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. Welcome to Beginners Mind Temple. Is anybody here for the first time? Oh, several. Welcome very much. My name is Kristina Lehnherr, and I am currently the abbess here, the abiding abbess here at the city center. I just started this a few days more than five months ago, so I'm new at it. And I welcome you very much. You're dropping in, actually, into... A three-week period of silence and retreat.

[01:00]

So that's a very particular way of dropping in the first time. And I'm going to talk about this a little bit. And as you can see, I'm residing in the royal pose. With a leg up due to a little thing on one of my small toes which changes everything in my body. So the topic of this three-week summer retreat is time. Tia Strasser, a Dharma teacher in our lineage, has taught been willing to lead the practice period. She used to be the head of practice here for a long time, many years ago, and then worked as a chaplain in a high school, I think.

[02:07]

Tia, are you here? There, high school, right? Okay. And now is the teacher, the residing teacher in Brooklyn, New York, where she is teaching and fostering the Dharma. So she's come back. And we have her for three weeks, which is just a treasure. And she chose time, time as the topic and theme for the practice period. Can everybody hear me? Okay. Time. Time. plays such a role in our world now. I love clocks, and I have clocks everywhere. But when you go to Tassajara, which is our place in the wilderness, which in the winter is dedicated to do monastic practice, you actually do not need a clock.

[03:22]

Everything is announced by sounds. And we have some of that here. There's a particular sound and rhythm that calls us to the meditation hall, another sound that calls us to work meeting, another sound that calls us to a Dharma talk, another sound that calls us to meals. So we have it here, but here we also have clocks everywhere. in the meditation hall, in the hallways, in the offices. I looked up a little bit the definition of time and what is said about time and found very interesting things. Time is a measure of duration and frequency of events and the intervals between them and the sequences of such events.

[04:23]

which often are in apparently irreversible succession from the past to the present to the future. Did you know that the international unit of time, the second, is defined in terms of radiation emitted by cesium atoms? I never knew that. but that was interesting how they decided that was the international unit of time. It also has significant social importance. It has economic value, time is money, personal value, because we are aware that time is limited each day, and also our lifespan is limited. So there is a linear way of looking at time.

[05:26]

But then in Buddhism and in Hinduism, before Buddhism, and even in the Christian church, there was a circular notion of time, which also is in nature. So indigenous cultures still often have a circular notion of time. Things repeat themselves. So in Buddhism, Hinduism, and in very early Christianity, there was a sense of circular lifetimes of beings. And it was at the Council, I can't remember which one, that actually the Catholic Church decided to be finished with rebirth. So now we're not getting reborn anymore if we are Catholic. And then I found something very interesting. The first linear organization of time can be traced to the monasteries of medieval Europe.

[06:30]

The guy who researched that believes that monks saw the need for a rationalized conduct in order to overcome the natural state. It would help them overcome the dependence on impulses and the world of nature. Rational action and proper timekeeping would prevent people from wasting time. The sole concept of wasting time never existed before societies began to industrialize a fast-paced and fast-paced lives became a virtue. It's interesting. And then there has been very wonderful kind of offsprings of how we started to treat time in industrialized civilization. The systems and procedures association of America has developed target times for daily activities.

[07:35]

Open and close file drawers. What do you think? 0.026 seconds. Close the center drawer, 0.027 seconds. Close the side drawer, 0.015 seconds. Get up from a chair and so on. So every activity was being measured in terms of time. So, then a person wrote something that's called Einstein's dream. And it says, in a world where time cannot be measured, there are no clocks, no calendars, no definite appointments.

