This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. I was just thinking that now, with the wonders of the Internet, This buzzing set my mind in this direction. At the wonders of the Internet, many people listen to the Dharma talks. They download them onto their iPad or iPod or something and listen to them while they're driving, while they're making breakfast or whatever they do. And I was thinking, should we restyle? Okay. Guess that wasn't the button to push, huh?

[01:16]

Should we restyle them for that medium? Like think more about... How should this be if you're going to listen to it... you cook your breakfast and worry about your day anyway but in in some ways that does reflect what I what I'd like to talk about and actually how I'd like to talk about it a couple of months ago I gave a talk about directed and receptive attention what I was trying to talk about in a way was the mechanics of how the experience of the moment is attended to in a way that draws forth awareness in contrast to we just suddenly or not so suddenly become further involved in the agendas that are present in our mind

[02:25]

And believe it or not, that is a topic that rattles around in my mind quite a bit, how to do that, how to convey something very fundamental about zazen, something very fundamental about awareness. Awareness, noticing, is a very easy thing to do. Sustaining it and letting it become a definitive influence in our subjective consciousness is a subtle and often challenging thing to do. What you're experiencing in the moment is usually secondary to the narrative going on inside your head. And the challenge of zazen, the challenge of mindfulness, the challenge of awareness is to turn that around so that noticing what's going on And the information that arises from that noticing becomes not just informative, but influential.

[03:32]

So last, in that talk, I talked about the mechanics of attention. Well, how do you pay attention in a way that stimulates that? So today I'd like to take a shot at sort of like working at it from the inside out. Because it is essentially, to a large degree, it's experiential learning. It's not about collecting more ideas about what it could be or should be. It's more about discovering how to do it directly with the experience that's arising in the moment. As someone said in the 70s, the medium is the message. Who was that, Larry? Marshall McLern. Marshall McLern. The context in which something's experience conveys the message.

[04:41]

Or as he said, is the message. So I thought we'd start with a couple of minutes of noticing. So if you could adopt your best noticing posture. Of course, it's nothing special. And then I would suggest, don't go anywhere. Don't change anything. Don't make what's essentially simple elaborate. Don't go through the extra effort of making something happen. There's already plenty happening. And notice.

[05:44]

What's the dominant experience of the moment? Is it thoughts? physical sensation in your body? Is it sound? And don't try to pin it down either. If it moves, it moves. If it increases in intensity, so be it. If it subsides, so be it. The simplicity and availability of noticing.

[06:57]

so so now what I'd like to do is read two poems I think some of you may have heard both of them some of you may not have heard either They're a little bit like sweet and sour. I was thinking, hmm, which one should I read first? And I decided on the sweet. My thoughts about these poems are often, as we endeavor to be mindful, as we endeavor to be present for the experience that's arising, We have a notion of what that is like when it's going well.

[08:40]

It's settled. It's clear. Sustaining attention is easy. Not grasping at what comes up is an abiding state. Something in that area. And then what do we get? Well, sometimes we get that, and sometimes we don't. We get a more agitated, destructive, preoccupied, repetitive thinking, ruminating. The sour. So the sweet and the sour. So here's the sweet. This morning, it's Aimless Love by Billy Collins. This morning, as I walked along the lake shore, I fell in love with the wren, and later in the day with the mice. The cat had dropped under the dining room table.

[09:44]

In the shadows of an autumn evening, I fell for a seamstress, still at her machine in the tailor's window, and later for a bowl of broth, steam rising like smoke from a naval battle. This is the best kind of love, I thought. without recompense, without gifts or unkind words, without suspicion or silence on the telephone. The love of the chestnut, the jazz cap, and one hand on the wheel. No lust, no slam of the door, the love of a miniature orange tree, the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower, the highway that cuts across Florida. No waiting, no huffiness or rancor, just a twinge every now and then, for the wren who built her nest on a low branch overhanging the water, and for the dead mouse still dressed in its light brown suit. But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow.

[10:51]

After I carried the mouse by the tail to a pile of leaves in the woods, I find myself standing at the bathroom sink. gazing down affectionately at the soap, so patient and soluble, so at home in its pale green soap dish, I could feel myself falling again as I felt its turning in my wet hands and caught the scent of lavender and stone. of spacious appreciation that turns towards and greets and meets and experiences what's arising and is nourished by it is supported by it okay and now something else

[11:54]

This one is by Sharon Olds. I go back to May 1937. I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges. I see my father strolling out under the ochre sandstone arch, the red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood behind his head. I see my mother with a few light books on her hip. Standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks. The wrought iron gate still opened behind her. Its sword tips aglow in the May air. They're about to graduate. They're about to get married. They're kids. They're dumb. All they know is that they're innocent. They would never hurt anybody. I want to go up to them and say, stop.

