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. My name is David Zimmerman, and I am a student here at Zen Center. I've been a resident for about 12 years, a little over 12 years, and currently serving as the program director, and I'm also a priest in training here at Zen Center. So I want to welcome everyone, and I always like to ask the question, who's here for the first time? A number of you, great. Welcome, a special welcome to you. I think I want to know sometimes about who's coming for the first time because I realize I often give a Dharma talk for that first time that I myself walk through the door for that one who is still here, who is still walking through this door anew each time and is still having questions about what is this?

[01:18]

What is practice? How do I relieve this dissatisfaction, this discomfort, this suffering that I feel? And so again, every time I try to prepare one of these things, who knows what's going to happen? It's with the heart and spirit of encouraging, encouraging myself and hopefully in some way encouraging all of you. So thank you for coming, newbies and all of us. In light of the recent Hurricane Sandy, as well as the kind of election process we just went through, and also an interpersonal conflict that I've been experiencing and having to practice with deeply, I've been thinking about the vicissitudes of life and how sometimes we may feel the storms of life, the ones that Mother Nature throws our way as very debilitating.

[02:26]

But also at the same time, the storms of life that we ourselves experience and throw our ways in terms of how we deal with what is most difficult in our minds and in our hearts also can throw us for a leap and unsettle us. and in some cases do just about as much damage as Mother Nature can do. So I want to touch upon today the practice of weathering our storms and particularly the importance of staying grounded and present in our bodies particularly whenever the full impact of the storm reaches us. both in our inner lives as well as our outer lives. And to be able to pass through these storms in such a way to allow a transformation, one that can bring healing and help us to experience wholeness again despite whatever devastation we have actually gone through.

[03:46]

whatever loss we may feel, either of actual physical items, or loved ones, or loss of our own sense of presence, who we are, the sense of self. I want to suggest that the ultimate storm that we encounter is the one of impermanence. The truth that everything we are and everything we know will be someday swept away by the floods of change. Here's a passage from Zen Mind Beginner's Mind in which Suzuki Roshi speaks to this truth. That everything changes is the teaching of transiency or change. That everything changes is the basic truth for each existence. Wherever we go, this teaching is true.

[04:50]

This is also the teaching of selflessness, because each existence is in constant change. There is no abiding self. In fact, the self-nature of each existence is nothing but change itself. the self-nature of all existence. There is no special, separate self-nature for each existence. This is also called the teaching of Nirvana. When we realize the everlasting truth of everything changes and find our composure in it, we find ourselves in Nirvana. So where do we take refuge in the midst of life's transiencies?

[05:54]

Where do we take refuge when both the world around us is in upheaval and the torrents and winds of war, of greed, of violence, of political arguing, disagreements, of environmental damage, are racking our very lives and our homes in a very devastating way? Where do we seek true, solid, safe ground in these times? And likewise, where do we find refuge for inner storms? Which, again, are just as destructive. our minds wracked with anger, with grief, anxiety, fear, or our hearts bruised and broken by some encounter that we may have had with another.

[07:03]

Where again do we find a place of composure, of rest, of equanimity, when in Buddhism we are told there isn't even an abiding self. No self to cling to. No life raft of me here, solid thing, separate from everything else that I can rely on. We are all afloat in the same ocean in a certain sense without any life rafts. So who's going to save us? How are we ever going to reach a safe shore? Where do we begin? So I want to go back to how we might stay grounded and present in the midst of great turmoil.

[08:10]

I have on my altar at home a statue of Shakyamuni Buddha. And I bought this particular statue for my altar because of the mudra that the Buddha is in. And the mudra he's in is the touching the earth mudra, which I don't know if many of you, if everyone is familiar with it, but it's the image of the Buddha sitting upright with his hand touching the ground in front of him. The story behind the origination of this mudra is that Siddhartha Gautama, as he was known before he became the Buddha, a prince who left his home, his wealth, his family in search of truth, spent six years wondering, trying out different practices, different austerities, different disciplines, finding, searching, seeking an answer to the fundamental question of why is there suffering?

[09:15]

However, the Buddha had spent many years looking outside to know or fail for an answer. And so finally, at one point, he stopped and turned, decided to try something else, which was to turn inward. And so he sat down under a pipel tree and vowed not to move until he finally had an answer. And that night, as the Buddha sat there, unmoving, he was tormented by Mara, the god of temptation. And, you know, it's mythological. You can say that there was or wasn't this particular being named Mara. But usually this particular god is one that throws us off our seats. So Mara harassed the Buddha. tried to tempt him with desires and worldly pleasures and with endless storms of critical thoughts and distracting emotions.

