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 evening. I'm often aware when I give an evening talk that many of us, myself included, I've been up a long time. So maybe for those of you who don't living at Zen Center, it seems like it's early evening. For those of you who live here, it's late evening. Or it's definitely well into the evening. So I thought we could start with the sitting, just to hopefully... help us create some sense of presence.

[01:05]

So if you could just go through whatever process you go to in terms of aligning your body, your breath, your mind with settledness, uprightness, ease, openness, What is the physical posture of that? What's the breath of that? What mode or way of breathing? has that stability, upright, ease, openness.

[02:09]

And what's the disposition of mind notices being in contrast to doing. There's a Zen saying, not knowing is most intimate. You don't know body. Just experience the array of physical sensations. Can you not know what it is to have a body? My knee, my shoulder.

[03:29]

sensations happening in a three-dimensional context. Don't know breath. Rather than the mind breathing the body. Letting something happen, the inhale, the exhale. Letting it happen and noticing as much as possible

[04:35]

How that is. How is it to let inhale? To let exhale? Don't know mind. Don't know what state of mind is or isn't the right way to do Zesen or the wrong way.

[05:50]

noticing as attentively as possible how mind manifests. Thank you.

[07:32]

So this morning we had Parinirvana ceremony. And the tanto read, I think it's Norman Fisher's, version of some part of the Parinirvana Sutta. I'm not totally sure. But anyway, she was reading this and then as we do in how we do the ceremony, it reaches a particular point about Shakyamuni Buddha starting to pass. And the tantal stops talking and there's a great of sound as the drummer runs the stick, the drumstick, around the rivets on the taiku drum. And in the quiet steadiness or stillness of the morning, it's like a spark of energy.

[09:03]

Then after, I think it's less than a minute, there's a boom, boom. And listening to the tantalist voice, as you started to read again, in the narrative of Shakyamuni passing away, that happens at a poignant place. And it seemed like the tantum, excuse me, was a little touched by the intensity of our own emotions at that place. How, when we're receptive the very um experiencing of something energizes enlivens brings about like a deeper connection you know we're following the narrative um sitting in the candle light uh and then it pauses uh

[10:44]

And then this non-thought, this non-articulation of the intensity of being. It reminded me of a verse that goes with the sixth coin in the Blue Cliff record. Silence reigning everywhere. the sign of the cicadas penetrates the rock. Boom, boom. Penetrating the notion of substantial existence. And then it reverberates with the moment. penetrates it, it reverberates with it.

[11:48]

This is the energy that flows through us. And I don't know what happened, obviously. I don't know what happened in those, I think, five or ten minutes, somewhere, that we just sat. Maybe your mind couldn't let go of some preoccupations. Maybe the suggestions I made had a kind of novel peculiarity to them that sort of attracted you. No. There's something in our human consciousness that when we open, engage, experience fully, energized. And it has a significance beyond knowing.

[12:55]

And then sometimes it stirs up a deep feeling. Or sometimes it stirs up an insight. And this energy, you know, in the suttas, it talks about it virya. It talks about it as on a continuum, the whole way from persistence. Committing to being present and the mind and the body seemingly stirred up with whatever they're stirred up with and clinging to it. bring the attention back to body, breath, mind. And as that can soften, then there's diligence.

[14:03]

But maybe one way to talk about it isn't so much like still pushing a rock uphill, but there's some intentional engagement. And then when we give over a little more, the character of it is more like engagement. The attention to body, the attention to breath, the attention to state of mind. Something's being enlivened. not something separate from me that I'm supposed to cross over and engage. It's becoming more immediate. It's becoming energized. And then to follow that, we could say the next aspect is something like enthusiasm.

[15:16]

We're has captures our interest it's like there's a willingness and then it's like some energy is let loose some energy of being in connecting starts to come alive become palpable in that alignedness, sometimes deep feeling, sometimes a sukha and a piti, a pleasant physical sensation, a pleasant mental sensation, it doesn't have so much of a mental formation or understanding or conclusion or judgment.

[16:23]

Almost all of us, and I think maybe all of us, when we have an experience like that, some way we feel something very important happened. Often in religious contexts, people say, I was moved by the spirit. And then this morning, the roll of the drum. The boom-boom. And then picking up again the narrative of the Parinirvana Sutta. But having been moved, somehow it's more tender.

[17:40]

How it comes forth less just abstract thought, but more the very stuff of life. And this is all of this I'm saying by way of bringing up this part of the Heart Sutra. Form and emptiness. Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. As we engage that energy, as that energy enlivens, it becomes dynamic. It's more of the moment rather than

[18:46]

defined by some thought. And how interesting, why do we hit the drum like that at that particular point? What meaning does that have? What's the message? What understanding are we supposed to have of boom, boom? And then the narrative continues. Shakyamuni moves more thoroughly into parinirvana. And in that, his admonitions come alive.

