This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. My name is Roushin Paul Heller and I'm here on this occasion. to teach a workshop with the title, The Spirit of Practice. Originally it was intended that I would co-teach it, but my co-teacher bailed out with the excuse that he was 91 years old. And the trip from Austria was a long journey. I know, feeble excuse, laughable.

[01:03]

Especially since he's the most spry in 91 you could imagine. And the spirit of practice. We've actually been teaching it together with the exception of this year for many years. Twelve plus, I think. Spirit comes from the Greek. The breath of life. Breathing life. And practice. Repeated engagement or application in an activity or skill. How to bring life to a repeated activity or skill. If we reverse them, the practice of the spirit, how to practice in a way that brings life, how to practice aliveness.

[02:20]

And that's what I'd like to talk about tonight. Brother David Stander, my usual co-teacher, I've often thought of him as one of the most alive persons I've ever met. And even though I think I've learned many things from him, and consider him a mentor, a teacher, and a good friend, I think my curiosity, how does he do it? How at night one can he be so alive? Can he be so curious and enthusiastic about what it is to be alive? And how can he have the energy, the dedication that he has?

[03:29]

That's what I'm gonna try to talk about. And I'm gonna use, I'm gonna quote two poems by Wilke, which just happens to be one of Brother David's favorite authors, poets. And I'm gonna quote a prescription for aliveness from Buddhism, a series of five factors. I was searching. One thing Brother David and I discovered about each other was that we both find poetry a meaningful way to express the spirit of practice, a meaningful way to engage the spirit of practice. We could say that poetry uses words to say more than words can say.

[04:36]

But also poetry has a kind of aesthetic and an inbuilt appreciation. It's so easy in our lives to be enticed by the utility of the necessary or the necessity of the utility that seems to be there to make our lives livable. And I think one of our challenges is to find the beauty in it all. So the first one is a kind of... The Declaration of Intention by Gokke.

[05:40]

A very interesting character. Some of his poetry has an extraordinary, to my mind, an extraordinary insight, spiritual insight. And yet, of the many things he did in his life, you know, he didn't spend time in a monastery or going through great spiritual training in a conventional sense. So this one's an expression of intention, maybe even want. I want. I want to unfold. I don't want to stay folded anywhere because we're unfolded there I am a lie. I want to describe myself like a painting that's looked at closely for a long time.

[06:45]

What about that for a thought? I want to describe myself as a painting that's looked at closely for a long time. If you studied your life with appreciation, you know, would you see the beauty of it? Could you see the sincerity, the dedication of who you are and how you are? Could you have an appreciation for your own process of living, the steps on your path on the journey of life I want to be like a saying I finally understood like a picture used every day like the face of my mother like a ship that took me safely

[08:02]

through the wildest storm of all. Like a saying finally understood. I wonder. I think inherent in being alive and in wanting to be fully alive is It's kind of a mystery within us. We think that's right there in our DNA. We started with it when we came out of the womb. And still, there's so many ways we tend to routinize our life. So many ways we tend to get caught up in the habitual, even though What initiated it once had its own ingenuity and creativity, but now it's become routine.

[09:09]

Now it's become the easier choice of action. Can we understand it? Ruki would like to. I'd like to be a picture used every day. One of the remarkable things about Brother David, to my mind, is his modesty and his humility. There's a list of accolades and achievements to his long life. he was still in Austria he did a PhD in psychology and then he came to the States and he did another PhD at Harvard in religious studies in that long life he's been a lifelong learner and

[10:27]

His deep affection and capacity to just do what needed to be done in a matter-of-fact way. To be used by the day like a picture. To not have a need to stand out as something special. To not think that aliveness is to excel. in contrast to others, or achieve more than others. In what I find to be a profound spiritual dimension, a humility, it's somehow this literally kept him grounded. Humility and humus coming from the same root, the earth.

[11:40]

Like the face of my mother. The source of life. So utterly obvious. And so completely miraculous. If you've seen a baby being born, it's utterly obvious. It comes out of the womb. Umbilical cord still attached. And so utterly miraculous. intimately at the source of life, is to look intimately at the source of aliveness. What if we asked ourselves, what is it to be alive?

[12:50]

What is it to practice aliveness? What is it to bring it into the agendas and the activities of each day? Do the agendas and activities need to change? Or is it how they're engaged? And to look at it with the same tender curiosity, you look at the face of your mother. About five years ago, I found a picture of my mother when she was eight years old. And I never thought up until then that my mother ever was eight years old. It never occurred to me that I had an eight-year-old mother. But there she was. So I put her picture up, you know. And it still mystifies me, you know.

