This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Greetings, honorable teachers. Greetings, sincere Wayfarers. My name's Kokyo, coming up from Santa Cruz. I've heard that the Buddha said something like, I teach suffering and the end of suffering.

[01:02]

Sometimes it's even translated, I've heard somewhat questionably, as I only teach suffering and the end of suffering. But even if that's not exactly what he said, I think it's pretty good. I think that All the teachings of the Buddha are very practical. They come down to this point of relieving suffering in our world. Sometimes I like to think of this word suffering as discontent. Suffering sounds like just the worst possible horrific experiences, but discontent is something that happens to even the happiest people sometimes.

[02:13]

And the Buddha was concerned with trying to relieve all discontent. And there's many teachings about discontent and the end of discontent. Recently I heard this formulation that struck me as a beautiful way to talk about this. I think it's attributed to contemporary Dharma teacher Shinzen Young. The formula, it's put as a mathematical multiplication formula, which is that suffering or Let's say discontent equals pain, we could call it pain or discomfort, times resistance. Discontent equals pain times resistance. And part of the...

[03:24]

of setting this up as a multiplication formula instead of, say, addition, is the way multiplication works such that these two factors in the equation, like pain or discontent, say we have five units of pain or discomfort five units of pain, physical discomfort. I think it's helpful to talk about it this way. And five units of resistance equals 25 units of discontent. So usually what we're into as humans is reducing the pain side of the formula. Some people outside of... the Dharma realm might not even notice this factor called resistance.

[04:28]

So we're trying to minimize the discomfort and the pain. Our whole life is based on reducing discomfort and pain. And it's a valid approach to reducing suffering or discontent. So if we have five units of resistance, but only one unit of pain or discomfort, we only have five units of discontent or suffering. So you can reduce that side of the pain or discomfort, and that reduces the overall suffering or discontent. And there are Buddhist practices for reducing pain or discomfort, like in meditation practice, I think that it's very worthwhile trying to find the most comfortable physical posture.

[05:36]

Sometimes it looks really painful to sit so upright and so still for so long, but I think it's good to find the most comfortable posture so we can sit for a while. In other words, to minimize the physical discomfort. So then we can really work with the resistance part, focus more on that. And also, the Bodhisattva path is particularly, I think, about reducing the pain and discomfort of others. We might even say that the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, when... Relating to others' suffering, they're trying to reduce this factor of the others' pain or discomfort through medicine. Doctors are all about reducing discomfort through social or environmental activism.

[06:41]

It's not actually about reducing resistance. It's about reducing painful situations to benefit others, to reduce others' suffering. But these same bodhisattvas, when they're looking at their own suffering, they might switch the focus and work more with their own resistance. Still, I think if there's something we can do in the world of pain and discomfort to minimize it, no problem. We should do that as much as we can. But there's some pains and discomforts that we can't eliminate. And that's where the Buddhist teaching is really emphasizing this other factor in the equation, the factor of resistance. And again, I think it's good to remember that when we're talking about other people's suffering, we don't say, you should reduce your resistance.

[07:42]

We say, we're going to try to help you reduce the actual pain or discomfort. But when we're looking at our own suffering, we can focus more on our resistance. And I think a lot of the Buddhist teachings are more emphasizing this looking at understanding and working with this resistance. I think there's almost like a modern trend in American Buddhism to really be focusing on social and environmental activism, for example, which is not so much working with resistance, it's working with the actual causes, the actual factors of pain and discomfort. And that is part of the bodhisattva path. But hopefully it doesn't get so far in that direction that we forget to work with our own factor of resistance.

[08:50]

Resistance could also be called any kind of manipulation, like control or manipulation or meddling with what's happening. Even like suppression is a kind of resistance. Suppression of pain would be kind of a resistance to pain. aversion, even grasping, I would say, is a kind of resistance. It seems sort of the opposite at first, like resistance is trying to get rid of something, but grasping or craving even is a kind of resistance because it's resisting our present experience. We need something else to fulfill ourselves. And therefore, we're craving something based on resistance to our discomfort.

