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. Seems like a long time since I gave a Wednesday night talk towards the end of the summer when the sky had an interesting color to it. which I did from the view out of the window I was sitting in, up in room 10. What I'd like to talk about this evening is a teaching that I referenced when I gave a talk in July, tending tension, tenderness. from a Christian monk, Gregor Mendel, from the 19th century.

[01:12]

Actually, he was best known for his works in genetics and mathematics. But somehow, in the midst of that, he also seemed to be quite a practitioner. talk about that, say a little bit more about that, and then talk about four bodhisattva vows. For me, the word tending, carefully giving attention and care to something... as a qualifier for how we're practicing. If you can imagine, I'm tending to the process of waking up.

[02:17]

I'm tending to the process of what's going on for me and the different emotions and thoughts and feelings and how I'm relating to others. I'm tending to it. If you think about it, It has both the quality. There's a certain way in which tending to it is different from being lost in it. There is both a discipline and a generous caring. So if you can hold that thought in mind, a generous, careful attention to your process as you practice. And then the word tension.

[03:22]

So the root of tending is to care for the ten. And then the tension has a different root. and that it has to be stretched, to be strained, you know. I think of it as, when we bring that careful and caring attention, in an inclusive way, we start to notice all the ways we don't include, the way we separate, The ways we construct self and other, us and them. And the ways we get hooked by the ways our desires can take shape that are not nurturing our being.

[04:31]

And the ways our aversions can do the same thing. So there develops a tension between the tending and what arises in our being. And when I talk in a moment about the bodhisattva vows, the first two are quite clearly attending to that human dilemma. And that in our practice, it's not so much about our exhaustive understanding, as it is about how we're bringing a caring attention. Both qualities are equally important. And in some ways, the caring facilitates the attention.

[05:38]

I think sometimes that the attention that doesn't have caring is more brittle. It's more difficult to sustain. It can be where the non-grasping sort of hardens into detachment. So that way in which we can bring comparing attention, and of course, such is the complexity of our human lives, it will make more evident to us where we don't bring that forward, where we're not behaving and attending and creating a perspective that has this inclusion. And then somewhere in our practice, we reconcile.

[06:46]

I was discussing this point with someone in Dogasan in the last week. And the term we came up with was, you sort of stumble into it. You stumble into the reconciliation. You stumble into the tenderness. I stopped to talk to the guy who's sleeping on our doorstep or has been quite recently. couldn't help but feel that tenderness. He was apologetic. He was doing his best not to create alarm or evoke some animosity.

[07:57]

As we start to tune into something, We start to see it everywhere. We start to see it in what someone says or doesn't say. We start to see it in the tragedy of the dysfunction of our society. And in a way, the first bodhisattva vow, Beings are numberless. In the way, our practice is asking us to relate to that. It's asking us to not set up us and them. It's asking us to not think we can create a little circle of inclusion.

[09:09]

in a satisfying and complete way within it. The person sleeping on the doorstep is part of us. And it's a dilemma. Many years ago, there was a student who lived here, and he and I were working together in Nightreach. And he would say to me, well, why don't we just leave that door to the Zen to open and let whoever wants to sleep there sleep there? It was a beautiful sentiment. And yet it had a tension between that what it is we're trying to maintain, the way in which we're trying to sustain an orderly, safe environment where the practitioners can set down their defenses.

[10:31]

In my room, up in room 10, it overlooks the courtyard. And I had the window open, and I could hear the friendly chatting from the people who were eating dinner outside. And it sounded quite lovely. Ah, the joy of sangha. Being able to sit in the midst of people you trust, whose integrity you admire. Not that they're perfect, but even that is part of what's attractive about them. Beings are numberless. And then our translation, I vow to save them. The original language, even in Japanese, is...

[11:36]

vowing to help them cross over. Cross over from being, what we might say, trapped in karma, the karma of desiring and aversion and anxiety. Crossing over into the tenderness of inclusion, the tenderness of relatedness. And how these two have a tension between them. They strain us. They stretch us. They challenge us. How do we hold that and how do we hold this vast world without setting up barriers, either physically or just attitudinally?

[12:54]

How do we do that? of, you know, Buddhist teaching, there is the teaching that Thich Nhat Hanh called interbeing, you know, searching for a translation of the word Shunyata. And in early Buddhism, it has more of, it's identified and defined more by negation, you know. There's no separate self. There's no constant abiding. But there's a positive side to it, which Thich Nhat Hanh brought forth, the intervening. So when we hold the first Bodhisattva vow, with this fundamental aspect of life, all life,

[14:08]

It all is part of the web of existence. How do we support everyone to be part of that web in a way that nurtures their being, that offers them the tending and the tenderness? my mind, actually to my heart, it's not something we can figure out. It's something we live into in a non-linear way. Maybe to turn that on its head. Instead of linear, it's omnidirectional.

[15:14]

Every direction we look, we intervene. how we cross over, and that's how us cross over, the us that includes everyone. And then the second bodhisattva vow is, we chant it as delusions are inexhaustible. It would be more accurate if we use the term afflictions. Because that's, even in the Japanese, it's referring to a Sanskrit word, Tresha, which is affliction. So that affliction is inexhaustible.

[16:19]

That within a karmic life, there is this seemingly unending tendency to... desire and have aversions and have anxieties and distress. And then as we do that, we find, we feel the tension. And we say, and I'm vowing to cut it off. But in a way, each of the bodhisattva vows is like a coin. We open to it. We engage it fully. And in that full engagement, there's an alchemy.

