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. In Brooklyn, where I teach. I actually teach in Brooklyn. At the Brooklyn Zen Center. there's a librarian in the community. And she noticed that I was giving a lecture and I had a book that I, just like now, I had a book that I spread out here, but it was a new book. And so this kept, this kept shutting. And so she gave me, it looks like a worm. It's a, it's just like a worm with a little yellow, head and tail.

[01:01]

I mean, the whole... You don't know where the tail is on a worm, do you? Looks like it could be a tail, right? With a head. And no tail? I don't know. What would that be? Or is it a worm? No tail. Anyway, it's black and it's about this big and it's filled with... It's either filled with like jelly, not jelly beans, like sand. It feels like sand. And then what you do is you just place it on the book like that and it's heavy. So it keeps the book open and you can read, right? So I was thinking, you know, we don't notice we don't notice all the ways that the world is supporting us and helping us. We can miss things just like that, just as simple as that.

[02:03]

If we're looking for something big or if the only way we feel gratitude is if it's some major idea that I have to have, then we miss. He's my student, so I keep track. And also, may I say why you might not be here?

[03:12]

Why you may not be here? His partner is a doula. A doula? Midwife. And there's a baby coming. Soon, so if the baby comes, then he has two children, so he has to go home and take care of the children. So what I was saying was that sometimes we're looking for something, and in the looking, we miss what's actually there in front of us that is the support of our life all the time. And often it's in the little things. that make the difference between whether the day is felt as with gratitude or as yet another sign that, you know, of lack.

[04:16]

So a smile, you know, at somebody that you are passing or gesture of help. There was a woman, today I was passing, and she was on one of these roller walkers, a roller walker, and two people passed her and asked her if she needed help while I was watching. It was just lovely. Simple things like that can make the difference in somebody's day. You know, I've been, I'm seeing things. I was seeing someone asked if I needed help. It doesn't take much. I want to mention Kinyan because I don't know if we've talked about it and it's a practice that we do

[05:25]

during retreat, during sashim, we do every day a number of times. And so I thought I would talk about it a little bit. When we have a period of kin yin, it's basically just exactly the same as when you're sitting. There are four traditional postures to practice with. And one is lying down, which is legitimate. In Brooklyn, we have two people who need to lie down. So we give them two, they get two zapatons in the corner. And sitting, we have a number of people in chairs as I am this time because of my knee and walking and standing. So these are legitimate postures for meditation practice. So kinyin, we have it in there not because it's kind of a throwaway, and we just have to fill up the space with something until we get back to our seat.

[06:32]

It's actually 10 minutes of another opportunity of helping us develop continuity of awareness, continuity of mindfulness. So when you stand up from your meditation cushion, just like Dogen says in the Fukanza Zengi, Don't get up quickly, like I do from my chair, but get up mindfully. Stand up, gather yourself, and get ready to continue your mindfulness practice in the form of walking. And the way I was taught was that you do it on the breath. There are many ways to do it. You can, in Vipassana, they have like a 20-foot, kind of like, If you took one of these rows between the two black lines all the way, and you walk, and you turn around and walk, and you turn around and walk, you turn around and walk, and sometimes you could do that very slowly, really infinitesimally slowly, so that you are mindful of each sensation as you shift the weight even.

[07:48]

That takes moments. As you feel your body. shifting the weight. And then the whole mechanism of lifting, of allowing the leg to lift. What happens with the hip? Do you raise the hip? Do you don't raise the hip? Walking is fascinating when you pay attention. And then that whole swing of the leg and the minutia of the little sparks of energy that go off as the leg swings forward. And then the feel of the weight as it comes back to the leg, in this case, the right leg, I'm thinking, touches on the floor, and that incredibly sensate, not sensational in that way, but sensate, sensate something, feel of the incredible feeling of the mushiness of your foot, making contact with the floor.

