This podcast is offered by San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. And for those of you who are here for the first time, welcome to Beginner's Mind Zen Temple. As many of us know only too well, because we're part of it, this past week, ending today, we've been having a seven-day meditation immersion. I asked myself, how would I describe that process? So here's the answer I came up with. create an environment that's contrived to help the participants drop down.

[01:10]

Drop down into more existential substrata. To drop below the usual preoccupations and concerns of life. And drop down into a substrata where the existential passions that are constantly bubbling away and enthralling and influencing what we're doing. So to drop down into that and to experience it as fully as possible through Engaging the particulars of the self, the thoughts, the feelings, the physical sensations, the responses, the reactions. To engage the personal so personally that you stop taking it personally.

[02:19]

When we take it personally, it's like, what's in it for me? Why are people doing this to me? There's some great separation. When we immerse in the personal, we realize that this life is an interplay. That we are adding the adjectives. That's our prerogative. This is a nice day. This is an unfriendly person. We're just reflecting the experience we're having. To see that and discover the self, discover the human condition, and on a good day, discover the nature of existence. And then Zen, in its own sweet way, has a strategy for this process.

[03:46]

And all sorts of ways of describing that and representing it. So the way I represented it this week was three gates. That you pass through three gates. The first gate is you bring sincere intention, wholehearted engagement. The second gate, being willing to experience what happens. Just say yes to everything. The third gate, stay in the middle. Stay connected to what's going on. And of course, together they create an initiation.

[04:53]

And from the process, from the perspective of the process of Zen, this is a classic way. In Zen literature over the last 1,200 years, this image has been presented and described and turned into poetry and paintings and all sorts of things. But it's also utterly and completely applicable to entering into the activity of self. Entering into the circumstances of our life. Entering into the dynamics of our relationships. Entering into our society, our world. And this is a common theme in Zen. The particular and the universal inform each other.

[05:58]

And I would like to read part of a poem, if I can find what I did with it. And it's a poem by Pablo Neruda. Pablo Neruda used the imagery of the sea a great deal. He used it as... an expression, as an example of the sea of life, something like that, this ever-changing dynamic that we're all involved in. I need the sea because it teaches me. I don't know if I learn music or awareness or or if it's a single wave or vast existence, or only its harsh voice and its shining suggestions.

[07:12]

The fact is that until I fall asleep in some magnetic way, I move in the university of the waves. As we enter in, as we become utterly involved in the intrigue of our life, it teaches us. It's a university. And then towards the end of the poem, I'm going to skip the middle. He says, there's a quiet power there. as a stone shrine in the depths. Replacing my world in which were growing stubborn sorrow, gathering oblivion.

[08:19]

And my life changed suddenly as I became part of its pure movement. And here's how 13th century Zen teacher talks about exactly the same thing. This way of being utterly involved and in that involvement something's revealed. The wholehearted endeavor of the way I'm speaking of allows all things to exist in realization. so that they may practice going beyond on the path of letting go, passing through the barrier of dualism, dropping off limitations in this way.

[09:28]

How could you be hindered by concepts and understandings? So this is the proposition. About 60 of us have devoted a week to. And then that proposition within the Zen teaching has rules of the road. The first rule of the road. Stay grounded. Stay present. Stay in real time. The second rule of the road, continuous effort. Keep coming back.

[10:31]

When you enter the dusty realms of what enthralls you, what enchants you, bitter and sweet, come back. and also bring them with you. As Dogen Zenji goes on from his basic proposition, and this is really the intrigue of Zen practice, is to stay present and discover, as I say, that the personal includes the universal. To stay present and let that presence include everything that can arise in a human life. And to discover a shift in consciousness, a shift in how we relate to it.

[11:42]

It's like the poetic expression is not trying to make a dogmatic statement. It's simply trying to allude to a way of appreciating some aspect of existence. And in the language of Zen, we call this non-grasping. We call this not knowing. So this is the third rule of the road. Stay grounded, continuous effort, and don't turn it all into ideas and judgments. I heard the Dalai Lama talk about this once, and he said, it's like being a tourist.

[12:50]

You know, when you're a tourist, you go somewhere and you appreciate what happens there. You don't spend your time judging it, trying to fix it. You just appreciate it for what it is. This kind of approach. And then within that framework, how? How do you do that? How do you stay grounded? And within the yoga of Zen, and in a large way the yoga of many schools of Buddhism, the body, the breath, and attending to the particulars that arise in the mind. Attending to them more as a process than... Trying to figure out the content.

[13:51]

Attempting to discover that in a way we embody our life. Our feelings become part of our body. Our breath reflects our emotional life. It reflects our sense of ease or dis-ease. And the process with which we apprehend experience shapes the experience. So the more we see the process, the more the experience that's manifest makes sense to us. When you're depressed, you see a depressing world.

