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. Good morning. Yesterday, someone who had to leave at the end of the day because of their work responsibilities said to me that the Tanto had said to them, you're leaving? But you've done all the hard work. Meaning that the first two days

[01:03]

The flavor of the first two days is transitional, getting used to this new world, this new way of being, feeling the residual of your normal way of being, how it affects your being, your body and your mind and your thoughts and your emotions, and the discomfort of having a new regime imposed upon you. Our habits have their own comfort from their familiarity. And they have lots of other things too. I would say yes, even though we leave behind We renounce. Still, we still cause enough trouble for ourselves to have something to do.

[02:09]

But hopefully, that is happening in a little bit more conscious way, a little bit more spacious way, that it's starting to become apparent more as a teaching than an affliction. more as an expression of existence rather than a distraction or deviation from what should happen. Yes, indeed. Somehow or another, maybe despite ourselves, we settle into shashin. and we unsettle in decision. In David White's poem, he was talking about, there's a common notion in psychology that in our sleep, the unfinished business of the day, of our life, the disturbing emotions come into our dream world.

[03:28]

and have their say. Our practice is a little bit like this, too. Several years ago, I took a calligraphy class with Kaz Tanahashi, a wonderful person, wonderful Dogen scholar and translator. and a very gifted artist and calligrapher. And he taught an afternoon class. I'd taken a calligraphy class before, one. And in that one, the teacher gave us, you know, okay, here's grass style, here's this style, here's this style. Guys had almost like the opposite approach. Today, for three hours, you're going to draw a single line.

[04:30]

That's what you're going to draw. About two and a half inch, about two inches long. The first, the character for one. And you think, okay, well, that's going to be easy. I'll have it mastered in about ten minutes. But as you engage drawing a single line, you discover how wet your brush is, how much pressure you put on the point of contact, how long you linger in that point, how you move your brush, how steady your movement is, how much pressure there is in your movement, the rate of your movement,

[05:31]

how long you linger in the end, the way in which you lift the brush. So I was doing this. And every now and then, cows would come around and say, in the usual cow's way, a little bit indirect, More offering a question than an instruction. How much pressure are you putting on the brush as you put it on the page? I invite you to explore that for 20 minutes. And then maybe give you a hint. How is it moving your brush across the page? And the more I did it, the more terrifying it became.

[06:40]

You know, this wet black line across pristine white space. This activity that required total commitment and left no recourse to If it didn't turn out right, it was there forever. And even that comes to an end. And how does it come to an end? Do you jerk the brush away to make a quick escape? Or do you accept what it is you've done? So be it. Such is the consequence of my actions. And then you start over.

[07:44]

Whether that was horrendous or magnificent, whether you're now exhausted or exhilarated, you start over. And of course, Kaz, being the person he is, would subtly offer encouragement. But what he wouldn't do, he wouldn't say, well, you're probably bored with that now. Let's do something else. Nope. Keep at it. Just that one line. Okay, you've done a hundred? Hmm. Is it? Yeah, I can see where you're going with this.

[08:47]

Do another hundred. This is the way of Zen practice. Oh, you're starting to get in touch with the inhale? Hmm. Do it another thousand times and see how that... What else is discovered? The Japanese word for study, study the self, it translates as learning by doing. This is an experiential process. We learn by doing. I've read in calligraphy, and it's also mentioned in Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, where Suzuki Roshi says, the gifted person, you know, who has beautiful penmanship and a gifted hand, they'll draw the one line.

[10:00]

He didn't say that part, but I will. They'll draw the one line, and after three or four, they've got it. He says, but actually, the person that's not so gifted, the person who draws a hundred and asks to draw another hundred, they'll learn something about the spirit of practice. They'll learn something about the spirit of calligraphy. Even though it terrifies you, frustrates you, disappoint you, exhilarate you. Okay, do it again. I have a student who's a sculptor. Recently, she lives on the East Coast, got an acclaim in New York that's quite notable in the world of art.