[08:40]

Events are triggered by other events, not by time. A house is begun when stone and lumber arrive at the building site. The stone quarry delivers stone when the quarryman needs money. Trains leave the station when the cars are filled with passengers. Isn't that a wonderful kind of dream? So... Time is the theme of our practice period or retreat and which lasts three weeks so it has a time to it. And silence is the container we decided to create for this exploration of time and our relationship to time. And silence is

[09:45]

So we agreed that the whole building is silent for three weeks, which is actually a wonderful experience. And silence has been always part of human contemplation, prayer in nature. Sometimes when you hike in the In nature, do you come around a corner and come to a space where you just get in touch with that deep, deep, continuous silence that runs through everything? And it just can strike you. And it's so interesting. You don't feel it before, and then you're there, and there it is. But when it's there, you know it's always there. It's not like it's tied to that place, but that place makes it tangible in that moment for you.

[10:48]

So in Psalm 62, verse 1, it says, For you alone, my soul in silence waits. And in some ways, that's for me like another way of expressing the invitation that our form of practice is for us every day we go and sit down. For you alone, my soul in silence waits. So the you is ourselves and the you is all beings. Because sometimes I read it, for you all one, my soul waits. in silence waits. You know, time is also experienced and related to very differently in different cultures.

[11:56]

So indigenous cultures are relating to time in a very different way and we in Switzerland experience that when we When more and more African people came because there was so much war and civil war in Africa, they came as immigrants. And so you would make an appointment for dinner. Dinner was, you could say, dinner is at 7 or dinner is at 6.30 or at 7.30. And then you would be there. And then maybe they would show up at 11 at night or half past 11.00. And the food, of course, was rotten or burnt to cinder or cold, and we were upset. But if you live in Africa and you have to walk distances, you never know how much time it takes to arrive. So they have food on the stove, and they just can cook for 10 hours, 12 hours, until everybody is there and eats.

[13:03]

So there's a total different relationship. And it was so interesting to see how difficult and how long it takes because it's in everything. Our relationship to time affects our bodies, how we see things, how we experience them, how we relate to them. So it was just wonderful. If we were willing not to just be upset and think they're just, you know... In polite, period, that's it. But be curious about what actually is going on. It was such an opening up, so next time you would invite them, you would know that, and you would put something on the stove that could wait forever. And if you got hungry, you ate. And then you sat down with them when they arrived. So when we are open to look at things that get in our way or are not the same as we are actually doing, They open the universe for us. They open new views and make us flexible.

[14:07]

So time, silence, and then we have in our schedule for the retreat, meditation. More meditation than we do on regular time, regular days. outside of more concentrated practice periods. And meditation is being still. Points us, supports us in being still physically, don't move. Being present, being here now. in this moment. So the sitting still is one form that helps us get to the moment because what we think of the past is memory.

[15:16]

What we think about the future is fantasy. The only life we have is this moment. We are alive. right now, and then now. And that's the present. And it's now we can respond. We are, actually we are all the time responding, but we can be in touch with the complete response of our being to this moment. When we are not busy thinking about the past or fantasizing about the future. And sometimes, as Tia said, sometimes we have to make plans, but we make the plans in the present. That's different than just daydreaming about the future, or we have to work through something from the past, but it's in the moment.

[16:25]

That's also different than being lost in the past. So, you know, Norman Fisher used to say, your life is never happening anywhere else than where your body is. So the party is never happening anywhere else. But we might think, oh, I wish I were there, or why can't I do both, or all those things. But actually, that's a distraction, because... Because we can't be unless we're so evolved that we can be in different places at the same time, which in some traditions is said this possibility exists. But that's highly evolved. And in this practice, we are actually discouraged from engaging in such things. This practice tells you, be here now, fully, completely.

[17:26]

And then life is amazingly unpredictable, interesting, moving all the time, changing all the time, and full. There's nothing missing in any present moment. And we so often think this is missing and if this were here it would be better and that. And we're just distracted from being fully embodied in the moment. So your body is your anchor. Your body is actually how you manifest this life. Without the body you have you wouldn't be sitting here. It would just not be possible. So meditation, sitting still, supports us and trains us to be in touch with this body we have at that moment, which is not exactly the body we had the moment before, and not exactly the one we will have a moment later, several moments later.

