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. Chanting this three times allowed me to drop in and taste the words. Today I have some very simple messages. Stillness in the midst of our imagination. Stillness receiving space in the midst of our imagination. Zazen. Just sitting as the keystone.

[01:02]

To our practice. Stillness. Receiving not moving. In the midst of our imaginations. The power of repetition. Zazen. Keystone. Sitting still. In the midst of our myriad imaginations. Our negative. Repetitions flatten us. The negative thoughts flatten us. And our positive thoughts can flatten the experience. What is it that you're repeating? Return to stillness in the midst of our imagination. And the fourth thing is the danger of a single story. The danger of a single story.

[02:07]

If we sit still and cultivate this vastness, this spaciousness in the midst of our imagination, the imagination our stories offer us, we have the possibility of experiencing some nuance, some opening to a vast universe. of the person or the experience that we don't know. A negative story flattens us, flattens the person, flattens the situation. And a positive story can kind of limit, you can get stuck in that not fleshed out story, returning to stillness in the midst of our imagination. the power of repetition, our zazen practice is a keystone element of our practice and the danger of stopping without the space between the words of a single story.

[03:19]

One of our ancestors, Ditsang, crossed the path of one of his students and Ditsang asked, Where are you going? And Fai Yan said, I'm going on pilgrimage. And Di Tsang asked him, What is the purpose of your pilgrimage? And Fai Yan said, I don't know. And Di Tsang said, Not knowing is most intimate. returning to the stillness and spaciousness in the midst of our imagination. Now I might ask myself or ask you, where are you? Where are we going? And you might suggest something like, I'm on the path of my life unfolding.

[04:26]

What's the purpose of this path unfolding? And you might say, I don't know. And I would say, ah, this is most intimate. This is closest to us. Actually, we don't really know. So our life, our day by day, our moment by moment has been suggested by my teacher, Tenshin Roshi, is a conversation. Our practice is a conversation. A conversation is between one, two, three, four, many, or with myself. I'm in conversation with myself. And if I sit still and I create some space in the midst of my imagination, I can witness what it is that's coming up. And I have the possibility of allowing myself to not get caught in a single story.

[05:33]

noting stillness in the midst of our imagination. You might notice that I have the power of repetition going here. And it turns out that we're being, maybe the word is bombarded, by about 11 billion bits of information per second. And what we actually register is is between 40 and 60 bits out of this 11 billion. Not very much. So to say I don't know would be joining with the truth. The future is what we don't know, and it is possibility. It's possibility for the better. It's wishful thinking about the future. And the wishful thinking is impermanent. Well, everything is impermanent.

[06:38]

So I have the opportunity to start this conversation, and I hope on the other side of this, you'll join me in the conversation. So for myself, I'm using this, I have used this over the years, this cultivation of Stillness, spaciousness, and not moving in the midst of my imagination. We could change that word imagination to in the midst of my story. The stories are numberless. We get about 11 billion of them, and I only register very few of them. Which ones will I attach to? So a question that comes up is, what do we have to offer? And how shall we live in these times? How shall we respond to our environment and to what's happening in the world? Can I pause in the midst of the various stories that are coming to my mind?

[07:40]

So I have to perhaps admit that the first thing is, honestly, I don't know. Now, I've said that several times today, this morning, and it's true, I don't know. What we might have are some guidelines, and I have mine. Maybe you can register what your intentions are, what our beliefs are, and what's helpful and what's not. But do any of us see a clear path, a clear path from this mess that we've created in a peaceful, sustainable world? No, we don't really. Blanche Hartman used to quote that what a monk has to offer, what a bodhisattva has to offer, what a practitioner of the way has to offer, what any of us in these screens have to offer is fearlessness.

[08:48]

In Zazen, our keystone practice, we create some space, some stillness in the midst of our imaginations. The word machinations just came to my mind. We are an imagination-making machine. Let's see. So I want to go to this definition. But before I want to go to this definition of the keystone practice, I want to flesh this out just a little bit more. I've been thinking about Suzuki Roshi. And it turns out, according to David Chadwick, he had nearly 300, not quite, but nearly 300 most important things. And one of his most important things was to realize that our lives are like a movie. And the most important thing is to realize the blank screen, stillness in the midst of our imaginations, the blank screen in the midst of the movie.

[10:07]

It allows us to create a true and honest and resourceful response to the moment, not necessarily something that we repeat over and over again. So I have been, over some time, I've been really taken with the looking at and registering trees. We had a tree cutter that used to work with us. He's not with us anymore on this planet. And his name was Ruck Rucker. Some of you might know him. And before I went to Tassajara, he said... Please have a conversation with the trees. Make friends with the trees. And I've been really watching the trees here around Green Gulch. The trees might be an example for us of a kind of stillness that's storing up quiet.

[11:14]

Their roots go down. They communicate with each other. Their trunk is their presence, and their branches reach out into the sky, and they offer an abode for so many species. The redwoods are around forever. They're an abode to many species. The trees store up water. The trees gather carbon dioxide. All of this in stillness. I like to imagine myself as a walking tree. And maybe, just maybe my roots, thinking of zazen, maybe my roots can be the precepts. Reaching down, gathering resource, coming up so they inhabit and manifest through this body.

