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. I wonder what I'm going to start with tonight. A number of people have said to me, a surprising number, really, given... that we're a limited group of people, have said to me recently that they wonder if they fit in at Tassajara. It seems to be a feeling that's going around like a virus. And at first, I just talked to each person individually about what they meant about that and what I thought about it for them. But as I was thinking about... that feeling, do I fit in at Tassajara, at first I thought, well, you know, it's not like every piece of Tassajara looks alike.

[01:11]

It's more like it's a jigsaw puzzle, and each piece is slightly different. So, you know, you fit in. If you're here, you fit in. You just have to find your place in the puzzle. And then, as I thought about that, it seemed two kind of hard or stuck or particular in a certain way that we aren't. So then I started to think of tasahara as more like a stew. Where you throw in the pieces and they cook and they change as they cook and they change because of the other pieces that are in the stew. So if there's carrots and there's parsnips, something happens to the carrots by being around the parsnips. especially if they're cooking together. So I thought, well, that was more accurate. And I haven't really gotten any farther in that analogy, so maybe you'll come up with something, but something that is not as rigid as the pieces of a puzzle, something that's more like we change and grow with each other.

[02:22]

You know, my... The main way that I say to myself and to other people about describing what I think we're doing here at Tassajara or what Zen practice as I know it, that limited thing of Zen practice as I know it is about, is one way of saying it anyway. The main way that I say it to myself is, I vow to be with this particular body and mind. to be with it, to be open to it, to try to understand it, to study it. And those things mean to not grasp at it or reject it, to not defend it or judge it. So to be like a vow.

[03:27]

It's not something we can always do, of course, but a vow that each of us could take. And I think actually we do take when we sit down in Zazen, whether we know it or not, we're saying, okay, I'm going to be here with me through this period of Zazen. So that's one way of saying, I vow to be with this particular body and mind, without judging it, without grasping at it, without defending it, without... trying to understand it, trying to study it. And I think this is a kind of subtle undertaking. How to do that is not so simple. And one way that Dogen, the founder of this school, describes it, I think, is this. Conveying oneself toward all things, To carry out practice enlightenment is delusion.

[04:31]

Are you surprised? Conveying oneself toward all things to carry out practice enlightenment is delusion. All things coming forth and carrying out practice enlightenment through the self is enlightenment. So that we... To have an idea of ourself and we proceed in the world and meet things and try to carry out practice enlightenment with them is kind of our normal way of living our life. And what is it not to do that, but rather to have things come forward and carry out practice enlightenment with us, with the self. To me, when I think about that, there's a kind of restfulness or settling on the self that that implies, like that I will be here at home with this self.

[05:52]

karmic body and mind. By karmic, I mean it's been created by many, many, many past things and many present things. And I will be with it and then many things will happen and I'll be there with the self. I will be open to it. So I think we can hear this as something passive, like I'll be sitting there calmly and things will go on. and I'll just accept them. But I don't think that's the nature of our... It's not the nature of human beings. I don't think it's even the nature of alive things, the bigger body that we're a part of, alive things. Even, as I've said before, even amoeba, if something pokes them, they respond. So we are many, many, many... nerve endings.

[06:53]

And when something happens, we have responses. So those are also things that are coming forth and carrying out practice enlightenment with the self. Those things that happen in response to other things. So if our vow is to understand that, to be open to that, to not judge it or defend it, then then we see what happens. It's not that we don't have responses. We do have responses, and those responses are at different levels of activity. Some of them are thoughts. Some of them are vague feelings. Some of them are quite intense feelings. Some of them are words. Some of them are actions. But still... We're coming from the place of trying to understand those, not from the place of I know what's happening and I'm carrying myself forward. I have some idea, maybe is already undercutting of it, but I have some self that I am being and there I am out in the world.

[08:11]

Rather, the self is being created moment by moment and This thing I call me or my consciousness or whatever in me would make a vow is saying I want to be there for that. It reminds me of during the practice periods here, we do two three-month practice periods a year in the fall and in the winter where people come and stay for three months and don't leave unless there's an emergency of some kind. So during those practice periods, we eat almost all of our meals here in the Zendo in a formal fashion with oryoki bowls, three bowls and claws. And it's mostly in silence except for chanting and then little signals you can make. And then there's a crew who serves us. And everybody takes a turn being on the crew who serves the food. And this, as you might imagine, is a lot to learn.

