This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. So what the heck does all that mean? One of the main things I was saying yesterday was presenting this notion of energy. In the language of Buddhism, pointing at the formless, that everything has this energetic component to it. And of course, everything also has a form.

[01:03]

Everything has a form. And how in this world of myriad manifestations, whether we like it or not, what's being manifest, As we sit with it, we discover we're not in control of it, that we can influence it, but it's not simply there according to our will or our intention or our sincere effort. Those influence it, but it comes forth from everything, from myriad beings. how can that be an awakening process?

[02:07]

This is what the cone between Nangaku and Basso is about. How can this attending to the very nature of how things come into being, how can that be an awakening process rather than just a replay of what you want and what you don't want? or even more mysterious, some way of being that becomes mesmerizing, entrancing. And in some ways, every way of being, every particular being is its own trance. Many years ago, I was arriving in Boston to lead a retreat, just as the Boston Red Sox had won the World Series.

[03:14]

And I wasn't aware of this, but as I was arriving at the airport and people were saying, yeah, we did it, and smiling at each other, and I was thinking, what's happening? What's going on? What's this common feeling of... accomplishment of well-being. And then someone said, oh, we won the World Series baseball. This way, a kaya, a realm of being, comes into being. It's like we conjure it up together. The way we conjure up a being called Buddha's Parinirvana. The way we conjure up a being inside our own thought, feeling, experience, in Zazen, out of Zazen.

[04:24]

do we wake up to that process individually collectively do we do it by chanting mantrams influenced by Shingon Buddhism Japanese version of tantric Buddhism Or for us, is it just showing the excellence of our Zazen mind, just flowing from one experience to the next, without preference, without resistance? So in the world of Zen, question is much more interesting than the answer.

[05:36]

So I apologize for continuing to talk. But let me confuse you even further with a poem. Woman unborn. often we hear the phrase the unborn nature of all being no what were you before your parents were born before the Kaya appeared with all its particularities with all its tantalizing attributes We then got busy liking and disliking, being afraid of, yearning for more of.

[06:40]

Before all that, what? And of course, before is a little deceptive because it implies linear time. This follows after that. This precedes that. It's more without getting entranced, without getting all caught up in it, without in a way going into a dream. What is it? Unborn in that way. right now, before you rely on all your stories about me and that and them, what is it?

[07:46]

What is it before that whole developmental process of being alive that your parents gave you? I'm not born yet. Five minutes before my birth. I can still go back into my unbirth. Now it's 10 minutes before. Now it's an hour before birth. I go back. I run into my minus life. I walk through my unbirth as in a tunnel with bizarre perspectives. It's 10 years before. 150 years before. I walk. My steps thump. A fantastic journey through eternity. Epochs in which there was no me. How long is my minus life? Non-existence so much resembles immortality. Here is Romanticism, where I could have been a spinster.

[08:49]

Here is Renaissance, where I could have been the ugly and unloved wife of an evil husband. The Middle Ages, where I could have carried water in a tavern. I walk still further. What an echo. My steps thump through my minus life, through the reverse of life. I reach Adam and Eve. Nothing is seen anymore. Now my non-existence dies already with the trite death of mathematical fiction. As trite as the death of my existence might have been if I had been born. Anna Swir, a Polish poet. So as we settle into Shashin, as we unsettle into Shashin, as we weave a normalcy that some rude ceremony comes along and disrupts, can we keep returning to Shashin?

[10:17]

The energy of being. Be aware you're aware when you're aware. But not separated from whatever's coming, whatever's being manifest in that moment. And the path of liberation is that it's both real and unreal. Not a very, I was going to say not a very difficult concept to grasp, but once you've played with it a bit, it's not. But as a practice. sometimes we have to watch our mind grasp so thoroughly so desperately so passionately and just be in awe of that some persistent image or story and memory or yearning and be so fully that experience of

[11:50]

that it's energy. And we can facilitate this. If it stays in the abstract concept, the contact with it is limited. The energy experience of it is limited. When we move even closer, Nangaku says to Basso, it's absorption. it's so intimate it's being absorbed in it so we train ourselves we train ourselves in yes we train ourselves in willingness to experience we train ourselves in not knowing what's supposed to happen and what is knowing what's not supposed to happen maybe The so-called virtue of shuffling randazendo, chanting something we have no idea what it is, is that we don't know what's supposed to happen.

