This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. So this morning I would like to speak about practice, Zen practice, as settling... into our life, settling into the life that we have, our actual life. So this sense of practice is different than cost-benefit analysis. This is not cost-benefit analysis.

[01:00]

And it's different than, this sense of practice is different than an improvement project. This is not the way I'm going to speak about practice is not an improvement project. And also, the emphasis is not, what am I going to get out of it? So it's unusual because usually that's our first thought, is what am I going to get out of it? That's what we're focused on. That's what we're concerned with. That's what we want to know. What am I going to get out of it? So this is different than that.

[02:09]

This practice offers something different than what am I going to get out of it. I think what it offers is pretty good. Pretty good stuff. So the way I'd like to talk about it is by quoting Suzuki Roshi, the man who was the founder of the Zen Center and Green Gulch, consequently. And I'm going to quote a few lines from an early talk, an early chapter of Zen Mind Beginners Mind. So as I think most of you know, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, he didn't write it down. These were talks that he gave that were transcribed.

[03:15]

In the 60s, he gave these talks. And then also there was a title put on each one, not by him, by someone else, by the editors. So this is from a talk, I think it's the third talk in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, after the prologue, the fourth one, if you include the prologue, and the title that was given to it is Control. And this is, again, many of you are familiar with this famous thing that he said, famous in certain circles, which is the best way to control your cow is to give it a large pasture, which is striking and probably why it's somewhat well-known, because it doesn't make any sense.

[04:21]

Most people would say that's not the way to control your cow, is by giving it a large pasture. That's the opposite of control. But Suzuki Roshi said that's the best way to control your cow. And also in this talk that he gave, he talks about relationships among people, like with your friend or your teacher or your student or your girlfriend or your boyfriend, your husband, et cetera, your wife, et cetera, et cetera, that kind of relationship, you know. And he says there are three policies. He mentions this word policies, what the various policies are that one can have in such a relationship. And I enjoy the use of, for some reason, I really enjoy that he uses the word policy.

[05:22]

I usually think of a policy in this regard, but he says the worst policy in relationships is to ignore the other person. That's the worst. The next worst is to try to control them. The best policy, Suzuki Rishi says, is just to watch them. Then they'll be in control in its wider sense. So the only problem with this is that We don't want people to be in control in its wider sense. I want them to be in control in its more narrow sense, like doing what I want them to do, and not doing what I don't want them to do, and it's best if they do what I want them to do, when I want them to do it, and how I want them to do it.

[06:37]

et cetera, et cetera. This is very narrow. So then they'll be in control in its wider sense. And this thing, this duo of narrow, and more wide, wider sense, in control in its wider sense, and in control in its more narrow sense, narrow and wide, often Suzuki Roshi would speak about things in their wide sense, great space, and so on. And we could say that practice, Zen practice, is about getting in touch with wider sense, getting in touch with the wider sense of things. Or a little bit further, it's actually about the harmony of the wider sense and the more narrow sense, our wider understanding and narrow understanding.

[07:55]

We can't get rid of our narrow understanding. Fortunately, we don't have to get rid of it. We can't get rid of it because it is the... Our narrow understanding is the tip, the tip. Here's the karmic wave. And then at the very tippy, [...] tippy end of the karmic wave called the present moment, that's very narrow. It's very narrow because it's extremely specific. It can't be anything else. You can't be anyone else other than who you are at this very tip end of the current moment. that has been caused by an infinite in time and infinite in scope causality.

[09:05]

That comes together and here we are. Each moment is like that. And we have a very specific number of hairs on our head. Or not. You know? And the hair is a very particular length. Each one of the hairs on our head is exactly the length that it is. This is a very narrow way. So the point of practice is that we harmonize this narrow, [...] narrow specificity with the widest understanding, with a very expansive understanding. This is called sang-do-kai, a harmony of specific, narrow understanding and wide understanding.

[10:08]

When we can harmonize, oh, harmony. Harmony, I'm not sure if this is true. But my understanding of music is that harmony is a very good metaphor. Because harmony is like, right, you're down here and the other person is up here, you know, and it's a harmony. It's not the same note. They're in harmony with each other. Wide and narrow are not the same thing. We're not trying to reduce everything. They're kind of going along. And then they create, if they're in harmony, then it creates beautiful music. That's very... that touches us and moves us. I used to play the piano when I was in high school. I played the piano rather obsessively. Excuse me, I think I need to cover this.

[11:19]

because I was a very reclusive young man and quite depressed, I'd say, now. So I didn't have much of a social life. So I used to play hours and hours every day. When I entered college, actually, I was a music major. But then various karmic-specific things happened, and I stopped being a music major. So just recently, I was in high school when I was very young. That was another problem. I was like 15. I graduated high school when I was 16. So now I'm 64, so that's 50 years ago. if my math is correct, approximately 50 years ago.

