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. Good morning. Today is the last day of what we call here in Beginner's Mind Temple. our summer intensive. Maybe we should call it our summer immersion. Zen practice is very much experiential learning. And just like learning a language, the best way to learn it is to be immersed in it. Someone was describing to me recently learning sign language because they've gone deaf.

[01:01]

So they went somewhere where they said, stop thinking. Live in communication with sign, even with yourself. I don't think Zen practice says stop thinking. Ah, how we all wish at times. And it's more Live in presence. And discover. In this process of learning, discover how to learn and pay attention to what it is you're learning. And they both go along together, obviously. The process of learning and what's learned. But before I say more and confuse all that, I want to read a poem by Rilke from Elijah Paul, which is called I'm Too Alone in the World and I'm Not Alone Enough.

[02:09]

I thought that spoke to something many of us feel at times. I'm too alone and why do people keep bothering me? I want to unfold. I don't want to stay folded anywhere. Because where I'm folded, there I am a lie. And I want my grasp of things true before me. I want to describe myself as a painting that I have looked at closely for a long time. Like a saying that I have finally understood. Like a picture I use every day. Like the face of my mother. Like a ship. Like a ship that took me safely through the wildest storm of all. I want to unfold.

[03:13]

I don't want to stay folded anywhere. Because when I'm folded, there I am alive. And I want my grasp of things true before you. Before you. I want to describe myself like a painting that I have looked at closely for a long time, like a saying I have finally understood, like the picture I use every day, like the face of my mother, like a ship that took me safely through the wildest storm of all. It's interesting to immerse yourself in the process of Zen practice. It's a little bit like a beautiful journey and the wildest storm of all.

[04:14]

Often, there's beautiful insights, realizations. moments of expansion indeed sometimes is upwelling gratitude appreciation and then there's also the wildest storm of all somehow now that you're willing to hold still and listen Something inside you says, finally. Do I have something to complain about? Do I have something to say? And what do we say? We say, I hurt. I've had difficulties. And I am still experiencing the consequence of those pains and difficulties.

[05:23]

Somehow this combination of the sweetness and the challenge of it all, it's almost like it turns us inside out. In the process, inevitably, despite yourself, despite the teachings of nothing to gain, nothing to lose, you struggle with the drama of gaining and losing. You know, why do we say nothing to gain, nothing to lose? Because we all get caught up in gaining and losing. Why do we say just be present in the moment, just as it is? Because that's incredibly hard for us to do. Understanding it, well, it's trivial in terms of understanding. Practice, it's profound, utterly profound.

[06:29]

Just be present for what is. to this experiential learning. The process of attending to the innumerable ways we separate, we distract, we resist, we grasp it, hoping it will be more than it is. And in the process, missing what it is. In a practical way, we study not being present and discover being present. And in a moment, I'm going to read Zen Cohen, which is about this process. This intimacy that's asked of us to connect to the moments of connection and failure, to connect... It has both its particularity and its universality.

[07:58]

It has both its precision and its vast incons... It's vast inconceivability. That word just did not want to come out. So then, in addressing this, Zen has crafted its own language, which is a little bit of a stumbling block, and then, in another way, it's a great support. Because within our usual articulation, our usual way of thinking about and describing reality, often we miss the implicit assumptions we're making.

[09:05]

So sometimes the struggle of coming to an understanding and appreciation of a way of describing other than the one we're used to helps shift. Sometimes it helps to reveal the assumptions we make of our definition of reality. So bear in mind, if it first... first hearing you think, what? These people are ready to speak plain English? Nangaku visited Matsu and said, well, what have you been doing? So you've done a three-week intensive. What were you doing? As I think many people will say to the participants of this three-week intensive, when they get back home.

[10:10]

Someone was recounting to me, they've been practicing many years now, and they said, you know, my wife says I'm a little better. And I said, that's high praise. When your wife says you're a little better, you should recognize that. You've heard it from an authority. Tsunangaku asks Matsu, what have you been doing these days? Matsu says, just sitting. Just being present. Just meeting the moment. This request It's so simple to understand and so challenging and perplexing to actualize.

[11:11]

And what's your intention in your sitting? There's something wonderful in being willing to sit. There's something powerful about having come to that place in your life. We're willing to pause and ask, what's going on? And you're willing to listen carefully to the answer. But how? How do you ask what's going on? And how do you become receptive to the answer? How do you direct your attention in a way that noticing becomes evident? How do you open your awareness so that receiving, that hearing becomes evident?