[11:07]

But she was telling me a couple of years ago, she keeps her studio kind of bare and white. And she says sometimes she goes into it and she's utterly intimidated. She's so intimidated that she feels almost suffocated and she just sits in the corner. Sometimes she'll do that all day. sometimes several days. She's just too intimidated by the vast whiteness, bereft of ideas and creativity. And then it'll occur to her to do some simple thing. Maybe I should look at that book. Maybe I should pick up that object and look at it a little bit.

[12:12]

And from there, something unfolds. It's like pulling on a thread. And her enthusiasm starts to gather. And then what she's want to do is to gather up steam and then work for 12 hours without even stopping to eat. A poor husband and children have to live with a mother and a wife like that. So as we saddle, as we enter, as we give over to this deliberate learning by doing that delights us, that intimidates us, that stirs up this, what we might call the substrata of our being, and draws it into this other world of interbeing,

[13:38]

I still remember how much I learned about how I was living my life from drawing that one line. I still remember at a point deep in desperation, Klaus's hand appeared reassuringly on mine and I could feel 50 years of practice, guiding the brush across the page, and thinking and feeling, oh, it's that easy. It's just a line across the page. There's really not much to it. There's really not much to Zen practice. Just sit there, Be present.

[14:47]

Notice what's happening. You're breathing all the time anyway, so why not get in touch with it? Asking absolutely nothing of you that you aren't totally capable of. In fact, it's asking nothing of you other than awareness that you're not totally doing already. And yet, in a strange and wonderful way, it can feel like it's challenging the whole trajectory of our life, how it's being lived. It's challenging us to be in touch with what arises.

[15:49]

in our being. So here's how David White continued that poem from yesterday. To remember the other world in this world. In the lightness of awakening, the other world is interbeing. It's interplay. It's interaction. It's not a world of separate self and other, of permanence, of linear before and after. And in this other interesting interaction, other world, the substrata of deep-held feelings that we're acting out, that we imbue upon something as simple as drawing a line.

[17:09]

Sometimes in serving, walking from the door the whole way round the zendo to serve the person on the other side of the room. It's not that far. It's not so likely to tire you out. You may think everybody's watching you, your every move. They're probably not. But still, something can be stirred. some personal drama, personal intrigue is being engaged. But then you do it and you do it and it becomes nothing special. Not to say...

[18:18]

that aspect of your being is totally gone. But some accommodation is discovered. And hopefully, that in this process of accommodation, part of the ingredient of the accommodation is awareness. If the accommodation is shifting one coping mechanism for another, then we've just shifted coping mechanisms. Maybe that helps us with serving or some other task or function of our life. But can we shed a light into the workings of our being? And this is awareness. is why we sit still.

[19:27]

The Jisha was cleaning my office this morning during Soji, and she handed me a piece of paper, which was a quote someone had given me. It was by a poet, Shoei Andro. And it said, poetry takes us to the bottom of the heart. Zen knocks out the bottom. Yeah, made me smile too. Can our sitting still, can the the gravity of our commitment, can our willingness to say yes and experience whatever's happening, can it allow what we are to rise into awareness?

[20:47]

Can the engagement in the moment open the door to something more than our own intrigue, which can become its own world system. It's terrifying to draw a line across the page. Maybe, maybe not. Was that the experience I had in those moments of connection with uncertainty and hesitation? Yeah. Did awareness of doing it, did a repetition of doing it start to offer a teaching? Yeah. The structure, the repetition, the awareness,

[21:56]

all those ingredients. This is the nature of our practice. To remember the other world in this world is to live in your true inheritance. Rather than seeing it as a dangerous, inhospitable territory, can we explore what it is to welcome it and reside in it? Yes, I will. And of course, as I said before, there's no bottom to our vow.

[23:06]

And the resolve that gets stimulated is a delicate process. Now, looking through the sliding light of the morning window toward the mountain, presence of everything that can be, presence of everything that can be. What urgency calls to your one love? What shape awaits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against the future sky? Is it waiting in a fertile sea, in the trees beyond the house, in the life you can imagine for yourself.

[24:10]

As we start to make contact, as we start to make contact with the empowerment of being what we are, is an aliveness. Do we own it? Can we command it? No. Unfortunately not. And very fortunately not. But that aliveness enlivens our being. In the open and lovely white page on the waiting desk. In the life you can imagine for yourself, in the open white page, lovely white page on the writing desk, can you enter possibility?

