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. Oliver dared to write a poem called what I've learned so far meditation is old and honorable so why should I not sit every morning of my life on the hillside looking into the shining world because properly attended to delight as well as havoc

[01:08]

is suggestion. The gospel of light is the crossroads of indolence and action. Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I not sit every morning of my life on the hillside looking into the shining world? Because, properly attended to, delight as well as havoc is suggestion. The gospel of light is the crossroads of indolence and action. Meditation, awareness is a funny thing, you know.

[02:09]

can't help but be attracted by some exquisite expression. And yet, experiencing moments of concentration, moments of distraction, moments of settling thoroughly into what is, moments of rejecting thoroughly what is. When we just continue to practice, you know, you just keep sitting Shashin day after day, they all contribute. Okay. Today's today. It sort of wears down our desperation to get it just right.

[03:24]

Or our desperation to avoid the disasters that will befall us if we don't get it right. Maybe every day's a good day becomes every day's today. As you may remember, in the mythical past I had oral surgery and I had an appointment yesterday to have the dentist look at it. My plan was to not bother going if everything seemed well. Everything did not seem well. So in the work period I went, I actually had thought, oh, it didn't work.

[04:30]

The plan was, is what they did, cut open my jaw and pack it in with splinters of horse bone. That's what I thought too. Really? A dentist is a marvelously cheery person. Maybe you have to be to be happy at being a dentist. And I went in and I thought, it didn't take. And then the question is, does your body say, okay, welcome. Or did it say, no thank you, go away. I thought my body had decided on the latter. So I went to the dentist with that. I even pronounced before he looked, him and his assistant, I don't think it worked.

[05:33]

And they looked in and they made all these positive murmurings. Hmm, oh yeah, right, yeah. And I looked at them both and I said, oh it's good news? And he said, no. But I marveled at what is good news? The good news is what we hoped would happen didn't happen. not my version of good news." And then, the backup strategy is to carve a piece out of somewhere else and put it in. And I said to them both, you know, I'm really not that interested in doing that.

[06:43]

And then they laughed. we have an experience, and then we have a response to the experience, and the character and intensity of our response sort of verify the wonderfulness or the terribleness of the experience. But really, it just is what it is. Is that good news or bad news? The assistant hadn't been there when the dentist made this decision.

[07:46]

And the assistant charmingly turned to the dentist and said, what were you thinking when you decided to do that? Make that strategy. It was just like a marvelous question. It had a hint of... How did you ever think a stupid thing like that was going to work? Can we see the unfolding... of our own existence? The experience, the response, sometimes the response to the response. And unfortunately, usually the answer is no, we can't see it.

[08:55]

it sweeps us up in its marvelous intensity. But when we're in the heart of Shishin, the capacity, whether we realize it or not, whether we know it or not, to do that, apprehend in that way, has been enhanced. You know, maybe we're seeing the surround, the response. But the diligent effort of sushin and what our body, our breath, our engagement in the moment, What we have learned about attentive non-grasping.

[10:01]

The action of attention and the indolence of non-grasping. We've learned something about the gospel of light. We don't have to claim that we've perfected it. That everything is just a jewel of Buddha Dharma. Dharma, the phenomena of the moment, the experience of the moment, and Buddha held, holding it in awareness. So it illustrates, it teaches, the nature of what is. And as Dogen would say, relating in that way actualizes it.

[11:05]

Not only is the teaching of non-grasping presented, the practice of non-grasping is actualized. But perfection, still we have this marvelous opportunity to start to see things that maybe we have been overlooking. As I talk to the dentist and his assistant. even though essentially they told me what I'd much rather not have been the consequence, I noticed some relief. I thought, hmm, how peculiar.

[12:12]

This is a way in which we're always in discovery mode. So that's me thinking this, feeling this, responding like this. And when we come at it like that, it offers its own maybe delight as to an extravagant word. But I think in some ways we can bore ourselves. Here I am, I'll just repeat the response I always repeat under these circumstances. Okay, go ahead. I'll just distract myself while you do it.

[13:34]

But in that moment where the mystery of self unfolds, there's intrigue. Really? Look at that. Bad news followed by relief. looking at the shining face of the dentist, bright and happy. No, it's bad news. How could that be? Didn't they teach him at dental school a little empathetic response? He's actually, you know, the professor and he's training these other guys. So he's long since, I assume, forgotten dental school and how he should be.

