even pathology. So it has to be seen in the setting it should be seen in. Come as you are is learning to mature, learning to take care of yourself, learning self-care with the end of entering the wholesome path of the Buddhas to be truly happy and leave suffering behind. not to create new suffering. So seen in that context... Huh.

[15:52]

Anyways, sorry, I got distracted. Uh-oh. Sometimes it's better not to do too much. Anyway, I'm sorry, that's a big... My name is Endless Digression, but that was a big one. So... And this isn't about narcissism, simply representing whatever random thought comes up for you. So seen in this bigger context, it comes alive. It becomes a living activity. It becomes a practice. The Brahma-Vihara, sometimes I think, you know, when I extend in that way, outwards, it brings alive the phrase, not one, not two. I have some idea, you have some idea. And when we open to each other, something new can be born. Something quite unique often can come out of that place if we're truly open.

[16:55]

So we need to practice these activities of opening in kindness, these exercises that we've been studying for six weeks. Buddha Gosa in his treatise on page 690 says, you know, good farmers, when they begin to cultivate, start with one small plot of land, one small section of the field, and then when you take care of that, then do another, and then another. So don't hurry with the Brahma Vaharas. Practice kindness to practice kindness in a very small way. Don't worry about its effect. Don't read political theory or the state of the world to judge the quality of kindness. So we practice both on the absolute realm of brahma-vihara-maha meta, and we practice apramana, immeasurable meta, or kindness, which is somewhat more connected and we see its effects.

[18:01]

And we practice very... Relative usually, or I do in the beginning, we practice in the beginning, I'll be nice to you and you'd be nice to me, but these are the parameters. If you're kind of going outside of that, it's not going to be fair and I'm really going to be upset and it's a little tight. But we work with that place first. The very relative situation, and even that's beneficial. So we start small. I'll work with kindness, but you really didn't say thank you and I'm pretty upset. And we get tight again. And then we say, well, how can I get it bigger? How can I get that looser? What would actually work here? So I think to look at our suffering as putting out our suffering is pretty good. But there's also, how would you really be happy here? What inspires you? If you could tell a story about becoming and wholesomeness and Buddhahood, what kind of Buddha would you be? Right now, what would you do? This empowers you to undertake something.

[19:02]

You begin to say, that didn't work so well. Actually, I feel worse. I was kind and now I feel irritated. Is there some way that this could work? Treat it as a creative puzzle. Michael Wenger in one of his koans said, if you're stuck, you're just not being creative enough. Rotate it. Look at it a little differently. We need to be a virtuous person. We need to be upright. We need to be somewhat tranquil, somewhat moral, somewhat disciplined, not excessively so. It's called the middle path. We don't get disciplined to create discipline. We get disciplined as part of wholesome becoming. So keep the flow of this alive always. So, don't despair. Plant loving kindness.

[20:03]

Be aware of your pain. And don't compare it to anything necessarily. Don't decide how much, not how much I should have. Don't decide its efficacy, as though you know what's going to result from this. In a sense, we say, we practice... In trust that we're Buddha, in faith that we're Buddha, we practice Buddha's way. This is practicing the Brahma Vaharas on the absolute ground. We give way. Sometimes we misunderstand the relative and absolute here. We mix those up. They actually work together. So we have the big vision of compassion without attainment, without fixing anything, without success. but we also practice on the relative ground. I really want to get in there, and this is some particular pain. Can I help? We do both. If we just practice only on the absolute ground, we can become quite ephemeral, quite ethereal, not so useful.

[21:07]

If we're just on the relative ground, we can become quite attached to our own kindness. So the two actually open this terrain up and make it the ground of becoming, or this... true being or ground of true being for the first time. But we mix those two. We don't completely understand those two. When Christ says, turn the other cheek, he's speaking from the absolute ground. We don't understand that. Then we try to compare it with all the situations and how it's all going to work out. It's a different ground, but they're related. We say form is emptiness, emptiness is form. So don't mix the two up. We practice, you could say, on the relative ground, but we have the big space of the absolute ground, the big openness of the situation. When Suzuki Roshi talked about unnaturalness, he said, only when you return to the big ground, to nothingness, to shunyata, to emptiness, something bigger than you can imagine, can you actually then engage naturally.