[25:29]

And of course, the allure of poetry is its implied transcendence. We can see with big mind. We can see the aesthetic of the possibility. But really, the thousand single lines or the hundred single lines followed by another hundred single lines. Total awareness of the axial, the pause, the total awareness of the inhale. It's an experiential learning process. It doesn't unfold with a single breath.

[26:43]

Sometimes it does. And even when it unfolds with a single breath, then the hundred breaths to help it to integrate. More usually, just this breath, just this inhale, this pause, this exhale. And as we engage it, just like Kaz teaching the calligraphy of one stroke, the many details. You see him with the breath. You see him with directed attention. You see him with receptive attention. We direct it to the breath

[27:45]

And we receive, when the mind's not so settled, we receive the random experience, the thoughts, the signs, the imaginings, the memories. As the mind's more settled, we receive... what attention is being directed towards. And as the mind becomes more settled, that comes forward to meet us. Amazingly, not only is our own being stimulated, but the contact enlivens. and the experience becomes more itself.

[28:47]

And then we pause, and then we start over. The attitude. Oh, it takes a hundred and then another hundred? Okay. Walking down the hall is just walking down the hall. It's not about getting anywhere. But in that moment, there's nothing as important. as walking down the hall. And it's not simply having that idea rattle around your head.

[30:07]

It's living it. It's living it in your body. It's feeling it as you move your body. It's staying with it as a random thought occurs. when that thought becomes demanding softening and letting it go with the exhale you'll get to the end of the hall one way or another it's settling more deeply it's engaging more deeply in the intimacy that's always available. As we engage the sheen more thoroughly, our own body presents its mystery.

[31:22]

The physical sensations how they arise, how a particular experience in our body can stimulate a certain kind of response. I had some work done on one of my teeth last year. Before Shashin, I had work done on this tooth, which is still going on. This time I had work done before Shashin on this tooth. And the dentist said to me, because of the work, you're likely in your sleep to clench your jaw. My mind knows this was a good thing to happen, I hope.

[32:29]

appropriate in terms of dental care, but my body says, somebody just attacked me. I better tighten up and resist this attack. So as we settle into the body, those hidden messages as your neck, your back, your knee complain, respond to attack. What is it to get that connected? That you can breathe into that. That you can breathe space, ease.

[33:30]

into that place of contraction. And then on the next breath, discover what's there now. What is it to explore the details of uprightness? The body of Zazen is really a formidable challenge. There's a rising physical effort. There's an accompanying settling ease, but to keep them both alive.

[34:37]

keeps the body alive and stimulates awareness. So uprightness is a steady con, a steady looking for the particulars of the engagement of this uprightness. The spine lengthening. opening the upper chest gives the shoulders a little more room to widen and gives the head the space to come back so its weight falls down the spine. The tendency is to settle down into ease, safety.

[35:45]

Uprightness in its fierce way says, please stay upright, stay open, stay awake, keep the body alive. This is your true inheritance. This is how you reside in the world, with an upright body, with an upright integrity, with an upright sense of being, either pulled forward into the future or holding back in the past. Maybe it terrifies you. Maybe it exhausts you.

[36:55]

Maybe it feels like, I need to rest. And actually, in the discovery of the yoga of zazen, a certain pragmatism is required. Your body needs to discover, needs to learn. But the principle doesn't change. Can you rest? If you think, okay, well, I need to sit on the bench for lecture. Okay. But can the spine have that uprightness? Can the food, when you're eating aureoki, accommodate uprightness rather than uprightness accommodate the food. When there's uprightness, the heart, the lungs, the stomach, the abdomen, they have their space.

[38:11]

The breath will enter them more fully. The details of posture. The more we breathe in and breathe out, the more the body is revealed. The bottom's knocked out. The bottom drops out. the ease. Saddling down, opening up with each receptive inhale. Like a great silent voice saying, it's okay.

