This podcast is offered by the 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 at Green Gulch on this beautiful day and welcome online. My name is Timo. I am living here at Green Gulch with my family. And I don't know if some of you were at last week's talk. My wife already introduced myself. I hear some people laughing as the one who is driving her crazy and she married. She married over and over again, she said.

[01:01]

So I want to dedicate this talk to all those who commit to live with others who drive them crazy. And if you are not one of these lucky ones, I think we always have some residential spots here open at Greenhouse for you to come. Yeah, the theme of my talk today is about letting go. Letting go of things, not only of what drives you crazy, but more in a broad way, like letting go of our belief and identification with a separate self.

[02:05]

And you might have heard that. This is one of the main teachings brought up in Buddhism. The teaching that our view of having a separate self is an illusion and, even more relevant, this illusion is the reason for our suffering because this illusion makes it possible for us to think that we can get something that we want and we don't have or that we can escape from something that we don't like and so I want in this talk just to investigate a little bit of what practices are offered to this letting go of our strong inherent belief.

[03:15]

As you may be very clear, I mean, this belief that we are separate is just like for all of us, the all day long And I'm not sure if we came into this world with this strong belief, but certainly we were like throughout our babyhood, childhood, constantly encouraged really to take in this view. I mean, you might even like when we... I just remember when we do potty training, it's like, you did it by yourself. You are so great. And that's just how we grew up. And I admit that I'm transmitting the same thing to my children.

[04:23]

So in a way, somehow this is our... evolution and our path to walk through this development believing in us being separate and I think most of the day this imprinted belief is not noticeable to us even though I think it takes a lot of effort, actually, for the mind to constantly create this, as our teaching says, illusion. It just passes by of us. But we notice sometimes there are some moments where I feel like, especially the moments where we feel like maybe we just wake up, we don't know who we are, or a situation comes up.

[05:24]

Even in meditation, we... we miss to reify this self because maybe there's a moment of not thinking and then we get uncomfortable and then we might notice all the the energy which jumps in to try to put everything back into our normal boxes so we know who we are and where we are and that everything is just fine So I want to go back a little bit. I mentioned I wanted to talk about practices to loosen that up, to massage this strong belief a little bit. And we are here at the moment in practice period, and we have heard in practice period quite a bit from our abbot about a method which is grounding in our bodies.

[06:30]

coming back to our posture, coming to our breath. And it's a little bit counterintuitive how we come back from this separateness by focusing on our bodies, what we think is our bodies. But somehow, I think our belief in self is not so much at home in our body. It's really at home in our mind, in our thoughts, in the concepts which we constantly make. And... I mean, one easy example to see that is like if you maybe have or you're asked to donate a kidney or receive a liver or whatever, you don't feel like, oh, you're giving this self completely away or receiving an additional one on top of it.

[07:47]

If somebody would ask you to give away your brain or to get... transplanted a brain because U.S. doesn't work so well anymore? I think we would have quite a different feel for that. And it's not because now we have a different wobbly piece there in our head. It's really because we think, oh, this piece makes our thoughts, our concepts, our ideas, and that is us. That is me. Much more than everything else. Even if the whole body stays the same, it's different. the thoughts and the concepts and the opinions, that is where we somehow learned to rest our idea of an I. And as I mentioned, so coming to our bodies

[08:58]

And just being aware and resting in our bodies is sort of a nice trick because we still believe this is us, so we are not leaving. But it is much less tightly associated with our illusion of separateness. So maybe just for me and for you, I just want to... sit with you for a moment still and give the responsibility of thinking to our bodies just to sit and breathe now that we have grounded in our bodies this is a good preparation for going into a little bit more the home territory the intense territory of our identification of our concepts to work to work as another possible ability of practice to work with our

[11:32]

what we call our minds directly. To work with them, meaning to bring some flexibility in them, to bring some porousness in them. And I think the last speaker introduced the song, like from Leonard you might know there's a crack in everything that's where the light comes in I feel like to discover and cultivate a crack in our identification with these thoughts or minds there is a lot of light behind to open up to open up a little bit that space and letting go of that, we can get the whole, we can get the whole light of the universe in.

[12:42]

And I would say that light that light comes from, or one could say, from a much expanded view of self. From a view of self that includes everything. And in our Zen literature, that unlimited, boundless self is often called host. And our limited self of our thoughts where we identify is sometimes called, or in this relationship, it's called the guest.

[14:00]

which is a very adoring name for what is happening here in our minds. So I want to talk a little bit about the host and guest relationship. And there are many scriptures and koans that teach us about how to meet this host. And all of this meeting, going back, is about because this is the place we will find home. This is the place where we can relieve suffering. And so these teachings tell us that the host from which the light comes in is not something separate from us. It's not in any way separate. different from us even though we don't believe it and that it is even not advised to look for this host or to try to try to get this host try to understand this host but since we are human beings we anyway do and so

[15:30]

we can try to channel this into a beneficial way. And I want to bring up here a story, a short story of awakening and meeting the host, which you might know if you have kids or grandkids. And I brought the book, and the book is called we are in a book and some people i see some people nodding their heads it's about two dharma friends piggy and gerald piggy you might imagine and gerald an elephant and they are trying to explore reality in this book And there's a nice, I wanted to characterize them, but there's such a beautiful characterization.

[16:34]

Gerald, the elephant, is careful. Piggy is not. Piggy cannot help smiling. Gerald can. Gerald worries so that Piggy does not have to. So these are the two friends, and you might recognize them in yourself. And this is the story. Um... Unfortunately, you can't see that so well, but I'll try to show you the pictures. Anyway, you just need to use some imagination. So these two guys, if you're sitting in the black, the gray blob is Gerald, and the pink blob there is Piggy. They're sitting together, and Gerald discovers something and says, I think... Someone is looking at us. And then Jiggy Piggy investigates.