[22:19]

Can you take a nap or eat some food? So we do both. We've accented more, I think, in our practice period, I would call tranquility absorption or tranquility or balancing or shamatha jhana, tranquility absorption. But actually, you practice both. Insight absorption. You're also looking with this calm, joyful, open mind. You begin to look deeply. into what this is what is this that's asking these questions we turn around and look back down the pipeline to where it's coming from ground zero or satsuki roshi said emptiness and we get a letter from emptiness which we interpret and do something and then we let it go and we go back again so it's a it's a flow here So I would say we're practicing insight absorption.

[23:21]

Page 103, if I recall, of this book even gives you exercises, if I can find them. In the midst of tranquility and balance, he says, you also add, you may ask yourself, Who am I? What is the referent of my sense of I? Is it my body, my mind, my emotions, my feelings, my will, my desires, all of the above? You will find, I believe, that there is no absolute referent. The sense of self that we normally hold is as false as if I were to claim to be Napoleon. So this is insight. we begin to, with this easy mind or compassionate mind, look at this question of, what is this? Right before my eyes, what is this?

[24:32]

Buddha himself acquired the jhanic exercises, practiced ascetically and nearly died, returned to the jhanic exercises, and now, as he said, with a soft, malleable, ready, appropriate mind, I looked deeply, what is this? What is it that's right here? What's it made up of? So by creating the right condition, his inquiry, he said, yielded wholesome fruit. So Sashin, you could see, is our time to emulate this. How do we make an appropriate effort, take care of ourselves, remain balanced, and go on this journey, this grand adventure into what? What is it? What is it? You know, to target them means literally...

[25:42]

the one that arrives or comes or thus comes, it can also mean thus departing. So you're left with an image of both arriving and departing simultaneously, both creating and deconstructing in the same instant, literally leaving no trace. We would call that extremely natural behavior. The good news is you're all headed there. the Buddhists say. They actually, you know, in the Lotus Sutra it says, you're all named already when you're going to arrive. It's all seen clearly to the ends of time, you could say that. That's the good news. That's your perfect just as you are. But you could use a little improvement. This is Sashim. Because you're not clear about this perfection. We still attach to parts of it and reject other parts.

[26:43]

Some confusion. But as it doesn't exist separately, independently, metaphysically, or ultimately, it's a conditioned event. That means we can actively do something here. It's a plastic event. The... the virtual self or the stream of virtual selves or micro identities that are forming moment by moment can explore themselves and see how they came about if they're conditioned correctly. And then can properly be seated in this drama, this big tale that's happening before our eyes. Sometimes with the thus come, the tathagata, I think another expression is, as what you initiate is also your response simultaneously.

[27:50]

It's called appropriate response. You're completely relating to the situation, the drama. This is where we're headed. So we're practicing, all of us, all of us as baby Buddhas, as baby Bodhisattvas, we're practicing our skill on this journey. A good exercise is, you know, we're always seeing our imperfection. How would you relate to people if you were Buddha? If somebody took your teacup, what would Buddha do? It's kind of great to hold that, how you would imagine it, and then also let your own reaction. Well, Buddha might do that, but I want my damn teacup back. And let them both coexist. It's a little painful, but if you can stay there, some space starts to be created. This is working with inspiration. We have to put out fires, but it's good to have some direction of what we're headed toward, too.

[29:01]

Some possibility here, too, in your heart. So if this were just a course in the Brahma Vaharas, at Saturday at 6, you would be done. But actually, it's the ongoing, I believe, request of your own hearts to open in this way. And what you do now, you'll do the day after and the day after. And I find I regress, and I have to start over. I have to again come back to enacting. It's hard to describe. Victoria and I were both, it's an embodiment. Compassion is an embodiment and an enactment right here that extends outwards intelligently. It's a very interesting act. Empathy is a very interesting place. I'm not me quite and I'm not you. I'm doing something else and we're coming into a kind of resonance here.