[14:45]

Now he just is how he is. And that part of ourselves, okay, I guess it's going to be the way I didn't want it. Okay. Does that stimulate resentment, anxiety, fear, remorse? Just what's next? I don't mean to hold that up as some perfect response.

[15:50]

It's just maybe tomorrow I'll be terrorized. Who knows? But just this sensibility that as our practice opens to hold everything that life presents in the process of engaging it of struggling with it of releasing it in our own extraordinary personal way something an equanimity a willingness. Okay. And then we can start to engage the energy that normally endorses those responses, that dissipates the...

[17:08]

and connection to the moment, is that energy is more available. The action and the indolence, as Mary Oliver would put it, they can be more evident. You know, we can say the practice of awareness, you know, if we want to be in a way analytical and mechanical. The practice of awareness is attend, and the object of attention is the foreground. And then sometimes, wonderfully, the background, or as Hafiz like to call it,

[18:12]

the 10,000 idiots hold still for a moment, become quiet. And this attended to object shimmers in being what is. More usually, it's experienced and the background is tolerated. And then every now and then, something else rushes in and pushes that aside, pushes the body aside, pushes the breath aside, and plants itself right in front of you. So be it. to that.

[19:15]

To continue this kind of articulation, then when that's just itself, when we're not fooled by the way the responses imbue it with authority, if I'm this upset, this must be really real. If my body is responding like this, this must be an absolute truth. This must be a permanent truth. In contrast, when this is a Buddha Dharma, it's just the manifestation of the moment. Look at the expression on the dentist's face.

[20:21]

Hear the tone of his voice. No, it's bad news. How amazing. Bad news never sounded so good. It made me happy to hear it. As it's just itself and its conditioned nature becomes evident, In one hand, we're not fooled into grasping it as absolute truth. It's just, what's arising in this moment?

[21:31]

Doesn't mean it doesn't have consequences, I assume it will. And Dogen Zenji says, right at the start of Genchu coin, when all things are Buddha Dharma, this is Dogen style, start with the punchline. Start with the most important part. What do I want to say? Say that first. Because who knows how long people will keep listening. Who knows how much of this they're going to read. Why on earth did he want to write a hundred fascicles? When all things are Buddha Dharma, all sorts of stuff happens. Can you approach this day like that?

[22:51]

Today, all sorts of things are going to happen. How amazing it would be to be aware of them. Then yesterday I went on and I quoted him saying, you know, when you find your place where you are. In some ways, same thing. When we're here. And then there's a whole yogic craft and skillfulness. How do you work with conditions? And the yogic craft in the Zen school is posture breath, body breath.

[24:04]

It has profound yogic implications, and then it also has just rudimentary awareness applications. Staying in the body, staying in the breath, is a wonderful way to stay aware. When the body is upright and open, it doesn't so easily succumb to habitual body that has within it embodied emotional characteristics. And similarly with the breath. Can we transcend the condition through our diligence with body and breath? No. Can we have a skillful relationship that helps support awareness? I would say yes.

[25:08]

To my way of understanding, that's part of the wind of the Zen school. Is it possible to get too caught up in all that sort of stuff? Oh yeah. But that's the human condition. We can get too caught up in anything. That's the nature of mind and heart. we have our moments of contact, they impact the body, they impact the breath, they impact the mind, they impact the emotions. As Dogen says, whether we realize it or not. And when we're in a period of intensive meditation like this, something is being absorbed whether we realize it or not.

[26:26]

whether we know exactly what that is or not. And in the Sotho school, it's the heritage of formal practice, the particulars of it. As we give over to them, something that's being absorbed asserts its authority. If you watch closely, when you go into the zendo and you take on the forms, they take you. And then you go back to your room and become a different person. Or not. Depend upon how you relate to that environment. But either way, You know, in another place what Dogen calls the Dharma I. Although there are many features in the dusty world, that would be us, this dusty world, and the world beyond the conditions.

[27:56]

You see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach. But marvelously, or maybe we can say with relief, it doesn't matter. What you see is what you see. What you see... is the manifestation of how you are in this moment. If all you see is anger, that's this moment's teaching. In this extraordinary way of arrow points meeting, if you are consumed by anger, the teaching is being consumed by anger. What's the most important point?

[29:01]

Being consumed by anger. Now, can it be met and allowed to be felt, be seen? What world does anger create? Maybe after a long dental career, you discover you might as well smile at your patients and make them happy. And then deliver the bad news. You might as well be Jizal Bodhisattva as the Grim Reaper. as we attend to it and see it, we're inviting it to unfold.