[13:02]

Don't do it. She's the wrong woman. He's the wrong man. You're going to do things you could not imagine you would ever do. You're going to do bad things to children. You're going to suffer in ways you've not heard of. You're going to want to die. I want to go up to them there in that late May sunlight and say, and say it, her pretty face turning to me. her pitiful, beautiful, untouched body, his arrogant, handsome face turning to me, his pitiful, beautiful, untouched body. But I can't do it. I want to live. I want to take them up like a male and female paper doll and bang them together at the hips like chips of flint, as if to strike sparks from them. I say, do what you're going to do. I'll tell you about it. maybe aimless love talking about what's always there, what's always near at hand, what's always waiting to be seen and appreciated.

[14:23]

And Sharon Olds, using the intimate details, in a way, of her own life story. If you read either of her poems, you see, indeed, it was her parents. It was the particulars of her journey, how they resonate, how they're meaningful and significant, how they have become embedded in her being, how they've etched their influence on how she thinks and feels. So both these attributes of our human experience, how we're inclined in some ways to set them up as some version of sweet and sour, some version of good and bad, something to aspire to and something to escape from.

[15:33]

And I would say we're inclined to play out this when we sit. We sit down. Why wouldn't we want to be in a state of clarity and appreciation, in a state of presence that meets and greets and falls in love with the soap, the rain, the highway, each particular of a human life? Doesn't that aspiration express in some ways the nobility of our capacity as a human? In some ways, doesn't it lift us up above some kind of embittered preoccupation with what hurts us, what's disappointed us?

[16:43]

And yet, the narrative of our life, those formative experiences. How our mind's eye, our imagination plugs from our history. One of the things that marvels me about this poem is the particulars, the details of something that happened before she was born. kind of almost like the inverse of an old Zen story, old Zen koan. What were you before your parents conceived you? The particulars and the deeply personal relationship to how their life history played out and how their life history affected her history.

[17:47]

And how for each one of us that's uniquely and significantly true. And how when we sit down and start to be present and this will come forth one way or another. And then in her poem, Despite the power and poignancy of her narrative, there's a sense of space. Even though there's kind of a provocative power to her language, they were going to do things that they couldn't imagine. Don't do it. He's the wrong man.

[18:53]

She's the wrong woman. What a message for your parents, huh? Or some part of yourself that you struggle with, that you're uncomfortable with. someone told me once a definition of forgiveness which was to stop wishing for a different past so these two worlds and the practice of Zazen to hone both worlds that this, they are both part of the human condition.

[19:55]

And both of them evoke something in us. They both stir us deeply. And it's not a matter of separating them out and living in the heaven of sweetness and determinedly avoiding the hell of sourness. It's actually a matter of embracing them both. It's not a matter of sterilizing the human condition. It's a matter of discovering what it is to live it. And within the context of Zen practice, this is a key proposition.

[21:01]

To go beyond sweet and sour, to go beyond good and bad, to go beyond like and dislike. With this interesting twist, in the middle of sweet and sour, like and dislike, self-proclaimed good and bad. Of course, one poem charms us and the other one stirs us in a challenging way. Of course, what happens in Zazen is provocative. We're alive. If our zazen becomes some process of limiting that human experience, of sterilizing that human experience, of determinedly making it something and determinedly stopping it from being something else.

[22:09]

We set the stage for a preoccupation. We set the stage for a struggle, sometimes utterly obvious, and painfully so, and sometimes subtle. We do, in fact. If you sit... Today we're going to sit all day, a number of us, 60 or 70. And over the course of the diligence and persistence of such an activity, usually something settles, becomes a little more spacious, a little more available for awareness. But really what I'm talking about is how do we remember what we might call the first principle of practice?