[09:11]

for a new person coming to that three-month practice period. There's a lot to learn about how to do your own bowls, and then there's a lot to learn about how to serve other people and how to move around in the zendo, because like almost everything Soto Zen, there's an exact way to do it and a gazillion rules about it. So we're sitting here in the zendo, you know, quietly and chanting and calmly, and then a crew comes in to serve the food, And then all sorts of things start happening, especially in the beginning of the practice period. People can go, they're supposed to go around to here, but they start going, they start, who knows what they're doing. Anyway, there's so many variations of things they can do. And if you've been around for a while, you, in one state of mind or another, might feel like you should help them. You might be really feeling compassionate for them because they're wandering around the Zendo looking confused.

[10:16]

You might say, psst, come over here. You missed somebody over there. Or you might just be frustrated. Get over here and give me my food. Four people have missed me already and please come. So there's that impulse from the people who are sitting there to help. And we've been told over... years, don't help. Just let them. It's okay. You'll get your food. Just sit there and wait. And once Reb made this even more clear, he said, even if you are one of the people who feels like they are responsible for the Zendo, don't help. Because some of us might feel like, well, they mean most people, but they don't mean me. I am certainly supposed to help them. And sometimes we do. Sometimes the Eno helps. There's a person who's in charge of the serving crew. Sometimes they help.

[11:16]

Sometimes Greg or I help. But that practice period, Reb said, even if you're those people, just leave it alone. Just trust. Great practice. And I think related to this, really, this just like not conveying the self forward, just waiting. for things to come. And then it does come to you and you do interact with it. When they stand in front of you, you bow to them and you tell them when to stop giving you food and you eat what they give you in many, many ways. And you have feelings about it. Many feelings about it was delicious or it was too much or many things. So that kind of activeness And yet, the subtleness of, am I going forward with some sense of directing the world?

[12:24]

Which is, I think, something that we've been taught to feel like we should have. I don't know if all cultures have been taught this, but I think most of our culture, Western culture, has been taught that we should have a sense of direction in our life, a sense of directing our life, a sense of constructing our life, of making our life, of who do you want to be? Not just who are you, but who do you want to be and how can you make yourself into that? Which I think is pretty opposite of Soto practice, actually. I think it's more like, how do you settle enough to actually... Join your life stream. There's a poem. I've been looking at Harry Roberts' book. This is somebody who Steve Stuckey has mentioned a few times. He was actually an Irishman who grew up with the Miwok Indians and was trained by them as a child.

[13:30]

His father worked with them and he went through their training and then he was at Green Gulch Farm some in the early years and helped us. set up the farm there. And in this book, he has this poem which says something. His teacher asked him, what is sea foam? He said, my teacher had a way of asking the strangest questions. Anyway, but he asked him, what is sea foam? So he wrote this poem, which is, sea foam is a bit of ocean captured by the wind. Sea foam is a bit of wind captured by the ocean. I think this is one way we can think about ourselves as

[14:37]

actually, as the sea foam. Sea foam is a bit of wind captured... No, sea foam is a bit of ocean captured by the wind. Sea foam is a bit of wind captured by the ocean. So there's a way to feel about ourselves where we are this sea foam, you know, captured by... the universe, by all the forces of the universe for this moment and then for another moment and the mystery of that. What would that be at this moment? What would that be at this moment of great angst of one kind or another, of great joy or great sorrow or anxiety or not knowing whether we fit in? of feeling like we don't fit in, still that the universe coming together now and capturing bits of itself and making this particular person for now.

[15:51]

That kind of subtlety of wondering, of settling on and wondering, what is it? What is it? Not to get the answer, because it's changing so fast you won't get the answer, but of openness towards this being's reaction to this situation. But openness not in that it's right. Another thing that Harry Roberts says is, today I did the best I could do with what I had to do it with today. Today I did the best I could do with what I had to do it with today. So not to succeed at that and find out what am I, but with the best of my ability and vow and capacity, today I will try to be with this moving, flowing being.