[10:26]

And when that didn't work, Mara tried something else. He tried sending his armies to attack the Buddha and knock him off his seats by giving him great pain, waves of fiery, mind-numbing pain shooting throughout the Buddha's body. even as he sat unmoving. But that did not dissuade Siddhartha. So finally the Mara put forth his greatest weapon, and that was great doubt. And he challenged Siddhartha by asking, but what right do you have to think you can become enlightened? At this point, Perhaps on the point of wavering, Siddhartha reached down and touched the earth, begging for strength and clarity.

[11:31]

This is the gesture, again, called touching the earth, sometimes also called calling the earth to witness. And with this gesture, the earth shook and trembled. And Mara was finally vanquished by the earth, bearing witness to the Buddha's great vow and intention. And then shortly after, in the last watch of the night and with the morning star, the Buddha finally awoke to his true nature and became the Buddha, the awakened one. So in the beginning of December each year, we actually have a week-long retreat called Rahatsu in which we celebrate this time of awakening by ourselves once again taking up this practice of sitting, unmoving, and being with whatever arises completely with our vow to wake up here now.

[12:41]

This mudra of calling the earth to wisdom is my favorite mudra because I think it expresses our capacity to find a ground of refuge in the midst of whatever life can throw at us, including the great doubt. Despite all that Mara threw at us, despite all that life throws at us, despite all that our minds and hearts do to unseat us, and the truth that we are here, whole, complete, already, we have nothing else to do. Despite this experience, the Buddha was able to remain steadfast and find refuge in Nirvana. I see this touching the earth mudra as a core practice.

[13:52]

That whenever we are in a storm of resistance or self-doubt or fear, self-hatred, whenever we are ravaged by our desires, temptations, fears, pain, that we can touch the most elemental expression of our existence. We can touch our earth body. and rest there, as if at the eye of a hurricane, simply witnessing everything that arises for us. Think in the same way that a child might turn to its mother for solace and comfort when it's crying, when it's frightened. So too did the Buddha in the midst of his greatest need, turn to his earth mother and let her hold him, touch him, validate, like we want every parent to validate, with a loving, direct, fully witnessing presence.

[15:11]

Simply to be seen, and by being seen, having our frontal mental experience and truth affirmed. Yes, honey, I know it hurts. Yes, dear, I know it's difficult. I'm here. It's okay. You're okay, fundamentally. It's our life reaching down to touch our life. to touch our ground of being. In my experience, mountains as another form of the Earth Mother can teach us a lot about finding our composure in the midst of life's vicissitudes. I spent eight years living and practicing at Tassajara, which is our monastery in the Los Padres Natural Forest.

[16:17]

near Big Sur. And during my time there, I can say that the mountains taught me so much about being still and upright, about the practice of Zazen itself, how to deeply cultivate and embody a quality of witnessing, equanimity, and presence for myself that I had never really known as a child growing up. a child of divorce, of children's homes, foster homes, being oppressed and ostracized or being gay, wanting that deep internal sense of presence in my life, wanting some model to show me how can I be this presence for myself. And so Tassajara gave me that gift in many ways. And it particularly gave me that gift during the summer of 2008, when there was the Basin Complex fire that swept through Tassajara and basically devastated the entire wilderness around it.

[17:28]

It was the third largest fire in California history. Some of you might be familiar with the story of how five priests who lived at Tassajara actually ended up in the midst of evacuation, turning around and returning to the monastery in order to be there when the fire passed through, even though none of the fire professionals would stay. And some of you might be familiar with the story as it's told in the book Fire Monks. So I don't want to go into that story today. I just want to say that to speak a little bit about how the mountains taught me in that moment when I was there in the valley as the fire passed through, how to embody a place of stillness and groundedness. Last night I went to the Bill Viola event that was at the Unitarian Church, I believe it is.

[18:31]

And one of the presentations that was one of the video clips that Bill Viola shared was one called Fire Woman. I believe it was called Fire Woman. And the video basically starts with this image of a giant wall of fire. And in front of it is the silhouette of a woman. Just a silhouette, standing there still, as this giant wall of fire is behind her. And when that first came up, I had this very visceral shock run through my body. Because the sound of it, the visual of it, the memory again of just trying to be still in the midst of the great fire entered my body, came alive in my body once again, even though I had thought in some ways that it had passed through, if you will. So I was reminded once more that sometimes some of the deepest traumas stay with us very deeply in every cell of our body until we enter them completely completely

[19:43]

until we know them and touch them completely, there's a way that they still reside, a way that we haven't let go, a way that they still in some way maybe continue to traumatize us. How do we let the fire pass through? How do we let the experience move on and let our whole being once again come forward? I think our practice of zazen is to sit like mountains in the midst of emotional and karmic flames without turning away. We can try to make our best effort to be non-manipulating, to not resist whatever is happening or appearing in this moment, whether in our minds or in the world around us. In zazen, we are embodying the capacity and willingness to be present for what is most difficult, to be exposed and vulnerable in the midst of our greatest suffering, and yet remain still and resilient.

