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. Welcome to those who are here for the first time. Welcome to those who are here for the 20th time, and the 10th, and the 50th. It wouldn't be us if you didn't come. It would be something else. I think as many of you know, and some of you probably don't know, today is the last day of a meditation intensive, seven days. And the meditation intensive of seven days was the culmination of several months of practice.

[01:06]

We call a practice period, the traditional name is an ango. It's where you take a period of time in your life and you bring a dedicated effort to practice in that time. And the theme of this practice period has been awakening. You know, a verb is different from a noun. When we turn something into a noun, it has a thingness to it, where a verb has an activity to it. So awakening, not enlightenment, awakening. But I'll get back to that. And then the whole practice period, culmination of the shashin, the culmination of the practice period is a ceremony we call the shuso ceremony.

[02:17]

And the person who has been training as the head monk for the practice period will sit up here And in the grand tradition of our finder, who may or may not have existed, Bodhidharma in China, personally I relish the notion that he may or may not have existed, but that's beside the point. The practice exists. And when he arrived in China, well, sometime after he arrived in China, he had a pivotal conversation with the emperor. And in response to the emperor's questions, he responded to his first question, where the emperor said, I have done all these marvelous good works, built temples, done things like that. Please tell me the highest meaning of the holy truth of practice.

[03:23]

And Bodhidharma said, empty, nothing holy. The emperor pursued the subject and said, well, who can say that? And Bodhidharma said, don't know. So the shiso sits here, and for those who have been in the practice period, in the sushin, they ask a question. She so responds. You know, in our normal state of mind, a question has an answer. Asking a question is a cognitive process that you think about something, have ideas about it, and present a question. But... In the world of Zen, you don't know where your question comes from.

[04:30]

You think, oh, is this the don't know? If your soul doesn't know the answer. There's endless answers to every question, the good questions, you know? Maybe what's for lunch, we can say, okay, it's soup and salad. powerful questions in our life, but we can't wear them out. We can't say, okay, answer that. Now I know everything about being alive, how tedious it would be if that were ever so. I mean, how tedious it is, even if we think it so. The questioner doesn't know.

[05:33]

The answerer doesn't know. But together, something extraordinary happens. And seven days of meditation is like that, too. Something extraordinary happens. Usually, deeply informative and instructive inspiring. Sometimes I wonder if it's just inspiring because it comes to an end. And you can go... Also, it appears to me that it's a journey. This meditation, immersion in one activity after another. Most of it meditation. but also ceremony, formal eating, formal cleaning.

[06:35]

Each activity asks us to immerse in it, to be it completely. And in that immersion, there is heroic journey. It's heroic because it's challenging. It asks something of us. You know? That we will meet obstacles. We will meet challenges of entering an unknown way of being and discovering what that is. How to do that and what's there when you enter an unknown way of being. In many ways, Sasheen is a journey into the territory of interbeing.

[07:37]

It's a journey into the self and it's a journey into opening to the world and discovering they're not separate, they're interwoven. Psychologically, we can say, well, we impute upon the world with our projections and transferences in our repetitive patterns of thinking and feeling, we impute upon the world the adjectives of being. And we arrive at the end of the journey not so much, or maybe not at all, at a destination, but more a new beginning. And so the story goes on, the story that the Shuso will read aloud to the assembly before the question and answers. The story goes on, Bodhidharma makes his pronouncements, and then he leaves.

[08:42]

And the emperor says, after consulting his wise advisor, Maybe I let him leave too quickly. Bring him back. And the advisor says, he's not coming back. This way, you know, we can't go back. You can't be the child you were again when you were six and have the parents you had when you were six, you know. we can only go forward. That's just the nature of love. We might lament it or we might celebrate it. It's an interesting proposition if we think about it. So we journey through sasheen the same way we journey through life.

[09:52]

And we arrive at a new beginning. And it's interesting in Zen, there's different notions about how to begin again. One notion is this. Don't take anything with you. Don't carry over your precious bundle of insights and realizations. On the third day, I saw a bird. There's a little hummingbird, which is actually an endangered species. It comes and hovers around the courtyard. I saw that bird. Today, we have our moment of insight. Sometimes we have this moment of connection to our own being.

