This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Many of you don't know. My name is Kay Du, Lynn Schutt. I'm a Dharma heir of senior Dharma teachers and K. Blanche Hartman. I want to thank Anna for the invitation to speak here today. Many of you don't know. My name is Kay Du, Lian Shutt.

[01:00]

I'm a Dharma heir of senior Dharma teachers. And Kay Blanche Hartman. I want to thank Anna, the tanto, for the invitation. And of course, the abiding abbess, Fu, for the invitation to speak here today. I haven't spoken in the zendo before. For some reason, I was in the yurt many years ago, the last time I spoke. So this is my first time here in the Zendo as a speaker. Anyone else? This is their first time here? Raise your hand. Or some toes if you want. I'm okay with toes. Since the young people I'm talking to on that part. All right. All right. Well, welcome. A special welcome to all of you. So I heard today is Family Day at Green Gulch. So it's also... Labor Day weekend. Do you guys know what Labor Day is? What is it?

[02:02]

You're nodding. River, tell me what it is. It's a day that we celebrate the worker. Very good. A day that we celebrate the worker in the U.S., that is. May Day is also one, right? A lot of people in the world also celebrate workers on May Day. And it's become, as in many holidays, it seems to me, having a long weekend. Makes it more about the vacation aspect. And since it's often considered the last holiday weekend of summer, when you say, and school starts around now when I was young, school started right after Labor Day. Have you guys started school already? Those are going to school? When I started, raise your hand. All right. And then just yell it out all at once. Isn't that nice to be on the end? What grade are you going to be in? Just yell it out. All right. Congratulations.

[03:03]

Okay. So, you know, so it's leisure time. So I brought a book. I was hoping that most of you would like a book. I brought this book that I thought spoke to the last weekend here. And it's called Wait. by Antoinette Portis. I'm gonna read you the book. Oh, and was there a clock? Is there a clock or watch? Okay, okay, great, thank you. So I have a sense. Great. Okay, so first picture, what do you see? Just yell it out. I'll tell for the people in the back. It's a city scene. This person is pulling a child along and says, hurry. Someone's walking a dog. Then the child says, wait, and pauses and offers their hand to the dog.

[04:15]

How do you offer your hand to a dog? They say that palm down makes a dog feel less like maybe that you won't be grabbing them. So, I'm gonna call this a mudra, right? I'm gonna tell you the mudra in a minute. I'm gonna give the mudra a name. All right, next picture, what do you see? Again, hurry. The adult is going, hurry. Where are they? It's a street scene. It looks like they're trucks and There's construction going on in the street, and so the child says, wait, and waves at this construction worker. Can you see that? Am I holding, is I'm making it too fast? You can come closer if you want. You can just come close and then go back. If you can come low. Okay, next. What do you see?

[05:17]

Yell it out. What animal do you see? Duck. What else? A man. What's this? There it is. Piece of bread. Right? So the adult is going, hurry! As they're going by a park, and the child, she, he, or they, are going, wait. And reaching back, to feed the duck or geese. I don't know my duck or geese. I don't know this. I think it's a duck. And then on this side, again, the adult's going, hurry. And what are they passing by? I bet you know this one. Ice cream truck. So then the child's going, wait. This might be hard to see. Wait. And it's pointing to their selection. of a rainbow popsicle. Who here likes rainbow popsicles? Yes, yes, all right.

[06:20]

I myself liked the banana flavor when I was a child. Yeah, see, someone agrees with me. All right, next the adult again is going hurry, and they're passing a store. What kind of store do you think they're passing? What's on there? Pet shop. Pet shop, or more specifically, maybe? What do you think the view is from? What does it look like the view is from? From the fish tank. Looking out, wouldn't you say? Yes. I was looking for his name tag. His or her name tag. All right, so, from the fish tank. And the child, of course, is going, wait. I want to see this. Next. The adult. What does the adult say? You can already say it. And the child is pointing to a bush.

[07:26]

A bush. Or flowers. Yes, let's see. It's not a flower, it is butterfly. Butterfly. Wait. What a butterfly. Oh, what do you see here? Here's a little thing that's coming in the future here, which is rain. Oh, I love this. How many of you, when you see rain, you go? When you're an adult, usually you're going, where's my umbrella? We open our mouth for a different reason, usually. So they're going, And the caretaker parent is holding out a raincoat. Hurry! Saying hurry even more because of the rain. And then one last big one.