[08:50]

It's really quite spectacular. When you pay attention. And so I think the way we still do it here, although I don't know exactly because we're going a little bit slower than I was taught, but it's on the breaths. It's actually a walking step. And the way Katagiri taught me was that as the leg swung out, he put the ball of his foot down first, which sometimes is exactly what my legs do. My foot, the front touches. Anyway. one variation in a theme. And so you feel the rhythm of the walking with your breath as a meditation. So it's not a, you know, it's an opportunity to continue the same thing you were doing on the cushion so that when you get back to the cushion, nothing's been broken. You know, the momentum of the gathering of your concentration is still happening.

[09:53]

when you do kinyin. And that's why we asked you to stay during that time and take your break before, after breakfast, and then wait until that 25-minute break after two periods at least so you can get a feeling of sitting, walking, sitting as the same thing. So I wanted to say that. And then I wanted to talk about sensation a little bit, which is the second skanda. And sensation, it's translated feeling, but we think of feeling as emotions. But the second skanda is actually sensation, which only comes in three ways.

[10:58]

It's pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. And... If you walk around in your day, this is a little bit tangential, but if you walk around in your day and you notice how you're relating to people, it's kind of embarrassing actually. The same thing is happening. You either are, maybe not with you, but you might, maybe it's true. You look at somebody and you're kind of drawn to that person, so that's kind of a pleasant sensation. And then somebody else comes, and maybe you've had some difficulty or something with that person, and so there's aversion there with that person. Now, here's the embarrassing part. This is really something. This is really terrible. And the third opportunity is that it's a neutral feeling. So there are lots of people who are around here, around you,

[12:00]

with whom you have actually a neutral feeling about. And the embarrassing part is, they are not part of your consciousness. You don't even see them. They're just part of the surrounding, but you don't have a pull or a push. It's interesting, you might watch. So in terms of the body, There's pleasant sensation, unpleasant sensation, and neutral sensation. And there are no problems with those. There's no problem. Pleasant sensation, great. Unpleasant sensation, which is basically a sensation where the volume of the sensation is just turned up, and that's what becomes painful. So if it stays at the level of sensation, it's not a problem. But what we do with that is the next thing that happens almost right away is we grab or we avert.

[13:07]

And then it becomes a problem because then we live life in this kind of ping-pong thing where we're always trying to grab onto things that we think are going to make us pleasant sensation, or we push away things that we think are, or do, give us unpleasant sensations. And like I said yesterday, if we just stop at the sensation without the push-pull, without making it more, without adding thought to it, and we just hear, we just see, we just have a thought, there's no problem with sensation. So over years, over time, what the mind has done, the sweet little mind, what the mind has done is it has built up certain kind of fallback habits that we have tendency toward for the way we respond to the environment.

[14:20]

And different people have different wants, and they're called basically hindrances. They're the five classic hindrances that keep us from being present with sensation, with pleasant or unpleasant events. Whether it's family, whether it's a person you don't know, whether it's the weather, it doesn't matter. Over the years, we've built up certain habits of mind that try to grab onto pleasant things. move away from unpleasant things, and they come in these five classic called hindrances or obstructions to meditation. So for those of you who know them, it never hurts to hear them again, and it's useful to hear them on the second day of a seshin, because on the first day, So things are new and you're making an effort to be present and everything's kind of, you've got some momentum behind it.

[15:26]

It's pretty good. Things are good. The second day, you have this interesting relationship with your mind around the hindrances because you're trying to be present and your mind is going, we've never done this before. Why now? So it's good to go over what the usual fallback thing is, and you'll each recognize these. But the reason why I'm pointing this out is because if you continue to make effort and you sort of rise above these hindrances and you convince your mind that you actually do want to be present, this is the bad news, that you really do want to be present, the third day, The problem is with the third day is you actually are present. And usually what you see, you don't want to be there for, which is why on the second day you were doing all the hindrances.

