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 evening, everybody. Welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. And my name is David Zimmerman. I am the tanto or head of practice here. And... I've been honored to be co-leading the spring practice period. We have a six-week period of intensive study with my Dharma sister, Leanne Shutt, K. Drew Leanne Shutt. And as many of you know who have been joining us for this period of study, our theme is Wise Efforts in Everyday Life, Harmonizing Stillness and Activity. And we've been doing this through four dimensions or four lenses, if you will.

[01:01]

And that's the lens of meditation and the lens of relationship, which we just looked at during the last week. We're about to start the lens or dimension of work. And then we'll wrap up with exploring wise effort in the realm of engaging the world. So tonight, I will kind of lead us into the introductory part of wise effort in the realm of work. So I'll say some things about that. And I thought that it would be good to start with the foundation of asking the question, what is work? What is work? What's our concept of work when we think of work? And so I have... I actually like going to dictionaries and kind of finding out, what's the root of this word? What does it actually mean? Because I often find what I think it means and what it actually means is sometimes different.

[02:03]

And so I looked up the meaning and etymology. And as a noun, work means exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something. Labor, toil. It also means productive or operative activity. And the third meaning... is employment as in some form of industry, especially as a means of earning one's livelihood. So given this, work can mean our career or simply a way that we make money. It can also be our calling or our life's work. And then thirdly, simply how our functioning in the world. And to go back to the etymology, work apparently is about a word that's about 5,000 years old. And from the beginning, let's see, the Proto-Indo-European root of the word is work, work.

[03:11]

And simply referred to as something to be done. Something to be done, a deed or an action. So another way of thinking about this then is that work is simply what we do. It is the activity of life, of the life we live. So work is, in another sense, living our life, period. And Enkyo O'Hara describes work as any activity we're engaged in that requires our energy and focus. whether or not we are paid for it. So I think we often have this concept that work is something we get paid for or something we are supposed to get something in return in some way. So another way of thinking this is work is everything that we do and it's simply being alive and simply being in this body is already work.

[04:18]

It's work enough. So the activities that we take up, simply taking care of ourselves, eating, and cleaning up, and bathing, and brushing our teeth, etc., are all expression of work in some way. So there's no escape from work. It's everywhere. And we can ask the question, how is it that we can recognize work as something that is deep and dignified. That it's what we are born to do and what we feel most fulfilled doing. So how do you think about work? How do you relate to the idea or to work in general? And what is the spirit in which you take up work? this doing something that needs to be done in some way.

[05:20]

So as we take up the study of wise efforts, we might ask ourselves a few questions. How are we in relation to this something being done in our daily lives? What is the heart of our work? What are the qualities surrounding our work or there's something to be done in our lives? And a question that I've been staying close to recently is, what is the work within the work? What is the work within the work? So we can think of there's the actual labor or effort of work, what we need to do on a practical level to get something done. brings something into being. And then there's the spirit of work. And Zen, as many of you might know, puts a particular emphasis on the spirit of the attitude of which we take up work.

[06:28]

And this is the how we go about our effort from a very heart-mind level. I had... at the beginning of the practice period that I had spent a long time trying to figure out the right kind of work that I wanted to do when I grew up. I spent about 10 years exploring what that would mean for me. And I realized that a lot of that had to do with my idea that work was something that defined me, something that determined my value and my... contribution and my place in society. And so in this process of trying to figure out, I was imagining, well, how do I want to be defined by what it is that I do? And it was a struggle. I couldn't quite figure out the what. And as I had mentioned, I decided after a while to put aside the question of what do I want to do?

[07:34]

and focus instead on the question of how. How do I want to be in the world, rather than what do I want to be in the world? And I came here, I moved into Zen Center, thinking that this being here and practicing Zen in a very intensive way would support me to clarify the how. And this how is the spirit, I think, that underlies what we call here at Zen Center work practice. the way that we take up work or something that we're doing as practice, as a means to being awake in each and every moment. So in Zen, work is considered an essential aspect of our practice, therefore. But it wasn't always this way in Buddhism. In early Indian Buddhism, the monks were actually prohibited from from working by the Vinaya, their strict code of how monks were supposed to behave.

