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. So we're in the middle of sushi. before the start is beginning to fade, and hopefully after the end hasn't started to assert its allure. So this place of being in the middle, where we always are, we're always in the middle of what?

[01:02]

Our life? the circumstances of the moment. Often we're in the middle of some involvement that we've put a lot into co-creating. in the middle. Letting Shashin be Shashin. Not what's come after or what was before or before what's after. And then more particularly as we continue, pause

[02:04]

Notice experience. Can something be allowed to soak in that experiencing? Something be allowed to register? Can the moment, can the experience start to define itself rather than be held in relationship to something else? This is the teaching of don't know. When we know in relationship to something else. In experiential learning, we experience what the moment is. And we learn so much, but it's not because of cognitively what we know.

[03:08]

And in the language of the Dharma, we talk about opening the Dharma eye. What's happening in the moment is seen, is experienced, teaches the Dharma, teaches the truth of what is. Sometimes it's the truth of conditioned self. We get... clarity around a particular state that we're in. We get a clarity around, oh, that person said that, that stirred up this in me, that got reinforced by this idea and that emotion, and I've carried that with me for the last 40 minutes. express itself in behavior, or did it just express itself in an abiding emotion or perspective?

[04:32]

As our dharma eye starts to open, certain clarity, and each thing, each arising, positive, negative, pleasant, unpleasant, offers itself as a teaching. And as each thing offers itself as a teaching, how the practice starts to appear. We stay with the basics. They don't change. Connect to the body, connect to the breath, notice the mental disposition, don't get carried away or struggle with... what arises in the realm of thinking and feeling. But as we start to settle, as the Dharma eye, as that kind of clarity starts to develop, as you sit down, noticing the more subtle details of posture.

[05:47]

Noticing the inclination of attention, the alignment with presence, what it is to open up to the signs and the sights, how they make something more available. We can start to notice these more subtle workings of practice. We can start to taste it starts to become palpable, experiential. What it is to abide, to abide in the experience of the moment. It's about non-doing. It's about being. As we experience it,

[06:59]

something is taught, something is learned. And the need to have opinions and ideas about it is somewhat muted, or maybe completely given up. And we start to literally get a feel for that way of being. The Dharma eye starts to open and it's supported. It's made evident and makes evident through experience. This is what Wayne Eng is getting at.

[08:02]

when he asked Ngaku, do you rely on practice and experiencing? Can that be the theme of your life? Can you rely on that more than you rely on the ideas and the memories and the stories and the judgments, the preoccupations? So now as we're in the middle, can that question become a guide as to how to relate? Can you rely on practice and experience? Can it be primary? Can some sense of...

[09:04]

what should happen, what should not happen, become secondary. It's so easy, even in Shishin, to stay busy. To have some fixed notion, good practice is this. Letting that define the moment. Am I doing it? Am I not doing it? And the self-referencing is being sustained. And some fixed judgment, some fixed way of being is being sustained. And to pause. Recalibrate.

[10:12]

What's happening now? And as we continue and continue and continue, something about opening to that is being learned. Even when we don't open. Even when there's such a degree of unsettledness, something about the moment seems separate. There's so much distractiveness. You know, as we sit to Sheen, most likely, there's going to be all sorts of states of mind and emotion, settled and unsettled, clear and obscure. Sometimes the unclear is a marvelous teacher.

[11:21]

You're sitting there, your body's tired, your mind is tired, you can't even remember what you're supposed to be doing. Or not doing. something in that not knowing. And it seems so dense, so authoritative in its influence. And then the bell rings and you stand up and you're back in this world. Simple, direct. The zendo, the floor, your body. How amazing consciousness always changing, always subject to causes and conditions.

[12:25]

How amazing that sitting down would engender such a particular state of being and then standing up would dispel it. How amazing that we can get caught up in thoughts and feelings And then drop. And what do we rely on? The thoughts, the feelings, the convictions, the judgments, the preferences. Or the clarity of noticing experiencing and letting that experience teach directly.

