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. And welcome to us all to Beginner's Mind Temple. A pivotal saying. by our finder, Suzuki Roshi, Beginner's Mind. And then he famously said, in the beginner's mind, there's many possibilities. In the expert mind, there's few. The way we can think, engage, that opens, that includes, or we can think, engage, that closes, excludes. In the language of Zen, this is a sensibility we're always looking at.

[01:09]

It's like a khan that we're constantly living and learning from. Right now, today, a number of us are having a one-day sitting, or being a one-day sitting, maybe. Maybe it's having us. I think that's a more accurate way to put it. It's part of what we call a practice period, our translation of a Japanese term, ango, that comes from an early Buddhist notion of take a period of time and just... give your practice more emphasis, more commitment, more dedication. And this we formally began on Wednesday.

[02:15]

And then this is the first one-day sitting, and then the practice period includes talks like this, sittings like this one we're doing today. classes, small groups, large groups, and meetings with teachers to discuss on an individual level what's going on in terms of practice. I would like to invite you all to participate. If you like, you can sign up and do the whole thing. The way we have it set up now is you can do it in person, you can do it online, where you listen online and attend the class online, or you can combine the two. If you're interested after the talk, you can ask someone in the office or somebody who looks like they've been here for a while and know what they're talking about.

[03:27]

our sense of carrying the finding teacher's heritage is to make this practice, Zen practice, available in whatever way we can. And I would say, so you could sign up formally, Or you could just ask yourself, how would that take shape in my life? What if for the next period of time, this weekend, this month, we're going to go for eight weeks, this year, to give more emphasis One of Suzuki Roshi's favorite sayings was, the most important thing.

[04:32]

And I've heard someone say that over the course of his talks, he declared different things, up to 200 things, to be the most important thing. I think that's what you call a mind that sees many possibilities. And then each practice period we have a theme. And the theme for this practice period is what we call the Heart Sutra, the Maha Prajnaparamita Hridaya Sutra. And of course, each of those words, each of those Sanskrit words is imbued with the meaning that's not just an intellectual proposition. It's also an expression of thoroughly engaging reality.

[05:39]

Or again, to put it in the Zen language, each one of those phrases is a koan. The translation of maha is great. That's the usual translation in English. but we could also say inclusive, bindless, thoroughly significant. Prajna wisdom. In Buddhist teachings, and particularly in the Mahayana, there's three expressions of wisdom. And one is what we might call knowledge, or a wisdom of our conventional reality.

[06:45]

And this can include the practicalities of our world as it appears, noting who we are as a person, our own personality, our own traits and characteristics, things like that, knowledge. And then the second wisdom is, maybe the best word to describe it in English, is insight. Insight is a very interesting experience for our consciousness. It's not what we figure out. What we figure out, we figure out in the context of what we know. We know some version of good and bad.

[07:51]

Some version of right and wrong. some version of success and failure. In the language of Buddhism, some dualistic construct. And then in the context of that, we figure out. In the context of our usual way of thinking, our usual way of being an expert, in the context of how our past experiences or psychology or emotional patterns or formative development sets a context. And we take whatever comes along and we create its relevance within that preset context. And within Buddhist thought and Buddhist teaching, this is not insight.

[08:53]

This is still in the realm of knowledge. Insight is when we, sometimes it's when we see the usual patterns. It's like we see through them or we see a bigger picture. And that creates a different knowing. It's an insight. Sometimes the experience that's being had opens us. Dogen Zenji, the finder of this style of Zen in Japan, he said, we forget the self. We forget the self And what's happening steps forward and informs us about being.

[10:02]

So here again, some flavor of maha. Great. Beyond the fixed ideas. In the realm of possibility. And then the third realm of wisdom has two aspects to it. One is we go beyond either of the first two. We go beyond knowing and we go beyond even insights. Because insight, when it becomes a formulation, it's like we take something from beyond the usual state of consciousness, It sparks something. But then we call it a backhoe going down the street. It was simply a sound.

[11:16]

Then the other aspect of it is it's the interplay between the two. the interplay between knowing, becoming aware of the context that we create being the person we are, and opening up to the possibilities beyond that. I gave a talk on Wednesday night, and I quoted... a French essayist of about 100 years ago. And here is the quote. If you want to build a boat, don't herd people together to collect wood and assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the immensity of the sea. To long for

[12:26]

the immensity of the sea, to long for Maha being, great being. You know, I suspect that almost everybody in this room has heard Martin Luther King famous speech, I had a dream, I have a dream. And if you haven't, I recommend you look it up on the internet and listen to it. It's very interesting. I remember hearing something on the radio. And he was a rising star in the world of civil rights. And some of the more established leading figures were a little put out by that. And then there was this big march ending up in Washington.