[08:39]

So they couldn't work. And instead what happened was they were supported by the generosity of their neighborhood lay community. So they would go to alms round, begging, and receive whatever the community was willing to offer them. And that's how they sustained themselves. But as Buddhism spread and entered into China, And the practices had to be adapted in order to suit the local cultural customs. And so begging was discontinued because it was frowned upon in China. And instead, Buddhist monasticism developed a new practice which involved... monasteries and temples incorporating work as a way to sustain themselves, and particularly through growing their own food, growing and harvesting their own food. So this was a very significant change in Buddhist history and what it is that we've inherited, because then Buddhism went from China to Japan and then to the West.

[09:50]

There is a well-known Chan master, Pai Chang, in Japanese it's Bai Zhang, after his students hid his tools to spare his aging body the vigors of farm work, so he was very old and still helping out on the farm and his students were quite concerned about him, is famously to have said, a day without work is a day without eating. So he refused to eat until his students returned his tools and he could take up working again. And so it's the spirit of Pai Zhang that informs work practice. Work as a form of virtue or ethical living is very woven and integrated into our practice. So in Zen, we work to be self-sustaining, to positively contribute our labors to the support of the temple, and thereby to the extension of the wider community who come...

[10:55]

to share in and receive the fruits of our practice and study and our dharma engagement together. And there's another Zen story involving Pai Zhang in which he is asked by Yunyan the following question. Every day there's hard work to do. Who do you do it for? Pai Zhang said... There is someone who requires it. Yunyan said, why not have him do it himself? Pai Zhang said, he has no tools. He has no tools, or he has no wherewithal or means by which to accomplish the work. If we take up work as an offering, which is one way we can think of work practice as an offering, as an expression of giving or an expression of love, then we can think of work as being done on behalf of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.

[12:10]

We work in order to give ourselves over to our awakened nature. and to the manifestation and expression of this wakefulness, and then through our relationship to this awakened aspect in each other and all phenomena. However, what are we to make of Pai Zhang's saying that our work is done for the one who has no tools? Who is this one? Why does this one need our labor in order to become manifest? And what kind of tools do they need exactly? A garden hose? A broom? A computer? A kitchen knife? Something else altogether? And could it actually be

[13:15]

that this body and mind tool or instrument could be enough? What would that be? That was a lot of work. So the questions of by whom is this work done, for whom, as well as how is it done, are echoed in a classic Zen story, which I expect many of you are already familiar with, those of you who have been around Zen for some time. And it's found in a collection of koans known as the Book of Serenity. This is case 21. And the story involves an encounter between two Zen brothers, Master Yunyan and Master Dao Wu.

[14:24]

And they were brothers both in the literal biological sense as well as Dharma brothers. And they studied with the same teacher. And as the story goes, Yunyan is sweeping the ground one day. Dao Wu comes along and says to him, Too busy. Yunyan responds, You should know there's one who isn't busy. And Dao replies, if so, then there's a second moon. Jungian holds up his broom and says, which moon is this? Now, if someone were to interrupt you while you were sweeping with this kind of question, how would you respond? I'd probably hit him with the broom. Stop bugging me. Can't you see I'm working? I'm trying to get something done here. But there's a playful element here that is very important.

[15:25]

And this is kind of part of a traditional, what we call Dharma combat, where practitioners kind of test each other's understanding of the Dharma. This is what's happening here between the two brothers. They're trying to one-up each other, poking each other. So Dao Wu sees Jungian working and essentially criticizes him, saying, you're not being Zen. You're trying to get something out of all your activity. You're working with a divided or dualistic mind. To which Jungian responds, well, you should know that there is one who is not busy, who is not trying to attain anything, one who is not separate from his activity. And Dao says, nonsense. That's like saying there are two moons or two realities or two persons inside of you. And Yunyan, not bothering to defend his earlier statement, simply offers his broom and says, which moon or which reality is this?