[08:33]

It gets bigger. Did you notice the hurries got bigger? Hurry! And they're running down towards what? A train. I live in San Francisco, so I think of Bart. And the child's going, wait! And what is the child doing as they're going, wait this time? Pulling on the skirt, right? Really more insistent. More insistent. Because, look, the train has gone by. And what is behind there? Rainbow. How many rainbow? Two, a double rainbow. That's supposed to be even more auspicious. Wouldn't you say? Yes. Yes. And then the last page says, yes, wait. So when we wait, we get to see things.

[09:35]

Yes? All right. So. With school starting in fall, when you say there's new energy in the air, maybe a sense of starting again, which for many of us is hurry and bustle and lots of things to do. I know I just came back from vacation and I just kind of feel like I have so much to do now. So when you wait, when you pause, and observe what's going on in the midst of things, right? In the middle of doing, in the middle of hustle and bustle, you get to see your surroundings, right? So I hear today you're going off any minute now to the family program and you're talking about equanimity.

[10:38]

So I'm thinking pausing, waiting. Observing your surrounding can help you to have a sense of equanimity. So see if you can have that sense, maybe just for a minute. I'm gonna say the word and then see if there's a sense of quiet and stillness. Doesn't have to be like noise kind of quiet, right? Quiet and stillness and subtleness when I say, wait. So maybe a deep breath. And a long exhale. Even saying the word wait, there's a real subtleness that comes with it. So see if you can feel that subtleness as you exit into your program. I don't know which way you exit. I'm going this way. Which way? Okay.

[11:39]

Somebody emailed me. Thank you. Thank you. This way. outdoors you get to go out into the sunlight all right so um i actually thought i would continue um with the book it's like groundhog day i'll just read it to you again no not not quite i did think you know i did when i was invited of course i was told it was children's program so i went looking for a book that i thought reflected some aspect of dharma practice and I thought wait because our first you know I would say the first aspect of practice is to pause or to stop so wait seems to be a good place another good way of putting that and then as I was reading the book and figuring out the talk I thought actually all these have aspects of practice excuse me

[12:47]

And so I thought that I would kind of go over the, since it's the beginning of school season, maybe talk again about what I think might be some aspects or ways of practice, not stages. We don't have stages in our practice. We're the non-technique school. And so I actually thought I'd put it through certain ways that I think. So my first thought on the offering. This is offering. And I would say this is the mudra of offering. At Tassajara, you know, when I was there, I think now I don't know if you have to eat in the student area again, students, when you're having your tea, because at Tassajara, you know, there's every summer, is it blue jays? Is it scrub jays? Is it I don't know, whatever else. There's always arguments about which kind of day it is, right?

[13:48]

But, you know, I thought the tasahara mudra, you have to eat like this because they'll dive bomb to get your food, right? So this is my tasahara mudra. So I'd say this is the offering mudra. So when we pause or stop or wait, this quality is a way that we are saying that we're willing. to step off the wheel of doing. You could even say off the wheel of samsara, of our habitual way of being, to stop searching and doing and wanting, pushing. And we offer ourselves to experience, to what comes up. And I was just saying, though, we're just on a vacation, my partner and I, Deb, So we decided it was a working holiday. So we went to a very quiet place and rented an Airbnb cabin and had a pond with a canoe and trails off of there and we were just not going to get off the land for a few, you know, very minimal driving and just relax and recharge, right?

[15:06]

And do work that was from the heart, not so much our everyday, you know, paying the bill kind of work. And so part of it was we would exercise every day. And so we were going off on this walk. We were told that there was a five-mile loop, right? So we start to do that. So we're walking, and it turned out it was more of a road than a trail. So we were misled a little bit. But so we went along, and it was big. It reminded me of going up Tassajara Road in a way because it was dirt and gravel, and then there were a lot of trees. So it was beautiful. The midst of redwoods and oaks, poison oak too, and blackberries, lots of blackberries. It was a late Sunday afternoon. And at first there were a couple cars, and then there were none. And as we rounded the corner, you know, we're looking at the scene. Oh, yeah, it's some... a raven was even following us and making a certain noise, literally following it, because we stopped.