[13:33]

And because he was a rising star, they couldn't exactly not let him have an opportunity to speak. But they thought, well, let's put him last. And then he stood up and gave, I have a dream. I suspect there isn't a single person in this room who could name more than one of the other speakers on that day, let alone quote them. But the intriguing thing, the immensity of his talk, the longing it stirs up, he spoke in terms of his Christian faith. And he spoke about it in a way, to my mind and heart, goes beyond the particulars of whatever religious sect he belonged to.

[14:48]

And he spoke in a way that I would say offers us the invitation to long for the immensity of the sea, to long for the immensity of seeing us all as equals, to long for the immensity of seeing us as us and not us as them. to go beyond duality, to let it enliven, to let it awaken. In the maha, prajna, paramita, hridaya, the heart, some way when our being is engaged, when our being is inspired, enthused, something rises up within us.

[16:08]

When I hear that speech, I'm inspired, enthused, with the hint of and maybe a little afraid. Nelson Mandela said, we are intimidated by the immensity of our own capacity. The Prajnaparamita Dayasutra is inviting us to explore this capacity. Inviting us to attune. Inviting us to unlearn being an expert and learn the realm of possibility.

[17:22]

And it's a very interesting notion to long for the immensity. If you think, reflect on what motivates, directs your doing, your everyday doing. I have to. I should. some expression of your desire or aversion, or even your confusion. And what is it, as Suzuki Roshi said, what if we nurture that beginner's mind? What if we nurture that immensity of longing? What if we allow these three forms of wisdom to be areas of exploration?

[18:45]

It's not to say there isn't a practicality to our lives. Of course there is. But how do we relate to it? The challenge for us is to neither consider that spiritual practice, Zen practice or whatever, however you might formulate it, is asking us to diminish the practicalities or avoid or even relinquish the practicalities of our life. but more to put them in their place. How do they take their place in relationship to the immensity of living?

[19:52]

And again, in the language of Zen, a koan. How does that take shape as a question in your life? Are you like Suzuki Roshi? Does it help to say the most important thing? The most important thing is to eat breakfast at breakfast time. Is it to ask yourself, what do I want? Until you peel away the layers of desire, competition, some kind of grasping, something that will protect you from entering fully into life,

[21:08]

or a substitute for being fully alive. In Buddhist thought, these questions, these ways of initiating being in the moment are called Dharma gates. And in the teachings it says there are endless Dharma gates. Your whole life the particulars of your whole life, they're all Dharma gates. And maybe one of the gauges is when we find ourselves contracting, resisting, avoiding, can we invite ourselves in the service of immensity, in the service of longing to turn towards.

[22:15]

It's a different sensibility from shoot. Shoot has its own form of contraction. There's something you're doing that's wrong and you should do the right thing. You should be the right person. Maybe it's true, as Nelson Mandela said, that we are intimidated by our own immensity and capacity. But that's a different proposition from being discouraged and defeated by some sense of inadequacy or brokenness. So this is the intrigue that Maha Prajnaparamita Hradaya Sutra, sacred text.

[23:29]

What is sacred text? Several weeks ago I went on a website, Krista Tippett's On Being. I'd read a quote from her and I thought, oh, I should look up her website. I looked up her website and then, as I think many of us do, we start one place and then I ended up reading an article on the website on the spiritual dimensions of running. Here's the quote that stood out for me in it. Someone was talking about they were running a marathon for the first time and they were telling someone, they were sharing with someone else that they felt intimidated. They were not sure they had the capacity to do it.

[24:38]

They were not sure they either had the capacity or wanted to go through the demands, the suffering of it. And the person said to them, the blessing is outside of your comfort zone. And that was my response too. Isn't that an interesting concept? The blessing is outside of your comfort zone. It led me to think, the many ways, you know, try, and I would emphasize try, because the world is ever-changing, as well as the self, to create the security, the comfort, the safety, the knowing, whatever it is, of something, some way in which we are being alive.

[25:42]

And it's like we're binding ourselves to that first realm of knowledge. But we're binding just the practicality of knowing the details. But when we bind ourselves to that and we live according to that, the immensity disappears. It becomes invisible. It loses its accessibility. When we're bound within that, it creates its own kind of dictates. Often we take on, in an unexamined way, the dictates that we find around us. whether we take them on or we generate them ourselves, we tend to narrow the realm of possibility.

