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. I got a note from somebody yesterday who didn't sign the note, and I think they thought that I would recognize the signature or the topic, which I think I should have. But... I wasn't sure, so I haven't responded. So if somebody gave me a note and they didn't get a response, can they send me another note? And I promise to respond if they sign it. So...

[01:01]

So continuing on, I am sorry that I haven't been able to be with you in the Zendo more. I think I will be able to now in a bit. And I am counting on you guys to keep the silence and keep your effort going and even, you know, when there's just you guys in the Zendal and also around, you know. So please keep making a good effort. And you can check in again with that little poem by Joko Beck, you know, caught in a self-centered dream, only suffering. holding to self-centered thought, exactly the dream.

[02:57]

It's warm. Thank you. This moment, just as it is, the only teacher. Being just this moment, compassion's way. So... This is the third day. Welcome to the third day. So how's it going? Usually it's bumpy. Often for people it's bumpy. Did you get drawn into a drama? You know, were you pushing aside thoughts? Were you having a discussion with your... small mind about staying present? Did your small mind convince you that it's better to be somewhere else?

[03:59]

Just to remind you, it's not over yet. In fact, it's far from over. So don't even begin to think about it. But this third day that you're still in, is a very important day. It's a kind of a tipping day. For some people, not for everybody. Everybody has their own time. Everybody has their own journey. There is no good and bad in any of this. There's no comparison mind. I spent six years with comparison mind seeking and struggling for enlightenment. And let me tell you, it was a waste of time. Well, you know, not a waste of time. I had to do that. So if some of you were doing that, fine, go for it. You know, I had to do it for six years.

[05:09]

I am so stubborn. Just like my father. Yeah. But it might be that you might be having some quiet moments, some moments where the chattering mind has given up. You've kind of convinced it that you want to be present, and it's let you do that. And this quiet time is kind of interesting. There's a moment, or it could be a long, long moment even in practice when you no longer are buying into your old belief systems, your old patterns, mental patterns, your own old shoulds, you know, or...

[06:21]

And you begin not acting from those. There's enough mindfulness, there's enough presence of mind that you're no longer reactive from those old patterns. Or at least anyway, they're weaker. And it's very interesting when that happens because there's a kind of a gap, a kind of a groundlessness appears. That's there all the time. But both mentally and behaviorally, there's this kind of strange kind of nowhere place. You're kind of nowhere. You're not doing behaviors that you learned when you were a teenager or a young adult even anymore, but there's no behavior to fill that gap, to fill that pattern. And this is a really kind of a good place.

[07:27]

It's a very good place. But it's uncomfortable. And if you're kind of noticing that kind of place, then I would suggest that you're very patient at those moments. And don't fill in behavior. Don't make up behavior to do. Just wait patiently and see who you're going to be. Because what's happening is little parts of yourself are dying away. Withering, withering. And there's no new shoot to take its place, which is a good thing. And so just wait in that uncomfortable kind of no-person's-land, groundless kind of place and see how the environment and you create a behavior, create a response. So the fourth day can be, can have moments like that, can have these gaps, can have these times when your old patterns, your old ways of thinking, your old thought patterns have really quieted down and there's a kind of a stabilizing clarity, kind of an empty groundedness that's kind of

[09:02]

kind of just there. And you can stabilize that place. You can stabilize that kind of nothingness. And what you can do is you can look at what arises and then turn the mind to look at what knows what is arising. So that's kind of like Dogen's turn the light inward. So that's what you're doing. Instead of looking out or looking at objects and paying attention to objects or content, you're turning the mind around. It's interesting. You're turning the attention around to look at attention. You're turning knowing around to look at knowing. And when you look there, as I said before, when you look there, what you see is, of course, nothing.

[10:07]

And so like I said before, don't, you know, speed past this nothing because it's actually what it is you're looking at is what you're looking for. And this nothing is what is paying attention. It's not you. You don't have to claim it. But it is there, and it is what we are in the deepest way. So to know that and to rest there is to stabilize, is to remind the mind of its nature. So you're not cultivating anything. You're not acquiring anything. You're not accomplishing anything. You're not creating anything. This isn't anything that anybody can give you. You don't have to cultivate it even. You just have to notice the noticing, which is what you're going to do day four.

[11:26]

Because now, presumably, your mind is maybe, for some people, wasn't that way for me for years. As a matter of fact, tangent, as a matter of fact, you know, I sat session after session after session. And at the end of session, a lot of people, you know, have a lot of energy. You get a lot of energy. You know, when the energy isn't taken up by your chattering mind, which is exhausting, when it's not... So, what was I saying?