[10:00]

I feel uncomfortable. I feel even though my whole body feels uncomfortable looking at that donut and not having it. So that craving for the donut could be a kind of resistance to this discomfort of not having it. Discomfort is just part of what comes with being, a sentient being. Being an embodied creature comes with discomfort and pain. It's not inherently a problem, actually. We can have pain without discontent. So in this formula, if we have... five units of pain, say physical pain or discontent, and only one unit of resistance, then we have five units of discontent.

[11:15]

But the virtue here of using this multiplication formula is that if we were able to reduce the resistance to zero, which is, I think this is part of the Buddha's proposal, we could reduce resistance to zero and then you could have maybe even a hundred units of discomfort and pain and zero resistance equals zero discontent. zero suffering with a lot of pain. And I think that's the proposal of the Buddha. It's possible to get the resistance to whatever our experience is, pleasant or unpleasant.

[12:17]

If our resistance is zero, then there's zero discontent. But anywhere of reducing the resistance definitely reduces the discontent. Another piece of the puzzle as I explore this in my own experience, this is kind of like a work in progress, exploring what is discomfort and pain. And we often, we all, it's pretty straightforward, I think. physical or bodily pain or discomfort is we all know that that generates tension in the body, some sort of tension of tactile sensation is uncomfortable.

[13:19]

But what about mental or emotional pain? It seems to me that emotion I think any emotion, like happiness, sadness, anger, jealousy, these kind of emotions are always a mix, it seems to me, of a tactile sensation in the body, pleasant or unpleasant, mixed together with a thought. We might even say if it's an ongoing painful emotional experience, it's a whole series of painful tactile sensations mixed with a series of thoughts. And they're so mixed together that it just seems like one mass of painful emotion.

[14:23]

But though they can't really be separated, I think in our meditation practice we can explore, kind of teasing them apart a little bit, the physical sensations, the tactile sensations in the body, and the story or thoughts. And that it seems to me, this is the work in progress part. seems to me, exploring this, that the painful part of the emotion is the bodily part. So much so that it's seeming to me that there may be no such thing as a painful thought. I know this sounds really unusual. It sounds unusual to me. But you try to experiment. Can you have a so-called painful thought with a completely comfortable body?

[15:32]

I don't think it's possible. I haven't found a way to define such a thing where the thought has a really painful quality to it, but the body is totally relaxed and feels just completely at ease. I think that the pain... What we call a painful thought is actually a sensation in the body that goes along with a thought of separation or a thought of anger. But the painful part seems to be more in the tactile sensations, the bodily sensations, it seems to me. But this is a work in progress. Next week, it may seem to me like Yeah, it can be a painful thought with a totally blissful body. I haven't found it so far. So all this is to say that even just a so-called painful thought actually has this bodily component of discomfort.

[16:39]

And definitely what we call an emotion, a painful emotion, I think always has a bodily component. the virtue of looking at it this way is that in practice we can focus more on the tactile sensation in the body. I think that's generally recommended in meditation, that if we're caught up in a painful emotion, at least during meditation, to focus more on the sensation in the body. It's more workable. The story and thoughts are usually very complex. Maybe then, later, if we're with our therapist outside of meditation, then it's, I think, generally recommended that you work with the story more than the physical sensation. That might be one difference between therapy and meditation. In meditation, it's not that the story doesn't matter.