[16:30]

You see? So I'm giving you a warning, fair warning. It may not be this way for you, but for many people it is this way. The third day kind of... You're actually, you've been making great efforts. So it doesn't mean, you know, if things get bubbly on the third day, it doesn't mean you're doing not a good job. It means you're doing a great job. That you've actually convinced your mind that you really do want to be here. And it kind of shows you all of the things that you've been trying to vert from in these classic ways. So the first one is, so grasping after pleasantness, sensual desire. grasping after and the way we do this. Actually, it has to have some humor because the mind that's doing this, we built it and we built it for a good reason. We built it for a good reason because whatever the constellation of our particular, how we grew up in our family structure or half a family or too much of a family or you were the wrong person,

[17:38]

kid in the family or you were the middle kid in the family whatever the situation was in your family how you know your tendency what you came in with all of these things together you created your particular way that you had to get through we all did so it's not like bad it's actually yay for us you know we made it we all made it and That's a good thing. So we don't have to get rid of any of this. We just have to see how the mind is working so we know when one of these hindrances come up, you go, oh, that's right. I know you. And thank you very much, but we actually, we're going to be here now. Thank you. So sensual desire and grasping is a big one. Some people... toward grasping, toward pleasant sensations, toward, you know, comfort.

[18:45]

It's the mind of if only, you know, if only I were this way, if only I had this, if only I had this kind of relationship, if only I had this, if only, you're always leaning into the future, leaning to the next pleasant event. It's actually uncomfortable. Grasping is actually uncomfortable, but we use it. It's very useful to take us out of the present moment. If I just had an ice cream, it's right around the corner. I'm just going to go right around the corner. Instead of being here, I'm actually around the corner, already around the corner. Daydreams is a good way to do that. I just barely... saw somebody in retreat who's kind of pleasant looking and before you know it, we're married and divorced. Can we live in that kind of house? And away you go into some kind of pleasant dream state. There's nothing wrong with it.

[19:52]

It's just that you're not present. Or the other one, of course, is ill will and anger and that's aversion. I grew up with a lot of anger. I have two majors in these hindrances, anger and doubt. I majored in anger and doubt. Those are the ones that I really had a lot. And anger comes with frustration, irritation, feelings of malice toward others, always blaming somebody else for how you feel, judgments, making judgments all the time. Clue, okay? The amount that you judge other people is the exact same amount that you're judging yourself. So if you find yourself judging people a lot, you might just stop for a minute and notice where it's coming from. It's just a bunch of projection from inside out.

[20:55]

Fear is aversion. So averting is actually all of these are resistance to the present moment, all of them. So you could cut right through all of these and just follow resistance in your practice. Just keep looking at resistance and you'll take care of all of these. But another one is one, two, three. The third one is sloth and torpor. And I put confusion in that one. Most of the time I don't believe when somebody comes to me and they say they're confused. I don't believe it. I mean, sometimes maybe it's true, but a lot of times I don't believe it. Because usually confusion is about you actually know exactly what's going on and what you need to do, but you don't like what you need to do. You don't like the answer that you get. So you get really confused. I really don't know what I should do. Yes, you do. You just don't want to do it.

[21:57]

It happens in Zazen a lot. There's just a kind of, especially in Soto Zen, you know, you're really present, but it's just slightly foggy. That's not our way of sitting. It has to be clear and bright in Zazen. So just slightly dull, a little bit, hazy, that kind of thing. The other one is restlessness. So sloth and torpor are not enough energy. So if you do sloth and torpor, concentrate more and you'll raise energy. If you do restlessness, widen the mind. And usually the mind will settle down. If the body is still and you listen, widen the mind, usually it'll settle down. Restlessness is difficult. So if you do have a tendency toward restlessness, it's too much energy.

[23:05]

Really pay attention to relaxing, settling the body. And the last one is doubt. Doubt is, the doubt that we're talking about, it's a hindrance, has a name, it's called... Thank you. It's called insidious doubt. It's undermining doubt. And the reason why it's so destructive is because of all of these, of all of these, doubt is the one that will turn you away from your own practice. I'm no good. I can't do this. It's not working for me. My teacher is no good. I don't like this community. It's based on I'm not enough. everything becomes not enough. It paints everything in this lack, this area of lack.

