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. Okay. Can you hear me over there in that corner? It's the furthest away and the noisiest. If you can hear, probably everybody else can too. So on Wednesday, to start our fall dedicated period of practice, I talked about our intention of practice. And I formulated it this way. That our intention arises mostly out of the context of what's going on in our life. And then as we think about it, it ripens or it deepens.

[01:08]

And the word I use, then it deepens into vow. And usually vow has a more, in a spiritual context, a more expansive and inclusive character to it. I remember I was born in Northern Ireland, and when I was doing Peace and Reconciliation there, I came across someone who told me this story. He said, when he was in prison, which he was for murdering a couple of people in the process of the sectarian strike, and he and his cohort got into a sort of Socratic dialogue, and they would ask each other, what's the most important thing? Our intentions like this, this is what gives it gravity, helps it settle down into our being.

[02:17]

What's the most important thing to do with this human life? And they went through this dialogue. They were in prison for a long time. And in the process of going through the dialogue, he came to the conclusion that being a person of peace and bringing peace to his community, not just his half of the community, but the whole community. And so that's what he did. There was an amnesty when the peace treaty was signed and he was allowed out of prison. And he worked for peace for the rest of his life. He died a couple of years ago. So this ripening of intention.

[03:19]

How marvelous that someone can go from feeling like the ends justifies the means. The goal I have is so noble that I can take these actions, violent, and they're justified. Then as you conjure it, as you let something deepen, as you let a quickening within you, this amazing way we have when we open, when we settle, we have a wisdom and compassion. As our intention settles, we start to tap into that. And in spiritual practice, we call this settling in the vow. And then, of course, vow is just a beautiful idea until we bring it forth into who we are and how we are and how we engage others and how we engage the world.

[04:28]

the priorities, the actions, the standards, the ethics by which we live and act. And similarly in our spiritual practice, the vow expressed through intention and then resolve. This way that the intention meets and engages the workings of who we are, what we are. Then this comes forth in action. That's what I said on Wednesday night. Today I'd like to talk about how that takes place in Zazen. In the Zen school, zazen is considered to be the full expression of vow, intention, resolve, and action.

[05:44]

And then we can say there's the zazen of the yogic process of sitting in a stable posture, upright posture, and letting existence be exactly what it is. And that instructs our being. And with that instruction, with that reorganization of our being, we get up and we enter the world. We enter the world hopefully with the wisdom and compassion that has been stimulated through vow. Zazen. Zazen is experiencing. And like any experiential learning, it's almost like the more we talk about it, well it's a delicate thing talking about it.

[06:55]

At some point, words will always fall short what experience will teach us. So I thought we could start with two brief experiential processes. So if you could, in your seat, just attend to your stability. and open your eyes about you. I just told him to open his eyes because he was drowsy. That's a terrible thing what happens when you sit in the front row. But the good thing is that all of us who've meditated a while

[08:05]

have all gone through the same experience. We know it's in no way an expression of lack of sincerity or dedication or effort. It's the humbling truth that you can't master the conditions. You can only practice with them. So settle, and then if you can Think of lengthening the spine. And think of opening up the front of the body. For most people, it means a little emphasis on lifting up through the sternum, through the upper chest. And then holding that uprightness, can you release, can you relax without the body slumping?

[09:31]

So there's an uprightness but without attention. And then as best you can, the next couple of minutes, and then when I put my hands up, Jay, you can ring the bell. Just try to notice everything. Everything that happens for you. When there's a thought, when there's a sign, when there's a sensation in the body, notice. The gift of noticing is you're not doing anything to it, against it.

[10:37]

And then a slight variation on the same body, settled, upright, open, released. Willingness to experience. Presence here Everything comes here as the event of now. In a willingness to experience. Nothing needs to happen. Nothing needs to stop happening. So in a way, the rest of my talk will be a commentary on those experiences.

[14:25]

In Zen, the notion that when we are open, attentive, and experiencing what is This not only draws us down, settles us into this innate wisdom and compassion of being, it also expresses its place in the order of being. Normally, our individual consciousness generates a version of reality and we live out that version of reality, conscious and unconscious as it may be, or known and unknown as it may be. The process of Zen is in one sense to step back and notice what's going on.

[15:45]

When you start to sit, I don't mean like when you're learning to sit, I mean every single time, whether you've been sitting, this is your first day, or you've been at it 40 years, 50 years. When you start to sit, noticing, how deeply can we remember what the core of being is? And for most of us what we notice a lot of the time is we notice the activity of mind, the thoughts, the feelings, whatever. And here's a story, a Zen story. A Zen teacher, I think in the 11th century, was approached by a monk and the teacher started the dialogue.