[16:34]

So he doesn't get caught up. He just says, One reality, just this. There's a number of different ways you can understand or approach this koan. And I'm just going to very briefly touch on two. And one of the things that this koan is pointing to is the need to find an appropriate balance between our effort and non-effort. Between this being busy, and being non-busy. And to not privilege one over the other, but actually to integrate them into our being. And we're often told in our Dharma practice that we can do this through the lens of mindfulness, through the practice of mindfulness and of non-dual activity, or sometimes what's called oneness in action.

[17:42]

And mindfulness is often used to point to this idea of right action, a sense of a wholesomeness or wholeness or skillfulness in the action that we take up. How is our action complete? And this completion is pointing to this act of, is our mind-body completely engaged in what we're doing? Is there integration of mind and body simultaneously? whole being engaged in whatever effort we're doing. So our effort becomes conscious activity, awake activity. The body's awake, the mind's awake. Everything that we touch through our endeavor is awakened in that process. So how might we learn to live our lives and engage in all we do in an undivided and completely present way?

[18:44]

What is it to engage what you do undivided and present? How do we learn to live in a way that isn't positing two minds or divide between the mind and the body? Or the heart and the mind? So heart and mind, just one expression of this life. A second teaching that this koan offers is the importance of refraining from dividing our efforts and our activity into mental categories in some way, into dualistic groupings such as busy or not busy. How is it that we can stop kind of judging or tainting our activities as either good or bad, right or wrong? worthy or unworthy? Because when we do this, there's this sense of splitting ourselves that happens in some way.

[19:53]

We split into two moons, into a sense of two beings when we do that, a good being and a bad being. And neither of them are true. So coming back to our wholeness again in some way, by dropping these dualistic concepts, And this is what we're doing in Zazen. Taking up this koan of knowing the one who is not busy. Knowing the one that's not being busy trying to figure things out or evaluate what's going on. But simply to allow the breath to sweep the mind-body. It's that simple. Allowing the breath. Breathing in. receiving, sweeping, breathing out, releasing, letting go. So this koan has been commented on and taught ad nauseum by many Zen teachers.

[21:04]

And so Leanne and I have offered a number of suggested readings to those who are participating in the practice period that I think are quite wonderful, quite good. One is by Darlene Cohen in her book, The One Who Is Not Busy, and another is Michael Luchford. And so rather than walk through this Cohen in more depth tonight, I'd like to turn to a contemporary poem that I think complements this Cohen in many ways and will help to unpack it a little differently. And the poem is by Billy Collins, and it's titled Shoveling Snow, with Buddha. And I'll preface it by saying that some of my first experiences of work were actually of shoveling snow in the winter. I grew up in Pennsylvania and Colorado, as well as mowing the lawn in the summer. So they were two very physical activities, neither which I particularly liked.

[22:07]

And I did them because I was told to do them. by my parents, my father particularly. And when I did them, I didn't do them with the mind of this is an offering. When I was young, I was still kind of caught up in the idea of I'm going to do this to get it done so I can go back to playing, I can go back to reading a book, I can go back to watching TV, or later on in my life so I can get paid to do it. And while this... context of this poem might seem a little out of place at this particular time. You should just remember that Mark Twain apparently once said the coldest winter he ever experienced was a San Francisco summer. So I believe we are heading into summer now here, so keep that in mind as you think about the atmosphere of this poem. So here it is.

[23:10]

Shoveling Snow with Buddha. In the usual iconography of the temple or the local walk, you would never see him doing such a thing, tossing the dry snow over a mountain of his bare, round shoulder, his hair tied in a knot, a model of concentration. Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word for what he does or does not do. Even the season is wrong for him. In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid? Is this not implied by his serene expression? That smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe. But here we are, working our way down the driveway, one shovelful at a time. We toss the light powder into the clean air. We feel the cold mist on our faces.

[24:19]

And with every heave, we disappear and become lost to each other in these sudden clouds of our own making, these fountain bursts of snow. This is so much better than a sermon in church, I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling. This is the true religion, the religion of snow and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky, I say. But he is too busy to hear me. He has thrown himself into shoveling snow as if it were the purpose of existence, as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway. You could back the car down easily. and drive off into the vanities of the world with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio. All morning long we work side by side, me with my commentary, and he inside his generous pocket of silence, until the hour is nearly noon and the snow is piled high all around us.