[23:20]

And how is it expressed in how we relate to what arises. The first principle, we can say, is the suchness of what is. But in many ways, it's a useless phrase, kind of bland, kind of abstract. There's nowhere to take hold of it. In the drama of our own inner activity, The suchness of what is comes alight. It's filled with significance. Again and again and again, we see a deeply ingrained impulse to get what we want and avoid what we don't want. A deeply ingrained impulse to warm

[24:22]

and move towards the pleasant and to contract and move away from the unpleasant. And how we take that basic impulse and draw it into involvement in our arising experience. So the suchness of what is is not some philosophical abstraction. It's an utterly passionate involvement. So when we sit down to do zazen, it's a little bit like, get ready, here it comes. Here comes your deep, urgent, passionate involvement in being alive. and if you think somehow you're going to sterilize it, control it, bend it and shape it in exactly the mode you think it ought to be, it will be an enormously frustrating and demanding endeavor.

[25:48]

And I have to say, you know, having coached people in the process of Zazen for decades, my observation is that's pretty much what we all do most of the time. And the challenge for us is to continually, attentively search for what is this relationship that allows it to be just what it is and meets it unconditionally. And the extraordinary fact is that noticing this simple activity that we can turn consciousness towards in a half second.

[26:54]

It's not the product of deep yogic concentration. It's not the product of deep religious fervor. It's not the product of great learning or great talent. They can, in fact, any one of those and all of those can be of assistance. But noticing is simpler than those and goes beyond those. So in Soto Zen, the style of Zen that we practice, we... We study this. We explore this. Each time we sit down, we remind ourselves of the first principle.

[27:59]

Okay, what is it we're doing again? How is it you relate to the human condition in a way that expresses awakening? How do you relate to the human condition that diminishes the suffering and throws open the gates of liberation? And the question in Zazen, the question in Zen practice, in some ways it's a philosophical, intellectual one, but in other ways it has nothing to do with either. It's completely a practical experiential one. Okay? Do it right now. Do it in relationship to your thoughts.

[29:02]

Do it in relationship to the ruminations and repetitive thoughts and emotions and stirring up. When you find yourself sitting there imagining your parents as they graduated, and what you would say to them. What fierce teaching you'd have for them. And what is the noticing that cracks something open? So this kind of inquiry, and I hope that makes some sense, in the process of practice, we take the admonition, we take the proposition, we take the request, and we experience it.

[30:11]

We draw it into doing. And there's experiential learning. And the difference between experiential learning and intellectual learning is that you may have the same notion, but through experiential learning it ripens, it deepens. I like to use the analogy of knowing you're going to die. Most of us come to that realization when we're about seven or eight. to let it ripen and deepen to where we get the impact of it, where we begin to appreciate the consequences of that simple truth, where we stop living as if we have indefinite time and others will always be there

[31:23]

and we can say what's important later. And for now, we can just stay distracted. So the fact stays there. As we work with it, the relationship, the understanding, the appreciation deepens, ripens. So this is the first principle of Zazen. This is the first principle of Zen practice. Something about an intimate relationship to the human condition. And how do we discover it? How do we realize it? By doing it. Each time we sit down, each time we interact with another person.

[32:29]

Each time we notice the arising experience of the moment. And so today, as I said, 60, 70 others are going to spend the day doing just that. It is a very interesting... fact about our human condition is that as we practice in this way, as we engage the moment and let the intensity, let the feeling of the moment resonate, we influence each other. It's almost like we can attune to each other's awareness. I remember many years ago my daughter was explaining to me what a marsh pit was.

[33:33]

Who doesn't know what a marsh pit is? Well, here's my daughter's description. It's when you go to like a music concert I don't know if it's just heavy metal or similar kinds of concerts. Punk rock? When you go to a punk rock concert, you don't sit calmly in the back, checking your emails. You go up front, where it's so intense and dense, all the bodies are pressing against each other. and they kind of vibrate the music together. And so you kind of share this one body. You share this response to the music.

[34:37]

You reverberate and resonate in the marsh pit. Sitting together is something similar. Just take away the punk rock. Take away the raging hormones. take away the pulsing vibrations, and you've pretty much got the Zen version. To me, it's similar, you know, although it seems to be mostly a male thing, the passion of shared experience in a sports event.

[35:47]

this utter commitment to a certain way of being and a certain appreciation and involvement in the arising experience. So in sitting together, in practicing together, it's attuning, reconnecting, and letting... letting the moment do you and undo you. It's as we open up to the experience of the moment, you know, we open up to the immensity of being alive. that we now, six or seven billion of us, have apparently the future of our planet in our hands.

