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. Welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. Can you hear over there in the corner? I returned yesterday evening from a visit to our monastery, Tassajara, inland from Big Sur. And I was there teaching a workshop on the spirit of practice. A title that we cooked up to try to express an inquiry into what is it underneath spiritual practices, religions,

[01:01]

that we're trying to get at. If you look at the major religions, and maybe if you look at all sorts of traditions across the planet, and in all sorts of societies and cultures, there is an attempt to both express and engage something that seems to be fundamental to how we relate to life. We create doctrines, we create practices, we create ceremonies. And so myself and a Christian monk and priest, Father Cyprian, in the tradition of St. Benedict, the sixth century, Catholic teacher who created a monastic system that has influenced most of the monastic systems in Christianity since then.

[02:11]

And Father Cyprian's in that tradition. He lives. He's the abbot of a monastery near Esalen in Big Sur. And then just over a couple of mountain ranges, you've got Tassajara. And What is that spirit, that ethos, that impulse, that mystery that motivates us, that inspires us, that instructs us as we take up some form of practice? I'm aware, in using that word, it's a term that, in many ways, fits more readily into Western Buddhism. I'm not even sure if Buddhist practitioners in Asia would so readily take up that term.

[03:21]

But still, I will use it. And Father Cyprian assured me that in early Catholicism, which relied a lot on Greek thinking, which I didn't know, had a term called praxis, which is actually the root of the English word practice. So I'd like to approach this topic today by offering you two Zen stories. As we were going through the workshop, and Father Cyprian would say, well, the church doctrine on this is like this. And my version of Zen, I think it has something to do with the orthodox version of Zen. I don't know if we have any doctrines.

[04:29]

In my version, we don't. But we have lots of stories. So two short stories. First story is this Buddhist scholar about a thousand years ago, quite recent. Goes to study with his young teacher. He is a master of the whole Buddhist canon. He has studied it and teaches on it and knows it thoroughly. But he realizes there's something more to get it. So he goes to study with his Zen teacher. And the Zen teacher will say, well, it's like this. And then he'd say, oh, that would be just the same as in this doctrine of Buddhism, this teaching. And the teacher would say, hmm, maybe so, but not exactly. And they did this for about three years.

[05:33]

The teacher would keep saying, just this. And he'd say, oh, that reminds me, or I see in that statement, this teaching. The scholar was continually taking something that the teacher was presenting and contextualizing it with ideas. And then one day, the teacher said to the monk, What were you before your parents were born? And the scholar thought, huh, I don't know if I know a doctrine that applies to that. His repertoire of ideas and concepts and definitions

[06:37]

didn't seem to supply a readily constructed response. Then the story goes on that for years he just kept working with that. What was I before my parents were born? You know, you can think, one way to think about the self is there's I, and there's I in relationship. You could say to any one of us, well, what roles do you have? Okay, I'm a sibling. I'm a son. I'm a father. I'm a teacher. I'm someone who came from this part of the world. I'm someone who has these kinds of friends.

[07:40]

Establishing I through relatedness. That sense of I. And then there's maybe another sense of I that we might call myself. Instead of connecting out into relatedness, internal. These habits of thought, these habits of feeling, these habits of behavior. Someone said to me recently, when I wake up in the morning, there's a sense of rage. very much every morning.

[08:48]

It made me think of a poem by Rumi where he says, and when we wake up in the morning anxious and afraid, maybe he was talking about himself, but in the poem it seemed to be generalizing. And Rumi says, When you wake up in the morning anxious in the fridge, before you get busy, slow down. Do something you love. And he says, take your musical instrument down from the shelf and play. And how that... mysterious dream world, that mysterious activity of trying to integrate, assimilate, make sense of, create an image, a story around that internal world.

[09:51]

So, relatedness and something internal. And then the teacher says, to the scholar, I'm asking you, what about beyond both of those? And the scholar has nothing to say. And then the story has a happy ending after three more years of contemplation of that which can't be contemplated. The scholar got it. First story. Second story. A monk comes to see Joshu.

[10:55]

Joshu was known for his straightforwardness. Just plain-spoken guy. He was a renowned teacher. He had something, something that attracted a lot of students. And this monk says to Joshua, I've walked hundreds and hundreds of miles to be here. So would you please, I ask respectfully, would you please give me your teaching? And Joshua looked at the monk and says, have you had your lunch? And he said, yeah. He says, go wash your bowl. That's a story. That's Joshua's teaching. How do you navigate the mystery of relatedness?