[15:00]

When you're feeling assailed by the difficulties of life, you see a silence. And as you see them, The marvelous thing about awareness is that the very activity of seeing, of being aware, alludes to, makes possible something more than that particular way of experiencing. Right now, I'm experiencing like this. As we have that experience, something more is alluded to. Something like, this is a way to experience. This is this moment's experience. Others could be having a different experience. And this is how we start to open up to the universal.

[16:07]

And if this whole process was just... intellectual. We'd probably get through it in about 30 minutes. But fortunately and unfortunately, it's experiential. And in an experiential process, we're obliged, most of us, some people have an extraordinary gift. Somewhere in the sutras and in the Zen stories, there are stories of the guy who comes, asks a question, teacher answers, and he says, got it. I'm out of here. And even in the early sutras, there's a similar story. There's a famous mendicant who come,

[17:19]

asked Shakyamuna Buddha a question. Shakyamuna gives him a full, complete answer, and he has a full, complete realization. So that's the rare few. The rest of us, lessons will be repeated until learned. And as we step back like this and just look at the process, our sense of reassurance, our sense of lightness, our sense of humor. But when we're in the midst of it, those murky waters hold within them the tragedies, the tribulations, the anxieties of

[18:30]

human life trying to thrive, trying to survive, trying to avoid ominous dangers that it doesn't quite know what it is. And so within the inner workings cultivating a groundedness, a stability, and an uprightness, a fortitude, a courage. That even though this human life, with all its projections, anticipations, and insistent recollections, that to a large degree reflect the workings of our makeup.

[19:34]

Still, those constructs are challenging, difficult, and painful. So in a way, as we enter into the journey, as we enter into the heart of being, it's formidable. If you just ask anyone who's been in this machine, Maybe they couldn't turn the intensity, the constriction, the ungrounded motion into words. But it was there. And that's why we need the rules of the road. Stay grounded. Keep coming back. and don't have a fixed idea about what should be happening and what should not be happening.

[20:45]

So Dogen Zenji goes on about this process and he says, receptive samadhi is its mark. Being open and receptive. Implicit in that is The samadhi means continuous contact, continually making contact with what's happening. Receptive, being available, being open to, being willing to experience, acknowledge. And the natural complement of receptive is attentive. pay attention. More particularly, we give attention to the moment. We give attention to the particular as it arises.

[21:50]

And we receive whatever the heck we receive. Receptive attention is its mark, is its characteristic. only Buddhas transmitted to Buddhas without veering off. We are constantly intrigued, enthralled by what arises. Because it symbolizes the very passion of our life. So the process of Zazen is not to purify the experience into some serenity, some exquisite light, but to open up with awareness to the human condition.

[23:00]

And as Pablo Neruda says, Let it be your university. Let it show you all the ways you think and feel and imagine and remember and anticipate. And receptive attention is its mark. sitting upright, grounded and courageous, practicing Zen. Maybe the word Zen is redundant. Practicing is the authentic gate to free yourself in the unconfined realm of this samadhi. Here's how Pablo Neruda says the same thing.

[24:17]

At least that's what I'm saying. Some might tongue-in-cheek, some might not. You know, this isn't the exclusive territory of Zen. This is the human condition. Here, I come to the very edge where nothing at all needs saying. Everything is absorbed through weather and the sea. And the moon swam back, its rays all silvered. And time and again, the darkness would be broken by the crash of a wave.

[25:18]

And every day, on the balcony of the sea, wings opened. Fire is born. Everything is blue, again, like morning. Here I stand on the very edge where nothing at all needs sink. Everything is absorbed through water in the sea. And the moon swam back, its rays all silvered. And time and again, the darkness would be broken by the crash of a wave. And every day on the balcony of the sea, wings open, fire is born, and everything is blue again. So the process of Sashin is not simply that we meditate. The process of Sashin is that we construct

[26:21]

a life outside of our habitual life. And that life is constructed to keep stimulating presence. So the process of shashin is that zazen, eating, sweeping, resting, are all conscious activities. And that's what makes it so horrible. That this very quivering of our being that's looking for an escape, that's looking for a change in what we're doing, some way to make it more so or less so, is challenged. Just stay right here and let it be exactly how it is.

[27:28]

And this is us. And as I say, that gate of being willing to say yes to whatever comes up. Yes, this is what's happening. Doesn't mean you like it, but it's what's happening. And that way our energy becomes ensnared in the effort to struggle against it. When that's released, even in our difficulties, it's quite usual in Sashin where a difficult emotion will burst through. And in the discomfort and pain of that emotion, there's also relief. I remember Chogram Tumpa talking about it once.