[11:00]

And we make a bold declaration. Never again. From now on, only this. Not to dismiss that. because actually the spiritual path is to learn how to have that as an ally, not as the delusion of perfection. Somehow, with the right practice, with the right meditation technique, I will perfect the self, and I will perfect how that self enters the world. Certainly in sin, that's not our goal. So initiating this journey is intentionality.

[12:11]

It's being willing to let go of where we've been and what we've done and to be here. Classically called home leaving. It has some aspect of letting something go, renouncing. All the spiritual traditions have it. There's a crossing over. This is what has been, and this is now. And this now, this new now, This always now has its own way of being, its own discipline. The discipline, the activity of the disciple who follows the path of the truth. It has its own discipline. Vow, renunciation, and discipline.

[13:16]

And so, first day of Sushin, I tried to talk about this in a solemn and intimidating way. Maybe not really, but somehow... Zen teacher said this to me once. He said, the Dharma is like a good joke. Everybody gets it. How do we take up this mystery of the spiritual path and describe it in a way where everybody goes, yeah, I know that. I get it. Maybe not so much I know it as... it reverberates in my heart. This says something about what life has been telling me.

[14:29]

Life is always asking us to initiate, to be in what we're in, to do what we're doing. To not just yearn for the good old days, or not just wait for the good days to come, but to live the life for living. To discipline and vow in renunciation. And usually that somewhat intimidating. A little off-putting. Really? But the marvelous thing about a seven-day meditation intensive, through one mysterious reason or another, everybody in the intensive has come to that point.

[15:47]

Okay? I'll do it. Yes, I will. Maybe I don't totally know what I'm getting myself in for. Really, no matter how many times you've done it, you don't know what you're getting yourself in for. Each one unfolds in the way it unfolds. Yes, I will. We initiate something. we're initiating an immersion in the process of experiential learning. And we're learning about primarily what's going on, but what is the nature, what's the structure of the self? Not so much in an abstract way, but in an experienced way.

[16:55]

What kind of patterns of thinking and feeling? What kind of lingering thoughts about the past, projections, anticipations about the future? And how does all that tie into how I'm relating to being alive? How I'm relating to others? How I'm relating to what I consider to be the priorities and purposefulness of life. And it's very interesting because shashin is something of a rarefied environment. We construct a way of being that endeavors to carry forth, in our case, a Japanese then tradition, but originally a Chinese then tradition, which was initially put in place by Bajan in the ninth century, and then modified by the finder in Japan in the 13th century.

[18:17]

And here we are in the 21st. course, we've got our old modifications too. But in another way, we're still right there. And you would think, how could such an arcane tradition be contemporary and relevant to what's happening in my life? I mean, did Dogen say anything about how often you should use your smartphone. He didn't even have Wi-Fi. I have no idea how he survived. But it draws us into something around the essence, the core of our being. You read in this very stylized way,

[19:22]

quite prescribed and you learn something about eating. You learn something about receiving and giving. You learn something about nourishment. You learn something about how it all has its own sacred inter-being. before you eat, the person who cooked the meal comes in and is acknowledged. So many places in our life, what we eat, what we have, what's supportive of our life is mysterious. And then sometimes... It's actually a little upsetting.

[20:29]

You read about some factory farm process. And it's a little upsetting to think, hmm, do I support that and contribute to that? So all that in this arcane form of eating a meal. And we have a period of work. where we just work, paying attention to what we're doing. With a few curveballs. One is, when the bell goes to stop work, you stop. It doesn't matter if you didn't finish the task. You stop, you know? Maybe in a more modern language we would say, setting boundaries, you know? Maybe we would say, knowing that you never finish your to-do list.

[21:35]

It's always, as you're working, stroking off the things you've done at the top, it's always growing at the bottom. That's how it is. And yet, each thing is the activity of the moment. We give each activity the time it needs. We do what we're doing. And something there is discovered. We learn that so-called work is not something that we do for a paycheck. Work is how we express in activity the purposefulness of life.

[22:36]

That our work, our activity, our engagement is our contribution. It's both practical, A lot of our work is cleaning up. One thing I've noticed over the years about Zen students is they're good at cleaning up. Whenever we have an event, we clean it up really well. We all just get in there, move the chairs and the tables, take out the dirty dishes and sweep the floor. Our work is discovering something about purposeful activity that's both utilitarian and something much, much more.