[13:54]

This eight-year-old, strong, upright, confident, looking at the camera. That's my mother. Unbelievable. Like a ship that took me safely through the wildest storm of all. Would we want it any other way? Yeah, the whole journey was calm. The sea didn't have a single wave. And the ship just sailed in a straight, uneventable light. Isn't it a funny thing?

[14:59]

Things happen to us. And while they're happening, often our visceral response is, oh no. And then we struggle and complain in our own way. And then later, upon reflection, we think, I learned a lot from that. I grew in that. It stretched me. It opened me. It taught me. The practice of aliveness is a kind of a reckless endeavor. It certainly was for Rilke, the guy who wrote these poems. There was one time he was staying in a castle as someone's guest. And it was very stormy.

[16:04]

And near the castle, there was a walk along the cliffs. I know this because I had the good fortune to take the walk. And it was very stormy. And by his own account, he was suicidal. And he went through a great... period of angst about life, about himself, about how to live and what was important. He wrote the most exquisite poetry during that time. It's sort of breathtaking in its insight, its courageous intimacy with being alive. Like this. Whoever grasps the 1,000 contradictions of their life pulls them together into a single image.

[17:07]

That person, joyful and thankfully, drives the rioters from the palace, becomes celebratory in a different way. And presence is the guest who receives the quiet evening, whoever grasps the 1,000 contradictions of a human life. I suspect that every generation of human beings thought, oh, you know, before we discovered fire, Everything was really simple and good. This whole fire thing, it's really complicating our lives. My son went to Kerala in southern India and he went

[18:22]

to have a treatment from an Ayurvedic doctor. And he was so taken by the person, he asked him if he could stay and be his apprentice. And for reasons best known to the doctor, he said yes. And then my son stayed there in the classic apprenticeship way. You start off sweeping the floor, doing the basics. He also had him chant the Vedas for an hour every morning. But he told him this story that captured my imagination. He said, the teacher said to my son, he said, in the old days, when people really knew what they were about and they got it right, they lived for 500 years. And I thought, pretty good. Those old days, you know, it was really good then. And then, a lot or so later, I was a little bit further up India, in Kambator, in Tiruvannamalai.

[19:33]

And a friend had taken me to meet an Ayurvedic doctor, who was kind of like a worldwide reputation. He had a very large clinic, and people came from the whole way across the world to study with him. Both of these Ayurvedic doctors were also very conversant with Western medicine. They were not narrow in the right work. But for reasons I can't quite imagine why, I thought I would ask this world around Ayurvedic doctor about the old days when people lived 500 years. The thing was that you did all the appropriate Ayurvedic things. And I asked him, even as I was asking him, I was thinking, why am I asking this weird person? But I did.

[20:36]

And he paused and he looked at me and he said, well, there are Ayurvedic treatments, but if you take them and you go back to your family, they'll say, who are you? They'll make teeth that fell out and grow back. They'll transform you. However, these treatments, most people cannot bear to take them. It's really captured my imagination. I thought, hmm, would not be the way. When my son was in Kerala, one of the treatments he got was he went on a ghee diet. Ghee is clarified butter. And so he had nothing to eat except ghee.

[21:45]

And if you can imagine thinking, I'll go on an all-butter diet. And he lasted 10 days. I don't know how much ghee he actually ate in ten days, but that's all he was offered. And the doctor was telling him that such is the human system, such is the human organism, that when it's stretched and strained and challenged, when it sails like a ship across that wild sea, it's enliving. And of course, as the doctor said, you have to be careful it doesn't kill you.

[22:47]

Don't overdo it. So, I think our practice is like this, the practice of aliveness. That if we settle for predictable security, the routine, we pay a price. The medicine that enables aliveness isn't received. But what is it to be ready for the medicine? And as we've been studying this week in both the Christian tradition and the Buddhist tradition, seeing how they both uphold both of these elements.

[23:53]

This element of Don't stay within the cocoon of your own ideas and habits and emotional disposition. However, sustain a balance, an equanimity, a patience, a sadness, a curiosity. Learn, and this image comes up in Buddhism, learn to be the good doctor that knows how to administer the medicine of aliveness. And to look to the teachings that can guide us.

[25:01]

And I would say that when we look to the spiritual teachings, the teachings of the breath of life, that when we look at them this way, they're enticing. When we look at them as an orthodoxy, a set of rules, a set of do's and don'ts, a set of shoulds and shouldn'ts, they can lose that aliveness. At various times in his life, this poet Roka was plagued as he was when he was staying in that castle and walking along the cliffs. He was plagued by his deep desire to live. In one of his poems, he starts off by saying, I want a lot.