[16:50]

And he said, well, where are you from? And he said, I'm from Yu province in China. And the teacher said, do you think of that place? And the monk said, I always am thinking of something about that myself or whatever. And the teacher said, notice the thinking. Noticing the thinking connects us to the process of selfing, of being a self, of constructing reality and responding to the reality we're constructing. And there's a great paradox in that. In one way,

[17:50]

It's very simple. Just notice. If you're thinking about this, notice you're thinking about this. And then the other side of the paradox is it's incredibly difficult as a human being to simply just notice the world you're constructing. Whether it's the province of you, place in China or the province of you as in me. Nothing is more interesting tantalizing than the world according to me. And the great instruction of noticing is not just its simplicity but in a way its generosity. There's a kind of implicit okayness in just noticing.

[18:54]

You don't have to fix it. You don't have to stop it. You don't have to make it something other than what it is. Just notice. Can you be instructed by that activity, that experiencing, that what you are is what you are and that has its place in all existence. That the incessant effort, preoccupation, approval and disapproval, human as they may be, they're not absolutely necessary for this life to thrive. So each time we sit down, This noticing, it instructs us, it reminds us. In a level below thought, being this, being what I am is okay.

[20:08]

Even though in my conscious mind I may have all sorts of judgments about it. Approval and disapproval. And Yangshan says to the monk, notice. Notice that mind that comes into being. And then the great challenge for us is, well, guess what? If this is what you're thinking and this is how you're constructing the world, then you need to take responsibility for it. This is my version of reality. Normally we imbue others with blame or authority over our world. When we notice, we stay here and we notice it's not just its content and this is

[21:21]

an important part of the yoga of Zazen, we notice its emotion, and under the emotion, we use a Buddhist word, Vedana, this kind of visceral response we have to it. And this visceral response resonates through our body, our mind, our breath. So in Zazen, We notice and we bring the noticing into relationship to the body, the breath, and the mind. And of course, this is an art in of itself. And as the practice period goes on, we will do some physical work around this, maybe as part of the half-day sittings.

[22:26]

And if any of you who are not in the practice period would like to attend those half-day sittings, they'll probably be on Thursdays or Fridays. If you call the front office, they'll let you know. So the noticing in its elemental or visceral form is in the body, the breath, and the mind. In a practical way, we can ask ourselves, well, what disposition, what way can we facilitate the process of noticing, given how difficult it is for the human mind and heart? to stay that simple.

[23:29]

So today, many of us, about 80, are going to meditate all day. We're going to do zazen all day. We're going to keep this process of noticing going as thoroughly as we can the whole day. It's just a way to create an environment, to create an opportunity. And then we create an alignment internally. We align the body. We align the breath. We invite the breath to soften, to deepen, flow in and out. And this body breath invites the mind. The process of Zazen has a similarity to the process of going to sleep. When we go to sleep, something releases. It's more about non-doing than doing.

[24:34]

You don't do going to sleep. You flow into it. You give over to it. We could say the process of zazen is there's this release and then the awareness The noticing that's based on attention is brought into being with the uprightness of the body, the attentiveness of the mind. As you're exploring this process, when you're not familiar with it, Yes, there will be mental admonition. Maybe there'll be deliberate ways you sustain your attention. Count your breaths.

[25:38]

Notice the exhales. Deliberately hear the sounds. But to remember the basic principle, cultivating attention and release. And the release is releasing into what is. So this refines our effort. Cultivating attention can become another form of doing. And then we just carry on doing the way probably the way we do most things in our life. Whether your doing is driven by your ambition, or driven by your anxiety, or driven by your sense of inadequacy, or whatever it is.

[26:46]

Can the admonition for a lease refine your effort? Can it infuse your effort with acceptance? So Yangshan says to the monk, look at the mind, look at the thinking. And then he adds a second part to it. He says, and look at what's constructed. In the coin it's like this, is what it says. Therein, he says, look at what's constructed. Therein, mountains, rivers, land, buildings, halls, chambers, people, animals, everything comes into mind. And then he asks the monk a question.

[27:55]

When you turn your mind, when you direct attention to the process of thinking, what happens? And the monk, having done this many times, says, when I do that, instead of the world being so concrete and real and permanent, it becomes more ephemeral. You start to notice it comes into being, it goes out of being. A feeling arises and goes away. A thought arises, maybe it draws up a feeling, maybe it gets linked to another thought. But when it's held with attention, not so convincing as the reality.

[29:00]

And I know some of you have heard this maybe a hundred times. But the process of zazen is every time we sit down to hear it for the first time, to remember that asks us to start at the primal point of our existence. Every time. It asks us to rediscover vow. From that place of vow engage our effort. That there is no, that this is the formidable and the utterly generous expression of Zazen. It's formidable because it's quite exact. And it's utterly generous because it's saying exactly who you are and what you are is completely appropriate.

[30:15]

It's completely what it is. And I would say, no matter how many times We try to convince ourselves of that idea. It doesn't penetrate through the habitual ways in which we refute it, the habitual ways we want to be different, we want the world to be different, we want to accomplish or avoid something. So this is the primal process of Zen Zen. And in the Zen school, this is the key catalyst to awakening. And in our seated posture, this becomes a yogic event.