[12:21]

So just recently, about six months ago, I started to take singing lessons. And then I bought one of these electronic keyboards. So I started to play the piano again. And it's really wonderful to play the piano. to play, I'm playing simple pieces. I didn't mean to tell you about this, but I'm going to tell you about it. I'm playing these, they're called J.S. Bach, easy keyboard pieces, minuets. And they're easy, but they're like, it's ecstatic. And what's ecstatic is, duh, you know, the sounds together. He's not harmonic, right? J.S. Bach is contrapuntal, but when you hit a bunch of notes together, there's a harmony there.

[13:27]

And it's very wonderful. So this is the harmony of wide and narrow. And when they harmonize, then... We are in the realm of Buddha nature. That's another phrase that Suzuki Roshi uses in this talk that he gave entitled, Control. He talks about being in the realm of Buddha nature. But when he says to be in the realm of Buddha nature, he does not mean some realm, some realm over there, like you're not in the realm of Buddha nature now. He means... our life as the realm of Buddha nature. Understanding our life and manifesting our life as Buddha nature. So here's the quotation.

[14:34]

Whatever we see is changing, losing its balance. The reason everything looks beautiful is because it is out of balance, but its background is in perfect harmony. So if you see things without realizing the background of Buddha nature, everything appears to be in the form of suffering. But if you understand the background of existence, you realize that Suffering itself is how we live and how we extend our life.

[15:50]

So in Zen sometimes we emphasize the imbalance or disorder of things, of life. there's a great deal that Suzuki Roshi is saying in this talk that he gave, and there's a great deal that he's saying in just the few lines that I'm quoting. But I particularly want to emphasize, because I memorized them, I'm very familiar with them, so I'll say them again in a and how we extend our life. There's a fellow, a teacher, not a Zen teacher, a Buddhist teacher in the Vipassana tradition.

[17:05]

His name is Wes Nisker. Some of you may know him or know of him. And I heard, I didn't hear him directly, But I kind of heard second or third hand, which is how I get a lot of information, actually. Sort of pick it up from the ether, you know. Hear it on the radio, or somebody tells me, somebody said something. So I heard that he gave this talk or something. Oh, I think it's an essay that he wrote in a magazine called Inquiring Mind. I tried to find it, but I couldn't find it. where he makes a distinction between first-sters and third-sters. So what he's referring to are the four noble truths. The first noble truth is dukkha, suffering, then samudaya, cause of suffering, then nirota, end or cessation of suffering, and the fourth one is marga, the path to the end.

[18:17]

The way it's structured is number two causes number one, and number four causes number three. So there's suffering, and number two is the cause of suffering, and number three is the end of suffering, and number four is the cause of the end of suffering, the path marga. And Wes Nisker, so I heard, was saying that he notices among practitioners and among teachers and so on that some people are firsters and some people are thirdsters. Some people really emphasize nerodha, the third noble truth, the end of suffering and how to get there and all the groovy things that are going to happen once you're there and so on and so forth. And then some people... Some people are just stuck, you know, on number one, you know. They never get it. I feel that's the way I am. For this lifetime, you know, number one is enough for me, you know.

[19:22]

Just the first noble truth is plenty to work with, you know. Suffering itself is how we live and how we extend our life. So I'll put it in context by saying it again, that whole quotation. Whatever we see is changing, losing its balance. The reason everything looks beautiful is because it is out of balance, but its background is in perfect harmony. Hint, that's narrow view, wide view. That may be obvious. So, if you see things without realizing the background of Buddha nature, everything appears to be in the form of suffering.

[20:32]

But if you understand the background of existence, suffering itself, you realize, excuse me, if you understand the background of existence, you realize suffering itself is how we live and how we extend our life. So in Zen sometimes we emphasize the imbalance or disorder of life. And just in passing our you know, this wide view and narrow view, this way of seeing things is resonant with Western psychological understanding. Zen practice and Buddhist understanding and Western psychology are not the same thing. They're very different things and very different modalities and methodologies and very different histories.

[21:40]

and contexts, and yet there are certain ways that they resonate with each other, resonate literally sympathetic vibration. And this is one of them. So in a sense, the difference between narrow view and wide view, if I were to use Jungian language, C.G. Jung, language like that, that's the difference between being caught in a complex and in a rigid complex of beliefs and thoughts and feelings and behaviors. That's like the narrow view. That's resonant with that. And to not be caught in that complex, to loosen that, which is the art of psychotherapy, is to loosen that grip of that complex. That's like having a wider view. That's resonant with that. this wider view understanding. So if you see things without realizing the background of Buddha nature, without importing and manifesting and being steeped in

[23:08]

the wider view, then, if that's the way it is, then everything appears to be in the form of burdensome suffering. That's that part. Now, the next part is really kind of very interesting and a little unusual, surprising. He says, but if you understand the background of existence, then, now here's the surprising part, it doesn't mean you go somewhere else. If you understand the background of existence, if you do, if you are imbued with this wider understanding, it doesn't mean you have some other life that's better than the life that you have now. It doesn't mean, that's not the end of the sentence. It's surprising. We expect him to say that. But if you understand the background of existence, oh, well, then you've attained enlightenment.

