Good morning. Is it working? It's not turned on yet. It is? So this morning, today, here at the Zen Center, we're starting what we call a practice period. For the next 10 weeks or so, a group of us, about 50, will practice together, supporting each other to stay true to our intention to awaken. It's a practice that has its roots in early Buddhism, in India. During the monsoon period, the practitioners, because it was too wet to travel,

[01:01]

decided to make good use of their time and come together and commit that monsoing time to practicing together with added intention and dedication. And that tradition has stayed alive in Buddhist traditions since then. And so we have our version of it. But what it brought to mind for me was How can that best find its expression in city life? We don't have monsoons. We're not renunciate monks and nuns. We have a very different lifestyle. How do we bring forth the very same jewels of practice? actually something I've been thinking about quite a lot over the last six months.

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And what I'm about to talk about today is my own ruminations on the subject. About six months ago we started a program called Establishing the Path of Practice and the notion of that program is rather than have the center, this center, be the primary emphasis of practice to have each person discover for themselves the primary source of practice where they live and to come together in groups and support that. To me, this is part of the exploration of letting the Dharma take root in the West. We live in cities.

[03:09]

We do not live in forests. We have varied lives. This first basic truth of Buddhism, of dukkha, which translates as everything from suffering to unsatisfactoriness, to maybe even just something as simple as stress. The stressors in our life and how they're experienced as stressors, to be more precise. How to maintain a busy life with lots of demands and responsibilities. How to take care of your health. How to take care of your relationships. How to respond to the society in which we live. and many more demands, responsibilities on our time.

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How in the midst of that do we find a quiet, settled spaciousness that lets us discover something fundamental about our life? How in the midst of that do we find some open-hearted warmth that we can bring to our own experience, that we can let guide and support our practice. You know, we live in a consumer society. What a threatening word, consumer society. There is in Buddhism the notion of two truths, the absolute and the relative.

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Or maybe another way to describe them, which I'd like to describe them today, as the dispassionate and the passionate. The dispassionate, life is just what it is. You're born, you live, you die. This galaxy has come into being. This galaxy will go out of being. Everything is subject to impermanence. Or maybe in the workings of our own life, our own personal life, is there a way where we can touch a deep sense of settledness? a sense of maybe a deep sense of sobriety where the ways in which we're intoxicated by our own yearnings, our own anxieties, our own fears can be softened and quieted enough that we can see and feel a little bit more clearly what's going on.

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And I think that's why many of us come to a meditation practice. Something in us knows that there's a wisdom in that. That just being intoxicated by our anxieties and desires misleads us. It concludes descriptions of the world, of our self, of what's appropriate and what's inappropriate, that aren't true guides. And certainly this is part of the intention of meditation, of awareness meditation that we discover this settledness that sees with more clarity. that offers us some guidance as to how to direct our life, how to create priorities within our life.

[07:43]

The dispassionate, and then the passionate. But we do feel, we do yearn, we do experience anxiety, sadness, excitement. and how to meet that, how to engage that skillfully. And our Buddhist teachings say, quite directly, that we do that with compassion, with passion. So to illustrate these two ways, I'd like to offer you two poems. Here's the first one. It's by Juan Jimenez. I have a feeling that my boat has struck down there in the depths against a great thing.

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And nothing happens. Nothing. Silence. Waves. Nothing happens. Or has everything happened And are we now standing quietly in the new life? Are we now standing quietly in the new life? Something about renewal. Something about being able to let go of the relentless dialogues and... and machinations of the mind something about being able to soften them and let them open and release this is part of the workings of meditation shamatha it's called sometimes called cessation

[10:04]

sometimes simply called stopping. In the heritage of Buddhism, mostly it seems to be brought into effect through long, concentrated meditation. Mostly. But there are also other methods offered that I think maybe are more appropriate in the kind of settings that most of us live. And one of these teachings is the six paramitas. So rather than directly addressing cessation, shamatha, stopping, we take into our lives, we bring into our lives ways of being that make our experience of being alive closer to this settled openness.

[11:12]

And the six paramitas roughly divide in two. The first three are giving, sila, which translates as behavior that supports awakening, and patience. And then the second half is energy, concentration, and insight. And the spirit of the paramitas, which is the theme, the paramitas are the theme of this period of intensive practice that we're going to do in the next 10 weeks, is that you take these practices up. And let their influence, let the consequence of taking them up and practicing with them, of engaging them, letting that have the effect that it will have.

[12:18]

If you want to be a generous person, give. Practice giving. So I've been entertaining myself by thinking, well, what... innovative ways could I bring forth these teachings? And I was thinking of giving, and I thought, well, I'll give everybody in the class a dollar bill. And then I'll say to them, I'm going to do this, and then I'll say to them, give it away. And give it away, but challenge yourself to Perpetuate giving in how you give it away. Something is created through our actions. This is the spirit of the Paramitas.