[13:29]

And then Gaku answers, even though practice influences experience even though practice and experience reveal the Dharma I show what is what is is always there it's not simply the product of practice and experiencing it's always there So to let this guide our effort, to let these subtle details start to become apparent. Our moments of clarity, our moments of concentration, they teach us the mind, breath, body of connection.

[14:52]

of being non-separate. And as we let them register, the subtle details of them become more apparent. So, as we enter the middle of Shashin, to let this be so, As the mind has its moments of less activity. As the silence in between batches of traffic becomes more palpable. To let something register.

[15:58]

Let it teach. Let it teach the more subtle details of how to practice. Let it teach what is that shift from relying upon the karmic constructs of my conditioned life and relying upon the Dharma. And what is that shift? What is that non-doing, that non-knowing that allows that and expresses that? This is what Hui Ning is asking about. For each of us to ask too. What is that state of being? What is it to find your posture from the inside out?

[17:19]

What is it to find your posture from remembering those moments of connection to body, those moments of embodiment, or some connectedness headed something like Tingling of energy. Something like some sense of inner space. Some sense that rather than your mind holding your body in place with its determination, the vitality of being held itself in place. And as you start to sit, what is it to tune into that? And what is it to let the body breathe?

[18:24]

What is it to allow the breath in a way that trusts life to flow? That allows the inhale. That accepts and receives whatever's coming up. And allows the exhale. doesn't grasp, lets it be what it is, experience just as it is, and pass away as everything passes away. And to come back to that sutra, come back to that inquiry, breath after breath. Something very steady, something very deliberate.

[19:30]

Something that just stays in the middle and doesn't have anywhere to go. Doesn't have a destination. Something that's immersed. to rely on that. To notice that maybe the way of relating gets too tight or gets too loose. Gets too tight becomes some issue of control. Too loose, the mind just sort of sinks into a drowsiness. So studying the Dharma from the inside out.

[20:38]

Discovering Zazen from the inside out. Letting a deliberateness become palpable. Noticing the difference between walking down the hall somewhat present and somewhat not present. And walking down the hall, just walking, and by coincidence, arriving somewhere. But in the walking, just walking. Not letting the mind go ahead of the body. these subtler details of the practice. As we settle into Sushin, now we can start to access them, look at them, be taught by them.

[21:45]

And then in contrast, when we're in the grips of our usual formations of the self, they stand out more evidently you know we can see how our habit habitual formations assert their authority what happens when they assert their authority maybe you can see how you relate to other members of your serving crew or cleaning crew or the person sitting beside you or across from you. Somehow they take on some archetypical role. As you reenact a piece of theater your life has taught you to play.

[22:55]

This is my friend. This is my enemy. This is how I'm not acknowledged. This is how I am mistreated. And this is who I am when I'm mistreated. With the Dharma I, all this is a teaching. Sometimes what arises out of all of this has a thread that flows back As we see, that feeling has occurred so many times in our past. That we can become more appreciative of how that is a pattern of what we do. So not to hold our practice with some

[24:07]

pure aspiration that will all be this kind of spacious, deliberate dwelling in non-doing. Now, as I was saying before, no matter what turns up, yes, this is what's happening now. Even that obscurity Your body's swirling, your breath's swirling, your mind's swirling. And as we start to pay attention, even when our mind is not so settled, something of dwelling can become apparent. we can start to notice that each moment is an offering for deep connection.

[25:12]

The same way as when we can start to connect to the breath, we can see each inhale, each exhale, each pause between the inhale and the exhale. There is an opportunity for connection. Within connection, there's an opportunity for abiding. abiding connecting and abiding this relying on presence rather than the karmic formations of our life and then we can also see the way we rely upon the karmic formations the way we rely upon what we want and what we want to avoid the way we can plug forward what we worry about, what agitates us, what we really wish would happen or would not happen.