[31:28]

a yogic process. Now, through various neurological and physiological studies, discovering that we are present in this way, something reorders itself in our being. Our brain reconfigures itself. The arteries of our heart dilate so our heart works more easily. Our digestion is stimulated, a respiration. Just as when we go to sleep, there's a healing process similarly. As we release into Zazen, And then when this is done with awareness, this awareness illuminates.

[32:41]

So the monk says to Yongshan, when I engage this process, nothing is a fixed reality. And Yongshan says, this is good. for the stage of trusting the process. But it's not yet right for this stage of being a person. In our seated says then, we can explore, we can experience what it is to let go of the anxieties the agitations, the aversions, the fears, the confusion, right down to how they become embodied. And we can learn to trust something about being nourished by simple presence.

[34:01]

And it has a quality to it. It has a quality of reassurance and nourishing. Then Yongshan says, but it's not quite the stage of being a person. We enter into the world. We are part of the world. We're part of its collective karma. We're part of the norms of our society. We're part of, in the United States, we're part of the emphasis on material being in our society. We're part of our own family dynamic and all sorts of other cultural influences. And even though in the stillness of our sitting they are ephemeral, when we enter the world, they are real.

[35:16]

Sometimes people say, oh, I'm leaving the Zen center now and I'm going back to the real world. It has its truth in a way. I mean, in a way, it's real because we say it's real, because we act like it's real. And the challenge of taking zazen into our life, taking this, what we might call, primal illumination, letting it shed light on the constructs of what we are, is that the world is both real and unreal. But yes, indeed, we create constructs. Like my friend in Northern Ireland who in the sectarian strife thought, okay, I'm of this religion, this person's of that religion, and they are my enemy.

[36:34]

They were both Christians. Their ethnic background was very similar. somehow the constructs that were held as fixed truths gave rise to a world, a reality. So Deng Shan is saying to the monk, How will you carry this primal illumination? How will you carry this sensibility into your world? What kind of priorities? What kind of ethics? What kind of intentionality? And the monk says, OK, thank you for that question.

[37:42]

Do you have anything else? Do you have any other guidance? And Yongshan says, to say that I have some fixed prescription, or that I don't have some fixed prescription, would we can say, don't harm, do good. What does that look like when you're a Palestinian living in Palestine or a Syrian living in Syria?

[38:46]

You're from Kenya with Somali paramilitaries coming in. What is good and not good? The young saint says, it's not possible to have fixed answer. You get one mystery. You get one mystery, and you practice with it. And you see for yourself. This translation says, after this, see on your own. Core practice instructs us.

[39:58]

And then our life becomes a place to enact what we've learned. We're not enacting it in the spirit of Zen. We're not enacting it because we know the answer. It's more like we're enacting it because we're aware of the question. What's going on? What's happening now? What's the process of thinking and formulating ideas and opinions and judgments that's happening in this being? And given that, now what? And so the activity of our life becomes our teacher. This is the spirit of Zen practice. You drop it and it teaches us how to pick it up and live it and be it with the spirit of inquiry, with the spirit of a vow that doesn't have a fixed prescription.

[41:23]

So I hope this makes some sense, because this will be what we will explore in the practice period. How do you do that? Study, what is it to settle, to drop it, to be as primal as possible? And then what is it to enter into the world, not just reenact our habit energies, not just caught up in our collective biases and prejudices, but somehow letting the engagement in the world be the demonstration of what it is to live about. You know, it often occurs to me now that now that we can get news from anywhere in the world, and of course, what news is most interesting?

[42:43]

The great disasters. We can get news in a matter of hours. Maybe you could say, well, this is terrific. We can have a kind of How else would you feel connected to a shopping mall in Kenya? Other than having it brought into your world, sadly, as a tragedy. But how do we not just become numbed by the overwhelming nature of our planet? its endless turmoil how can our mind stay stable and our hearts stay open how can it be this world this beautiful tragic world

[44:06]

in all its workings, how can it be a source of inspiration and support of our practice rather than overwhelm us and make us feel numb? We can say, we sit down and we open with great compassion and patience to the human condition. And remind ourselves, this is us. This is not me, this is us. These thoughts and feelings all their variations are us.

[45:08]

We all have these emotions. The particulars are of this place and time. But the vow, the general expression and the aspiration are us. Can we touch it? Can it inform? Can it be embodied? And can it be inactive? This question, Yongshan says, this is the great mystery. This is the question that in a way can't ever be fully answered. We can act. Then the world rearranges itself in the next moment and asks again, and now what?

[46:25]

How do we take care of our own tender being and how do we take care of our collective tender being? And from a Zen perspective, our sitting, and our actions are not two different things. They're interwoven. You touch something elemental, and it flows into our actions. Our actions, our experiences of the world, instruct us deeply about our conditioned existence and stimulate the vow. 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.

[47:30]

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.

[47:46]

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