[18:48]

really be in touch with that. To be in touch with the feelings that are present in this moment. To be in touch with the thoughts that are present in this moment. So, you know, we have the time concept, and Buddhism also tells us there are three marks that characterize existence. So our existence, the existence of this, of everything that appears in the phenomenal world. Also, that is not tangible, like thoughts you can't touch a thought with your hands or hold it and show it to somebody else and feelings.

[19:51]

And that is impermanence, which means everything, nothing is fixed or static. Everything is in a continuous change, flux. Second mark of existence is what is often called no-self. And Pema Churton puts this very nice. That doesn't mean if you see, if you understand and realize what that means, no-self, it doesn't mean you disappear. So it's not annihilation. It's just there's also no fixed self. So nothing is fixed about ourselves. And neither... Is anything fixed about anybody else? Which is actually a wonderful, helpful thought, because here's this person who is just upset at you and maybe scared you or irritated you, and it's not a fixed self.

[20:59]

Next moment is next moment. And so we don't have to hold on. This is such and such person. and next time we see them a year later, oh, you were like that last year, so this is what I'm going to expect from you. So we are not fixed. Everything keeps changing. And also we are not separate. Even though we see each other as individuals that are, you know, not me, We are completely interconnected and interdependent. And we are all human beings, and we are all, with all other beings and nature, are subject to impermanence. We all share that. The third mark of existence is suffering in Buddhists.

[22:08]

view. Buddha's view. We suffer as long as we resist the truth of impermanence. It's put in a very simple way. As long as we busy ourselves running around the moment we get a little bit bored or don't like something, we fill it with something else rather than hang out with boredom. I had a friend who, when she was a child and got bored, and she would go to her mother and say, I don't know what to do with my, you know, I'm bored. Her mother would say, oh, that's fine, just bore for a while. And she was turned into a very creative person because she was encouraged by her mother to hang out with her boredom.

[23:12]

Often when we come home from a week of, you know, a day of work, we have a particular rhythm. And it's very hard to actually sit down and not do anything till another rhythm shows up. It's much easier to continue. At home and through dinner and through the evening until you go to sleep with the same rhythm. So transitions are often not easy. So rather than being fully present that we enter a different space or a different time or a different situation and allow our bodies to start responding to that and be with that, we enter them and shape them. the way the time before was shaped and shaped us. So that would be something you could take home. And when you come home from work, before you do your evening activities, just sit down till you feel you've arrived.

[24:22]

And from inside comes what you want to do next. not planned ahead, and settle down and let all those plans and the restlessness kind of abide with it till something comes up. Because sometimes we go and we have all these lists what we have to do during the day and we of course don't get to it and then we have lists what we have to do in the evening and we don't get to it and then we wake up with new lists and we don't ever, then we're used by time. So our practice is sitting still, not moving, doing nothing, which is not easy for us. You know, Lianne, last time when she gave a talk, she said, my friend...

[25:32]

said she doesn't like to have to wait and watch people with their complicated robes to be seated. And she suggested that we all turn to each other and introduce ourselves and say hello to our neighbors, which was wonderful. It was wonderful. And another way, not the better way, another way, and so we have choices, is to... Settle into the discomfort. And I'm using that example because it was so wonderful. So it's not like not settling into discomfort is not a good thing. But there's also the possibility to settle into discomfort, which is a lot what we do when we practice. When we go to the Zendo and sit down and we do not move till the bell rings. do our best not to move till the bell rings.

[26:38]

It's often quite uncomfortable. And we would rather do something else. We would think, why did I sign up for this? Or, oh, I should have just signed out. I could do something else much better. And if we... learn to stand the discomfort and stay in touch with it, not go daydreaming, oh, I just think about what's happening next, you know, going sailing and at some point the bell will ring. It's actually we get in touch with our vulnerability as human beings. Today, this morning, we just had a memorial service for David Kogi. His photograph is on the altar, who died a year ago.