[19:59]

This way in which form melts into emptiness and emptiness gives rise to form. This way in which heaven being enlivened and drawn into engagement, we take in more thoroughly what's happening. And then we relate to form and emptiness on the realm of concept. I don't know about you, but I think it's quite boring. when we experience it, when we live it, when it brings up a strong emotion, when it enlivens the moment, when the sign of the cicadas penetrates the rocks, some knowing beyond knowing,

[21:24]

some not knowing being the intimate expression of our being. I don't mean to say that this, the end of the spectrum of dhurya, where our involvement has an enthusiasm, a willingness, an intimacy to say, Well, that's when we do it right. And over here, persistence is when we're caught up in the tawdry world of our own delusions. To remind ourselves that these two dance together, form, and to use Thich Nhat Hanh's word, interbeing, they're always in an interplay. And that interbeing isn't the destruction of form.

[22:52]

It's actually the enlivening quality of form. And form is not the delusion of the sublime world of interbeing. It's the momentary expression. Like one classic analogy in the suttas is that you can't see light until there's an object for it to shine on. That interbeing is not evident until there is something expressing being. And in the Heart Sutra, this form of engagement is the very first presentation.

[24:00]

Then it follows on from there and it says, and this applies to the skandhas, this applies to... This sense of the path, this applies to the sense of attainment and non-attainment. This applies to the very notion of dharma, of teachings, the very notion of experience. And how things are enlivened or not. When we move into fixed ideas, we tend to bring along with it the way we relate to fixed ideas. And our experience shifts from this dynamic aliveness to a mental activity, opinions.

[25:14]

I sometimes think our mind just gets bored. When we have a fixed idea of what zazen is, this is what should happen. This is what practice is. Something in us just gets bored and thinks, I'm going to daydream. Oh, wait a minute, I've got better things to do. I'm going to worry about what I've got to worry about. Or I'm going to figure out how I should relate to that predicament. Something in us yearns for that aliveness of the interplay of form and emptiness. Then the Heart Truth Sutra says, and Avalokitesvara engaged it by looking deeply.

[26:28]

In the Zen tradition, we try to carry this looking deeply. What is it to look deeply into this stuff of every day? What is it to look deeply into the persistence, the diligence, the engagement, the enthusiasm? What is the world of hearing the siren? The shift of pitch. from high to that throbbing low one? Does it interrupt some sense of well-being, some sense of contained existence, or does it add an exclamation point?

[27:44]

This verse comes as a compliment, as a commentary on the koan. And the koans were quite straightforward and utterly impenetrable. Young men said to the assembly, every day is a good day. not long after the pari nirvana ceremony, Kim texted me and said, the ceiling in my bedroom has drips of water coming through it. It must have been a day of water today.

[28:58]

Then in the afternoon, My son texted me and said, ah, the water heater has just burst and there's water slowing. I was in the middle of a study with someone on a Dogen fascicle. I thought, hmm, let's finish this. Then I thought, when I got over there and looked at it, and water heaters do that. At a certain point, they give up and leak. And I thought, could I fix this before I go to practice Piriti? Part of what was happening in my mind was, and then this evening, there's something called giving a talk.

[30:11]

One thing I've learned about giving a talk is, it's about energy. It's about aliveness. Harada Roshi said to me once, he said, it's like a good joke. Everybody gets it. There's something in all of us that's navigating, that's exploring, whether we recognize it or not. liveness is. What form an emptiness is. What looking deeply is. And so I thought, okay, I have this much time.

[31:22]

I'll see if I can fix the hot water heater in this period of time. I made a strategy, went to the hardware store, got the parts, came back. I'd gotten the wrong parts, so I went back to the hardware store, got some more parts, came back, and couldn't fix it. And I thought, okay, couldn't fix it. But somehow... Thinking, actually, believe it or not, this corn was rattling around in me. Every day's a good day. And the whole proposition of it was like, well, let's see how this all turns out.

[32:24]

It would be very convenient if I fixed it. It would stop leaking. We'd have hot water. But it didn't work out that way. And watching my mind, you know. A little frustrated with myself when I didn't get enough, I didn't get the right part and had to go back to the store. other quality to it too. It was like the whole thing was its own. Boom, boom! An exclamation on being alive. I think we're going to have to live with a broken water heater for a while.

[33:40]

That's how it is. That's the silence of the Tukedas, the song of the Tukedas penetrating the rocks. That's the constructed world displaying its impermanence. That's the request of looking deeply at what is. In working on the water heater, towards the end of working on it, I undid something and a torrent of water come out and absolutely soaked me.

[34:53]

And I thought, maybe I should just take a shower. I'm already wet. And then I went to afternoon tea, practice period tea. And we talked about, do you know the one who is not busy? And Yon Man says, every day is a good day. Abalokiteshvara says, the five skandhas are empty. The sander that you

[36:07]

penetrates the rocks? Can something about our lives be energized in a way that we see and feel and hear and touch and taste what's happening? even when we're wrapped up in all our concerns, all our agendas, all our preferences, disappointments. Can something in us look deep like this?

[37:08]

What is that? What is it to see more than just what I want and what I don't want? The way I'm burdened by the past and frightened of the future. What is that? Can that be, that inquiry, can it be an exclamation? Can it rattle the rivets of the tesha drone? Can the boom-boom penetrate all the way back to Shakyamuni?

[38:18]

Can the words be a light unto yourself? Can they be both a great gift and an extraordinary challenge? 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.

[39:15]

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