[17:42]

It's just that to start with, the tactile sensations are more workable. We can really just feel the tension in the body. Sometimes it's in the gut. Sometimes it's in the heart. Sometimes it's in the shoulders. And then, once we identify that sensation, then we can work on not resisting it. Just letting it be. In other words, it's feeling the feeling completely. We're talking here about the physical, tactile sensations. And when we do that, by just feeling it completely, experiencing it completely, it tends to become a little bit more workable situation. We're not adding this resistance and therefore creating all this

[18:44]

heavy-duty discontent on top of the already painful situation. So the discontent part starts reducing because the resistance is reduced. And it might become so workable that we're still feeling this tension in the body, but now we can start to now work with the thoughts and the story behind it, or it's woven in with the physical sensation. Another thing about emotions is particularly painful emotions, which again are this blend of tactile sensations involving some tension usually, just uncomfortable bodily sensations mixed with thoughts and stories.

[19:49]

that painful emotions are not necessarily states of resistance. I think a lot of them are. But, for example, sadness could be a resistant emotion, but I think there's types of sadness that aren't resistant. Like my mother died a couple of months ago And right when that happened, when I first heard the news, I felt this great sadness, strong emotion. But I knew that her death was coming. She was old. She'd been sick for a long time. It was appropriate, it felt like, that she was dying. I wasn't resistant to the fact that she was dying. It was kind of a relief. I wasn't resisting the fact that she died, but it still felt like this great sadness, just that I'm not going to see this person again, that this person, this beautiful person is no longer in this world.

[20:56]

There's a kind of sadness that goes with that, but it almost felt like a purifying sadness, a beautiful kind of sadness, not a resistant sadness. And so therefore, according to this definition today, if there wasn't resistance to it, I would say it wasn't a state of discontent for me. And that's how it felt. It didn't feel like suffering or discontent, even though I was crying. It was a strong emotion. But without discontent, somewhat unusual experience for me to feel such a strong emotion without any discontent or resistance. But many emotions are almost like inherently like states of resistance. Like anger, I would say, is almost always a resistance to what's happening.

[21:58]

It's kind of what it is. It's like there's some painful situation happening, and sometimes anger is the actual resistance to feeling the sadness underneath. We're resisting the situation strongly. There's a bodily tension connected with it. And there's thoughts of, I don't want this to be happening. And thoughts of blame and resistance. And also craving, I would say, or greed is generally like a... inherently a state of resistance to the present experience. So in Buddhism, what we call klesha, it's like afflictive emotions. I would say they're emotions, so they always have a bodily component and a story or series of thoughts.

[23:08]

But these afflictive emotions are always states of resistance. And therefore, they're always suffering. They're always some amount of discontent with them. That's why they're so emphasized by the Buddhas. These are the things we have to really work with, and if we can lessen our resistance, we'll lessen these afflictive emotions. Also, the afflictive emotions, their resistance... based on me as a separate individual person. So this is why usually when we talk about anger, somebody inevitably will bring up the case of, well, what about resisting climate change or something like this, right? You know, justified anger. And I think it's different because this kind of

[24:16]

This kind of anger ideally is not so much about personal separate me and my personal separate individual pain. It's about a kind of collective pain. It could be a kind of a selfless anger. Maybe we shouldn't even call it anger, but a strong, energetic, selfless resistance on the part of the whole to improve things. And again, so this is like the bodhisattva path, this kind of resistance or this kind of discontent based on the collective whole and the collective suffering is more about working with the actual painful situation than the resistance. So if we're talking about climate change, we actually do want to reduce the painful situation of climate change on behalf of all sentient beings. but when we're working with our own individual, personal discontent, then maybe we shift the emphasis over to working with the resistance side.

[25:29]

We might even go so far as to say another way of talking about resistance is that resistance actually is this false sense of a separate self. Sometimes we talk about no separate individual entity. It's like the controller of our experience in addition to our experience. Sometimes we talk about that as a view or a belief. We kind of feel as if there is a separate me in addition to the experiences of body and mind. It's kind of an understanding or a view. But another way of talking about this sense of the separate self is it's actually an activity.

[26:35]

It's an energetic activity. At least that's how we know it. We maybe can't exactly find the actual belief or view, but we find the activity that we call the sense of separate self, and that activity could be called resistance. Resistance to what's happening. It's a way of describing what we mean by the separate, unchanging individual, personal, me. It's just that activity throughout the day of slight or drastic resistance to what's happening. One of our ancient teachers, Dogen Zenji, tells this story.