[24:12]

It's extremely difficult to work with because you don't trust anything to work with you. So it's very important that when you have this kind of doubt, you talk with a teacher that you've had a relationship with, and they will hopefully just talk you through very gently very gently. This needs a lot of support when this is happening. So it's not a question of the particulars of these things. It's a question of knowing the structure of this kind of mind that you're watching for. You're watching for the mind of grasping, the mind of aversion, the mind of restlessness, the mind of sloth and torpor, the mind of doubt. Not what the content is, but the habit, the movement of mind that falls into one of these entrances. And then name it.

[25:12]

So, just a clue. Be ready for tomorrow when, as you've been making your effort. I know you're making effort. I can, you know, it's wonderful in this endo. Tomorrow, if you've been making effort, then you might be face-to-face with what actually is there for you when you really are present. And that'll be great. Whatever it is. So, here's a poem. about being present. And then I'm going to, we'll talk about section five and six of Uji, Uji Puji. This is a poem by Neruda. So it's in, I have a book that has both the Spanish and the English. I wish I could read it to you in the Spanish, but I can't.

[26:28]

You can? You want to read it in Spanish? Come. And then I'll read it in English. It's very beautiful in Spanish. It's a long. It's three pages. Okay. Okay, let's enjoy. Como una tabla. Fresco. Esta hora. Este día. Limpio. Como una copa nueva. Del pasado no hay una telaraña. Tocamos con los dedos el presente. Cortamos su medida. Dirigimos su brote. Está viviente. Vivo. Nada tiene de ayer irremediable. De pasado perdido. It's our creature.

[27:32]

It's growing. In this moment, it's carrying sand. It's eating in our hands. Get it. Don't fall down. Don't lose dreams or words. Take it, hold it, hold it, and order it until you obey. Do the path, lamp, machine, kiss, book, love. Corta su deliciosa fragancia de madera y de ella hace una silla. Trenza su respaldo. Pruébala. O bien, escalera. Sí, escalera. Sube en el presente, petaño tras petaño. Firmes, los pies en la madera. Del presente hacia arriba, hacia arriba. No muy alto. Tan solo hasta que puedas preparar las boteras del techo.

[28:33]

No voy alto. No te vayas al cielo. Alcanza las manzanas, no las nubes. Esas, déjalas ir por el cielo. Irse hacia el pasado. Tú eres tu presente, tu manzana. Tómalo de tu árbol. Levántala en tu mano. Brilla como una estrella. Tócala. Thank you. Did you like it? It's called Ode to the Present. Ode to the Present. This moment, as smooth as a board and fresh, this hour, this day, as clean as an untouched glass, Not a single spider web from the past. We touch the moment with our fingers. We cut it to size.

[29:35]

We direct its blooming. It's living. It's alive. It brings nothing from yesterday that can't be redeemed. Nothing from the lost past. This is our creation. It's growing this very instant. Kicking up sand or eating out of our hand. Catch it. Don't let it slip away. Keep it from vanishing into dreams or words. Make it a road or a bell, a machine, a kiss, a book or a caress. Slice into its sweet scent of wood. Make yourself a chair from it. Then weave yourself a seat. Try it out, or better, try a ladder. Yes, a ladder. Rise out of the moment, step by step, feet firmly planted on the wood of the moment. Up and up, but not too much, just high enough to patch the holes in the roof. Not too far. You don't want to climb to reach heaven.

[30:38]

Climb up to the apples, but not as far as the clouds. Let them cruise the sky, drifting toward the past. You are your own moment, your own apple. Pluck it from your apple tree. Hold it up in your hand. It shines like a star. Stroke it. Sink your teeth into it. Now off you go, whistling on your way. Moment. So now, section five and six. I think we'll do two sections. For those of you who don't know, we're doing Uji, Being Time, from Dogen. Helping us to understand that we, in the activity of the moment, are time.