[21:05]

To sit like mountains is to sit not moving, but not unmoved. It's not that the mountains of Tasselhar didn't feel the pain of the fire as it rushed over them. It's not that the mountains didn't hear the suffering of the animals that were dying and the plants that were burning. I think the mountains did feel and experience all this. I think they dwelt with deep compassion for the suffering, witnessing it. I think the mountains understood that true compassion requires acknowledging our inescapable and mutual vulnerability.

[22:07]

That we both understand Touch the earth body of our suffering. And the earth body in return can become a healing and loving presence. I've been thinking about the fire again because I've been in the midst of an interpersonal conflict that for me has felt very much like going through another wall of fire. And it's with a Dharma friend and colleague. someone I deeply care about. And part of it is just each of us having our particular views of a situation, each of us having a particular need or request of the moments, maybe not being able to give each other what we most need. But all the same, it's still very painful and very difficult to feel like you can't meet another person where they're at, or you yourself are not being met

[23:11]

where you're at. And of course, my suffering in the relationship to this difficulty is my suffering. It's not the other person's fault. It's never the other person's fault. It's what we bring to it. How we relate to the situation. That relationship is what determines our degree of suffering and our degree of relationship, how we hold it, how we meet it, how we are present for it, how we hold and meet ourselves in the midst of whatever is arising. In the midst of this particular fire, I've been reminded recently of a particular practice that I actually think is a wonderful tool in which many Buddhist teachers have been sharing recently, including Diana Winstead and Tara Brock.

[24:15]

And this practice can help us whenever we are in the trenches of difficult emotions. My teacher, Tia Strozer, also I think the lead, shared it this summer during the intensive that we had here. And this mindfulness tool that I want to share with you is called RAIN, R-A-I-N-D. And that's an acronym for the four steps of the process. And this technique, if you will, can be used anywhere at any time that you might need to come back to this moment and be cooled and soothed in whatever particularly fiery tempest you're experiencing. And when we can do this practice consistently, There's a way that we, over time, develop a capacity to rely on it almost as a second nature.

[25:18]

It helps us to keep going too much further into a particular difficulty without being more mindful. So the four steps of RAIN are as follows. And this is particularly the frame that Attara Brock offers. R. Recognize what is happening. A, allow. Allow life to be just as it is. I, investigate. Investigate inner experience with kindness. N, N, non-identification, which is simply rest in awareness. So this practice of RAIN can help us to decondition our habitual ways in which we resist what is happening moment to moment, ways in which we resist the truth of this moment.

[26:29]

And it doesn't matter whether or not we resist what is by lashing out in anger or by numbing ourselves with alcohol. Or by getting immersed in obsessive or primitive thinking as a way to try to make ourselves right. Just think about it enough and hard enough and often enough. It's going to be right someday, right? When we try to control life, we cut ourselves off from life. And so RAIN is a way to help us to begin to see these unconscious patterns of cutting ourselves off and resisting and taking the first step. And again, the first step is to recognize what is happening. To see what is true in our inner life.

[27:32]

Not only out here, what's actually happening here, but really what's happening inside. turning inward first, attending to the thoughts, the emotions, the feelings, the sensations that are arising in this being. We might notice that, in some cases, physical sensations, actually have a deeper truth to them. That there's some way of relationship to our thinking. That when we stay with a particular sensation long enough, that it has another truth for us to learn. And so if we stay with the actual physical response of the moment, then we can recognize something more.

[28:36]

And we can actually awaken this recognition by simply asking ourselves, what is happening inside of me right now? We call forth on our natural curiosity. And we let go of any preconceived idea about the situation or about another. And instead, listen in a kind, receptive way to what's going on into our hearts, and in our minds. The next step is allowing. Allowing life to be just as it is. And this is allowing, which means letting be the thoughts, emotions, sensations, feelings that I discover. And this allowing is intrinsic to our healing. Realizing we can actually let be by turning towards our conscious intention.