[27:49]

He's quoting some of the old Chinese ancestors, and he said, an ancient Buddha, an ancient Zen ancestor, once asked his teacher, when hundreds, thousands, myriads of things come all at once, What can be done? This is maybe kind of a, especially a good Zen story for 21st century life in a modern electronic age. Hundreds, thousands, and myriads of objects, you could say, or experiences. Sometimes life feels like that, right? A lot of stuff is coming all at once, and it feels stressful and overwhelming when all these myriad objects, which means like experiences, come all at once.

[29:03]

What can be done? And the teacher said, Don't try to control them. In other words, don't resist them. Don't resist these experiences. And it still might be kind of overwhelming, but if we don't resist them, it's maybe less overwhelming. If we don't resist them at all, If there's zero resistance, maybe there could be zero overwhelm. And then Dogen comments on this story and says, it's true what that ancient Buddha said. When myriad things come, don't resist them. Don't try to control them. And he said, Dogen says, this is good advice.

[30:07]

especially because they can't be controlled. We can't control all these experiences. Again, let's try to find a comfortable posture to sit, but within our means. And if we can't control it, then at least let's not resist it. And then Dogen goes on to say, actually, these experiences all these objects or these experiences are not really objects at all. They're not really experiences or things at all. They're Buddhadharma. So that's another layer of this teaching that all these experiences, these unpleasant experiences that we tend to resist, if we look really deeply, maybe find that they're not even really unpleasant experiences at all. They're appearing that way, we can call them that, but truly what they are is Buddha karma.

[31:14]

They are the Buddha's truth. All these unpleasant experiences, the true nature of all these unpleasant experiences is they're just the Buddha's truth. They're just reality expressing itself as unpleasant experiences, which comes along with the human body. If we signed up for the human body program, then I think that it's a package deal. It comes along with the unpleasant experiences. Even Shakyamuni Buddha, it looks like, had unpleasant experiences, especially in his 80s as his body was falling apart. What the Buddha also said, I have realized the complete cessation of suffering, of discontent.

[32:23]

So, let's see. The Buddha had zero discontent because he had zero resistance. If we say that this separate individual limited me, that I think I am the kind of the controller or owner of these experiences, if that is the activity of resistance, if this controller or owner of experience expresses itself as basically resistance to experience or trying to control experience. We could say our true nature, even sometimes in Zen they even talk about our true self, not our limited individual personal separate self, but our true shared inconceivable

[33:40]

boundless, all-inclusive, unchanging, eternal self, its very nature is non-resistance. That's what its activity is. Our true nature is natural and incessant activity is just complete non-resistance. In other words, this boundlessness, we could even speak of it as this very present awareness with no edges or boundaries that we all share, is incapable of resisting. It's literally incapable of resisting anything. And, uh, because everything is appearing within it.

[34:48]

We know it's incapable of resisting great pain because great pain does appear within this boundless awareness, does it not? And this boundless awareness receives or accepts or holds great pain without any resistance. So within this boundless, inherently non-resistant presence, there appears the separate individual me that is nothing but resistance. Within my true self, which we could call non-resistance, appears a false self called me, the individual person, which is... always slightly resisting experience.

[35:51]

So in order to let go of resistance is to let go of our separate self and vice versa. So these are some thoughts been considering about what discontent is and how it works, how it comes to be and how it ceases. In case it sounds kind of abstract, we should have a story, a Zen story, to exemplify this non-resistance. this contentment that is non-resistance.

[36:59]

Once upon a time, in the old days in China, there was a practitioner of the way, and Fai Ren, and once he came to a practice with a Zen teacher and really wanted to practice with his teacher. So he came to the monastery in the winter and the teacher came out and saw him sitting there waiting to come in and threw a bucket of freezing water over him and said, go away. And the monk, Faiyuan, did not resist that. He continued to sit there because he wanted to practice with his teacher. We might even say he wanted to practice with his teacher because he really wanted to completely learn non-resistance and realize the end of suffering.