[39:24]

It's okay. This world fierce and unknown. It's okay to live in it. It's okay to live in this person. Something softening and opening down. It doesn't need to hold itself tight. Breath after breath, receiving this teaching. And when we're distracted or caught up in some way, notice that, acknowledge, contact, experience, and come back. In each breath with its own rhythm, the inhale,

[40:31]

the pause, the exhale. The habit of mind in the service of efficiency is create a habit and then it doesn't require full attention. The method of Zazen is you give it full attention anyway. You can be totally distracted and keep breathing, thank goodness, or we'd all suffocate. You can draw the line on the page simply with not too much attention. There's a curious way, the more attention, the more difficult the line becomes. heard this great story about a calligrapher from the mid-19th century, a Japanese Zen teacher.

[41:43]

He really hadn't done much calligraphy. He was the abbot of a temple. He hadn't done much calligraphy. He was in his 60s, and someone said, would you do me a calligraphy? He said, okay. Then he did this calligraphy, and people were astounded. It wasn't that he had great craft, but the ease and flow of his calligraphy was so evident. But maybe he's notable by being the exception. Maybe there are wonderful people who sit down and settle easily into an embodied and in-breath Zazen. Most of us, it's a steady learning.

[42:46]

But maybe, as Suzuki Roshi said, this is how the deeper learning happens. Continue to practice. Continue to discover breath by breath. There's a term in Zen that I've mentioned a couple of times during the practice period, kanodoko. First two characters mean experience, second one means perceiving, Then the next two means do, the way, and then awakening the way, realizing the way. So experiencing the experience in a way that realizes the way. The steady work of Shishin.

[44:00]

patient work of Shishin, the repetitive work of Shishin, is this steady presence, this steady, every breath's a new breath, every activity's a new activity, every gashou's a new gashou. At the last Abbott's group meeting, we talked about gashou. we were commenting on the great variety of gashos, somewhat lamenting the lack of uniformity. And Mel pointed out to me that I have a habit of pointing out the tips of my thumbs. And I pointed out to him, it wasn't even that simple, that my thumbs... have quite a curve.

[45:03]

And we discussed whether I should compromise the togetherness and the service of folding them in. And he did say, I have weird thumbs. Exactly. It's not so much the perfect form as it is, the forms, the details, invite directed attention. And then we discover. You discover you have so-called weird thumbs. Okay. So now when I do gaisho, some extra attention to the thumbs. This is the flavor of soto zen. We're into detail. Exactly.

[46:08]

We should laugh at it. And then we should do it as thoroughly as possible. We need them both. We need the uprightness and we need the ease. If there's only uprightness, the body stiffens. It loses a certain elastic aliveness. It becomes tiring. If there's only ease, we sludge. We drift into something. The balance. Similarly with the details. And not to forget as we do this, that the depths of our being tend to rise up. You know? And I would say, as best you can, hang in there with them.

[47:12]

Embody them. If a strange mood afflicts you, be an afflicted strange mood. How is it in the body? What world does it create? What kind of thoughts or images? And in those moments of spacious opening, what kind of world do they create? What kind of body? What kind of mood or attitude? Not so you can grab it and own it and put it in your pocket, but more you can learn from it. This is interbeing. All its manifestations are our teacher.

[48:17]

There's no recipe for create this way of being and fit yourself inside it. Something in you will rebel if you turn meditation into a small box. Something in you, quite simply, will refuse to live in it. distractions will come hurtling forward with enticing notions. Let me just read this again. To remember the other world in this world is to live in your true inheritance. Now, Looking through the slanted light of the morning window toward the mountain, presence of everything that can be.

[49:21]

What urgency calls you to your one love? What shape waits in the seed of you to grow and spread and branch its branches against the future sky? Is it waiting in the fertile sea, in the trees beyond the house, in the life you imagine for yourself in the opening and lovely white page on the writing desk. Well, maybe later. For now, in the inhale and the exhale, in the walking, in the bowing, in the chanting, in the eating, in the sitting, in the resting, Is it turning the doorknob? In stepping into the room? In going to the toilet?

[50:27]

In having a cup of tea? In sitting in the courtyard? In watching the cloudy sky? This is Buddha's way. Thank you. Visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[51:17]

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