[12:20]

And that when the branches... or the fingers, or the doings of the many things I do all day long are a reflection in the midst of this stillness of the precepts of knowing how to respond in a resilient way. So I'm going to read this definition of a keystone species so that you... that we together might see how I'm thinking about it in terms of zazen. So keystone species are those which have an extremely high impact on a particular ecosystem relative to the population. So we could see ourselves as the ecosystem and our stillness in the midst of imagination as the keystone. relative to the greater population.

[13:21]

A keystone species are also critical for the overall structure and function of an ecosystem. Our ability to be still and spacious and register vastness might be critical to an overall structure and function of the ecosystem. And they influence, keystone species influence many other types of plants and animals that make up that ecosystem. In the absence of a keystone species, many ecosystems would fail to exist. Zazen is our keystone practice, resting in the space between this, This and that. Good and bad.

[14:23]

Non-attachment to this and that. Stillness, spaciousness, receiving the pause. Inquiry, questioning, whatever arises in the midst of this stillness. Is that so? Or how about, and what else? A story arises and we can ask, and what else? If we stay in our own conversation without connecting with others, we're basically in our black box that created our trials and struggles. So we, maybe this morning, we're reaching out a little bit to hear some other way of forming our thoughts and our imagination. Maybe you have something to say to me or to the other people on the screen so that we can expand our story and how we're relating to the world. Our life, this conversation, our life is a conversation which appears and disappears.

[15:34]

It's in the stillness of our imagination. Our thoughts and emotions, they arise and cease. we don't attach to them they arise out of this pause and this space and they go back into the silence out of the stillness in the midst of our imagination what is the purpose of this path that we're traveling we don't really know is it helpful is it beneficial what would be a really I don't know about really, fresh. A fresh response. A creative response to what is arising in front of me. Stillness in the midst of imagination. Zazen is our keystone practice that supports this very ecosystem that offers a gift for

[16:42]

To a world that's lost. The power of repetition. We return again to stopping. Witnessing. Stopping. Just this breath. Witnessing. What is Sazen? Just this breath. What's the most important thing? Know your own mind. What's the most important thing? Stillness in the midst of imagination. And how does the stillness matter? You can see your own mind. Stillness in the midst. Did you watch yourself fill in? What did you say? As soon as there's a pause,

[17:44]

Something will arise. So let me check in with myself. Yeah. The silence. Taking some refuge in this silence and the pause. Where are we now? What is requested of me now? Our great ancestor Bodhidharma... suggested that we, that he was not searching for Buddha, that he was investigating the mind. How would we do that? In the stillness, in the midst of our imagination. We should investigate this mind. There's no wisdom and no Buddha, no nothing outside this mind, which comes through our five skandhas. Conversation is sharing with ourselves and sharing with others.

[18:46]

This silence and this pause belongs to all of us. This moment of spaciousness can be shared by all of us. Paying, offering, giving homage to, attentiveness to having faith and trust in spaciousness, having trust and faith in this journey that we're on. So I have, I'm going to close with a prayer. I'm going to call it a prayer that, came across my screen. And I'm sorry, I don't really have the person I could attribute this to.

[19:49]

And what he offered, what he made a reference to was a person who some of you might know, Peace Pilgrim, who went on pilgrimage, as long as we're talking about pilgrimage, for some like... 28 years or so, just walking around. And her particular mantra was, and I'm making this part of our circle of returning to stillness and living our life through the keystone practice of Zazen, live in the present, do the things that need to be done, Do all the good you can do each day, and the future will unfold. Live in the present. Do the things that need to be done.

[20:50]

Do all the good you can do each day, and the future will unfold. And on top of that, he received, what would I say? He received a configuration that Brother David Stendhal Rast put together from the Talmud. And this person, who I apologize to you in the universe for not being able to bring your name into this conversation, put Peace Pilgrim and this piece from the Talmud together. Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do not be daunted by the world of your grief, your fear, your confusion. Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief, by your fear, by your confusion, by not knowing.

[21:59]

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Live in the present. Do justly now. Love mercy now. Walk humbly now. Do the things that need to be done. Pause. Just do the things that need to be done. You are not obliged to complete the work. You are not obliged. To continue where you are obliged. You're not obliged to complete the work on the path of your life's unfolding. But neither are you free to abandon it. The power of repetition. Neither are you free to abandon it. Just do the next right thing. The future will unfold. Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief.

[23:06]

Live in the present. Do justly now. Love mercy now. Walk humbly now. Do the things that need to be done. Say the things that need to be said. Be present for what needs to be presenced. Do all the good that you can do each day. You're not obliged. to complete the work. But neither are you, neither are we, neither are we free to abandon it. Just do the next right thing. The future will unfold. In this conversation with others, with ourselves, with this practice of being able to drop into, We have faith in the spaciousness and stopping.

[24:08]

May we prepare ourselves. May this be a preparation to be a blessing for the world and all of our turmoil. To increase our capacity to sit with and hold with all the tensions that are inside of us and all around us. So that each one of us and each one we can encounter can go forward with a blessing. Stillness in the midst of our imaginations. Stillness in the midst of our stories. Stopping. Zazen. A keystone to the ecosystem of our practice. The power of returning of repetition. the danger of getting caught in a single story, the story that can flatten us, the story that can take away the vastness of our experience.

[25:19]

There's power in our imagination. Use it carefully. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[25:58]

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