[27:03]

And there's this poignant and delicate process that we're in. Of course we want security. Of course we want predictability. Of course we want to be safe from the ravages of uncertainty in this ever-changing world. We want to know that we'll be okay. That the people we love will be okay and will be there for us and we can be there for them. But Buddhism holds up this simple proposition. And it just says, everything changes. And without the longing for immensity, without including this in the equation of being alive,

[28:20]

impermanence is at best something we should acknowledge. But when we're in the realm of should, usually there's some begrudging. It's different from longing. Not to say we don't sometimes long for impermanence. If you think about this very interesting distinction between recognizing, I have no idea what's going to happen. And the response is, you know, one response can be, oh, no. And then another response can be, hmm, well, let's see how it goes, you know. And I would say the second is supported and nurtured by inclusion of possibility.

[29:29]

That there's both the longing, yes, there's an intellectual component, but it's the heart of it that sustains us in our relationship to impermanence. It's the heart of it. Like the very word courage comes from the French word cour for heart. So the Heart Sutra presents this proposition. And in a way, it says to each one of us, how do you want to relate to this?

[30:33]

A friend of mine said to me a while ago, she said, I make a point of doing something different every day. Even if it's just walking to the store a different way. To take that and weave it into what I've been saying. Some way to weave in just a little immensity, a little difference, a little expansion into her day. What is beginner's mind? What is beginner's heart? What is it to compassionately and kindly and patiently attend to?

[31:50]

The way of being that so readily and repeatedly arises where we want to stay safe, where we want to contract, where we want what we want. And we want to get it. And we want to avoid what we don't want. And we don't want to have it. How can we coax that aspect of our being back into relationship to maha, How can we see it as an illustration of Prajnaparamita? The wisdom, the learning that we can engage in that teaches us how to live, how to practice, how to be with each other, how to invite liberation in contrast to suffering.

[32:57]

for ourselves and for others. I once heard the Dalai Lama say, my good friends, my enemies, the Chinese. Yes, we're different. We have different agendas and different preferred outcomes. But in a way, we're good friends. In a way, it's all us. Internally, the part that yearns for the intensity of the sea and the part that yearns for it to stay within our comfort zone. How does it become a teaching?

[34:02]

How does it become a sutra? How does it become a sacred text filled with the wisdom and compassion and skillfulness of practice? How did the three varieties of wisdom come into play? What is the mind and heart that sees the workings of your being and learns from them? Whether you're expanding or contracting. Whether you're stopping at a crossing and waving the other car on, or blurring your horn and giving them a finger. Can either be the teaching. state of mind, of heart is that?

[35:11]

In Buddhist teachings, the title is the whole story. like hearing the title, I Have a Dream. And something in you remembers the cadence of the repetition, the rising voice. Something in you remembers being touched, what it feels like, what it creates within. And what is it to keep that close rather than just something on rare occasions occurs to you?

[36:35]

Oh, yeah. and then is readily set aside as you resume some other way of being. As we follow the path, it's very helpful to remember that this Maha holds the fragility of our limited existence. How else will we learn the compassion and patience? How else will we keep turning towards the immensity? How else

[37:37]

will we keep discovering the beginner's mind? Even what initiates the discovery seems to be a blatant example of the absence of it. And in the world of Zen, Beginner's mind, Zazen mind, they're synonymous. So today, many of us, 70 or so, are sitting all day. And for those who have done it several times, we know all sorts of mind appear in that period of time.

[38:38]

all sorts of responses. And the challenge of bringing back into play this relationship between the particularity of our karmic conditioned life and this immensity of interbeing, shunyata. And I would leave you with this thought. Without the immensity of interbeing, how can we possibly sustain the courage, the enthusiasm within the limitations of our own wanting

[39:55]

and aversion and confusion. Within that world, how will the inspiration touch our hearts? And isn't there a way that we're all susceptible to inspiration? About a year ago, someone sent me a clip, and I think it was put together by a little video clip. I think it was put together by an insurance company in Thailand. But really what it was, was one person did something nice to another person, then that person did something nice to another person, and it just went through this chain.

[41:06]

I'm not quite sure what that has to do with insurance, but I was touched. I thought, oh, yes. Yes. the life I want to be part of. 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.

[41:59]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_96.78