[29:50]

And this letting be is actually the heart of Zazen practice. Allowing things again to be as it is, without changing it, moving away, without manipulating it. Just being open, receptive, direct truth to the moment. This allowing is actually beyond you. It's actually dwelling in the heart of our interconnectedness. This allowing is surrendering with affirmation. It's saying yes to everything we experience in this moment. To the whole world as it appears. Whether or not we like it. Preference has nothing to do with it. The minute they step either line of like or dislike, suffering arises. There's a saying that what you resist persists.

[30:54]

In my experience, wherever there is resistance, there is the self. And wherever and whenever we experience suffering, there is some expression of conditioned self at play, including the boundaries of where we imagine we begin and when we end, and where we end, or where another begins or another ends. And over years and years of practice, these grosser levels, sense of boundaries of self-separation, might fade away. And you will begin to notice a more subtler and subtler level of where this is a sense of not me arising. How do we turn to that? That is our edge of practice in every moment. How do we turn to it? And as we sit over many years, this path of practice...

[32:08]

is one of a slow dissolution of self. And in Zazen, we sit and see the structure of the self, and then we let it dissolve in gentle, open awareness. But in order to do this, we have to feel the yucky stuff. We've got to feel the anger, the pain, the fear, the grief, the intensity of these internal flames that visit us. We need to feel the elemental energy in our body. See how it embodies us. See how it's an expression of our resistance and tension. See where the boundaries of our self exist. When you do this often enough, you develop a capacity. And that capacity is to be yourself. exactly as you are. You build a capacity for trust.

[33:11]

And this trust is the gift of unwavering presence. This is the trust that the earth showed when it showed up for the Buddha. The third step of RAIN is to investigate. And this is to This is something we can turn to at the times when simply recognizing what is happening for us, inside of us, around us, and also allowing it to be maybe isn't enough. Maybe our feelings are just too intense, too overwhelming, and we need to take another step. And this other step is investigating with kindness. This is, if you will, in some ways coming to the eye of the hurricane. This is calling on our natural interest, our desire to want to know the truth.

[34:20]

And directing that desire, that attention to our immediate experience. Now we can do this by simply asking ourselves, what is happening inside me? We can also ask, who wants more attention here? How am I experiencing? What am I experiencing in my body? What am I believing? What thoughts are coming up in this moment? And what do the feelings that are arising in me want from me? Unless the sensations related to these various feelings are actually felt... and brought into awareness, they're going to control our experience. They're going to control us, and we won't be free from them. And we'll continue to rely on a sense of a deficient self rather than our larger Buddha self.

[35:30]

So we can investigate with kindness, bringing the heart energy to penetrate this very question. The final step is that of realizing non-identification. And this is how we rest in a natural awareness. So the lucid, open, and kind presence that we evoke in the first three steps of reign, of recognition, of acknowledging, of investigating with kindness, leads us to the freedom of non-identification. This is the place where we rest in natural awareness, again, which is our Buddha nature. This is where our sense of who we are is not fused with our limited emotions, our limited thoughts, sensations, the stories about who we are.

[36:39]

We are much greater than that. And so when we are no longer identifying with this small self, We're not feeding it. It actually loosens. And what happens is we open into another place. So when we come through the storm of these emotions and feelings and sensations and center into our attention of being present and hear and study, again, we come to this eye of the storm. We can rest there, just in awareness. And we know what we have gone through only once we have gone through it. We learn from it only once we have weathered the storm. And we can come back again and again any time the clouds begin to appear, any time the smoke in the distance begins to threaten us.

[37:45]

Come back here to this presence embodied feeling. Touch the earth within you. Be the presence that you always wanted to be. Anyhow, I think I've said enough. And I just want to again say, encouraging ourselves whenever we need to, whenever we are experiencing fiery moments in our lives, storms that we feel we cannot weather, that maybe if we try this technique of rain, that we actually might enjoy walking through the rain

[38:50]

but whatever we're experiencing. How do we walk through our lives with both feet, here, now? Appreciating what is as it is. Appreciating the teaching of every difficulty. Because I know the only way that I know is through difficulty. The only way that I learn, actually, how to be free is having gone through the difficulty. So that's why I value the fire. I value the conflict even though I really don't like it. It has a gift. Can I stay with it long enough to find this gift to relish it? And then maybe in time I can offer it to someone else as encouragement. Anyhow. One more time, brain, recognize what is happening.

[39:55]

Allow life to be just as it is. Investigate your inner experience with kindness. And then simply rest in non-identification. Nowhere to go, no one to be, nothing to be done. You're healed. You are healed and whole in this moment, just as you are. Thank you very much. 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 sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[40:56]

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