[16:11]

And then we looked back, and we'd go a little bit, and it went down a few trees, right? And we wanted it to follow us, you know, but it didn't. Anyways, as we were walking on this quiet road, we rounded a corner, and all of a sudden, a mid-sized dog barked, right? It was about 30 yards away, and we paused. We paused, and Dad, my partner, and I were just like, should we go on? Is this, you know, is it a ferocious dog, right? Because we also were talking about how it was an area that seemed to be maybe a lot of growing of herbaceous, recreational, and now medicinal, and medicinal, not now, a medicinal kind of thing. So we were worried a little bit about perhaps You know, we might be on some road somewhere that we're not really supposed to be. And there were a lot of signs, private roads, go at your own risk kind of thing, right?

[17:15]

So we're like, should we keep going? And then we see another dog starts to come down. And Deb, you know, she starts looking for a stick and she tells me, reminded me that one of our partners in the past had been attacked by a dog, right? So we're looking for the stick and then we heard a voice, And at first we couldn't really hear the details. And then there was this woman's voice that says, oh, they're sweeties. They're sweeties. They're sweethearts. They won't hurt you. And so we went ahead and rounded the corner fully and went forward to meet these two dogs. First, the dogs were kind of running. You know how the way dogs are? It's about 30 yards away. So they run towards you and then they kind of run back to their owner the way dogs do. Children too, I think. And so they're coming back and forth between us, and then it ended up being a couple, this woman and a man. And as the dogs came towards us, when we decided we're going to go ahead, I bent down a little bit, and I bent my knees even to get lower in the ground, and I did do my offering mudra.

[18:25]

That's the way I was taught to approach dogs. And I went like this, and when I did that, the front dog, which was the older dog, didn't hesitate anymore and came fully at me. Like, it seemed like fully happy. The tail started wagging. The way that we love, I love dogs. When you think that kind of abandonment they have, like, oh, perfect, right? And so at this point, so to me, you could say that when we pause and offer ourselves to experience, it comes and meets us. Which brings us to the second page of the story, which is the construction, right? And then the waiting is when the child is waving at the construction worker. So to me, I would call this the seeing and meeting.

[19:26]

When we pause and are willing to meet experience, right? We offer ourselves and then we meet what is happening by letting go of our anxiety and fears that comes up. Because for most of us, you know, we talk about wanting to experience our life, wanting to be open to our life. And yet, in my experience, I have a hard time with that. Right? When things are sudden, especially. I don't know how many times people on the street will say something to me, and my first response is always, like, what do you want? Right? As opposed to, you know, you think, oh, how can I help you? I'm a bodhisattva. How could I help you? But that's not really the way I am. Maybe you guys are, but that's not the way I am. So to me, it takes knowing, you know, oh, what do they want that I might not want to give, and yet

[20:30]

I'm willing to meet that. So we pause to really meet experience despite fears, anxiety, whatever it is. And in fact, in the story with the dogs, there's a moment where you think, yeah, the woman says they're friendly, but what if they're not? Especially if you have history of knowing that dogs bite or have had have been bitten before. So, to offer to open up, right, and then to keep on being willing to let go of our initial conditionary actions based on experience. You know, I'm not saying there wasn't experience and validity, and yet we're practicing to be open to see new experience, to be able to meet the moment despite our past experience, right?

[21:34]

So in this story, after we worked through all those mental associations, right, and emotion that came with bending down to offer myself to the dog, all the dog again ran to me and was very, she too, let go of her anxiety and fear, right? By my offering, she... came to me fully also. So next is this thing about the ducks. And we're waiting. I need this one. And I'm going to call this feed or give over to practice. So first again we pause and offer and then we meet experience. And yet After the initial luster of practice, the calming that you get from just sitting, you know, the initial concentration practice that you practice and the settledness of the body, then what classically you would say the more the vipassana, the kind of insight kind of practices that

[22:51]

come with it when you start to really investigate fully not just me experience but when you start to really engage more with your experiences those associations and what happens with them and then it takes effort to keep on doing when you say right you have to keep that's when you after maybe three months or six months of practice. And, you know, the newness of the bowels and the newness of learning the form or whatever wears off. And so it takes more effort. You have to be keeping willing to open up and see how your conditioning does keep you from things. So, again, to go back to our walk on the road in the woods on our hike. So we had to be willing to stay on the walk, right, to continue on the road down the path.