[24:15]

Then great things happen. Then everything rolls smoothly. Then you get parking places when you want them. Everything really works. If you understand the background of existence, no, no, no, no. That's not what he says. That's not how he ends the sentence. He ends the sentence. So you do this great thing of, you know, understanding the background of existence. That sounds really nice. Then what happens? Then you realize that suffering itself is how we live and how we extend our life. Then it's like a boomerang. You just come right back to the very life that you have. Not a new life, not a different life, not somewhere else, not some Buddha realm that's, you know, over in Hoboken or someplace else. Not someplace else. Here. Right? Right here. Wherever here happens to be. Not just here. This minute. Wherever here is. Maybe we could say that the only difference then is not so much that we've eliminated, relinquished,

[25:33]

eradicated our narrow view, but simply that we're not being pushed around by it. We're not being pushed around by it because we have the ameliorative effect of the wider view. So it softens our understanding and thereby strengthens our understanding. So I wanted to illustrate these points with an example. And the example I was going to use is the movie, The African Queen. Now for those of you who were here, the last time I gave a Dharma talk, four or five months ago, I also mentioned the African Queen. But African Queen is really good, so it bears mentioning more than once.

[26:37]

So who here has not seen the movie The African Queen ever? Oh, my God. I am shocked. I strongly recommend it. Seeing the African Queen. And I will now give you a brief plot summary of the African Queen because, well, because it's a great movie and also because it is a Buddhist allegory of development and enlightenment and wider view. I don't know that, I doubt that anyone involved in making the African Queen thought that at the time, but it is.

[27:44]

So the African Queen, the African Queen is the name of a boat. So this is taking place, the movie was made in 1951 and stars Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. And I think it takes place, it's like the First World War, it's maybe when Britain had just entered the First World War before America came in. And so these folks are in Africa. And the African queen is the name of a boat, which is very ironic because it is anything but a queen. It's this beat-up, beat-up, beat-up, beat-up old boat. That Humphrey Bogart is the... captain of, and he's an alcoholic, and he goes alcoholically around in the various byways of Africa. And I won't go into the whole plot, but anyway, Catherine Hepburn comes on board, and as the only passenger, her brother, they were missionaries, Catherine Hepburn and her brother, and her brother was killed.

[29:00]

And so Humphrey Bogart is this very kind of an alcoholic, ne'er-do-well kind of a guy. And Katharine Hepburn, on the other hand, is very, very uptight, rigid, Christian, like that. And they, not surprisingly, really hate each other initially. And the movie is the development of their character and the development of their relationship. As they go through various trials and travails, it's about how they widen. They widen their perspective. So Humphrey Bogart stops being an alcoholic because Katharine Hepburn, there's this one scene where she's pouring. He's got this case. And she's taking each bottle and pouring it into the river like that, you know, without him knowing it.

[30:08]

Then he discovers it and it is furious. But anyway, that goes on. And then she also gets wider. She loosens up and gets softer. So this is all going along very nicely. the boat is having a lot of problems. And then there's a... There's a... From the point of view of the story as a Buddhist allegory, there's a climactic scene almost at the end of the movie. So they've been through these various problems, but now the boat, I think it's broken altogether. It doesn't work. And... Humphrey Bogart can't make it go. And they're stuck in these reeds. You know, it's like very, very shallow water, like just up to the waist, and just reeds all around.

[31:15]

It's very hot. So the only thing to do is Humphrey Bogart gets down in the water. By this time, he and Catherine Hepburn have become actually... Not just warmer, but they're close with each other. They really have developed a relationship. They like each other a lot, and they help each other a lot. So he gets down in the water, and he's got this rope that he's kind of walking along, pulling the boat, which that's as fast as they can go, because the motor doesn't work anymore. But the water is infested with leeches, blood-sucking leeches. So he pulls the boat for 20 minutes or whatever, and then he gets into the boat, and Catherine Hepburn rips the leeches that have glommed onto him off.

[32:19]

And then he gets back in the water and pulls the boat some more. And it goes on like this for a while. So for those of you who have not seen the movie, do you get the picture? Do you get what I'm saying? So this is the way it is for us sometimes, is it just reads. We don't see how to get into We don't see our way out. We don't know how to get out. Not only that, but the very effort to get out is very debilitating. Leaches our energy out of us.