[30:26]

We're inviting it to make evident its conditioned nature. Sometimes in practice we say, returning to the source. And yesterday I was talking about when we experience the experience, it goes beyond the story of it. It's just, it's vivid being. It's vital being. But we can also think of the same phrase, as peeling away the layers. What's underneath anger? Someone told me they were talking to their partner and things are not going well between them.

[31:37]

And they were describing it and they were saying, When she says that, then I immediately feel, that's not right. And I interrupt her. And she gets upset. So we followed it upstream, a few steps. follow it upstream? What's going on that gives rise to the necessity of interruption? And while you're having that process, is it possible somebody else, by some odd coincidence, could be having their process? And do you think they enjoy being interrupted?

[32:41]

You think when they want to speak their truth and you interrupt it, they're happy? They think, thank you very much. Hafiz said, when I listen, I listen as if I'm hearing the last cherished words of my teacher. Sometimes when we follow it back to the source, the eye of practice starts to at least entertain, engage, consider possible other considerations. But in Zazen, we give ourselves over to the awareness of the moment.

[33:54]

And Dogen says, although there are many features in the dusty world and the world beyond conditions, you see and hear, you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach. In order to learn the nature of myriad things, You must know that although they may look round and square, the features, the other features of existence, or as he puts it, oceans and mountains, the other features of oceans and mountains are infinite in variety. It's not only what's around you, it's also right in the middle of your being. or in a single drop of water. In the realm of practice, I would say, as much as you can stay here and let the Source unfold here, please, if it takes hold

[35:20]

and won't let go first of all experience being gripped in such a way let it be a valuable and precious teaching learn something about the nature of attachment. And follow it back to the source. If it's happening in Zazen, move from content to feeling. Of course the mind says,

[36:22]

I should have said this or that, whatever. What's underneath? What's feeding such intrigues? And feelings. Emotion has its own physicality. Emotion has its own breath. So we can bring emotion, its motion, its energy, into the body and the breath. Not too annihilated. metabolize it to understand it deeply to absorb the infinite variety of being to see within it the abundant variations that go up to make who we are

[37:53]

As Mary Oliver says, delight as well as havoc are suggestions. They're conditioned existence. They conjure up. So this day... Most likely the arisings of your past. Meeting the arisings of now. That phrase by Dogen. Not merely carried over from the past and not merely arising now. Woven together.

[39:01]

So be it. Can it just be met with the eye of this moment? There's a saying in Zen that says, don't go to it, let it come to you. Let it come here. Let it happen here. Can it be close to this body breath? So as you go through this day, can you stay close to this body breath? Can there be pause not because The world is a paving itself according to your definition.

[40:13]

But can there be pause because this moment is this moment? Without even knowing what we're doing, we're learning something about being aware of awareness. We pause and not only is there seeing or hearing or feeling, Not only is there experiencing that experience, but it has its own spaciousness, its own abiding, its own permission to be.

[41:29]

And in that permission, All things are Buddha Dharma. Something pops into your mind. I was sitting at my desk upstairs in a car I drove by, and I heard about four bars of a country and western song. I didn't know the song, but I heard the bars. It evoked an emotion, and the emotion evoked yearning. I didn't even think I liked country and western music. these murmurings these glimpses of our being when all things are Buddha Dharma sometimes being in the moment in a car passes the music blurs and you can almost see the music

[43:15]

Here are the first three bars of it. And your mind labels it. The Beatles. Our being wants to live. Our being demands being alive. terrible it would be if we thought practice was to inhibit it. Could that inhibition be Buddha Dharma? Could that inhibition be Buddha aliveness? In the moment, the sign of the jet plane is the Udumbar of flower.

[44:38]

It's the expression of awakening. Don't worry, I'm not going to start a new lecture. I'm just going to read it. what I've learned so far. Meditation is old and honorable. I thought that was very nice of her to say that. Meditation is old and honorable. So why should I not sit every morning of my life on the hillside looking into the shining world? Because properly attended to. Delight as well as havoc is suggestion. Hmm.

[45:40]

Well, that's a whole other talk. The gospel of light is at the crossroads of indolence and action. Indolence or action. She actually wrote Indolence or Action, and I, in the service of Sandukai, the interplay between the two. Each moment offering you itself. Can you receive the gift? 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.

[46:42]

For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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