[23:56]

So we were on this hike, and the map that we were given was kind of rough. And one, it wasn't a path, a trail, as it said, and it was more of a road. So when we met this couple with the first set of dogs, right, we asked them, well, does this go this way? Does it really go around? This is what we wanted. And so the woman was telling us that, oh, yeah, yeah, and do be careful, because after this trailer that you're going to see, at this trailer, a A guy lives there and he has two dogs. And they're supposed to be on the line, but she has heard that they're ferocious. And sometimes they're not on their line. And you know, they haven't been known to bite any herself or her dogs, but she had heard they were ferocious, right? This is what she told us. So then we were like, right?

[25:01]

And honestly, we were like, should we, we said, should we continue? Should we continue? And we decided to, and now Deb really wants the stick. So we looked for a stick, and she picked, she looked at one first, but I'm not exaggerating. It was probably from here to maybe halfway in this mat. And I have to say, is that a little big? And she's like, okay, I'm gonna try to break it. And she couldn't, and we picked another one. Again, this stick, like her whole hand, right? It's about this long. And she tells me again the story of how that dog bit her partner. The whole story, which I won't go into here, but she did tell me the story again. And she says to me, when we get close to the trailer, come on my left side. She's between me and the stick is between both of us and the dogs, right? And I'm like, okay, okay. And we're walking about 100 yards.

[26:03]

We have not seen a trailer. We haven't even rounded another corner. And she's like, come to my left side, right? So the sphere is building. And we don't notice the environment anymore before we're like, look, there's a deer. Look, there's a jackrabbit. or you know, this or that, wildflowers. Now we're like, where's that trailer? We said it wasn't the new trailer, it was the older trailer. We're just looking for the trailer and these possibly, well, in our mind they are ferocious dogs. So, and indeed when we got down to, it was a tan trailer that was kind of dilapidated. But we heard ferocious barking. We really did. And we stopped. We did not even pause this time. We stopped. And we were looking to see if we can see the dogs, if they're on the leash.

[27:07]

And then, again, we heard another voice, a man's voice. And I'm yelling out, we just want to walk by. It's a safe. It's a safe. Is it okay to walk by? And finally we hear, and Deb had to hear because my hearing's not so good, that someone, the guy said, yeah, they're tied. And they're still barking loud, right? So as we walk by, I'm on her left. The barking got louder and louder. And we're hesitant as we're walking by. And then we see there was another black and white dog and then a gray pit bull. And yes, they were on leashes, right? We go by, and as we're looking, I noticed the pit bull, which was quite hefty, on the line, barking. Didn't really look out, honestly, ferocious, just big and barking. And Deb says, who's much more an animal lover, she understands the animal perspective much better than I do.

[28:14]

She says, oh, the poor chubby thing. living his whole life running back and forth on the line, right? What a life, right? What a life. So, we have to be willing to give ourselves over to meeting experience again and again and seeing our habitual reactions to things, even though just minutes ago some dogs barked, we paused, we had some fear, you know. And we let that go. And each time we think, oh, okay, I learned the lesson. But my experience is I have to learn the lesson over and over. And it takes effort, right? But, you know, and when we come to Sashim, it's a similar thing, right? One days or five days, seven days practice period. We have to be willing to see. and be with things as they come up, to give ourselves over to the experience.

[29:18]

Now that's the thing. So here's the ice cream truck. And you notice the kids are like, yeah, ice cream truck. Everyone knows an ice cream truck. And then we know that we get to choose, right? This waiting is choosing. So an aspect of practice, is that, in my experience, is that I come to practice, I'm willing to meet things, and yet mostly, I like to choose what I meet, right? I'm looking for the deep concentration. I'm looking for insight about things I want to know about. You know, how to get along with my mother, how to get along with my coworker, How is it that I can make my life better? How is it that I can sit better? How is it that I can know the form more?

[30:21]

How is it that I can? Very self-referencing and very kind of task-oriented, right? How is it that I can overcome? How is it that I can change something myself And others, you know, we like to think, oh, I don't want to change others, you know, but I'm always trying to change other people. How about you? Sashin, you're always like, what is wrong with my neighbors? I never noticed this about them before, right? Right? Maybe it's just me. So, our practice becomes... We like it to be very specific. Like the storybook, the story, we tend to focus on what we like and what we want to get out of it, what insights we want. Perhaps obtaining certain positions or status, Doan or Chico or work leader.