[13:09]

Oh, thanks. It's at the end of Sashin. All right. So at the end of Sashin, Chattering Mind, if Chattering Mind isn't happening... If chattering mind isn't happening, then it's not a lot of waste of energy. And that energy, you know, often people are, at the end of the session, they're happy and hubba, hubba, hubba. Meeting people is very energetic and it's nice. It's really nice. For years, I was a failure.

[14:19]

I didn't want to talk to anybody. I was so far, you know, so fast out the door and feeling horrible. Just felt horrible for years after Sashim because I was doing this comparison mind. I was supposed to get something. It was actually set up that way. So what I'm trying to do is not set it up that way for anybody who is like me. Because that's the truth. There's nothing to get. There's just something to relax into and notice. Just notice the noticing. And that stabilizes that clarity. So when you get up from the cushion and you do soji or you do kitchen work or you do cleaning or chidening or anything around the temple, you can take that stability with you, that clarity of mind or that gap or that silence.

[15:46]

It's actually silence. And you come from, you do behavior from that silence. And if that isn't the case for you, like it wasn't for me for years and years and years, then what you do is you develop patience and you work on compassion for the one who thinks of themselves as a total failure. That was me. How can you fail at life, you know, when you think about it? This is all about just that we're life, right? How can you fail at life? It's like a non sequitur. Is that a non sequitur? No. Okay. It's an oxymoron. Anyway, so that...

[16:52]

for some people might be uncomfortable, might feel a little groundless, might feel whatever it is. It might feel nice, too. It is our refuge. It is our home. It is our birthright. It is human. It's human. It's the gift of what being human is. It was about, you know, we did this morning the refuges, the refuges, which I haven't done that ceremony in that way for decades, I think. Fifteen years, maybe. At least twelve. Like that. So I didn't know what to do. It was the neatest feeling. Loved it. So I'm standing in the back and think, this is how to do life. This is what category taught me. Standing in the back, I don't have a clue what to do. Not a clue.

[17:53]

But everybody is doing it together, right? So it was time for something to happen. Something was supposed to happen, and nobody else was doing anything. So I thought, it must be me. It must be time to do something. There are usually only two things to do in a ceremony. You either offer incense or you bow. So I thought, okay, let's see. I'll try offering incense. Okay. So sure enough, this is the greatest thing, you know, it's like a dance. I go up and I offer incense and sure enough, you know, bells ring and all of this other stuff starts happening, you know. So I go, okay, that worked, let's go. Let's see what the next thing's going to be. And then we got to the vows, the Bodhisattva vows, you know. And I'd forgotten how wonderful our way is, you know, our path, our... Sota Zen way of doing things.

[18:56]

And there it all was, you know, taking refuge in the deepest part of ourselves, you know, respecting the Dharma with other people, remembering our deepest yearning to really live connected with all beings. doing good, not doing bad, living for the benefit of all people, acknowledging our twisted karma, entering every Dharma gate, vowing to free all being. I mean, it's amazing. And it's good that it's impossible.

[20:02]

It's good because it's a lifetime you can relax. We just keep doing the best we can. And it's a lifetime journey. So it's good to be reminded of our inmost yearning for the best we can be. I wanted to do seven and eight today of Dogen. So, seven. Do not think that time merely flies away. Do not see flying away as the only function of time. time merely flies away, you would be separated from time.

[21:09]

The reason you do not clearly understand the time being is that you think of time only as passing. So here again he's talking like we were talking about Newton. Newton? All of a sudden the image of Fig Newton popped in my mind and I wondered if that was really his name. His name is Newton? I hold him in such respect, and now I'm going to always think of him. Okay. So the thing here, what he's saying, Dogen is saying here, is that if we think that time is this flowing thing, which we do, and Dogen acknowledges it, Then again, we're falling into the mistake of thinking that time is separate from us and not understanding that we are time, time being.

[22:13]

And that there's a gap between us and time. And we think it's not who we are. So we not only misunderstand time, but we misunderstand what he is saying we are. And then he says this really neat thing. He says, in essence, all things in the entire world are linked with one another as moments because all moments are the time being. They are your time being. And what he's saying here is that everything is connected. All time and all being are connected. All moments are connected. All beings are connected. And so I was reminded of this. I don't really understand science very much, but every so often something happens in science that I really kind of enjoy, even though I think I probably don't understand it, but I like the concept.

[23:20]

So there's this concept in physics called entanglement. Do you know this? Entanglement? Do you? Oh, okay. This is just the neatest thing. This is how connected everything is. This is... I'll share with you. Entangle means that there are two particles. And the two particles relate to each other as if they were like a seesaw. So if one particle is down, the other particle goes up. The other particle, one particle goes down, the other particle goes up. Or if one particle is spinning to the left, the other particle will spin toward the right. And when this happens as a system, it's called entanglement. Now, that's not hard to understand. Here's the neat part. Somehow or another, these little particles tell each other what the other one is supposed to do.

