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. When the old Zen Do, which was down there in the student eating area, when it burned down in one afternoon, The next morning, we started building this one. And it took about six weeks to order the materials, have them arrive, and build it. And this floor was a white cedar. And we put it in the floor, and then the master builder called Disco, we said to him, how shall we stain it?

[01:03]

And he said, no, we're not going to stain it. We're not going to put anything on it. And we were totally perplexed because it had this kind of innocent whiteness, you know. And we thought of all of our what we trail in. You can see the footprints of where the doshi stands on the mat. And Paul said, we'll walk on it, the oils of our feet, even the dirt. And we'll walk on it, and then each day we'll wash it. You know, we'll just wipe it down. and it will discover its own beauty. Here it is.

[02:07]

Probably if you get under the tans, you can see original white spots, if you're so inclined. Maybe our practice is like that, you know. when we started to walk on it, you could see this pristine whiteness, and then you could see this trail going in here, back there, this way. And then slowly, it took a while. I mean, it took about six months to start to give us some idea of what Paul thought was going to happen. It's like when we're in the midst of our practice, when we're paying attention, in that moment where you notice you missed something,

[03:33]

in that moment where in this abundance of beauty, of nature, you discover you're totally engrossed in some old worry. It doesn't seem to have any beauty to it. It doesn't seem like it's furthering of enlightenment. And yet, somehow, something happens. Sometimes the phrase we use is beyond all human agency. I know if you went out and said, I'm going to get my feet dirty and then I'm going to walk all over this floor, I think my feelings would be hurt.

[04:53]

What? Our precious floor. Something about practice something about how it influences us, how it influences the world, seems to be contradicted by our momentary attempts, momentarily attempting to experience the experience that's being experienced. always the sincerity of our efforts is contributing.

[05:58]

Maybe it's better if we don't try to calculate, you know. How much did my footsteps across this floor contribute to its beauty? Maybe it's better if we just try to walk across the floor mindfully, like a good Zen student. And this notion of time, how as we enter into this machine, it becomes more apparent to us. But each day in Sushin has many days. The day of getting up in the dark, walking through the dark to the Zendo.

[07:14]

Sometimes it has an urgency. Sometimes it has a mystery, walking through the dark. And there it is, the pre-zazen morning. And then after breakfast, we come out, and it's light, somehow it's not warm. How could that be? How can it get light? But it didn't get warm. In fact, it got a little bit colder until the sun starts to hit the valley. Maybe a little disappointing.

[08:34]

Maybe a thought should go back to bed. Maybe a resignation to the austerity of Zen practice. And then as the morning starts to warm up, the relief. Every day is a good day. The chorus of nature has established itself. Its benevolence is evident

[09:42]

And then the afternoon warmth. The reassurance. Sometimes things turn out well. Sometimes the floor ends up looking beautiful. How many footsteps does it take? How many wipes with a damp cloth? How many moments of awareness does it take for any one of our minds to release its grasp on its fixed definition of reality? in the afternoon flows into early evening.

[11:03]

Sometimes pleasant. Sometimes the waning of the light offers its own a sense of diminishing. Thank goodness we can come and chant the Enmei Jukko Kanon Gyo and have Kanzeon support us. utter generosity of her kindness. Every day, many days, many worlds, many kayas, you know, created out of the particulars of the moment, our associated thoughts, our feelings,

[12:31]

Every day, so many moments, so many situations, so many sensations in our own body, so many thoughts in our own mind, sometimes plagued with thoughts of the past, sometimes preoccupied by considerations of the future. Yesterday I read this phrase, the whole body is beyond the world's dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? And then I said something.

[13:50]

I can't quite remember what I said. later I thought, hmm, I was a little trite. This human life is so mysterious. The workings of it. Think of a large boulder taking a hundred thousand years for one breath, one inhale, an exhale. sometimes our memory of the simplest things so we let this zendo out in the morning and then Paul being an utter genius he is started to calculate

[15:26]

what it would look like, what materials he needed, and started to call all his carpenter friends. I need you, and I need you now. Please come. Please help. And like great bodhisattvas, they came warmed all over the place. It's quite a feat to build a zendo from nothing. This was actually the garden. To turn the garden into a zendo in six weeks. Oh, and just to make it interesting, we had a very tight budget. Small, tight budget.

[16:28]

Sometimes we create a great heroic challenge from the process of undoing our karmic intrigues and preoccupations. A great heroic challenge. It's sometimes it's like the whole world is reaching out to take our hand and show us the path. Sometimes the intensity that feels like it's squeezing us, like when you're sitting in arioki,

[17:48]

And it's only halfway through the meal. And already your knees are on fire. Or your back. And it feels like the request to just be this is like squeezing you. Yesterday, when we were walking, doing the outside kinhin, we walked past the old bathhouse, and there was this, what I find, enchanting, gurgling sound. And in that moment, just this

[18:53]

flash of delight. Sometimes we think attention and awareness are something we muscle into place. And we forget that the world is just saying, Just open your eyes, open your ears. Smell that breeze. Okay. You have thoughts and feelings going on inside of you. There's some mysterious way you're processing. and working through your karmic existence.

[19:55]

So be it. There is still this world who could believe in a means to brush it clean. This is a magical valley. Fires, floods, landslides. Too much water, too little water. Once the road got washed out, And really in a very dramatic way, just a big section of it, about 50 yards, disappeared. And we had to drive the food in to one point.

[21:05]

And then we had to form a chain of human bodies and pass the food and carry the food over the 50-yard gap. and put it in another truck and drive it on in. So we did. That's what we did, because we wanted to eat. We were and still are very interested in that eating. remind ourselves of the yin and the yang of practice. Dedicated effort has its place.