[11:58]

If we can't fathom myself, How do we relate all of this? Is it just a place to explore the mystery that's within us? Do we live it out and try to find the responses? Do we assign to others a role in our internal psychodrama? Sometimes it's a useful way to think. I've often found, you know, in this tradition, we have one-on-one interviews. I've often found that if a male comes to me and I find out, oh, he has had a lot of trouble with his father,

[13:03]

a lot of unresolved trouble with his father. I'm in trouble. Because guess what? I'm going to be held responsible. Somehow or another, there will be an inclination to see within me the very same terrible things of the father. Sometimes when I read some of the biblical stories about God the Father relating to God the Son, the people of Earth, the Father sitting in judgment, the Father giving out punishment,

[14:07]

how the internal gets extended not just to people, but how we create a studied response to existence. Whether you want to call it a doctrine, your belief structure, or the guidelines by which you try to live. And Joshua says, have you had lunch? Go wash your bones. Just take it as it comes. And of course, we could immediately in our complex world say, well, that's simplistic and naive in this world.

[15:18]

there are many complex challenges and demands upon us. And still, there's also do what you're doing. Live in the moment. Take care of what appears in front of you. do some work for me across the street many years ago. But what he said to me has stuck with me. He was talking about being a plumber. And he was saying, if I can't meet the person right in front of me, I'm not doing my job right. I was stunned. I thought, wow, you've actually become a plumber.

[16:22]

to give birth to that, to practice that. So somewhere in the midst of the complexity, the inner complexity and the outer complexity, do what you're doing. Meet what's in front of you. Relate to it. There's a saying attributed to Bodhidharma, the finder of Zen. If you want to know the fish, watch the water. If you want to see who you are, watch how you behave. Watch the way you relate to things. Watch what gets stirred up around you. And then in the workshop, as a starting place, we used the notion of the Trinity.

[17:38]

And within Catholicism and Christianity, you have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And then I sort of took a Buddhist teaching. I'll tell you what I took, but sort of fits. It has three. Being the rebellious Zen person, I thought, could it be the mother, the daughter, and the Holy Spirit? The imagery is, in my own, I must confess, not so deeply learned notion, maybe unlearned in the whole notion, It was a patriarchy. So, who comes first?

[18:40]

The father. The mother follows behind. But the something giving birth to existence. Maybe the mother and the father giving birth to the daughter and the son. Giving birth to existence. Maybe we could even say, stretch it a little and say, the Zen teacher was asking the scholar, and what gave birth to this existence that you are? What were you before your parents were born?

[19:43]

What is, in Christian terms, God the Father? And it's interesting because the Buddhist notion of that seems to have a closer connection to the Jewish approach to that and the Islam approach. They would both say that which cannot be named. And the Buddhist, so what I said was there's a Buddhist teaching of the Trikaya, it's called. And you have the Dharmakaya. realm of being, kaya. The realm of being that goes beyond all our ideas and concepts and notions of what is. That which can't be named.

[20:52]

That which can't be contained within thought. Goes beyond thought. and then that which comes into being, the son, the daughter, the children of the parents, of God the father and God the mother, and God the son, and God the earth, and God the wind, and the water and the sky. Somewhere in our spiritual traditions, we creatively explore this notion.

[21:56]

How did all this happen? I read recently an article on astrophysics. The universe is increasing its rate of expansion. And if, and I think it's a considerable if, if that continues to be for maybe another 10 billion years or so, it will go so fast, it will break loose of the time-space continue, this whole universe will stop existing. So try that one on. If what were you before your father and mother doesn't feel challenging enough,

[23:04]

the atoms will accelerate so much that they will disintegrate. Similarly with the electrons. And yet, here it is. Existence. And we are it. Both as an eye, and in relatedness, and as a myself. This marvelous, mysterious internal being. Waking up in the morning. And what was that? What just happened? What was this consciousness doing?

[24:12]

What did it get involved in? And what's it bringing forward into this so-called I, into this so-called the world? And Rumi's saying, before you get busy with all that, Just elaborate, maybe exaggerate. Take down your instrument and play it. Stay in a less fully defined and formed state. The Holy Ghost. And in the teachings of Buddhism, the sambhogakaya, the interplay of that which goes beyond and that which is manifest.

[25:28]

And the notion in Buddhism is that that interplay When it's allowed to flow, when it's allowed to dance, when it's embraced and not resisted. Joy, harmony. When our relationships are going well, how lovely. Mutual appreciation. good communication, harmonious interactions. I give you a gift, you're deeply touched by the gift, and you give me one bag. Mutual generosity. Mutual kindness.

[26:36]

in Buddhist terms, the sambhogakaya, that which goes beyond all thoughts and concepts, the dharmakaya, that which is manifest, the nirmanakaya, and the interplay of the two. Within ourselves, the I and the myself discovering how to coexist. Shall we stay asleep and live the dream of myself the whole time? Just letting the world be an extension of our dreams? Should we obliterate the myself and live in the suchness of the external?

[27:54]

Should you leap out of bed and dismiss the workings of the inner self and devote yourself to the external. So this interplay that we're living all the time, whether we recognize it or not, whether we think we have a handle on it or not, or we prefer just to ignore it and try to suffer less and be happier more. And then within Buddhism, there's a very interesting proposition, is that we could put it this way, that we learn about the harmony from the disharmony.