[24:22]

So somehow, if this particle is going down, the other particle knows it's supposed to go up. but they don't communicate. There's no way that we know that they're actually communicating. And not only do we not understand how they communicate, but they communicate over millions of miles apart. That isn't thrilling? You don't think that's extraordinary? It blows your mind, Rick? How in the world are these two particles, millions of miles apart, this one is going right spin, and as soon as it starts spinning right, this one over here is going to start spinning left? How does that happen? How is it that Buddhism can say that if you blow a soap bubble, a butterfly lands on a flower in India?

[25:25]

That's Buddhism. It's somehow or another, it's that interconnected. Einstein said he didn't believe it. He called entanglement spooky action at a distance. He didn't believe it, but it's true. This other guy, John Bell, proved it with his theorem that entanglement is real and actually happens to tiny particles. That doesn't give you pause. I love it. So I wanted to take a moment here to talk about a friend of mine. I had a relationship with a Native American. He was a combination Pawnee and Osage a long time ago when I was in my 20s. And I learned a lot from him.

[26:28]

And mostly what I learned from him is how connected he was with the earth. There was never a time when he didn't... wasn't grounded in his connection with the earth. So, for example, one night I invited him over for a Sabbath dinner. And, you know, I wanted it to be really nice and stuff like that, and I prepared a lot for it, and I bought a really expensive bottle of wine. And... It was time to open it, and he was over, and so I opened it, and I poured, you know, two glasses of wine. It's really nice. And then he said, wait a minute, and he took one of the glasses. He would do this all the time, this kind of thing. He took one of the glasses, and he went outside, and he did something, and he came back. The glass was empty. This is an expensive bottle of wine. So I asked him, what did you do?

[27:31]

You know, what did you do? And he said, well, I went outside and I returned the wine to the earth. He said, the best, the first and the best to the earth. Okay. And he did that, you know, a lot. Like, you know, if we went camping or something like that, he would always do that. He would take a piece of venison or whatever, you know, eating. But then I hadn't by that time gotten used to it, you know, and he would give it away. out of respect, out of gratitude. And I think, you know, I don't think, I'm pretty sure I know, I think that our culture has lost that sense of connectedness to our own detriment, to the detriment of other species as well.

[28:33]

So I wanted to read two things from Native American people. One is from Massasoit, who was the chief of the tribe that first met when Europeans came to the United States. They were the tribe that did Thanksgiving. And of course, by the time he died, he felt that it was a big mistake what he had, how he related to the, basically how they saved the Europeans. Because by that time, his culture was already at risk And this is what he wrote. A few sentences. What is this you call property? It cannot be the earth, for the land is our mother, nourishing all her children, beasts, birds, fish, and all people. The woods, the streams, everything on it belongs to everybody and is for the use of all.

[29:38]

how can one person say it belongs only to them? And then this is from Luther Standing Bear. They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one. They promised to take the land and they took it. It was not hard to see that the white people coveted every inch of land on which we lived. It was greed. Humans wanted the last bit of ground which supported Indian feet. It was land. It has never been land. It has ever been land for which the white man oppresses the Indian and to gain possession of which he commits any crime. Treaties that have been made are vain attempts to save a little of the fatherland. Treaties holy to us by the smoke of the pipe, but nothing is holy to the white man.

[30:44]

Little by little, with greed and cruelty unsurpassed by the animal, he has taken all. The loaf is gone, and now the white man wants the crumbs. Nobody talks much about the Native Americans who are still here. Nobody talks much about what we did to them, what we've done to so many people in the United States. I think we would be a healthier country if we admitted our history because it is only by seeing the truth of our suffering individually and communally that we can be free of it.

[31:47]

So we don't have to feel guilty, but we do have to be responsible. We don't have to feel burdened, but we do have to acknowledge. We have to apologize. Something. We have to hear, like, for example, the Oglala Sioux, whose religious spiritual home are the Black Hills in, I think it's North Dakota, South Dakota. United States wants to pay them some billions of dollars to make up for taking their land when there was gold found in the hills. And the Oglala Sioux are not a wealthy tribe. They don't do a lot of casinos and stuff like that. They're not wealthy. They won't take the money. They want the land back. We should give them the land back.

[32:54]

It's their heart. We should listen to what they say is what would be healing, not what we think. It's in the same way when we have a relationship with someone and we've been hurt. We've hurt someone or we've been hurt. It's very difficult to heal that hurt all by yourself. It's totally possible. But it's much more difficult to work through that pain on your own. But if the other person is willing to just hear your pain, it goes miles, miles for you to process and heal that hurt. It just takes a willingness to be open to somebody else's suffering without feeling threatened by it or blamed by it or anything like that. Just acknowledge, I hurt somebody. I was hurt by somebody.