[38:04]

So, after a while, The teacher came back and saw him frozen into an ice cube. He couldn't move. And said, what are you doing? You're still here. And he was able to unfreeze his jaw enough to say, I came for thousands of miles to practice with you. Why would a bucket of cold water deter me? And the teacher said, OK, you can come in and practice Zaza. And so he thawed out his ice. fought him into the zendo. And then this teacher was kind of strict. And it was a poor temple, so they never had much food to eat. And Fa Yuan at this point was now the tenzo, the head cook of this monastery. And he knew that the teacher wouldn't allow a nice meal for the monks.

[39:13]

So he waited one day when the teacher was out of town and then kind of like somehow found the key to the cupboard of good food and broke in and took some good noodles and good sesame oil and made a good meal for those monks out of love and compassion for those hungry, deprived monks. He tried to create... some comfort. Those monks were resisting some. Maybe Faiyuan was really working on his own non-resistance. Again, this is an example of Bodhisattva activity. Instead of just telling the monks, well, our teacher wants us to never have the good sesame oil. He said, I'm going to give you guys the good sesame oil. I'm going to reduce your discomfort. That's what we do for others. And he did that, and the teacher kind of came back early, unexpectedly, just at mealtime, and enjoyed the meal himself.

[40:26]

But then afterwards called in and said, you stole that good food to reduce the discomfort of those monks' bellies? then you're kicked out of the monastery. And not only that, you have to pay back the cost of the noodles and oil. And not only that, since you don't have any money, you have to sell your robes and bowl, which is all you have to pay back this stolen food. And Phi Wen said, amazingly, OK. I think that's why some of these Zen stories are kind of amazing stories of total non-resistance. He was really, I think, you could say maybe he internally was resisting, maybe, but at least externally he was training in non-resistance.

[41:32]

So he was able to say, okay, and he left, he sold his robe and bow, and I don't know what he wore after that, but found something. paid back the money, and then lived in the town nearby, but needed some shelter. So there was a kind of like a, sort of a, I guess a homeless shelter run by this monastery in the next town. And the monk was friends with the caretaker who said, of course you can stay here. But when the teacher found out that Fa Yuan was staying in the monastery's homeless shelter, he said, how long have you been there? A few months. Well, Here's the bill for your room and board for that time. Please pay it back. And so he must have found another bowl to go begging with and begged for food and sold the food to pay for his room and board because his teacher asked him to.

[42:32]

And after a while, his teacher said, he's actually a really sincere practitioner. He's so into non-resistance that of course he can come back and practice, which he was happy to do. So sometimes it's kind of extreme. I think that's why these old Zen stories get recorded. They sound kind of extreme to us, the degree of non-resistance that's possible. But I think for the Zen practitioner, it was a practice for him. We can work on reducing the factor of discomfort, especially when we can do something about it, like change our posture or have something to eat.

[43:37]

If we can't do anything about that discomfort, which sometimes is the case, right, that's when we can shift over to really emphasizing if there's something I can't do anything about that's really then not resisted. Sometimes it's hard to tell and how much to focus on improving the comfort level and how much to work on. improving the non-resistance factor. So there's some thoughts for this morning. My mouth is a little bit dry, and it would be okay if I didn't have some water. But maybe it's not such a big deal to have some, especially if it doesn't seem so harmful to act on this resistance to a little bit of thirst.

[45:00]

That would be another thing to consider, right? Sometimes craving for something is really going to cause a lot of harm to others or ourself, and then maybe not so good to just go along with it. That kind of resistance, we can let go of that resistance. Thank you for your presence and willingness to take up this human realm experiment. It's a big undertaking, and congratulations for signing on the dotted line. We can all work with it together. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[46:07]

Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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