[13:03]

That we're granted beginner's mind just through our not knowing. So we just do it. go through the particulars of it. Last night I sat up late trying to get it into my stubborn head. Okay, we're going to do this, and we're going to do this, and we're going to do this. It turned out the way it turned out. The Eno looking at me. Don't you want me to do this part or not? Oh, yeah, right. Incense the show. Just like our Zazen.

[14:06]

We bring our diligence. We bring our informed effort. And then it turns out the way it turns out. The extraordinary notion that that supports us more than if it turned out exactly the way we thought it should turn out. How deceiving that would be. How misleading it would be. I'm doing it just right. I'm doing it. The very fact that it turns out the way it turns out keeps requesting and challenging, drop your expectations. Drop the notion that says, oh, this isn't the right way.

[15:12]

I got to make a greater effort or whatever to make it happen the right way. So first of all, Nan Gaku just pokes at Basso in full appreciation and respect of his effort. This is an important point. Can we, in exploring our own being, in exploring and making our heartfelt effort, can there be a trust and respect for our own being and our collective being and maybe for all of us that doesn't come easily that's not

[16:24]

predisposition we move into under most circumstances. So in the process of Zazen, we find it in the body. We find it in the breath. We find it in the careful way we engage the process. This is Nangako's admonition for basal. Essentially saying, what you're doing is terrific. The way you just apply yourself. The deep sincerity and courage and nobility of your practice. Just don't make it about something.

[17:36]

Just don't burden it with expectation or what should or should not happen. Myriad realms, myriad kayas of being will come forth. some of them announced by the eno, and some of them just through the peculiarities of your individual consciousness. Sometimes your mind will be light and clear, and sometimes it will be heavy and foggy. sometimes attention will flow naturally with the breath.

[18:41]

It will infuse the physical experiences of the body. And sometimes the mind will rattle and rattle. lots of commotion some of it the well-worn core issues of your psychological life that have a genius for creating these realms of being crush it to try to dismiss it but one it won't work which is probably a good practical notion but two it's thwarting the very life force of your being

[19:56]

to see its life, to see its kaya, to experience its energy, and to let that energy not simply exist as a mental notion or emotion, but to draw it down into your body, to draw it in with your breath. to release it, to let it flow with the exhale. This is as we enter more fully. As we enter more fully, there's a paradox. paradox is the request of practice grows.

[21:11]

The request of practice isn't, well, sort of pay attention every now and then when you feel like it. The request of practice is pay attention continuously. when you like it and pay attention when you don't like it. Watch that mind that keeps wanting to normalize. It keeps wanting to craft a normal sasin. Some way of having security, predictability that me can thrive and ask yourself to hold that impulse to hold that trait lightly ask yourself to explore that as you walk from the zendo to your cabin

[22:31]

Just watch how many moments of experience arise that you just couldn't have predicted or wanted. So the request grows. And the challenge for us is, as a request grows, intensifies that the request be one of enlivening not oppression when it becomes one of oppression then it becomes complicated because in our sincerity we want to comply we want to do it right we want sincerity and our dedication to be expressed but when it has this restricting attribute to it something in us is just not willing to go along it gets back to our room and says okay now I can be me

[24:00]

Now I can act as if I'm free, whatever that might be. And that's a wonderful and instructive thing to watch. How can there be nothing outside of the realm of practice? How can there be this flow of energetic attention? just moves from zazen to ceremony, to breakfast, to break, to zazen. So we don't stifle the energy. And then the other way we can...

[25:01]

dissipated is we indulge it. We grasp something. And somehow in that grasping, that request of Shashin to become whole, to become wholly present, to be completely here, is dissipated. into the arising topic, however it might be, whatever it might be. to create a steadiness.

[26:06]

A steadiness that's moved this way and that way but has a kind of a gyroscope that keeps coming back to uprightness. A steadiness that isn't fending against how a Parinirvana Sutra, a Parinirvana ceremony influences consciousness. It just lets that influence be something to experience. And then we find within it that there is the Dharma.

[27:21]

That there is not only in our conscious process instruction, but in how we engage. As we contemplate Buddha, the historical Buddha, the Buddha within, the Buddha capacity in all beings, we contemplate that something is invited to attune with it it's not so much to align ourselves with a way of thinking or to hold certain beliefs or cannot hold certain beliefs it's more to

[28:36]

Tune with the way of being. Tune with the sense of energetic flow. In Bendava, Dogen says, this is what's transmitted from Buddha to Buddha, ancestor to ancestor. And then Nangaku turns it on his head when he's talking to Basso. And he says, to truly engage this is to eliminate Buddha, is to kill Buddha, is to just get rid of the concept completely. feel the vibrancy of what it is to not grasp.