[33:59]

We do that. We're human. Eight. The time being has the quality of flowing. So-called today flows into tomorrow. Today flows into yesterday. Yesterday flows into today. Today flows into today. Tomorrow flows into tomorrow. This is very Dogen. What I noticed was that this word flow, flowing, is... different in different translations. Some translations say continuity, some say passing, sometimes flow, sometimes flowing, sometimes quality of flowing, like in this case. So I think what's happening here is that Dogen, I'll read the rest of it, and then I'll say, because flowing is a quality of time, moments of past and present do not overlap or line up side by side.

[35:14]

Ching Wan is time. Huang Bo is time. Shan Ji is time. Shi Tu is time. Because self and other are already time. Practice enlightenment is time. Being splattered with mud and getting wet with water is also time. So I think what he's saying here is he's acknowledging both apparent flow. I think that's what he's saying. He's admitting in conventional world, the way we conventionally understand and experience... That's not true. The way we think we experience time conventionally is that it flows. The way we actually experience time is only in the present moment. So he's acknowledging both, that apparently there is this quality of flowing. It seems like it's flowing. But actually, all time is all intermingled with what we think of as time and is only this present.

[36:22]

So that these people who are not exactly in our lineage, but they certainly are Zen people. Their practice realization is exactly the same as our practice realization. And their practice realization and our practice realization is happening now. Only now. Even though apparently we think that their practice realization happened in the past, and our practice realization maybe is going to happen in the future, that's not what he's saying. He's actually saying that their practice realization and our practice realization is now. So... In the Flower Ornament Sutra, the Buddha speaks of time in this way. If you really are noticing time, if you're thinking about time and you read Buddhist stuff, it pops up all over the place.

[37:27]

So it popped up in the Flower Ornament Sutra, which is this great sutra that you just read because it's kind of a neat experience just to read it. You just read it. I don't want to... You read it because it has, like, lists of these fabulous florid names and things. I mean, a page or two of just... You're just reading names. Your mind just totally shuts off because you can't... There's nothing to understand. It's just like you're just reading these... Anyway, read it. It's really neat. It's like an experience of dropping off your mind. This is great. It's really neat. Anyway, okay. So it says in it, this is a quote, All times penetrate our time. One time penetrates all times. Past, present, and future. In one second, you can find the past, the present, and the future.

[38:33]

So, conventionally, there is self and other. There is practice realization. But it's the deepest level. There isn't. Time doesn't come from anywhere. Time is not going anywhere. Time is only this being life now. So I'm going to read this. Dogen and physics and the Flower Ornament Sutra are trying to loosen our grip, uncurl our tight little fingers around thought. Time is just a word. It doesn't point to a thing. So we can let go into life, our life, personally, as it's happening now.

[39:39]

Remember, like I was talking about the other day, there is no difference, I think, between means and ends. I think that's what Dogen is saying. I know that's what Dogen is saying. There doesn't have to be a sense of tightness, constriction around the heart. There could be in this gap that you're experiencing at the end of your breath, or when your chattering mind has quieted, this openness, openness of heart, willing to be hurt, willing to suffer your own and other people's pain. It comes with a flexible mind, willing to give up ideas, willing to give up assumptions, willing to give up shoulds, willing to give up our ideas about how things need to be to make us happy.

[40:53]

It's a kind of a stripping away. We make our identity with holding to thought. That's how we create an identity. So as we loosen our hold, this gap can appear. It isn't fancy. Our way doesn't promise anything. It's just ordinary, as Katigari said. I think I said this yesterday. It's just day to day, days to days, he said. Just ordinary and intimate with what we are. This activity, then this activity. It could surprise you. It did me this morning. It's a fun way to live. Not knowing. They say not knowing is nearest.

[41:56]

What would that be like? Not to know what you're going to do next. Just open. Like a kid. Full of wonder. Here's another poem. It's called The Water Cycle by David White. It's another poem about time, or now. Once I looked down, I saw a puddle on the ground. It ran around and around, then it disappeared. It made me frown. Enough, enough. These few words are enough. If not these words, this breath. if not this breath, this sitting here, this opening to life, the life we have refused again and again until now, until now.

[43:01]

So, tomorrow Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in from day to day. What is it? Shakespeare. I should get that poem. Creeps in this something something from day to day. Is that in The Tempest? Should I bring that? I should find that. That's about time. Shakespeare. Why not? So tomorrow is an interesting day for you guys. It's nowhere close to the end. Don't even think about it. Oh no. And it could be a day if you made effort today and didn't, you know, engage the chattering mind.

[44:11]

Every now and then there might be some quiet. Your mind might settle itself on itself. It might notice its noticing. There's nothing happening. So I guess we're done. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[45:17]

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 Domo.

[45:37]

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