[17:25]

Something is transformed. And it's not because... of our great practice. It's more because as a consequence of our willingness to participate in this shared existence in a way that creates connection rather than separation. maybe a more accurate translation. I was looking at several. What I've concluded, the more accurate way of describing it would be afflictions are inexhaustible.

[18:28]

I vow to harmonize or come into relationship with that aspect of our shared existence. And as we attend to these first two bodhisattva vows, they create within us both the potential for tension and the potential for tenderness. And we tend to that tension and tenderness. We watch ourselves. Okay, then where do I tend to interrupt? Where do I tend to pull back? Where do I tend to

[19:33]

Stay contained within me. I was talking to my grandson yesterday. Who's 10. And he used to live. He not lives in Portland. But he's visiting. Right this week. And once when he was about three and a half. He knocked on the door. of my apartment, and I knew it was him, and I said, who is it? And he said, nobody. So I opened the door, and nobody walked in. And I recounted that to him, and his comment was, nobody is the host of somebody. How about that from a 10-year-old?

[20:35]

There is a way, as we enter B, in which we open up to relatedness, that the small self becomes the big self. bodhisattva vows aren't necessarily saying, and this is the path of becoming an arahant. The stuff of our humanness still rattles around and insists upon its way of it being expressed. But can the, as And the big self holds the small self. And it's a point that it's very helpful for us to attend to in our practice.

[21:52]

Because if we set up a duality, a competition, a good and an evil... then it's the righteous trying to conquer the evilness. And really, when you look at the early suttas, they're talking about calling forth virtuous being. Not simply integrity, but a virtuous being in which everything flourishes. do we do that? How do we take it to heart? How do we invest our life in the process?

[22:56]

How do we discover how to practice in a way that doesn't make us contract or feel tense when we see our own shortcomings. How do we come to terms with the glaciers? This is the second bodhisattva vow. And then, It says, the third one says, Dharma gates are boundless. Dharma gates are without number. Dharma gates, everywhere you turn, there's a teaching, a potential teaching. I vow to...

[24:04]

And to them, I vow to engage that experience, that potential, that possibility. I vow to engage it in a way that I've learned something. For a long time, young men's statement, every day is a good day, has been synonymous with that notion for me. Every day is a teaching. Every day is an unfolding. Every day is more to learn. tend to the tension of our human life with that attitude.

[25:19]

Not so much because we're broken or inadequate or we don't know everything we should know about practice, but because there's something in that way of living. that creates virtue and then buddha's way is unsurpassable you know it sounds like buddha's way is better than any other way but actually it's not saying that at all what it's saying is half of waking up sets the stage for all the multitude of teachings and practices that have been evolved in the spiritual life of our existence.

[26:30]

At the core of them, There is this connecting, this immersion in, this awakening to the virtue of existence. That includes even our desires and aversions. His way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. What time do we have, Brian? 8.17. I'd like to suggest...

[27:37]

a way to meditate on this. And that is, as you said, think of opening up to everything that's arising. Every physical sensation, every thought, every emotion, whatever arises, just Open to it and connect to it. Connect with it. There's a way in which when we sit like this, it's like rather than the usual narrative, somehow our attempt to sustain the self, somehow to make our life work.

[29:39]

I often think, that the recurring conversation we had or an exchange we had that didn't feel comfortable or concluded, then mind is inclined to repeat it. And so sometimes our meditation, our zazen, can become the opportunity to resolve. the unfinished business of me. In a way, to just experience what's arising is like a radical shift from that state of mind. And to do so evokes a kind of trust, Also, the engagement of body, the engagement of consciousness, the engagement of the senses, of shikantaza, just sitting, is how we call forth that trust.

[31:11]

The trust of being the experience of the moment. And in the Zen school, this is pivotal to enact, to become, to immerse in being what's happening in the moment. Dogen Zenji said, this is the wondrous way. when he returned from China, to Japan, and he wrote an essay called Benda Wa, Wholehearted Practice, Wholehearted Practice of the Way. In his very first sentence, he said, this is the teaching that all the Buddhas and all the ancestors have passed on. This is how they all engaged.

[32:15]

This is how they became enlightened about delusion. Enlightened about the karmic tendencies of human life. We become enlightened within the being that we are, singularly and collectively. It's not that we make it something completely different. And Dogen Senji, the finder of this school of Zen in Japan, he said, this is the wondrous method of awakening. And then he called it Jijuyo Zammai, the Samadhi,

[33:17]

the continuous contact of the arisings of the self. And then within each one of us, there is a request to tenderly to the process of being the person we are and seeing it and experience it. And I would say to you, as we engage it, that trust develops. And you may or may not have some

[34:17]

concepts that support it. My experience is that mostly it becomes a deep-seated feeling. A feeling of possibility. There's a way in which we don't quite know how life will be manageable, but something in us is willing to live it. It's not in denial of the first two bodhisattva vows. It actually says, so be it. That is how life is. And yet, we stumble into the third and the fourth bodhisattva vow.

[35:32]

Dharma gates are everywhere. All these challenges that we're confronted with at this point in time. So be it. That's how it is. And will we magically resolve them and get what we want? Well, that would be an extraordinary event. And highly unlikely. the lottery passed a billion dollars. A friend of mine said, well, I'm going to buy a ticket. And then we started to discuss, what would they do with the billion dollars when they got it? And I reminded them that most people who win the lottery a year later say they wish they hadn't won.

[36:43]

not a simple matter to tend to this human existence. There isn't a simple remedy for it. Just do this and everything will be fine. We engage the process and we cultivate something. The qualifier to the process that Dogen used, Mio, it translates as mysterious, wondrous, profound. It's a mysterious, wondrous, profound process. We don't figure it out. We live it. Thank you.

[38:00]

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.

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