[30:01]

Sometimes I describe that as the virtual self develops some decent pattern recognition. There's no disharmony for a moment. I come into harmony when I reach like that. That's still a little restrictive, but I think it's an okay image to use. The virtual self. And the virtual self is made up of endless dispositions. Sankara skanda. The fourth skanda is... formation or how we form our reality which is based on previous formations which is based on previous formations extending endlessly backwards you know endlessly backwards to cultivate effective wholesome dispositions is our work here you know we begin to change the coursing of all of these dispositions as they are our

[31:09]

You could say they're inactive dispositions until the conditions are right, and then they're enabled dispositions. If you've cultivated anger at certain types of people that wear certain types of clothes, one day someone will come in the door dressed like that, and that disposition will be enabled again. It will flourish. It's called karma. And it will cause more confusion for you, more suffering and pain. So our work is to You could say clean all of the lenses, and in a linear, logical way, that makes no sense. You clean the lens that's provided to you thoroughly, wholesomely, in a healthy way. It strikes all of the lenses. All of the dispositional filters are hit by that. The deeper your work, the more powerful the transformation. Now, the good news is this means you can do something.

[32:11]

This is entering the path of the Buddhas. I work with these dispositions as they arise, and I stabilize, I practice appropriately, and I change. It's very powerful if you change. If you are angry and you practice, I'll try using some kind word here. I can do this with this person. They're not so charged. I can do this with this one. Ill will begins to decrease, and there's a shift, a fundamental dynamic shift. Again, this is ontology being. If it were intellectual, nothing could happen. You could see the problem. If you have 20 million screens, how would you ever fix all this? But on the ground of being, whether interconnected, it's very dynamic. Depending on the effort you make and the insight you have, they all begin to shift. Brahma-vaharas, the little planter box of the four abidings, are planting the wholesome seeds.

[33:16]

You also plant wholesome seeds. Ways of becoming to start to change this filtering. As Varsha Bandhu said, you know, he posed it as, we think we experience this out here, but we're experiencing our experience of something. This is dispositionally conditioned. Because of this, insight allows us to change. And as we're changing, we're actually forming ourselves simultaneously. We're not separate from it. Appropriate attention begins to change the next moment of appropriate attention. Something starts to shift. Sometimes there's a big shift, a tsunami, big earthquake, we call it Kensho. Big picture, big take on things.

[34:19]

But still, we have to work with it out here in form. We have to develop it. Now what? It's not enough just to have a big moment. What are you going to do now? And we've seen people fall short. People of great accomplishment then enact unwholesome behavior. They fell short. It wasn't enough just to have a big picture for a moment. And we all know how to be kind because we know the product of unkindness in our own lives. The seed of Buddhahood is in our inquiry for this happiness that we're looking for. It drives us forward. It's insatiable. Learning how to cultivate it correctly creates a Buddha field.

[35:22]

Buddha doesn't kill the self. He cultivates the self and it grows into everything until there are no boundaries anymore. And I'm just about done. Sophia asked me, she said, Sophia? Oh, there you are. You know, it feels like Upeksha equanimity is stepping back. And I said, it's just the opposite. It's inclining into, without distinction, you could say. The close sometimes I think of it is an act of such profound love that there's no fire in it anymore. Everything gets included. It's an act of profound involvement where self and other now drop away. The friction actually starts to decrease. I looked up a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh.

[36:27]

Of all the translations of Upeksha, I liked his best. Some use the word neutrality or disinterest. It's not quite right. It's actually just the opposite. It's total interest. It's total involvement. But it's very appropriate. Love after the fires have been extinguished. He wrote, true love allows you to preserve your freedom and the freedom of your beloved. This is true love. True involvement. So they even have a phrase in the schools of consciousness of Buddhism, it's called equality wisdom. Very hard to describe. Total immersion, involvement, and you could say no energy. Almost cool. Wondrous observing wisdom, they call it in that school.

[37:30]

Equality wisdom. This is seen from the ground to the absolute. So here, be content. Practice with compassion and joy, real compassion and joy, even with your difficulties, you can do this. Actually, if you can't, then it's probably not real. It's not the real stuff. Yunyan asks, I'll end with a koan. Why does the bodhisattva Kuan Yin have so many hands and eyes? Da Wu says, it's like reaching back for your pillow in the dark. Yun Yin says, I understand. And Wu asks him, say, what do you understand? Yun Yin says, the whole body is covered with hands and eyes. This is pretty good.

[38:31]

This is relative. relative truth, relative bodhicitta, relative awakened mind. Wu replies, there's nothing but hands and eyes. This is absolute bodhicitta, this is absolute involvement, this is equanimity. There's nothing but hands and eyes. Thank you. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[39:35]

May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:38]

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