[31:50]

That time is not separate from us. So here's Section 5. An ordinary person who does not understand Buddha Dharma may hear the words the time being in this way, quote, For a while I was three heads and eight arms. That's delusion, his way of representing delusion. For a while I was an eight or 16 foot body, his way of talking about the Buddha. This is like having crossed over rivers and climbed mountains. Even though the mountains and rivers still exist, I have already passed them by and now reside in the jeweled palace and vermilion tower. Those mountains and rivers are as distant from me as heaven is from earth. That's Dogen making a quote of how ordinary people view time. But Dogen says...

[32:52]

Well, it's not that simple. It's not so simple that the mountains are over there and I've passed through them and now I'm in some other place. It's not like in the past I was deluded and now I am vastly awake. He says, that's not the case. We're not necessarily getting better. The past is not necessarily gone. At the time the mountains were climbed and the rivers crossed, you were present. Time is not separate from you. And as you are present, time does not go away. So the point is that thinking past, that time has passed, doesn't happen. That's his point. Time doesn't come and go. We've talked about this already before. And when he talks about impermanence, he's talking about that we are time and that all of time is now, that we can't escape. our past, and the question is, this is the question, and it's especially the question on the third day of retreat.

[33:57]

The question is, how do we relate to what we imagine is the past that is appearing in the present? So we're not, you know, it's not unredeemable. There's no fixed past that we need to address there is only what of the past is here now and that can be redeemed that can be lived without getting stuck in it so he says as time is not marked by coming and going the moment you climb the mountains is the time being right now Past is here. If time keeps coming and going, you are the time being right now. And as we talked about before, we are as time also Buddha time.

[35:07]

Remember he said on each moment there is illumination. Illumination is happening on each moment. And we are this moment, so there is illumination here as us. Realization is here. He keeps emphasizing this. There is no duality in his teaching. This is the moment. It all exists now. There is illumination on each moment. If we are fully 100% in the moment with no separation, without getting imagining in the past or flinging ourself in the future, then it's a Buddha moment. It's a realized moment. We are awake in the moment, including past and future, whatever that might have been. It's redeemable now. Because it's only now that we can redeem it. Because we are now, and now is illuminated.

[36:10]

Illuminated with Buddha mind. We are Buddha mind. This is the meaning of the time being, he says. Does this time being not swallow up the moment when you climb the mountains and the moment when you resided in the Jeweled Palace and Vermilion Tower? Does it not spit them out? So time being just swallows up everything. I don't understand the spitting out thing. What does he mean spitting it out? He's playing. I think he's having fun. What do you mean spitting out? I don't know. Anyway, he says spitting. Maybe the translation is not so great. You never know. I didn't have the time to look up another translation, so I don't know what they say. But I don't understand spitting out. Does it not spit him out?

[37:15]

Maybe it means like all the present is incorporating past and future in it. And it brings out past and future. Maybe that's what he means, spitting it. Guesses? Anybody else? Letting it go. Yeah, that could be. Yeah, yeah. I like that. Emitting. Well, that was five. So here's six. Three heads and eight arms may be yesterday's time. So we know already, right? We know already three heads and eight arms. He's talking about delusion. The eight or 16-foot body may be today's time. And we already know that every time he says eight or 16-foot body, he's talking about Buddha. He's talking about us. Yet yesterday and today are both in the moment.

[38:19]

when you directly enter the mountains and see thousands of myriad peaks. So he's saying here, when there is no separation, when he says directly enter, whether it's mountains or whether it's directly enter the moment or directly enter any activity that you're doing, there is no separation, no separation between you and time, between you and the activity. Whenever we fully enter an activity, That's what he's saying is realization. Because there's no separation. There's no mind leaping away into whatever your particular favorite hindrance might be. One hundred percent, as Blanche says all the time, one hundred percent wholehearted devotion to each activity. Yesterday's time and today's time do not go away.

