So, good evening. So in Not Always So, Suzuki Roshi has a talk that's titled, Find Out for Yourself. And maybe I should stop the Dharma talk right there.

[01:02]

In it he says, in your zazen, or in your life, you will have many difficulties or problems. When you have a problem, see if you can find out for yourself why you have a problem. Usually you will try to solve your difficulty in the best way as soon as possible. Rather than studying for yourself, you ask someone why you have a problem. That kind of approach may work well for your usual life. But if you want to study Zen, it doesn't help. I think he's clearly making a point. And maybe I'll soften it a little bit and say there is help and you can ask and people can give you advice.

[02:10]

But I think what I'd like to talk about this evening is in this spirit of find out for yourself to just share a few lessons or kind of ways of practice that have been helpful to me with the realization that Everybody has to find their own kind of way in or out or just being. So maybe somewhere to start is with the question, okay, so we have to find out for ourselves, how do we do that?

[03:40]

Where do we start? Or what does that look like? And I think a lot of people who come to Zen Center are familiar with a passage from the founder of this school of Zen named Ehe Dogen, and he said to study the self, I'm sorry, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. And to study the self is to forget the self. And to forget the self is to be actualized by the myriad things. And I think, sometimes we get stuck on this word study. We have an idea of what that looks like in our usual life and maybe in Zen practice, it's not quite the same thing.

[04:42]

So I guess usually we think of studying, meaning kind of get information maybe Keep a list, write it down, weigh the pros and cons. Look for different kind of advice or commentary or something on what you're studying. And in my experience, much of this studying takes place on a physical level. rather than a intellectual level. And even though we're kind of one thing, we're our mind, our thoughts, and we're our kind of felt,

[05:56]

body, physicality in the world with sensations. So, you know, those aren't two different things, you know, it's kind of all happening right here. And all of it is kind of good ground for study. But in my experience, I've found the mind to be very quick, maybe kind of tricky. I can, you know, believe or know something one day so completely, or one moment, and the next kind of...

[06:58]

in a totally different way. So it'd be kind of hard to trust the mind in the sense of trusting my thoughts. And a lot of instruction in Zen is, especially around Zazen, or Zen meditation is around posture. It's around kind of an awareness of our own body in space. And how do we develop that? Or how do we know that? Or how do we enter that? So if we sort of tentatively divide our experience into kind of thought and mental activity and sensation or kind of physical experience, my experience with that is that the physical felt sense in our body

[08:37]

Sometimes it feels like it works at a completely different kind of pace, almost a different time and space than our mind. And it tends to be a lot slower. Somehow the lessons that I've learned through feeling something or experiencing something physically are often kind of slower to develop or kind of, I'm not paying attention to them. But once it kind of is felt or experienced in a conscious way, like, you know, oh, to sit kind of upright has a, has a, almost exhilarating sense to it.

[09:48]

So in a way it's kind of unprotected. Not that we always feel that, but I think that feeling can develop as we start to meditate or learn to meditate is a kind of We start to see a correspondence between the way I am physically in sitting. It kind of affects the way I see the world mentally. What's great about Zazen is it gives us this sort of time and space in our life, in our day, without a lot of distractions and kind of ways that we engage our mind.

[11:08]

And in that sort of wide space, these lessons of the body are somehow easier to experience or consciously know or feel. I used to live at Tassajara for a few years, and after I left, kind of while I was there the last maybe few months and then after I left, I had this reoccurring pain that was just the very tips of my toes on one leg. And I didn't know what it was and it would come and it would kind of grow stronger and stronger and to the point where I couldn't kind of walk on my foot or put on a shoe or

[12:14]

And there was a way in which the kind of not knowing what it was, was the scariest part. Like the first few times it happened, you know, sort of burning, intense sensation of pain would develop over a few days. And then kind of, it would peak in some way. And then it would subside. over another few days. And it wasn't the same every time it occurred, but this sort of cycle was occurring, I don't know, every two months or something. And I remember that after it had happened a number of times, I could kind of feel in my body when the pain had peaked, when it was kind of no longer kind of increasing, but it was sort of decreasing. And there's a way in which that brought relief.