[26:04]

I think I want everything. I want a lot. I think I want everything. And who doesn't? Who doesn't want to be alive? Who doesn't want to hear the crickets so thoroughly that they're not chorus eases our hearts makes our brain dance with joy and you listen and you hear in different parts of the valley there's different rhythms and the rhythms move towards each other move away from each other change

[27:06]

And if that's possible, listening to the crickets, what else is possible? And you meditate. And you listen to the breath in your own body. And you feel in the inhale your emotional disposition to being alive. Your willingness to allow what is to be. And then you pause. And then you hang in this stillness between receiving and giving. Between embracing and letting go. And you listen and feel your own body And is it a flow?

[28:16]

Is there a stepness? And can this life breath flow through this body, breath after breath? Can this life breath, as it flows through the body, be the good doctor? teaching us some primitive, visceral, essential message for being alive. And what is this contradiction within our organism that keeps saying, actually, I think I'm just gonna sit here and relive that annoying conversation. How dare they say that to me?

[29:21]

I'm a really hard worker here, and I deserve the day off. The thousand contradictions. We taste a little bit of that exquisite life breath and its teaching. And something in us opens like a flower open to the sun. And you think, and then we never close. And then every period of meditation we leap at it with utter devotion and dedication. Nope. We'd rather worry about that thing that annoyed us. Or that might annoy us tomorrow.

[30:28]

The thousand contradictions. Whoever grasps the thousand contradictions in their life pulls them together into a single image. that person, joyfully and thankfully, drives the rioters from the palace, becomes celebratory in a different way. There's a celebration when you get what you want. I got what I want. There's also a Chinese curse, which is, may you get what you want. So I've been told, celebratory in a different way. And presence in the guest is the guest that's received on the quiet evenings. Presence is in solitude.

[31:36]

The tranquil hub of talking and every circle that's drawn around presence lifts out of time on those compass legs. It lifts us up out of the am. The mistaken activity that I'm making this life. I'm shaping it. When I worry about this, and desire that, and get annoyed by that. I'm shaping this world. No, we're not. We're shaping our response to it. We're influencing our response to it, our way of experiencing it.

[32:41]

And when we start to see this, when we hear the crickets, we hear the sound that is there, and it's like we hear the dark of the night. We sense, okay, this is this exquisite moment. And it's completely itself. In this way. And endless other ways are possible. And that's what makes it exquisite. That's what gives it beauty. creates almost a timeless moment.

[34:05]

In that presence, we forget what we were worried about, what we were annoyed about what happened today, and what we were anxious about what's going to happen tomorrow. We forget the calculation and measurement that we attribute to aliveness. And it's like another voice speaks. It's like we receive a medicine that we can't take on our own terms. We receive a medicine that asks us to go beyond our own demands of what life should be. And in Buddhism, this is called awakening.

[35:17]

And it's very interesting, this story of Shakyamuni. You start off in this discipline, He learned it. He practiced it thoroughly. He moved to another one. He moved to another one. One was philosophical. One was Hatha Yoga. Another one was the refinement of just how to relate to the particulars of consciousness. And then he set off into uncharted territory. And he made a total mess of it. He got all caught up in his own fixed ideas and almost killed himself. And then, with the aid of an eight-year-old girl, Sujata, who gave him her lunch,

[36:29]

and said, I think you need this more than I do. And then he thought, he ate the lunch and he thought, oh, maybe I need to rethink all this. Or maybe I need to stop thinking this. He crossed the stormy sea. And interestingly, he was the one who made it stormy. And somehow, his ferocious foolishness was a profound teaching. I want a lot. I think I want too much. I want everything. The other thought that came into mind, when my son was three years old, we were in this end-center dining room, and there was fresh strawberries for dessert.

[37:38]

And he took a giant bowl, and I whispered to him, Kieran, you took too much. And he said, I want too much. No? And I thought, well, who doesn't? I want what I want. Oscar Wilde said, I can resist everything except desire. The world shaktimune lying broken in his own fixed ideas and having the good sense to take help having the courage to start over

[38:57]

with beginner's mind. One of the sheer delights for me teaching with Brother David was maybe teaching a way and something would come up that he wasn't familiar with. usually my misrepresentation of some Buddhist idea. And how his curiosity and attention spiked, you know? I could learn something here. Decades and decades as a monk. Not one, but Two PhDs.

[40:00]

Endless exchanges with all the spiritual luminaries of the last half century. Present them with a new learning. And he lights up like a candle. Beaming, radiating light. pick up the elements of our spiritual practice with curiosity. What will my meditation reveal today? What mischief and extraordinary genius will my mind and emotions and the breath going through my body

[41:11]

So I would say that's what the Buddha, Shakyamuni, realized. That's what the Buddha within us is asking of us. That every moment offers its symphony of presence. And then if we don't pay attention, it offers another one. What floor could you ask for? Spirit of practice.

[42:16]

The practice of spirit. The practice of aliveness. 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, visit SSCC.org and click giving.

[42:50]

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