[28:38]

He was a famous Tibetan teacher. Some might say infamous, but... And he said, it's like hot and cold water coming on you at the same time. poignant contraction of the difficult emotion and the soft expansion of relief. And something in this being worked and reworked loosens up the solid boundary of the self, the boundary between self and other. I'm me, here's the boundary, and the rest of the world is there. Something in this expanding, contracting.

[29:48]

It's like we've become, to go back to Pablo Neruda's image, the waves on the shore, expanding, receding. The shore, the boundary, is not a fixed event. It's a dynamic event. And within this whole holistic... context of Sashin, the particular yogas of body and breath and attending to mind. The amazing truth is just learning to sit down and to sit upright is a journey. In endeavoring to do just that, sit down and sit upright, you discover all sorts of things about your body, all sorts of feelings in your body.

[31:07]

Many of them you'd rather not have, but this psychosomatic play of your body during Zazen is part of the journey. You discover all sorts of things about breath. You discover all sorts of things about mind. And this morning, we had our ceremony about Buddha's awakening. And in the world of Zen, Buddha means the particular historical Shakyamuni Buddha. It means that innate capacity in every one. It means that innate suchness of being that all being participates in. But within the lore of Buddha, historical Buddha, it was an oral tradition for three to four hundred years.

[32:18]

So how accurately and precisely it's represented, before people could take small videos of it with their cell phones. I think it's open to question how accurate the details are. But I think, to my mind, the details are even more intriguing because they're what that flow of human intelligence and mythology decided to... to hold up. And in the lore, in the story of Shakyamuni's awakening, he went through a variety of trainings and learnings, reached a point, he went through a great yogic training. And such was his ability that he became an adept.

[33:22]

And then he moved on and he went through great philosophical training and he became an adept. Then he went through great concentration training and he became an adept. He had the yogic skills, he had the concentration skills, he had the understanding. And something around essential freedom was still eluding him. And so he decided to embark upon his own path. And the story goes that he got into enormous trouble. The path he chose, which was extreme austerity, almost killed him. And then by coincidence, while he lay there on the verge of dying through, as a consequence of his austerities, a young girl who was going to go to the meadow and take care of the oxen saw him lying there and decided that this guy needs something to eat.

[34:50]

And gave him her lunch. He ate the lunch. And it broke the spell of his own self-determined awakening. I am doing this. And I just, if it's not working, I need to do it harder and longer and more determinedly. It broke the spell. And then all those marvelous skills were able to be deployed in a more skillful way. And he awoke. And when he awoke, he said, I and all beings awaken. And the I there, the self there, is not the little self that separates

[36:01]

It's the all-inclusive self. The little self sets up its path of awakening almost like as a challenge to the rest of the world. I am going to awaken. The large self receives the gift. Sometimes the gift is someone else's lunch. Sometimes the gift is someone else's example. But on our path of awakening, we receive the gift. And this is part of receptive samadhi, to receive the gift of

[37:04]

that's already given and as we receive the gift something reshapes the heroic effort that we've been making to make our life work however we may construe that or even if we're just making our effort with a wonderful, mysterious quality to it. This is the marvel of the path. We receive the gift and the gift invites us to open. The gift invites us to be part of everything. And Everything awakens. And this is the story of Shakyamuni's awakening.

[38:14]

How real those particulars are, how exact, precise. How can we ever know? But the journey of a human life, the journey of every human life, the process of waking up for each and every human being, the way that each of us can enact the gift of sujata. Sujata was the little girl who gave Shakyamuni her lunch. To be the recipient and to be the giver. To be part of the whole awakening. This is the paradigm of the story.

[39:20]

So the process of Shashin. We enter in the contraction, self-imposed, self-created. The inevitable passion play of a human life. And the very intensity of that contraction the opportunity for expansion, for connection, for receiving the gift. Receptive samadhi is its mark. Only Buddhas transmit it to Buddhas.

[40:33]

receiver transmitted to each other sitting upright practicing is the authentic gate to free yourself in the unconfined unbounded realm of this state of being And then for each of us to find it in whatever language, in whatever mode of expression, you know, whether it's Dogen Zenji's Shobogenzo or Pablo Neroda's The Sea. Or anywhere. And everywhere. This is the inquiry. Inquiry. How does your life become your university?

[41:38]

Maybe showing my own bias, I'll end by reading another piece of Pablo Neruda. I need to see. I need to see because it teaches me. I don't know if I learn music, awareness if it's a single wave or a vast existence or only a harsh voice or its shining suggestion of fishes and chips the fact is that until I fall asleep in some magnetic way I move in the university of the waves a quiet power out there, sure as a stone shrine in its depths, replaced my world in which were growing stubborn sorrow, gathering oblivion.

[42:50]

And my life suddenly changed. And I became part of its pure movement. Thank you. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[43:27]

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