[13:27]

It was still painful, it was still scary, it was still unknown. But to kind of learn some cycle or pattern from my body, and not that it's written in stone or that it was gonna be the same, but to have some kind of relationship to what was happening in my body It gave me some peace in that experience. So one of the kind of natural cycles of being alive as a human but also kind of reflected in the world around us that has kind of helped me in practice is, you know, the cycle of breathing in and breathing out.

[14:38]

And there's lots of different types of meditation and a lot of them focus on the breath. And it's something you can kind of... It's kind of an endless study. And it's a wonderful study because it's something that we're not necessarily doing. We're not saying, okay, I'm going to breathe in now and, okay, that's been about long enough and I'll breathe out. It's just happening. Which is wonderful. And there are some ways that we control our physical being. There are things we do. We can exercise and kind of strengthen our heart or lungs or we can take up bad habits that

[15:52]

hurt our heart and our lungs. You know, we can... You can't... Okay. Can you hear me now? So down? Is that better? Okay. Yeah, please let me know if you can't hear me. So the breath can be this place of, um, this kind of boundary between what we, what we do and what we kind of think we control and what we, what just is, what's happening in a way that is, is out of our control. Um, I mean, maybe not completely.

[16:56]

You could try and hold your breath or something. But I think this is what is meant by study, to study the self. In my experience, mostly that's not an intellectual experience. It's kind of bringing our attention to a natural process that's already happening and is kind of out of our control. And staying with it and seeing what that tells us about kind of the nature of being alive. Do you have a watch?

[18:03]

So another lesson that's been helpful in entering kind of practice or this kind of study is an instruction that comes up a number of times in Zen literature. And the image is turning the light inward to study the self, or to illuminate the self. So Dogen, the founder of this school, in a sort of basic, sort of two-page manual on how to sit zazen and how to practice Zen, called Fukuan Zazengi, in one translation, he says, therefore, put aside the intellectual practice of investigating words and chasing phrases and learn to take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward.

[20:03]

Body and mind of themselves will drop away and your original face will manifest. So one of the Zen teachers that was a great influence on Dogen was a teacher named Hongzhi, who said in one of the talks or passages that's in Cultivating the Empty Field, he said, then you must and directly reach the middle of the circle from where light issues forth. So on one level, these are kind of beautiful, kind of poetic images.

[21:13]

But what are they kind of... pointing to, what are they encouraging us to do? So one sense of light can be this awareness that we bring to the act of breathing. We're kind of shining our attention on some thing that's happening, some functioning. And we can develop thoughts and ideas about what that is, but there's a sort of before that, there's just a way that we're

[22:17]

bringing the focus of our perceptive energy to something. And so the idea that our attention is kind of like shining a light on something, then makes it more interesting to think about what would turning the light inward to illuminate the self what does that look like? So often I know that if I'm having a problem, a difficulty in my life, and I'm finding myself kind of reaching out to

[23:30]

change something or sadly even change someone so that somehow it will feel more comfortable here. That in a way that occurs to me that that's kind of casting my light outward. So searching for something. And every time this kind of turn the light inward occurs to me by grace, my body can relax in some way. It's like, oh right, the solution isn't out there. The ease. peace, the kind of happiness that I'm searching for wildly in some way.

[24:39]

I might have more success or... Yeah, more ease. I start kind of right here. So what is the nature of this problem that I feel? Why do I perceive it as a problem? So again, Suzuki Roshi said, when you have a problem, see if you can find out for yourself why you have a problem. So I think some of you are aware of this, maybe many of you.

[26:05]

But a little over a year ago, I had a heart attack. And it wasn't necessarily painful, a little discomforting, but the realization that something so serious, something so core to my being was struggling, had a kind of wakening effect. There's a sort of clarity and realness to our lives that can happen when we very directly recognize that our time is limited. That this mysterious thing that we're trying to study, this breathing that happens without our volition will end.

[27:28]

And there's a way that can be, that's not a good thing or a bad thing, it's just, okay, that's what happens. But, in experiencing our, Our impermanence. A lot of problems drop away. A lot of things we were worrying about. We kind of forget.