[31:32]

And there tends to be a lot of comparison and judgment in this aspect. And again, it's very self-referencing. A choosy kind of practice. That's why I call this stage choosy. And that's okay. Okay, you know. There's nothing wrong, of course, mind you, with wanting these things. Nothing at all. Most of us come to practice thinking, There's something to be done, something to achieve, and that's okay. It's okay to have that. It's the clinging to how that should be. I need to be this position, then that position, or how it should be when I'm this position, things should be like this. And the thing is that, and it seems like in our practice with this monastic, you know, vestiges, sometimes very monastic, that they're definitely forms and roles and hierarchy in a temple in a monastic setting.

[32:43]

And so it might seem that that's what our practice is about. And indeed, these are practice positions. And my understanding is much more that we practice to see what we bring, what our wanting what our expectations of these things are and then when we're in the midst of them to see how those expectations and the I that usually comes with it interacts in that moment for myself usually I'm disappointed usually I'm aversive because that's is my tendency right my habitual kind of tendency and so Again, being willing to offer yourself to meet the moment, right? And then to keep on doing it over and over again, seeing how we choose and pick, not judging that we choose and pick, but seeing it clearly is useful.

[33:49]

And then, in this page, when I enter the fish store, is from the perspective of the fish. The fishes, or the fish, are looking out, right? Isn't that perspective, you say? And yet, notice the child is still here. So I would call this the aspect of observation, or letting experience reveal themselves. So we let things show themselves to us, but we're not completely out of the picture. We're still there, right? And so our practice becomes more about not just how is it that I overcome my issues, how is it that other people get to see me? It becomes much more how are we able to include other perspectives?

[34:53]

Not invalidate our own, mind you. I don't mean that. And yet, is it possible to have enough grounding to validate your own experience and see other people's points of views? So, practice becomes less about how to better or fix ourselves or other people. And... less about how to get something out of practice and becomes much more about understanding other ways of being and points of use. And then we get to notice in this drawing the butterfly. It's just a little bit of the child loves. The whole experience really is as it is things are as they are only the thing itself so here we let things people experiences phenomena reveal themselves to us so this is the not as we'd like it to be but as it is I think

[36:21]

This is what Dogen means when he says in the Genjo Koan, my printing, put it on top of itself. To carry yourself forward and experience mere things is delusion. That mere things come forth and experience themselves is enlightenment. So whatever happens, when we're on the cushion or off, is practice. It's not that we don't have preferences and still don't want choice, and yet we have enough subtleness that we experience whatever comes and we're able to offer ourselves to meet it and keep on meeting it with openness. We keep letting it reveal itself, and we're of our interaction with it mind you it's not like I'm gone it's more that I'm not the center of things and things show themselves to me so we notice right this even as we're eating or in the dining hall as we sit

[37:47]

as we bow, as we walk on the path. Paradoxically, when we give up choosing, where we look for my practice, everything becomes practice. So, Taigen Leighton says, so the Genjo Koan Different way of translating that, right? I like the actualization of reality as a translation. From Taigen Leiden, in the practice of the Genjo Koan, he says, the word Genjo means to fully or completely manifest, to express or share. And in this context, Koan does not refer to these teaching stories, but to the heart of the matter. So, when we can get to the heart of the matter, it's raining.

[38:55]

Remember, the hurry got bigger and bigger. When we're able to be at the heart of the matter, not my matter, but the matter, the possibility of us to be able to respond appropriately increases so when it rains it's appropriate to hurry perhaps and then when you're out of the rain it's appropriate to really pause and stop again and to really see the double rainbow because they waited now The part I didn't tell the students, or the children, is in the front flap here, and you can say the epilogue. It says, when the street is busy, and you have somewhere to be, sometimes you have to hurry.

[40:05]

But when something very special comes along, sometimes you get to stop and wait. So things or phenomena, which includes you and me, us, are special, right? It isn't whether you, me, or we notice it that makes it special. So when we can pause and offer ourselves to see and meet myriad things, to give over and over again to being able to be open and upright and settle in that meeting, to really feed this, reinforce this ability to be open in a settled way. And when you understand where you want to choose and pick, and yet are still able to let experience interact with you and reveal themselves to you,

[41:15]

then you understand that specialness is a quality that's in every moment when you're able to wait. Thank you very much. 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 sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[42:00]

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