[33:21]

Leaches our life out of us. Even when we're trying to do the right thing and get out. We don't know how to get out. And we try to get out. And trying to get out is like more pain. It's like worse. And there's nothing to do. We don't know what direction to go in. To get out of the reeds. So we make these efforts, and they're very, very, very slow. We don't have a motor. It's really slow and painful, much slower than we'd like. Then, because the movie is such a great movie, then the camera pans out from the scene of them walking along in the leech-infested waters, and you see that the open water is right over there.

[34:29]

The open water is close. It's a lake, I think. It's very close, but they can't see it. This is very much like our situation when we have some difficulty. It may be that the answer, the resolution, the good thing, the way out is close by. We have no idea. All we see are the reads. So I think Zen practice is very, very, very good for that kind of a situation. we don't know how to get out of a bad situation that we're in. And the bad situation may be like an extra, you know, because it's an allegory, it's portrayed as an external bad situation.

[35:36]

But a much more difficult situation, much more difficult, as difficult, similarly difficult, is internal reads, internal problems. Internal, we don't know how to get out. Where we may feel like, oh, I should have done it differently. How can I get out of this thing? I'm such a person of bad faith. Or whatever it may be. How do we practice there? And what we often do there, some of the things that we often do there is then we try to rewrite history or second-guess ourselves. See, if I would have done that then, then all of this wouldn't have happened.

[36:37]

It was so stupid. How could I have been so stupid as to have done that? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You can fill in the many et cetera blanks there, I think. if you're older than 10 days, which all of us are. Or we blame another person. Either I wouldn't have done that or they wouldn't have done that. So this is what we do. This is not, though understandable and quite usual for us, This is just thrashing around in the weeds, in the reeds. Just thrashing around. Understandable because we're trying to get out of the reeds and we don't know how. And I say that Zen practice is useful for this situation as though this were an unusual situation.

[37:45]

But even if it doesn't look like it, often we're in this situation. Even if it doesn't look like that, that we're in that situation, that's the situation we're in. In trouble and don't really know how to get out. It's even worse when we think we do know how to get out. Oh yes, just do this. This will get that motor going and then you'll just be able to zip, zip, zip. And we're really sunk. So, oh, and this happens, you know, in the movie, more plot. Later, they do get out. The water rises. Isn't that wonderful? You know, they go to sleep, they're exhausted, and then overnight, the tide comes in. We don't know when the tide's going to come in, but in the movie, the tide came in at night, their boat got lifted, and they saw they were on the water.

[38:48]

on the lake, and there was actually an enemy vessel on the lake, and then they did various heroic things, and the enemy vessel blew up, and they got married, and they... The last scene is there, because they got onto the enemy vessel, and I don't remember exactly how it happened. The enemy vessel blew up, but they were okay, and the last scene is... And they've gotten married. Really, they got married. And then the last scene is they're just bobbing in the water and they're going to swim to shore and live happily ever after. So, before the heroic deeds get done and before we save the day and save ourselves and save everyone else, we're going to What's our practice there when we're in the reeds?

[39:48]

We don't know what to do. So if Humphrey and Catherine can, I don't remember what their characters' names were, can, if they can, understand the background of existence, then suffering itself is how they live and how they extend their life. Even though it's suffering, it's not exactly suffering anymore. It's not exactly the same thing as caught suffering.

[40:50]

It's not the same mark not the same lakshana. Then we have the three marks are impermanence, not self, and suffering. And the fourth mark comes into play when we can widen our view. The fourth mark is nirvana is peaceful. That's the fourth mark of of existence, the fourth lakshna. And I think that their wide view is represented by is their actual It's not like some magical thing, like a white light or something like that.

[41:58]

Their wide view is really their character development. And consequently, their ability to be intimate with each other. That's what their wide view is. That's what happened. They got wide enough. to bear their own life and to live deeply in their own life and to settle into their own life. So the only thing in the quotation from Suzuki Roshi I didn't go back to is the very first couple of sentences, which is kind of the complement of suffering itself is how we live and how we extend our life. So he says at the beginning of this little quotation, he says, whatever we see is changing, losing its balance.

[43:10]

The reason everything looks beautiful is because it is out of balance. So this is the other side of it. Things are beautiful. Life is beautiful because of our narrow problematic view. Everything looks beautiful. How does it go again? I have to do it from the beginning or else I can't do it. Whatever we see is beautiful. Oh, no. No. Whatever we see is changing, losing its balance. The reason everything looks beautiful is because it is out of balance. Oh, yeah. But its background is in perfect harmony. That's why things look beautiful. Which is true. A flower or a person or, you know, whatever it may be.

[44:17]

A chair. It's beautiful because it's out of balance, but its background is in perfect harmony. Okay, thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[45:08]

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