[17:02]

who is interacting with so many things, some of which I know and some of which I don't know, and to be that part completely, but not with righteousness, but just with willingness, maybe. know maybe maybe this sounds easy or maybe it sounds hard I think for I believe this is true but maybe it's not but in my experience it is that in any situation

[18:14]

the thing that is hardest for us, or the thing that's hardest for me, is my own response. Something happens. I think I don't like what happens, but if I look more closely, what usually is true is I don't like my own response to it. I don't like how it makes me feel. I may also not like what it does to me, That's often true. If we have a sickness or somebody leaves us, we wish they were still there for us. We may not like the state that it leaves us in, but I think usually even harder than that is how we feel about it, how we feel about... how we feel about ourself in that situation, and can we be open to ourself.

[19:19]

This has become clear to me about myself in something that we call seshin, this long periods of sitting, and usually after, for most people, maybe not everybody, but certainly for me, after three or four days of sitting a while, there's a fair amount of pain somewhere. It seems to move around in my body, but for now we'll just say in my knee. And if I'm feeling that pain and there's no place else to move, now my choice is either to sit there with it or get up and walk out. I can find myself, I have found myself thinking, I can't stand this. I can't stand it. I can't stand it. I hate this. I need to, you know, why am I doing this? Anyway, on and on and on about how terrible the situation is or how terrible, anyway, everything is by that time. So at various times, I have managed very, you know, I've done a lot of these sessions over the years.

[20:25]

So at various times during them, I have been able to actually separate that voice and the feeling that goes with it from the pain in my knee. actually see that that's extra, and by going back to the knee or whatever, wherever the pain is, give less energy to that voice and sometimes actually goes away. And when it does, the pain, wherever it's been in my body, has been a totally different thing. It's still pain, usually, but it's not this like... epic battle going on where everything is at stake and maybe my life is a total wreck. It's just this pain. It's the rhythm of pain that comes and goes.

[21:26]

And there have been times in my life when that has not been made up like sashim, where you decide to sit down and actually go through that kind of pain. There have been times when it's been like a life situation that's been happening. when a similar thing can happen where the resistance to it, the I don't want this and I am not going to be here for it. I'm just going to keep saying it shouldn't be like this. And then I might even spend some time thinking about or telling somebody the reasons why it shouldn't be like this. But when that resistance, when there's nothing, you know, sometimes only when it's... clear there's nothing else to be done finally I like settle back down and say okay it is and then it takes a similar kind of pulsing kind of pulsing you know it's not like steady but it's more like a wave of movement sometimes painful movement but it's not static it's

[22:36]

something that's happening. And it's different than just this fighting against it. So I think that's similar too to Dogen's, the subtle difference between conveying yourself forward toward things with the intention of manifesting practice enlightenment with them. versus being there with what is happening and letting practice enlightenment come forth. So we convey ourselves forward with this idea that, you know, my husband shouldn't have left me. I shouldn't have pain in my knee. They shouldn't have let me go from that job. It shouldn't be so hot in the summer, various things. Conveying ourselves forward with that idea of how things should be and basically resisting reality versus really accepting this is how it is and accepting our responses to it.

[23:43]

And again, this doesn't mean that we don't do anything. We're actually there with our responses to it. And sometimes those responses are active. A lot of times those responses are actually active only on the inside. Sometimes they're active on the outside, appropriately. But where those things come forward and make our life, where the ocean and the wind are making this kind of seafoam today. probably said enough or at least i've said enough to start with i'm wondering if any of you have any thoughts questions anything like that yes daniel yes they do sometimes and you know in chinese medicine

[25:01]

Bitter is one of the flavors that we actually need some of. And I think for most of us, you know, there's the part, the place, the vegetable that we are in the stew, and then there's our internal stew, where for almost all of us there's some bitterness. And, yeah, really, we're not the... you know, the big cook in the sky who's deciding what kind of stew it is, right? So we're just being there for it, tasting it. Is that okay? Did you want to say anything else about some suggestion of what to throw in? Okay. Thank you. Anything else? Yes, Emily. Can you say that again?

[26:05]

Yeah. Can you say anything about what that feels like? That's fine, but I think when you're feeling like a shattered mirror, to try to find where you are, where your body is, and open to what does it feel like. It may be terrifying and confusing, but there may be some feeling to that that isn't just those words. that you can actually feel.

[27:14]

And if you don't have an idea that those things are wrong, there may be something in that that is in some ways freer than being just a plain old mirror. Freer, maybe more accurate. More like a prism. More like where... When things come at you, they're not just simple like that reflection, but there's actually, because it's shattered, there's some more variation in it. Do you know? I mean, it is kind of crazy making because we're so used to, you know, this thing of I'm supposed to be making me and making a life that I can stand behind. So to let go of that is kind of crazy making.