[12:14]

Hafiz says, how do I want to hear? I want to hear like I'm listening to my teacher's cherished last words. So what way of engaging supports that? So this is what Nangaku's asking him about. What's your intention? How do you refine your effort? What is it you think is going to happen or not happen? Matsu says, I intend to become a Buddha. Nangaku picks up a tile, starts to polish it. Matsu falls for the bait and says, what are you doing? And he says, well, I'm polishing a tile. He says, why are you polishing a tile? Well, I'm polishing a tile to make it into a mirror. Well, how can you polish a tile and make it into a mirror?

[13:19]

How can you do zazen and become a Buddha? So, in some ways, simple enough proposition. But when you go down a layer or two, what stimulates our motivation, what stimulates us and inspires us to make an effort? And make no mistake, simple a proposition as being present is, as you get into it, you discover It asks everything you've got. We give attention. And full attention is full giving. We make a wholehearted effort.

[14:22]

And we make a wholehearted effort by giving our whole heart. So as a human being, we're usually effortless. is made in relationship to consequence. It's quite a challenge to make effort that has no deliberate intention of creating a consequence other than presence. So when we drop down the layer, this becomes a more subtle process. But learning how to learn starts to reveal itself. So Master Ma, or Matsu, asks Nangaku, his teacher, says, well then, what do you say? If it seems like I'm still trying to do something, I'm still trying to attain something, what do you say?

[15:24]

And Nangaku says, it's like this. If you want to move forward, Like if you have a horse and cart and you want it to move forward, do you beat the cart or do you beat the horse? And of course, the answer is obvious, sort of. At least in the mind of Zen thinking. Or more particularly, I'm going to quote Dogen Zenji, who seemed to delight. And taking the obvious and the conventional and saying, that's not it at all. The obvious and the conventional? Stay away from that. Turn it upside down. sense we can say the process of practice is plumb the depths of your being.

[16:43]

What's moving you? Notice when you're caught up in some passionate story about your life. What's energizing it? What's underneath? What are the words underneath the words? What's the emotion? What's the intensity that's feeding in that enduring preoccupation? And then in another way, what's the particularity? How does that intensity reach out and take some episode of your life and say, this episode of my life exemplifies what it is that I consider significant, that I hold as important, that I say is relevant, maybe even pivotal, in how my life is being lived, how I want it to be, how I want it not to be.

[17:52]

So plumbing the depths and holding the particular both have their place. So in some ways we can say, Oh, we'll mind our aspiration, our inspiration, our intentionality, how we understand what should happen and what should not happen. These are the prime movers in our world. This is what moves our life along. This is the horse. This is what we work with. But then when Dolan comes to discuss it, he says, this is part of it.

[18:54]

But actually, the horse and the cart go together. Not to get too caught up in the structure of the cart, but the horse brings the cart Yes, there are the depths of our being, but also there's this constant daily challenge to express the life we are in the way it's being lived, to express the life we are in the context of the life we're living. So if we simply came into a three-week intensive, and diligently immersed ourselves in this practice of presence, and then walked back into a wider world which was utterly uninformed or unmoved by that work, by that process.

[20:06]

Wouldn't it be a little, or maybe more than a little, ineffective. So we engage the process. We engage the particular to learn something about how to engage every particular. We learn how to go in and how to reach out. And in the process of Zazen, Despite our diligent efforts to reach in, the world follows us right in there too. The issues of your life come rushing in to visit with every moment you're given the chance. So Dogen Zenji says, working with the cart, discovering how to relate when your life rushes in,

[21:17]

to meet this precious silence, this precious spaciousness you're trying to create. This is where both something about the practice is lived, is turned into the experience that becomes the experiential learning, and this is also somewhere that we learn how to apply the practice, how to apply this beautifully crafted process to the ordinary particulars of a life. So just as looking takes this fundamental notion.

[22:23]

I want to unfold. Because where I fold, I am a lie. Something about the inner workings of this being. Something about how each of us holds back in some way. For all the mysterious and wonderful reasons that we're human and how we're human. How we let something unfold. I want to be true before you. And then he turns it right into the world. Like a picture I use every day. like the face of my mother, like a ship. The balance is found in both the prime mover of our life, our consciousness, our attention, our purposefulness, the capacity to be clear, the capacity

[23:47]

to be present and attentive in the moment. But then how that relates to what arises, how that is fluid, how that's adaptive, how that's spontaneous as needed. So the process of zazen includes both of these. and so when you do something like immerse yourself an intensive it's wonderfully confusion you know it there may be something that happens that you consider a failure it causes some kind of disruption maybe just for yourself nobody no one else notices And then you pause and you notice your own sense of limitation or what you describe as failure and how you relate to it, whether it's with self-criticism, disappointment, discouragement.