[39:22]

Three heads and eight arms move forward as your time being. It looks as if they are far away, but they are here and now. So whatever we think our delusion might have been that we've awoken from, maybe so, maybe not. Maybe it's still here. You know, I'm convinced now, unfortunately, that, you know, our personality is always going to be the same. I'm always going to be the same, you know, slightly peculiar, slightly, you know, dictatorial, as my brother would say. You know, person that I've always been, you know, always. There's some good things, too, you know, and then some things that give people difficulty and sometimes too much energy. And so on and so forth, and I think I'll probably always be that way. I mean, the things that drop away are the things that are, how can I say, it's like the personality is there without the holding to it or without the extra, how can I explain it?

[40:41]

Without the push of the self in it, that's what's gone. But the personality stays. I think that's always going to be there. So you have to get used to it. You have to like it, because there is. There's no sense trying to make peach into an apple. So... 8 or 16 foot body moves forward as your being time and you can't ignore even though it may be that the delusion will always be there like we were saying the other day it's like on each activity are we bound or are we free in each activity in each moment so sometimes it will be a deluded moment and sometimes it will be an illuminated moment but whatever the moment is going to be it's going to be now Don't you think that's funny?

[41:48]

I think that's hilarious. Because, I mean, three-quarters of the time, you have to admit, we're not here. Woody Allen has the funniest line in one of his pictures. He says, reality is really something, something. Reality is really, I forgot if he said wonderful or not wonderful. Anyway, reality is really terrific for people who are actually there for it. Most of us are not. I mean, really. It's a disaster. You know, you take your life in your hand when you get into the car and ride in on the street. Three quarters of people are not there. It's not funny. And then my brother, my brother and I, this is the time when we have the most difficulty is when he's driving. Because he's a businessman. And he does 3,000 things while he's driving.

[42:50]

It drives me up a wall. Because I'm in the car. You're too close. Get off the phone. Stop texting. Let me have the phone. I'll do it for you. No, it's okay. I can drive with my knees. It's the one thing that really makes, I get upset when I see people driving and they're talking on their phone, you know, or the kids, the high school kids, they're texting. There's this horrible thing online.

[43:50]

I don't know if you've ever come across it. I don't know if it's an advertisement or it's a YouTube thing. I love YouTube. And it's about, you know, it's terrible. It shows the last thing that was on the phone of a kid who was texting before they had an accident. Some pretty horrific accidents. You know, like, see you in a minute, or, you know, don't wait for me, or love you, or LOL. and then smash. Don't you guys do that. Don't drive and talk. Don't text. Don't look at the phone. Now they have TVs. Instead of putting the TV in the back, they're putting the TV right next to the driver. Are they kidding? Are they kidding? Human beings are just amazing.

[44:52]

What are we thinking? Okay, never mind. You have to love us. You know, really, you have to love yourself. The hardest thing to do is to admit we're human beings. And we have all of these frailties. You know, we make mistakes. We try our best and we fail over and over again. And there's somebody in the community, Kokai. whose now name is Shinshu, she wanted to be named falls down, gets up. Isn't that a great name? Falls down, gets up. Great name. Eight or 16-foot body moves forward as your time being. It looks as if it is nearby, but it is exactly here. There is no separation. There is no need to get rid of the past. There is no need to fix anything. There is a need only to see clearly until let go.

[45:59]

And the last line is, thus a pine tree is time and bamboo is time. It means, there's a little footnote, it means long life or a long time, but you don't even have to go there. The pine tree itself is time. The bamboo itself is time. You know? Blanche is time. He is time. All of us, each one of us, complete as we are. Nothing missing, nothing lacking at all. We have everything we need to be free. So tomorrow is the third day. Expect bumps, maybe, maybe not. But certainly keep making really the effort that you're making.

[47:06]

Stay present. Continuity of being present. I appreciate your effort. I appreciate your willingness to step into the fire. That's what you are stepping into. If you're having a lovely time, that's okay too. Sometimes that happens. But whatever it is, it's there for the moment. And do not hang on. Do not grab on. Just allow whatever is there to arise. It's here for a moment and gone. and then the next moment complete in itself. Be there for it. Thank you.

[48:09]

Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost 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. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[48:32]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_93.9