[37:07]

I think it's not an exaggeration to say that what we do in the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years will be extraordinarily significant to how long the planet is capable of supporting our life system as humans. How immense. Each one of us has in our own hands, not simply our own life, but our relationships. the interpersonal experiences of our significant relationships. And then beyond that, the people that we bump into, that we connect to every day. So in some ways, Zazen is extraordinarily intimate and uniquely individual.

[38:15]

And then in some ways, it's utterly interconnected. We do this together. We're doing life on the planet together. So in sitting together, in practicing together, I remember once hearing this story. but four centuries ago, Jesuits from, I think it may have been Holland, somewhere in that region, they were in China, and they went to a Zen temple, and they asked the teacher, all the monks were sitting doing meditation, and they asked the teacher, what's he doing? What are they doing?

[39:18]

And he said, not much. They're just kind of sitting there, not doing much of anything. And he said, are they thinking? I mean, what do they think about? And he said, do they think about God? And he said, no. They're probably thinking, what time's breakfast? This powerful disconnect. of how the world is referenced. You know, how in some ways we can be so separate. And then the phone rings. In some ways we can be so separate and yet we're utterly not. We have our ways of thinking and being and feeling and describing reality in ourselves.

[40:25]

Of course we do. But can we become aware of it in a way not be fooled by it into thinking this is the whole story. This is what keeps me separate. This is what keeps me separate. from the love I want to receive and the love I want to give can we experience the human condition in a way that isn't compounding the notion of separate existence we are profoundly gregarious creatures that intimacy of interconnection is enormously important to us.

[41:27]

So we sit in the zendo, in the constructed environment that it is, and we touch something essential about the human condition. by being an individual and being intimately part of everything. We touch that and we take it to everything we do. Because it's already part of everything we do. So then there's a question for us collectively as fellow practitioners. How do we do that? So some of us will go to the Zen Do. after we finish sitting and then some of us will go off and do all sorts of other things but we're still part of this one human experience how will we support each other how will we support the people we meet so today

[42:44]

is the day we're initiating a period of ten weeks of what you might call the marsh pit of silence. The marsh pit of noticing. The marsh pit where it's not exactly all the other bodies are pressed up against you in a way that you can't deny, but actually you can deny it. You can avoid it. You can ignore it. But can you not deny it? Can you not avoid it? Can you not ignore it as an intentional expression of what supports, validates, stimulates, nourishes a human life that nourishes all human life, that nourishes all life? So for the next 10 weeks, this is the endeavor we're going to take up here. And certainly another question that rattles around in my mind, and my heart too, is how do we support each other to do it?

[44:02]

Not simply some small select group that will come here in... in the formulation of Soto Zen prescribed forms. But how will we touch the formless and bring it into every form that life takes? So as we do this here, how many can join? And the image that comes into my mind is that you sit here or you sit at home. You attend the talks or you listen to the talks on your iPod as you eat your breakfast or drive your car or whatever other wonderful ways you've thought of listening to the talks.

[45:13]

But the tricky part is how do we sustain... the dialogue? How do we sustain the interaction? How do we sustain the influence upon each other? How do we feel, literally, that nobility of each other's practice? Certainly in my mind, I think, oh, well, we could come together and have small groups. And I want you to know, you literally, for those of you who don't live here at the center or haven't signed up to participate, you're welcome to express your interest in doing that. What I've discovered is if people come together... in a group anywhere between 8 and 12, where they can literally get to know each other, literally get some direct experience of who each other is, and talk about what is it to practice with the human life.

[46:28]

That very activity. Not that anybody says anything profound, but almost invariably people say something helpful. Sometimes the helpfulness is as simple as, oh, you struggle with that too? I'm not the only one? Sometimes the helpfulness is, oh, that's a really helpful suggestion. I would never have thought of that. Or I haven't thought of it so far. So please feel invited. Um. Maybe it's extravagant or melodramatic to say that our planet is asking it of us. But maybe it's not. Maybe that's not melodramatic or extravagant. It seems to me that the more thoughtful

[47:42]

we can be the more appreciative of each other, the more we can learn about living in harmony with ourselves and all other forms of life, something beneficial will come of it. Actually, I would say even the intention to do it produces something beneficial. Please. This is the great challenge and joy of our human lives. It's an act of creativity. It's not an act of conformity. It's an act of discovery. It's not an act of compliance with something already figured out.

[48:46]

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. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[49:15]

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