[29:53]

And to let it instruct. To let it reveal just the patterns of your consciousness that are dependent upon grasping. Grasping and aversion. Just another variety of grasping. This is what Nangaku gets at when he says, Sit Buddha. Don't sit Zazen to become Buddha. Sit Buddha. This is what Dogen's getting at when he says, actualization and realization, the same thing. Can the willingness of your sitting, can the energy of your upright posture, can the flow of your inhale and exhale, can the open receptivity of your sense doors, can they be

[31:08]

the manifestation of vibrant presence. And when the manifestations of karmic consciousness, of habitual feelings and thoughts come along, can they be experienced in awareness? Can there be this transmission of awakening to this particular consciousness, this particular kaya that's arising? Each construct is just itself. winning the World Series.

[32:15]

It's just about getting excited about a bunch of grown men running around a grassy field chasing a ball. And hitting it with a big stick. It's in how it's related to that it becomes relevant. It's in how it's related to the life takes on its particular attributes. And we're in a dream about it until it's related to in a certain way. In a paradoxical language of practice, the unborn gives birth to what comes into being.

[33:17]

That's when it's seen for what it is. So in our sitting, can we see what it is? Because how it's being related to is something more than just a replay of our karmic patterns. And then in Dogen's commentary, he repeats what he said in Vendava. This is the transmission of all the Buddhas, of all the ancestors. So we learn something.

[34:23]

We learn a process. We learn it experientially. And it doesn't give us anything to hold on to. But it brings forth in our being the attributes of awakening. the trust, the energy, the continuous contact. So as we sit, as we allow It's as if the arising worlds of being undo us and we become willing participants in that being undone.

[35:49]

For no good reason, we give ourselves to something called the Parinirvana ceremony. And the Buddha, historical Buddha, the Buddha within, the Buddha within all beings, comes forth. And we bow to that. Not because we have a fixed idea of what it is, but because something in us

[37:01]

experiences it as our true home so fortunately or unfortunately we have no more major ceremonies. Probably fortunately for the Eno and the Dawans who have to make all the arrangements. Maybe unfortunately for us, now we can settle back into the predictable pattern of Shashin. and worry about the things we like to worry about.

[38:06]

But I would say, please. It's so easy, it's so tempting to draw up some kind of contest involve in your technique of practice some mark of achievement or failure. The Buddha way isn't contained within such notions. It doesn't mean we're not diligent about the technique we're involved in.

[39:15]

Quite the opposite. Give it everything you've got. Just don't grasp at what happens as a consequence. And as you give it everything you've got, attend to what arises. What's happening? How do you practice with it? And what happens when you practice with it? And bring that to Doka San and practice discussion. that there's layers to our being and the rational conventional layer yes that's significant but the layers underneath the bold statements made by our emotional life bold because often they defy the rational mind

[40:45]

that wants to be reasonable. Even our physical being that seems so orderly. You settle into Sasheen and it's totally disorderly. One moment it's floating light and then the next moment it's as heavy as lead. all these different modes of being, can we simply attend to them? Can we be instructed by them? And can the heartbeat of our effort, what's happening, what is it to practice with it, and what happens when I practice?

[41:53]

And as I said before, especially in class, in some states of mind, indeed, it might be a cognitive process. But in more settled mind, it's a more sensate process. Often wordless. This kind of exploration cracks open the world according to me. This kind of exploration, especially as we get in touch with the deeper feelings, the world according to me and its habit energies starts to make sense. No wonder a topic like that

[42:56]

be persistent and repetitive, given these deep-seated impulses to think and feel like this. As we make this kind of deeper contact, there's a demythologizing. the world according to me it's not that we stop creating these kayas these realms of being it's just they're a little bit lighter maybe the saving grace of baseball is that you can pour out all your enthusiasm. And you also know it's just a game.

[44:03]

So please, as you settle and unsettle, Let the Buddha within refine the effort. This doesn't happen in a pristine state. This happens in the messy state that you're in. Don't wait until your mind is serene, your retention. wrong whatever mind is presented turn towards it experience it let it be what it is thank you

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