[28:36]

Totally forget. And then, at least in my experience, some time passes and after two days I left the hospital, I went home. I had final exams that week. Suddenly I'm back in my life. And those problems that sort of dropped away in direct knowledge of impermanence, well, they're back again. They're the same concerns, or some of them are. And we forget, or I forget, this kind of direct feeling of impermanence that is, you know,

[29:43]

Yes, scary, terrifying, and clarifying, and kind of neutral. It kind of just is. But, you know, time passes and I forget that. I forget. I mean, I know intellectually that my life is limited. but I don't feel it anymore. I don't feel that closeness to it. I guess what I'm maybe trying to say is that all of this is the study, you know, of being alive.

[30:48]

Um, and there's not a right way to do it or a wrong way to do it necessarily. Um, and, um, the fact that when things become very real in my life, I have one response, you know, um, And when that moment passes, I forget that kind of physical sensation, and it becomes somehow theoretical. Like, yeah, I could be in pain, but I'm not right now, so I don't really know what that is. oddly that's comforting, you know, that when we experience great pain that our mind kind of has a way of protecting us and allowing us to forget that great pain.

[31:55]

And I think what I find hardest or most difficult is to be okay with whatever kind of stage I'm in, to not want something else or some previous experience. So, you know, there's, when I feel the immediacy of my impermanence, there's actually, you know, there's some clarity or vibrancy to my experience that oddly I then miss when I'm kind of okay. physically recovering. So, you know, my hope is to keep up with the kind of moment by moment changes in my experience And so when Suzuki Roshi says, find out for yourself, I think what I'm trying to describe is a process through which I'm finding out for myself.

[33:31]

But I'm curious, and we have a few minutes. If anybody wants to share some way that they're finding out, or if somebody has a question about something that I've said. Yeah, Miguel. to yourself. But I often find that to be too late. Like, once the crisis is hit, I'm putting out the embers on the fire. I feel like I didn't have an opportunity to investigate.

[34:38]

I just got to see it flash. What I'm saying is, how do you actually and just intellectually looking in. Yeah. You know, on one level it's sort of expanding the circle of what we're studying. So when the crisis happens and it sort of brings us with an immediacy to what's happening or to something that we've been doing that we kind of didn't realize or whatever, there's a reaction there that's saying it's too late. I should have known this beforehand. But then there's a kind of widening of, oh, like, it's interesting that I'm having this immediate experience and I'm already kind of saying it's too late. And that's still studying the self.

[35:44]

And it's all okay in that sense. We didn't do anything wrong. And what we experience in that moment can be seen as sort of teaching us for the next moment, preparing us. And in that sense, it's not too late. Yes, like if I bring my attention to a certain phrase, like turning the light to illuminate the self, kind of that act of attention can sometimes then reverberate at other times in my life. And in some other circumstance, this kind of message comes up. I mean, do you have that experience with practice? It's when they actually touch.

[37:05]

Last year, my sister also had a cardiac episode. Yeah, I remember that. She told me. She told me that's after she takes me up from the airport, McGregor, back to her house. Oh, by the way, I've had a cardiac episode. Hello, please, so I can try. All I was thinking was, here's this immediate thing that happens Yeah. Yeah. You know, just that act of catching yourself, like, what could have I done, or what didn't I do, and kind of noticing, oh, is this the way that I'm kind of softening a light that's too bright, that's too... So just noticing that is this study.

[38:40]

Thank you for your question. Jean, did you have some? I mean, I think, yeah, thank you. And that's kind of where I started out and what I intended to say tonight. course it's whatever I said was completely different from what I intended but you know most of Fukan Zazengi this sort of instruction of how to sit is you know physical instruction it's sort of like So when Dogen was awakened, or he had this awakening experience, and he brought it to his teacher, his teacher said, you know, what's happening?

[39:47]

And Dogen said something like, eyes horizontal, nose perpendicular, which sounds kind of cryptic or odd, but maybe it could be Just a really clear awareness of, like, I'm located in space. I'm here. So I think the process of zazen, at least, is kind of bringing attention to very subtle details of how we're in space. you know, at first it's kind of clumsy, like we have to kind of be very conscientious about it to kind of establish our sitting posture and then watch it wilt and then kind of establish our sitting posture.

[40:49]

The more we kind of make an effort in that direction, the more we're kind of feeling how it's happening rather than kind of directing it or... yes, I think Zazen is the perfect way to kind of study the self in this physical way. Thank you. And thank you all for being here this evening. It's a real honor to... have the opportunity to be here with you. And I wish you good luck finding out for yourself. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[41:57]

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.

[42:20]

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