[22:09]

But if we get so preoccupied by it, we're missing the kindness of others. the beauty of nature. It's helpful to notice that. If you just think, oh, it all just flows and just trail your mud and dirt all over the place, it'll be beauty. We miss the rigor of the request of life. The ever-changing kaya of existence. It's our teacher.

[23:22]

But it calls the shots. whether we like it or not, whether we want it or want to avoid it. Shakyamuni said, well, if you get stuck in that, you'll suffer. Nagarjuna said, if you can see the changing profoundly, everything changes. Your state of mind changes. Your perception changes. the zendo changes. Maybe sometimes it's your torture chamber and maybe sometimes it's your jade palace. Once a couple of years ago someone here

[24:30]

needed to go home to Kazakhstan, but they had no money. And the Sangha took up a collection and gave her money. And she said to me, the generosity was so abundant that it was actually hard to let herself experience it. She said, this is twice what I need. And I said, What a lovely problem to have, to have twice as much money as you need.

[25:38]

When we blend the two, the yin and the yang of our effort, of our engagement, they can support each other. When we sit in the intensity of the demands of our formal practice, something happens. It cultivates a beauty. its own way at its own time. When you sit diligently attending to breath, to body, to mental formations, to the very nature of mind itself, and notice

[27:07]

the ways in which you miss. The mind wanders, the attention gets taken away. Even the breath, even the body can offer up some kind of resistance. It seems absurd to think, oh, how beautiful. As it attends to the very nature of how we construct reality, as it attends to the very nature of how we try to promote the well-being

[28:14]

humanness. You know, yesterday I was talking about shambatta. Often the adjectives that are attributed to it are calming and stopping. But when we talk about stillness, what we're talking about is lessening, loosening, letting go of our reactiveness, of how something in us is clenching rather than opening. It's a delicate process.

[29:22]

force yourself into compliance. Sometimes it seems to me that each one of us has to totally mess it up to discover response for ourselves over the years I've come to think I see someone who's very determined and very strict with themselves and I think that's fine being determined and very strict will teach you something about loosening up.

[30:43]

Sometimes when I see someone and it looks like they're thinking, oh, I'm going to skip that foolish part of being overly strict, I think, hmm, Okay, let's see how that works. In some way, each of us needs to meet the challenge of awareness. Each of us needs to meet the way in which, but I want it my way, you know? I want the sun to shine warm when I want it. I was sitting in the abbot's cabin. It was quite cold. By this time of year's standards, by mid-December's standards, it's going to be warm.

[31:46]

And a little ray of light started to shine on the window. And I went over and I opened up the curtains and there was this little ray of light shining across the room. And I noticed, and I'm expecting that to warm the place up. Hope springs eternal. And then the sun went behind the tree and that disappeared. Each of us is challenged to discover the way in which we assert our preferences. Each of us has to tell ourselves quietly, you can't always get what you want.

[33:07]

And I would add to that, each of us needs to discover how to savor the human condition. It's no great crime. pull open your curtains and let that little beam of light go across your cabin. It's actually a lovely opportunity to laugh at yourself. Ah, yeah. Isn't that the way? I wish it was always the way. It was just, oh, look at that, how humorous.

[34:10]

Sometimes a mysterious holding, struggling within yourself. As if all the great pains of your life are encoded in your somatic being. each of them like the things that sprung out of Pandora's box has to be addressed but if we can hold the other side the the appreciation the savoring maybe even Foolishly, the gratitude for life, the gratitude for nature, the gratitude for Paul Disco sending out the clarion call and bringing a swarm of highly skilled carpenters.

[35:30]

How did they get the time? always so inspiring for them that they set aside their well-paid jobs to come here and work for nothing. This is what nourishes us. This is what inspires us. This is what restores us in the midst of our efforts to see deeply the human condition that each of us is an example of. To poke at the mystery of our own being. And watch how

[36:35]

we will project it out. The perplexing, sometimes utterly embarrassing way in which we conjure up a version of other and then we point an accusing finger at it. Why are you causing me so much trouble? As I was saying yesterday, can we cultivate a presence that invites us back into own being? That we start to see the subjectivity of our world. this thought, this memory, oh, this consideration of other.

[37:47]

As we start to immerse in that, the subjectivity of being, We start to see the kaya's that it creates. We start to see how they can solidify and how they can flow. When we can bring awareness and contact and experience to a particular thought, a particular feeling, a particular memory a particular anticipation, it invites it to just be now. It invites it to be a dynamic interplay of being. And yes, we can all be a little bit foolish about it.

[39:05]

can be fooled by our own constructs. And that's part of our challenge. But at the very same time, almost paradoxically, we can open up to where we are. We can open up to the gurgling of the creek. We can open up to the spontaneous generosity that arises. We can open up to the mysterious many days

[40:09]

that fits inside of one day at Tassara. And it's like a yin and a yang. They will support each other. They will illuminate each other. They will complete each other. all these years later, we still walk across the floor and we still wipe it. It's not that

[41:15]

practice, and we'll get everything sorted out. And then we're done. Now the way continually unfolds. So we can relax. We don't have to be in a hurry. as you work on the alchemy of your own being, yes, sustain your diligence. Sustain your skillful, dedicated attention to the basics of practice.

[42:31]

And as Dogen Senjis says, And when you find yourself where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point. The other side, the opening, the savoring, the appreciating, just what is in the moment. It seems to me we need it, each and every one of us. We need the support. We need how it reminds us to open. We need the nurturance of knowing that our practice is just not

[43:44]

enduring hardship. 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, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[44:22]

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