[23:44]

It alludes to vocation, what you're called to do. And the mind and the heart, it starts to tune in to these universal attributes that are popping up in the middle of this arcane process, conjured up by Bajan in the 9th century, modified by Dogen in the 13th century, introduced to us by Suzuki Roshi in the 20th century. And we constantly tweak it. An hour ago, I was talking to the Tenzo and saying, okay, can we do it this way? And then we had to have a little discussion. Okay, we can only do that if we change this.

[24:48]

Okay. So it's Bhaizhan's way, and it's also utterly contemporary in a very practical way. That's our life. And as we settle into this, we discover more about being present. We discover how the moment is engaged. We do what we're doing, whether that's breathing in, sweeping the sidewalk, chanting or putting food in our mouth. Do what you're doing. And then there's receptive attention. When we do that, we connect not only to the particular, but we see that this particular is part of the whole mandala of existence.

[25:54]

Eating this meal is about eating meals. It's about receiving and having gratitude. It's about this circle. The cook cooks it, the servers serve it, the eaters eat it. And then we change roles. Somebody else cooks it, somebody else serves it, somebody else eats it. This is our life. Each of us, if you think about it, if you ask yourself, how many roles do I have in my life? I have the role where I work. I have the role of my family. I have the role of whatever kind of spiritual identity I have. I have the role of wherever I fit in my circle of friends. And so many more.

[26:59]

and we move between them, and it's interbeing. If we think I'm only this, we're neglecting the rest. So this circle of being, this interplay of being, directed attention, and then letting that initiate the interplay of being, the discovery of how things just, they are connected. They rely upon each other to come into being. And then as we settle more into Shashin, sorry, I'm going to speed up a little bit. I want to get to the end. Which... There isn't, right? So, why am I speeding up?

[28:01]

I had a poem to read to that. What can I say? And a while ago, when I planned it, I thought, that's a great ending. We come to almost despite ourselves and the complexity and multiplicity of what can arise in our mind, we come to connect to what's going on in an elemental way. We see, we hear, we taste, we touch. And in moments when there's presence, any of those can come alive.

[29:06]

So, I got to the first part of the poem. Every sound has a home from which it has come to us. Every sound has a home from which it has come to us. and a door through which it is going again out into the world to make another home. The marvelous thing about this existence, something comes into being, it's vividly precious and present, and then the car moves on down the street to the intersection. You chew that mouthful and you look at your plate, your bowl again, and take another. It becomes a world itself by listening deeply for the way it belongs.

[30:17]

It becomes a world itself by listening deeply to the way it belongs. When there's receptive attention, the sound of the plane is part of the tapestry of this moment. Each of us makes up us. The thoughts, the feelings, the sensations, even though they're flowing through, they're arising, they're passing away, they make something. They make something particular, and they make the interbeing of the flow that we're all part of.

[31:21]

Often the analogy in Buddhism is the wave. The wave appears on the ocean, and it's itself. It's a wave. and it subsides, and it's part of the ocean. Without the ocean, there's no wave. The wave belongs to itself. The wave belongs to the ocean. It becomes a world itself by listening deeply for the way it belongs. There, it can learn how to be what is, and how to do what's being done. So as we immerse in Shashin, some of this becomes apparent. And it's interestingly, it doesn't become apparent as a sophisticated, you know, ontological idea.

[32:31]

it becomes apparent more as a feeling. It becomes apparent more of a feeling of deep familiarity. And there's this wonderful paradox. Here I am in the midst of something contrived by Bajan 1,200 years ago, and yet I belong. I can sit in it, and somehow it feels like it's connecting in an intimate way that I've touched sometimes in my life, but actually not that often. And this intimate being, as we go on from there, then it sort of constructs itself as a challenge, as a request, as an ideal.

[33:40]

And we're attracted to it, like the moth is attracted to the light. In another place, this poet, David White, He describes that attraction as we become the lit angel of perfection. What you discover is you're still the person you've always been. That old mind of yours still squirts out its preoccupations. In a flash, you shift from the rhapsody of just hearing what's heard to critiquing the person beside you for the way they got off their cushion and stood on the floor.

[34:47]

They were a little bit noisy there. Not sure that was so mindful. And then the challenge for us is like, as Robert flies, he says, How do we be a lover in two worlds? How do we embrace the exquisiteness of momentary existence with all its implicit profundity? How do we embrace that and how do we embrace the stuff of being human? our own in the capacity to conjure up a complex and challenging life. And then to have all sorts of thoughts and feelings and struggles and fears around it.