[29:15]

There's something in seeing the limitation of being human. There's something in experiencing that limitation that's deeply instructive. In Buddhist teaching, we have three basic ways of creating disharmony. That which brings us pleasure tends to create desire. That desire tends to create an approach to existence that says, I should get what I want.

[30:26]

creates a kind of clinging and inappropriate response to this ever-changing world. We're part of a huge dynamic. Even if the astrophysicists got it wrong, and we're still going to be around after 10 billion years, Although I think most of us think, well, it's a human species. I don't know if it can last that long. Maybe we can console ourselves, but we're part of all of this. But the notion that there is within us, this impulse to try to own it, to try to take it and own it within myself.

[31:44]

It's mine. And then the matching notion that that which is unpleasant, we want to separate from it. We want to ensure that's outside myself. We want to ensure that we won't be harmed, diminished, destroyed by that. The Buddhist teaching is these are deep-seated impulses within us. And sometimes we play them out in blatant ways, and sometimes we play the mind in subtle ways. Then the third one is, it's usually described as either delusion or confusion.

[32:57]

It's the two questions that define something are, do I want it or do I not want it? Do I want to grasp it or do I want to push it away? That's all it is. And the confusion. What do I want? What do I want? this interplay within us. We experience the power of our desires and aversions, and yet something in us knows, that's not the whole story. No. There's something within the human condition. Maybe we could call it wisdom. Maybe we could call it the spark of awareness. Maybe we'd call it Buddha nature.

[34:03]

however you want to call it, there it is. And these three forces come into play. And seeing how they come into play gives us an illustration of the limitation of grasping an aversion. And it challenges us to discover what is that harmony of the sambhogakaya. Because both from a Zen point of view, the attraction and the aversion are cons. Or should you disregard your own safety and just walk out into the traffic with your eyes shut?

[35:14]

Our aversion is in the service of our well-being. Our desire, what about a healthy appetite for life? In contrast, to be so disconnected, that you don't see a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Harmony, this interplay that brings beauty, brings a deep appreciation of the limitation of a human life. that brings glimpses and connections to some greater being. We start with attending to what is going on.

[36:24]

And this is the spirit of the Zen way. We don't have fixed doctrines that say, you must believe this. You must do this. You must turn into this kind of being. It's more, here's a process. Here's a way of attending to your experience so that you learn how to live in the middle of it. You learn how to live in relationships. to all being. And you learn how to accept this internal being. We have the inner being and we have the inter-being. Both there. And when we hold that notion, then we can look at what we do.

[37:34]

Oh, we create these kinds of ceremonies. We dress up like this. The Catholic priest, Father Cyprian, he said to me, you know, I did bring my long, white, flowing robes. What do you think? Should I wear them? And I said, oh, I don't think so. They'd only get dirty here at Tassajara. And I didn't wear my long, flowing black robes either. But I would say, there's something in being able to take up a tradition, and put down the artifacts.

[38:40]

Pick them up, put them on, take them off, put them down. We are going to live our lives one way or another. I mean, even if you get up out of bed in the morning and decide, today I'm going to go naked, it's still something. You still have your skin on. And what a marvelous and mysterious thought that would be. I wonder how many people in this room have ever thought that. Maybe this is a naked day. I never have. But then when we turn towards...

[39:41]

this human dilemma. It keeps inviting us back to how these forces within human life come into play. And then there's an interesting term in Christianity. I don't know if we have an equivalent in Buddhism, but it's the notion of sacrifice. And it literally means to make sacred. And in a way, to take that and co-opt it into Zen practice, we take the experience of the moment and in holding it with awareness, we make it sacred.

[40:59]

Here's an example of what is happening. Here's an example of the interplay of the Dharmakaya and the Nermanakaya. Here's the father and mother giving birth to the son and the daughter, and the interplay between them. Here's the father-son and the mother-earth. giving birth to all life. I'd like to finish with a poem by Joy Harjo, who a couple of weeks ago was the first Native American, the first nation person to be designated as Poet Laureate.

[42:05]

holds Father, Son, and Mother Earth. But first of all, I have to find it. It's called Eagle Poem. Joy Harjo, our new poet laureate. I recommend her poetry. It's powerful stuff. To pray. You open your whole self to sky, to earth, to sun, to moon, to one whole voice, that is you. And know there is more that you can't see, can't hear

[43:18]

except in moments steadily growing and in languages that aren't always sound or other circles of motion. Like ego, that Sunday morning over Salt River, circled in blue sky and wind, swept our hearts clean with sacred wings. We see ourselves and know that we must take the utmost care and kindness in all things. Breathe in, knowing we are made of all this, and breathe, knowing that we are truly blessed because we were born, and die soon within the true circle of motion. Like ego, rinding out the morning inside us, we pray that it will be done in beauty, in beauty.

[44:19]

Thank you.

[44:47]

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