[27:40]

He was a resident of this community, and his suffering was so big that he could not continue. And, you know, so we never know when our life is going to end and how it is going to end. We cannot know. Nobody can. And when our friends' lives are going to end and how. We can't know. So that's the vulnerability of life. And, you know, Tia is encouraging us in these classes to just stay in touch with that vulnerability. When we become capable to stand it, to be intimate with that everything is changing and that we actually have only a small degree of control over what's going on in our lives and in other people's lives, we can relax.

[28:55]

When we fight that, we try to manage ourselves. We always have plans to get younger and fitter and do something. You have a vacation. What are you going to do? We usually don't take a vacation from doing. It's very interesting. It's like, what are your plans? And something ends. What are you going to do next? So sitting is giving us actually a vacation of that. And it's often very uncomfortable first because we don't know what to do. The message is, you don't have to do anything. Just be available to your experience. So when we sit still, maybe you could just for a moment check in with your bodies.

[30:05]

How are they doing? Do they need changing position? Are you awake? Are you falling asleep? Not one is better than the other. can we start noticing what is going on without putting it into good or bad or like or dislike? Just what is here right now? What is available as experience right now in this body? And how's your heart doing? Irritated? How are you feeling? And what kind of energy is it, that feeling, and how is it manifesting in you, in your whole being?

[31:14]

And what is going on in your mind. Maybe you can actually feel how completely quiet it became in this room. something to do with being attentive to what's happening here in each one of you. And it's a shared endeavor.

[32:29]

Everyone attending this way adds to the supports everybody else attending in this way. And it doesn't matter how old you are. Doesn't matter how fit you are. How clever you are. And your body is always with you. You're never somewhere else than where your body is. So it's the place you can always come back to and be here, wherever here is. So practice, our practice, is giving us the opportunity to come back to the immediacy of the experience that is here right now.

[33:36]

And to whatever that is at any given moment. And when we do that, we start noticing that, you know, things come and go. They move through. Feelings move through. Thoughts move through. Pains move through. When we are really in touch with our body, we know when we need to move because that's not good to sit through this pain. And sometimes there's a pain when we really are attentive. that just changes and moves through, which in a way we start to see that we are not fixed entities, that everything is changing. And we can relax a little more and we become more flexible, we become more inquisitive because that's actually our true nature is flexible because we are completely put together by many, many innumerable things.

[34:43]

What we ate, how we slept, who's around us. I mean, every talk is different. Every body of people in this hall is different. Every time. So, a part is that we can relax much more. And that is also one of the instructions. Can you relax in the middle of the experience you're having right now, regardless of whether it's a pleasant, unpleasant, you like it or you don't like it experience? Can you relax in the middle of it and just let it be there and be with it? When we make a place for silence in ourselves, when we make room, a place for silence, we create the space for ourselves.

[36:04]

And that's simple, but it's also radical. And it helps us resist what... The force of our culture is that tells us to, that advertises our life, tells us what will make us happy and what we should be doing to be happy and all of that. So it's rather than an advertised life, we have a discovered life or a life that continues to be discovered, that is unfolding. I think it's going to be time to stop.

[37:10]

For you alone my soul in silence waits. Maybe you can something of today's presentation speaks to you. If it did, see how you can take it into your everyday life. It can be a very small thing. It can be a moment of silence, of internal and external silence at your workspace or when you come home or when you get up and before you go to bed. It can be One friend had a day of silence and she told everybody in the community that she wasn't speaking on Mondays. And nobody spoke to her. And it was her refuge from the other days in which she had to speak a lot and listen a lot.

[38:26]

So there's so many ways we can create spaces and stillness for ourselves. That doesn't have to be a three-week retreat. For you alone, my soul in silence waits. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. 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.

[39:31]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:34]

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