[35:52]

Yeah. Maybe in the battle of good and evil, you know, we transcend that tardry human conditioning and float on the cloud, on a zen cloud of exquisite emptiness. But actually, it's the interplay. It's how they inform each other and relate to each other. And this interplay, very interestingly, in the cosmology of Buddhism. This is called the realm of joy. It's interesting because most of the time in our sincerity we tend to judge ourselves as coming up short, failing. Oh, I really intended to be totally present and attentive and my mind wandered.

[37:05]

We've committed some sort of mindfulness sin to mix a few traditions together. Can we see in that moment Can we say yes to that too? Can we develop an inclusivity that can experience it, whatever way it turns, rather than segregating it into what should and what shouldn't happen? Can we start to turn towards and experience all the nuances of the human condition? Can we connect to them and see that they're woven into the fabric of life as much as the ones that we hold up as exalted?

[38:17]

Can we come to that deeper sense of belonging? Can we come to that place in the journey that says, that feels now. Now, here, is. And from this place, you know, we step forward. So, I got to the finishing poem. Poems by David White from... Lovely little book of poems, The House of Belonging. It's called At Home. Amidst the bees, wandering in the garden, in the summer light, the sky, a broad roof for the house of contentment where I wish to live forever.

[39:24]

The sky, a broad roof for the house of contentment where I wish to live forever. in the eternity of my own fleeting and momentary happiness. I walk towards the kitchen door as if walking towards the door of a recognized heaven and see the simplicity of the shelves and the blue dishes and the vaporing steam rising from the kettle that called me in. not just this aromatic cup from which to drink, but the flavor of a life made whole. When we enter the moment, it is just the moment, and it's everything. I'm not just holding this cup, I'm holding life.

[40:35]

I'm not just tasting this tea, I'm tasting life. Not just this aromatic cup from which to drink, but the flavor of a life made whole and lovely through the imagination seeking its way. Not just this house around me, but the arms of a fierce but healing world. Not just this line, but the innocence of the earned forgiveness flowing again through hands made new by writing. Each time we give over, each time we engage, this kind of redemption, you know? It's like we're enacting this sacred life

[41:36]

which is our life, is worth living, is worth the activity I bring to it. It's worth committing to. And actually, it's the committing, it's the working that makes it so. We redeem and forgive our own limitations. And while we're at it, we forgive and redeem everybody else too. This is the bodhisattva way. And not just this line I write, but the innocence of an earned forgiveness flowing again through hands made new with writing. entering the silences and the chambers of the heart to start again.

[42:45]

So, for those of you who haven't sat Shashin, you might think, that sounds like a whole lot of fun. and in a way it does and in a way it is it is a whole lot of fun but in another way it's nice it was a Palestinian poet who became quite renowned. He'd gone through a very difficult life. Towards the latter half of his life, he became a prominent poet. He wrote a poem about happiness. He says, yes, I have some happiness, but be careful about wanting it, because this kind of happiness...

[44:07]

is not the happiness of getting everything you want. This is the happiness of giving everything you've got. Sashin's a little bit like that. You give yourself to the cup of tea. You give yourself to sitting on your cushion when you're not sure you still want to be doing this. Why don't I sign up for this? You give yourself to each and every moment. But that's the process of redemption. It's not an intellectual process. It's a lived transformation.

[45:12]

Personally, I would say it's a worthy endeavor to ask ourselves, what will I do with this one wild and precious life? But there's always the answer, do what's right in front of you. Do what you're doing. And let it teach you about wild and precious. And put it in the context of the rest of your existence. The most wonderful question of all is the impossible one. What will I do with this one wild and precious life? We'll never be finished answering that. It'll always be vast in front of us, challenging us in every way possible. But it's like the Zen story where the monk says to the teacher, can you say something that's impossible to talk about?

[46:36]

And the teacher says, yes, I can. Could you do something that's impossible to do? Yes, I can. Can I do it entirely and completely and perfectly? Can I do something? Can I make the effort? Can I make the commitment? Can I offer that doing? to the entirety of existence. Yes, I can. Somewhere in the workings of Shashin, that makes sense. It's like, oh, yeah, right. And in the world of Zen, we call that awakening. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[47:43]

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.

[48:06]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_96.23