[28:17]

It's really counter to a lot of idea of what we're supposed to be doing. But it's never really been possible to do it. Do you want to say something else about how it's crazy making? Or are you able to? feel like you're what unraveling yeah yeah well that's you know control that's a really good word it's a really good concept you know we we want so desperately to be in control and we have so little of it really you know if we can let in the amount of wind and ocean it's making this little bit of sea foam you know it's uh It is very terrifying to that part of us who feels like, I need to be in control, which is why it's really good to notice that we have never been in control and that we're definitely not in control right now.

[29:32]

There are so many things that are supporting us to sit here. But, yeah. So, you know, I think it's... It's good to do this in a pretty safe place. I think that's why something like Tassara is constructed, where there is so much stability that all kinds of chaos can actually happen in that context. And still, as I've said many times, it's like we... get up in the morning and we know what we're supposed to put on and where we're supposed to go and what we're supposed to do and we get there and we look, therefore look like we're pretty sane. And that's actually not unimportant. That's actually pretty important to ourself and to our capacity for being there with the kind of chaos that can happen inside.

[30:37]

Yes. Yes. Go ahead. Yeah, right. I think that they force us through our delusions. You know, that when we're happy, when things are making us happy, I mean, we have delusions.

[31:45]

We're probably going to have delusions until the day we die, but they wax and wane some. And when we're happy, there's no reason to question them. But when we're not happy, when we're in pain, there's a lot of reason to question what we think about it, what we're doing. So I think it pushes us back closer to the bare reality of whatever that is at that time. And really, that's kind of the core of Soto Zen, anyway, is what's actually happening. Not that we would get it with our mind. Some portion of it we might get with our mind. But it's it. The universe is happening. And we're part of it. And actually, it's possible.

[32:50]

And I believe it's okay. to just be that part. And then, because we have minds, because we're human beings, we'll be conscious of some part of that. We won't be conscious of all of it, but we'll be conscious of some part of it. We'll be able to enjoy that, participate with it, have some thoughts and ideas about it. But the relaxing of this control thing that we think we're supposed to be doing is a huge relief. I think that's part of why pain is important in that. Thank you. G? Well, we're surrounded by not knowing. So we actually are intimate with it. And mainly we spend our time

[33:51]

trying to deny that, trying to accumulate knowing, running through the things that we know and telling other people about them and making sure that at least somebody is on track with them. So intimacy with it is basically you just sit down. It's zazen, either actual formal zazen. or walking around Zazen, where you're just like being there with what is. And the chaos is all the things that are happening. You can call it chaos, but it's kind of like the wind in the ocean.

[34:54]

It makes seafoam. You could call that chaos, but it's also very structured. It has its energy flowing in a certain way. There are tides and there are however the wind works. Life is pretty much that way, too. In some ways, chaos is like from my point of view because things aren't going the way I want it looks like chaos but really things are things are functioning you know people are functioning we're functioning and it's possible to see some of those patterns again I don't think we'll see all of them but and if we if we feel like I need to protect myself in that that makes us very nervous and anxious because there's so much and so many different patterns happening. But if we are willing to be part of it, and then this Harry Roberts, I guess in the Miwok tradition, basically they call practice walking in beauty.

[36:11]

And... I take that sort of like a number of you at Brother David's talk the other night where he was saying his practice is gratitude and that everyone wants joy. And we think that the way to have gratitude is to have joy. If we have joy, then we'll be grateful. But he said it's actually the other way around, that you're grateful and then joy will come to you. So walking in beauty is sort of the same. You look for beauty. And then you walk in beauty. And out of that will come joy. You look for things to be grateful for. So for us, we don't usually talk that way, but it's similar. It's like we settle the self on the self and welcome what comes. And some of it may seem pretty chaotic or may seem like anxiety or whatever, but we... Try to stay there with it and see, you know, what is this?

[37:19]

What is this? Not to be gotten with our mind, like, what is this that I can describe? It's just, what is, can I be open to this? Well, we illuminate some part of it. I think we illuminate enough for our life, and we know that we're part of something bigger than we can illuminate. We can enjoy that. Let's see. Yes, we should stop. We're late. It's past our bedtime. We're about to turn into pumpkins. Thank you all very much. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support.

[38:26]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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