[17:41]

And agrees. Someone is looking at us. Who is looking at us? Child asks. He's a little bit of an intellectual guy, so he has all these questions, you know. And also he's a little bit afraid. A monster, he says. Sitting here, I can actually relate to Gerald a little bit. I mean, so many people. Somebody's looking at me. And Piggy is more relaxed. He says, no. It is a reader. Actually, many readers. Readers are reading us. And now comes Gerald again, I think. Yeah. How is a reader reading us? The reader is reading these word bubbles.

[18:54]

Sorry, maybe I should. turn fully around. But you know it. We read this every day. Secretly, yeah. After Dharma transmission. We are in a book. We are in a book. That is so cool. We are in a book. We are in a book. We are being read. We are being read. They are dancing this joy. And then Biggie says, oh, I have a good idea. I can make... The reader say a word.

[19:59]

Gerald, a little bit skeptical. You can make the reader say a word? I can. If the reader reads out loud. That is a good idea. That is a funny idea. Here I go. Did you hear that? The reader said, banana. Oh, the reader just said it again. And then they just have their bliss and joy as in every enlightenment story. And I think I just stop here.

[21:04]

And you can maybe have this book out there later so you can have a look if you could see the pictures. I think I want to move. into a little exercise here with you. I want us all to play, I want us all to play ourselves, whatever your name is. And I want us all, when we do that, to imagine we are in a book. we are being read. So what I want you to do now is to make some sort of little movement. You can choose. You can move your arms or your legs or your ears if you have big ones.

[22:15]

And just do that in the full awareness that you are being read. Don't try to figure out how that works. Just do it and completely surrender to the reader of you. So now I want to move that maybe one step ahead, but a little bit more in an easy way. Let's say first, now we do it with the example we were given. We all say banana, but before you do, these are three steps, the three steps to enlightenment.

[23:20]

First one is we say, Banana. Just as whatever you're called. As the person we are. As if we go in a shop and we want a banana. So one, two, three. Banana. Okay. That was good. We have lots of practice in that. So now the second step is like we are again. completely aware that we are being read and we say it with fully surrendering to being read and awareness of that. One. Are you ready? Two. Three. Banana.

[24:22]

Great. Okay, now third step. Third step is we are the reader. We are the reader of this person. We are ourselves the host. And we say it. One, two, three. Banana. Yeah, what an enlightened assembly here. So maybe at some point you might have some wonderment here. which I feel like is completely... I mean, some people might have been a little bit confused, like, who am I now?

[25:24]

And who is saying banana? And where do I go with that? And I just want to say, first, this is very natural, or you are a natural, maybe let's say it like that, because that is exactly the place, the place of confusion where I mentioned before, where the light can come in, where we are not sure about who we are and what we are. And I just want to encourage you to exercise that place to get comfortable, to make friends with that space of not knowing. And I remember in my first sangha I was practicing in Germany, we had that clear rule during Sashin, which is an intense meditation week, which we actually will have in the coming week, where we had the clear rule, it's like when you hear the wake up bell, so somebody's running around with a bell and ringing it, when you hear the wake up bell, you get up without any hesitation immediately.

[26:44]

And I didn't appreciate that so much at the time, to be honest, but I learned that yes, this is a great exercise because this is often the place when just we hear something where we don't know yet really where we are, what's going on, where we have been sleeping, and especially if you go to a retreat and you don't even know the bed or the room or so, where is what, this is the place, the wondrous playground where we can investigate, where we can get friends with not knowing, and where we can cultivate the gap to let the light in. So I encourage you to play with that whenever that comes up for you, rather than bringing things as quickly together in a box

[27:45]

where we know where things are as we can, what we usually do during our daily life. Let's see. So we have a little more time. So what I want to bring in is maybe what people were waiting for, a little bit more serious comments on this topic. And so I want to bring in two quotes from our venerable ancestors, where I feel like there's a lot of resonance with the story of Piggy and Jerrel about guest and host. And a very famous quote from Dogen, that resonates to me, which most of you might know because we often recite it in the morning when we do services, which is, by the way, a wonderful playground for exactly that sort of play to let the light in.

[29:03]

And Dogen's quote, which I want to mention here, is to go forth and experience myriad things. This is called delusion. When things come forth and realize you, this is called enlightenment. Maybe just to mention again, these things coming forth to realize us are not separate. And then at last I want to mention how the relationship, how Suzuki, our founder, brought in this play of host and guest.

[30:15]

And since in our practice period one theme is the teachings of Suzuki Roshi. And what I always resonated with very well was his picture of movie and screen where the movie is sort of our little guest mind where We know things and where things happen and where we are clear who is the good guy and who is the bad guy and what we want and what who wants. And the screen is where all of this happens. The screen is just like the background or you could say the compassion which holds any of those stories, which appreciates any of these movies which are projected on the screen.

[31:22]

And it's also the, you could say it's the fabric which brings all these parts in the movie together. Without the screen, there wouldn't be a movie, and without any movie, it would be useless to talk about screens. And so I want to end with a quote from Suzuki about this nice picture. Our everyday life is like a movie. Most people are interested in the pictures on the screen without realizing there is a screen. But when you are practicing, you realize that your mind is like a screen. To have a pure, plain white screen, that is the most important point.

[32:31]

So you are not afraid of your life at all. You enjoy something which makes you angry, or makes you cry, and you enjoy the crying and the anger too. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. 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.

[33:36]

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