[13:29]

To become generous, give. and become the person who acts in such a way? I think more logically we think, well, when you're a generous person, you give. How about you're a stingy person and you give and you become a generous person? It's wonderfully illogical. Why on earth would a stingy person, why on earth would somebody who doesn't have enough This is very close to the heart of our practice. The nature of our human life, when we look at it from a self-centered point of view, it prompts us to want.

[14:34]

It prompts us to feel like we don't have enough. It prompts us to be anxious about what's going to happen next. It prompts us to create separation between ourselves and others. And yes, through dedicated meditation practice, through deeply settling mind and consciousness, through realizing directly codependent arising, the interconnectedness of all life. We can see through these karmic arisings. But realistically, it's challenging to find the time to dedicate our lives to that practice. Those of us who have gone off to Tassajara and other monasteries and retreats have discovered It takes quite a while. It takes quite a while to really settle down deeply and let yourself release the deep stories of who you are, of what the world is.

[15:51]

So this almost illogical the rational practice of just entering the world and behaving as an awakened person behaves and discovering what it creates. Entering the world, giving. Entering the world, patiently being present for the difficulties and the suffering that's created. In Buddhist teaching, Dukkha has like three layers to it. There's the original difficult experience, there's the response to the difficult experience, and the response to the response. So a wonderful exploration to do with yourself. Maybe even as a writing exercise, maybe as a daily contemplation. How do I suffer?

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How do I behave when I suffer? And what's the consequence of that suffering and my response to it? And when we start to explore our life in this way, quite naturally, compassion starts to arise. So here's the other poem. It's not a crime to be Romeo or Juliet. It's not a crime even to die for love. What counts is whether you can be Romeo or Juliet. I mean, it's all a question of your heart. karmic life, our karmic formations, our fears, our anxieties, our yearnings are not the enemy.

[18:14]

Our practice is not a refined version of self-criticism. Although I think maybe nearly all of us make it that in one way or another. It is quite a significant step when we shift from criticizing others to criticizing ourselves. But actually, the practice is asking us to make a bigger shift. It's to release criticizing altogether. And can criticizing just be seen as a version of suffering? That's why I would suggest to you It is a powerful practice. How do I suffer? And when you find yourself criticizing others, can you hold it as suffering?

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When you find yourself criticizing yourself, can you hold it as suffering? And these two truths, the dispassionate and the compassionate. They meet together at the point of practice. And this is so wonderfully exemplified by awareness. Awareness has no agenda. Awareness is simply being present for whatever is happening. There's a wonderful fascicle by Dogen Zenji, the finder of Soto Zen in Japan. where he describes it as the acupuncture needle. When you place the acupuncture needle at the blockage, the energy flows. When we bring awareness to the point of blockage, the point of stuckness, something starts to flow again.

[20:27]

That's what awareness is. Simply being present for our experience and seeing how the passion of our life is contracting, is constricting, is blocking something. And can we meet that very experience with awareness and turn it into compassion? that liberation is a momentary activity. It is not simply the consequence of becoming an adept meditator. That the very activity of giving creates a generous person. The very activity

[21:35]

of being patient enough to experience what we're experiencing creates the groundedness that illuminates what's happening and lets it turn into the path of liberation. Can we realize directly just how immediately available liberation is and can we start to see the territory of our own habits of our own personality and each one of these contains the challenge of shamatha, of this moment of pausing.

[22:43]

Where our boat, this boat that flows along on the unrelenting agenda of our life, just for a moment pauses. That's what a moment of awareness is. It's just a simple pause. But the question, what's happening, becomes the activity of the moment. The more completely it becomes the activity of the moment, the more completely everything falls away and everything is reborn. It's that difficult and that simple. whether you want to call it on the dispassionate side, body and mind falling away, or on the compassionate side, willing to die for love.

[23:55]

It's really the same practice. The dispassionate and the compassionate come together like the two hands in gashot. So when we sit, you know, The challenge is not to stop being the person that we are. That is not the stopping we're talking about. The challenge is to radically shift how it's related to. That's the challenge. To radically shift how the arising experience is related to. And as I say, we can do that through... Chittabhavana, development of consciousness. And we can do that through the practice of paramita. The practice of the attributes of awakening. And they're complementary.

[25:05]

So over this next ten weeks, This is what we will explore. I hope in a variety of ways that are both effective and entertaining. When I thought of giving everybody a dollar bill, several years ago I read a book by Jacob Needleman, a philosophy professor, I think at SF State, where he examines money, the thought of money. What do we think money is? Power, freedom, prestige, safety. The dollar bill is such a...

[26:16]

powerful icon in our society. I think it's very helpful if we can become aware of these power symbols, these power icons in our society and learn to use them skillfully. This is... To my mind, this is part of the challenge of practicing in this life we have. What are the power icons of your life? In one of the extended lists of the perfections, usually I just listed six. That's the common list. But then there's another list of ten. And in the list of ten, one of them is bala.