[26:26]

We can study What is it to rely upon? The Dharma. The practice. We can study relying upon the karma. And as we do this, something starts to clarify. As Dogen Zenji says, Not so much that it's something in the realm of cognition. You figure something out. More that something in your bones starts to learn how to be what it already is. Something remembers. So Mary Oliver's poem, Remembering, Even now, I remember something.

[27:47]

The way a flower in a jar of water remembers its life in a perfect garden. Maybe this is an instruction on how to sit. Sit like a flower in a jar of water, rather than some iron rod forged to an iron plate. The way a flower in a jar of water remembers its life as a closed seed. It's open or closed. The answer to both is yes. The Dharma sees the karma.

[28:53]

The karma exemplifies the teachings of the Dharma. Interdependent. The way a flower in a jar of water steadies itself, remembering itself. As we settle, we're less caught up in the content and more of the process of being, the process of... Right now, the mind is quite distracted. And that reflects in the capacity to pay attention. That reflects in the mobility of my emotions. That reflects in my physical disposition. In discovering something about pausing, about letting the breath alleviate, letting the breath make more spacious, letting the breath come down and help something to settle.

[30:12]

As Prajnatara says, this is the Sutra. I study thousands and thousands of times with each breath. The way a flower in a jar of water steadies itself, remembering itself. Long ago, the plunging roots, the gravel, the rain, the glossy stem, the wings of leaves, the swords of leaves, rising and clashing for the rose of the sun, the salt of the stars, the crown of the wind, the bed of the clouds, the blue dream. As we settle, Experiencing how dynamic, how interactive, how unceasingly variable each flow of existence is.

[31:31]

In contrast to how determinedly we fix it in a certain way. So this practice realization is not about determinedly conjuring up the state of mind, the state of body, the pristine state of consciousness. It's just noticing. Just allowing awareness. It's just a willingness to be part of. And in that willingness, something appears, something arises that's always been there.

[32:42]

And the Dharma eye, to see it just as it is, arises. Dogen Zenji says, this is the transmission that all the teachers have transmitted. The Dharma eye sees the Dharma. Just a poetic expression to say that in that settledness, in that openness, what's happening becomes evident. and it has its roots in the whole of our life as we taste and experience that emotion that emotion of being mistreated and experience how it connects like a thread through our history how we've experienced and rehearsed and practiced mistreatment if that's

[33:54]

one of our chosen threads and brought it to this moment to this interaction and right in that moment something can open like a flower in a jar of water something can remember to just be, to allow this just to be itself. Yes, we're in the middle of being alive, but this is just exactly itself. Yes, we're in the middle of walking down the hall, but we're just walking down the hall, being nobody, going nowhere. And in that moment,

[34:56]

Everything is alive. The body is alive. The sights are alive. The signs are alive. They're not held in the shadow as just mental notions. They're palpable, they're direct experience. And they speak of being alive. They speak of long ago, the plunging roots of being alive. The earth and the rain, the gravel, the rain, the glossy stem, the wings of the leaves, the swords of the leaves, rising and clashing for the rose of the sun, the salt of the stars, the crine of the wind. that we're in the center of an interconnected existence.

[36:12]

The crown of the wind, the badge of the stars, the blue dream, the unbreakable circle. This moment precedes the previous one, follows the previous one and precedes the next one. Just flows. Whether we were aware or not. So, the moment becomes apparent. the self becomes apparent. And in the language of Buddhism, the marks of shunyadha start to become apparent.

[37:13]

Everything's dynamic. Everything's interactive. Nothing has independent existence. And as it says in the Prajnaparamita Sutra, when everything When it becomes apparent in this way, there's nothing to fear. And the mind is no hindrance. It just does what it does. Doesn't mean it's neutral. Sometimes it's neutral, most of the time it's not. As we find this kind of roots, the capacity to trust this life, to be this life, to entrust this life, to practice realization, the necessity of fearing it starts to fall away.

[38:32]

the Dharma eye sees what is. Thank you. 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.

[39:18]

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