[25:05]

And as you do that, you start to see the way you hold the world together and balance it and judge it out in terms of success and failure. And then you notice your own successes, so described by yourself. And they too, as you examine them, unfold and offer a wider teaching. And as you continue the process, And as Rilke says, through the wildest storm of all, as we move through the tumult of a life, an interesting thing happens. It's not so clear to you

[26:15]

And interestingly, it's not so important to you what is success and what is failure. The process of continuing your journey, knowing that in a whole variety of ways it's going to contain success and failure. There's a way in a more usual state of mind we measure the likelihood of success. And if the likelihood of success is low, the willingness to commit is low. The tentative nature of our involvement. And maybe the other side is

[27:18]

when we think the willingness for success is high, we're more enthusiastic. And so where it leaves us is usually it steers us towards our area of competence. You know, there's a wonderful, silly Sufi story where the Sufi master, you know, who's like the fool, is looking under a light for a precious thing he lost. And someone comes along and says, is this where you lost it? And he said, no, but where I lost it, it's dark. Here there's light. If our effort is directed towards our area of competence, because that's what we're good at. All we discover is what we already know.

[28:18]

And yet, it's not easy to turn towards your area of incompetence. The mysterious, disconnected parts of your life. The parts of your life where you're slow on the uptick. You have to listen several times. Could you say that again? Could you say it a different way? And how to develop that kind of attitude in our practice? So in conventional terms, it arises as difficulty. And in conventional terms, difficulty is a bad thing, something to avoid. something to work diligently to overcome, something that's close to the dangerous notion of failure.

[29:23]

But in the realm of practice, the difficulty is where the learning happens. The fumbling, sometimes in Zen we say, not knowing, just searching, feeling in the dark. This is how and where the discovery happens. And so sometimes to be able to take a conventional way of being and turn it upside down has a curious kind of liberation to it. It's like the need to be afraid of failure. The anxiety of the uncertain. The embarrassment or shame of showing our own inadequacies.

[30:32]

They're turned upside down and we find ourselves in this more curious state. happening here in this unknown territory where the sense of me is not so clear where habituated competence doesn't easily carry me forward And from the attunement of Zen practice in its own strange way, this is a blessing. And as you go through an intensive and often, you know, with the wonders of Soto Zen detail, everything has layers of detail that you're being told and forgetting.

[31:46]

this so-called failure comes up all over the place. But where in our lives does it not? Where in our lives are we not facing the unknown? You know, you can be in relationship with someone 30 years, you still don't know them. there are still aspects of them that are a mystery. There are still aspects of yourself that are a mystery. But this turning it inside out or upside down, it relates close to Nangaku's question. Well, what's the point of your sitting?

[32:55]

Is the point of your sitting to exhibit your mastery? Is the point of your sitting to let the world be nothing but your mastery? Or can the point of your sitting be this exploration of the unknown that's constantly unfolding? Can the point of your sitting be that you can learn something about how to hold the tentativeness of exploring what it is to be alive? Exploring that tentativeness with a vibrant curiosity. each of us at this extraordinary moment in our lives. You know, process of discovering who we are and what comes next.

[34:02]

Often aware of shadowy, ominous If we can turn it upside down and open the door wide to failure, open the door wide to uncertainty, something flows. Another poem on unfolding with a totally different flavor. Maybe not totally, but quite a bit. I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding. I'd love to live like a river unfolds, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding. So when you immerse yourself in Zen practice, And it sort of takes you apart.

[35:20]

When you immerse yourself in the person you already are, in the life you're already living, how can it not take you apart? When will it ever just stay according to what you think it is or you wish it would be? When is it not going to be unruly, self-propelling, its own manifestation? So in that state of being, how to hold this human tendency to make predictable. try to draw everything into our area of competence. How to hold it and allow some incompetence.

[36:30]

How to not know. How to discover. This is the request of Zen practice. In some ways, an expression of dysfunction. And that in some ways, maybe the most practical response we can have to an ever-changing world. The most helpful thing we can do in a life that just simply can't be predicted. So Nan Gaku asked Master Ma, and what's the point

[37:50]

So in a way, nobody else can answer that for us. And in a way, every time we sit down to bees as in, that question's in front of us. What's the point? How to bring forth that involvement. That the originality of each moment is realized directly. 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.

[38:51]

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