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What has power in your life? What preoccupies you a lot? Is it relationships? Is it material things? Is it worrying about money? What is it? In the language of Zen, this is when we would say when the particulars of our life become a koan. A koan is something, a way of inquiry that reveals, that sheds light on what's going on. It becomes a Dharma gate. You take a dollar bill.

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and you relate to it in a way that lets it be a Dharma gate. You take the very places where you find yourself getting stuck, preoccupied, and you explore them. What is it to explore that and let it open and reveal how it has power, how it has such a strong influence? What is it that wakes me up in the night? What is it that plays through my mind during the day? And to recognize, in a way, these are dangerous questions. And the cultivation,

[29:21]

you know, of giving patience and a basic practice that keeps our mind in a wholesome state. I think the three of them can be bundled together in a kind of maybe the attribute of benevolence, you know, the support of well-being. But can, as we bring our dedication and commitment to practice, rather than have it be a new and improved way for self-criticism or criticism of other, can it be a new and improved source of benevolence, of generosity, of compassion? It's a very interesting question, to make this kind of almost like heart shift.

[30:27]

It's not so much to do with how concentrated you can be. It's more, as this poem says, it's more a matter of the heart. classic then teachings as we know them in our lineage from China to Japan, many of them fashioned in the Tang Dynasty, hold up this exalted dispassion, this seeing clearly through the constructs that we impose upon our experience.

[31:28]

But I must say for myself, I've come more to appreciate the efficacy of compassion in discovering how to bring that forth as an attribute as part of the foundation of meditation. So as we sit, as many of us are doing today, to sit not only with the resolve to stay present, but also to add to that the resolve to meet the arising experience with a generous benevolence. It's not that that dissipates our intention to stay attentive, but it softens the mind that wants to control or criticize.

[32:39]

It softens the impulse to struggle. I don't know if that makes any sense to you at all. I hope it does. You know, this first paramita, dana, which literally translates as giving, you know, which gives rise to generosity, which has as a background this benevolence and compassion. which so much contradicts the constant messages of a consumer society.

[33:43]

Consume. It's like devour. In some ways it's almost like the opposite of give. Devour the world. What is it to give life to the world? What is it to sit in a way that gives life to the life you already have? I think maybe that's what I'm trying to say. What is it to sit in a way that gives life to the life you already have? To me, that's with this poem. It's not a crime to be Romeo or Juliet. It's not a crime to be alive. That's not contrary to mindfulness, to shamatha, to presence.

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It's not contrary to the dispassion. It's just a compliment to it. So please, for those of you who are sitting today, allow your sitting to enliven. Allow the inhale to bring into being everything that's already alive. Allow the exhale to release the frustration, the difficulty, the struggling. Maybe we could say the complementary teaching to the paramitas is the hindrances.

[35:53]

But it's very important before we consider the hindrances that we get the message of benevolence. Because if the hindrances are just simply a description of self-criticism, already they've lost their usefulness. The hindrances are more to let us see how we cut off our compassion, how we cut off our own aliveness. What is it that you need to release to be more available for your life? What is it that you need to let go of to be more capable and present of just sitting right here, right now. What is it to bring that question up each time you sit down today at the start of each grade of zazen?

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What is it to bring it up at each time in your life when you find yourself constricting, holding back. That's what the hindrances are. And what is the workings of the heart that can bring forth a commitment to letting go of those ways in which you restrict your own life? And how can you communicate that to yourself in a way that makes it seem plausible and available as something you can do? This is the territory of compassion.

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Where we take up this radical practice of engaging our own life with a compassionate heart and a compassionate act. That each time we sit down to meditate that we bring to that activity, a compassionate gaze? What am I holding on to? What am I restricting that's causing suffering? And what would it be right now to let that open and release? And then in the midst of that, to find our posture, to find our breath, to be fully engaged in our state of mind, in mental constructs and images.

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And let the light of the Dharma illuminate them. To realize that compassion can bring forth dispassion with the same efficacy that dispassion can set the stage for compassion. That there's a mutuality between these two practices. I hope that made some sense, not too much. I guess what I would really hope is that it left you with some kind of feeling like, hmm, like that. That you find your own relevance for it.

[40:50]

And I'd like to end by reading some more of this poem. It's not a crime to be Romeo or Juliet. It's not a crime even to die for love. What counts is whether you can be a Romeo or Juliet. I mean, it's all a question of your heart. You fall head over heels in love with the world, but it doesn't know you're alive. I mean, just because you love apples, do apples have to love you back? I mean, if Juliet stopped loving Romeo, or if she never loved him, would he be any less a Romeo? It's not a crime to be Romeo or Juliet. It's not a crime even to die for love. So maybe shamatha, maybe cessation.

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Maybe stopping is to die for love. Maybe if we can discover deeply that this practice is about bringing happiness and joy and alleviating suffering, we'll find ourselves drawn more and more and giving everything we have over to it. Maybe. Thank you.

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