[25:32]

Then I hear him speak. After this, he asks, can we go inside and play cards? Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table while you shuffle the deck and our boots stand dripping by the door. Ah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes and leaning for a moment on his shovel before he drives the thin blade again deep into the glittering winter. So here we have the Buddha, a model of concentration, a model of mindfulness, shoveling snow beside us. We who may feel ourselves as anything but a model of concentration or mindfulness at times. And as Buddhas are wont to do,

[26:37]

This one is shoveling snow in a state of deep samadhi. And we have this tendency, we're prone to wanting to contrast the shoveling of snow with the typical activity that we think of when we think of a Buddha, which is sitting, just sitting, zazen. But then again, what exactly is this activity of sitting? What is the proper word for what a Buddha does? or doesn't do, as the poem says. And haven't we been told by Zen teachers that Zazen is a radical non-doing, a radical non-efforting and non-moving? And don't we have a tendency to think that Zazen is the only real practice or real work of a Buddha? Regardless, here we are together with the Buddha, diligently working our way down the driveway with some sense of purpose or intention and direction.

[27:48]

In this case, to remove the snow. And we do so one shovelful at a time. One thing at a time. Just doing one thing as Zen students are encouraged to do. No multitasking for us. or simply being immersed in our experience of this moment, feeling the cold mist on our faces as we toss the snow into the air, noting the smell of the snow, noting the sound of our breath, the movement of our muscles, just experiencing the immediate direct experience of being alive in this moment. in our endeavor as completely as we can. And then, at some point, suddenly we notice that we are no longer immersed in our activity. Something's happened.

[28:51]

The mind has wandered, as minds are wont to do, right? And so with every heave, or if you will, lurch of the mind, we disappear and become lost to each other in sudden clouds of our own making. How easily it seems that we lose our way into these fountain bursts of snow, right? Of, if you will, obscuring faults and conceptualizations. How easily we disappear into clouds of discrimination and self-defense. and negotiations, fantasies, and imagination. And then, in doing so, we become disconnected to each other in some way, losing sight and contact with our larger connectedness, our larger interbeing, as Thich Nhat Hanh says.

[29:56]

often do we find ourselves commenting, either in our heads or aloud, on whatever the experience is of the moment, as if the moment kind of required something extra, some further elaboration to fully make it perfect or right. And even if we're kind of working in the kitchen at some point, cutting away the carrots, we find ourselves in single-pointed concentration, Suddenly, out of nowhere, a thought pops into her head. Ah, look at me. I'm in the moment, right? I'm one with my work. What a great practitioner I am. This is kind of a real spiritual experience I'm having right now, right? And so we imagine, finally, in our activity of shoveling snow, that we have found the true religion, the one that's so much better than a sermon in church, or a Dharma talk, for that matter. And yet this mental elaboration and commentary that we do in our mind has already defiled the moment.

[31:10]

It's just us once again pissing in the previously pure and unstained snow moment, leaving our mark as if to say, I was here. Where is the practice of leaving no trace of yourself? No trace of ego. But the Buddha, the undistracted one, the fully engaged one, the undivided and wholeheartedly and fully present one, is too busy to hear us. And he just keeps shoveling snow. And he's not caught by our needless chatter. There's only functional speech for him. And this is a practice that we take up here in our work practice, particularly in the kitchen. Observing functional speech. Only speaking when necessary to give direction, for example, or to offer relevant information.

[32:13]

So all morning long we work side by side in silence, cutting carrots, making soup, sweeping, typing emails. Side by side with the chattering mind and the mind that abides. in silence at all times, with the one who is not busy. And that one doesn't tell us even, doesn't even bother to tell us to shut up, right? Or to tell us to stop all this unnecessary chatter, but just keeps focusing on the task at hand, taking into stride both the undeniable weight of the snow and the weight of our chatter with what's described as a generous pocket of silence. So the Buddha has thrown himself into shoveling snow. He has dissolved himself in his activity, becoming one with shoveling.

[33:15]

As if it were the purpose of existence, the poem says, as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway. And how often do we imagine if we could just get to the point of having a perfect life in the form of a clear driveway or a clear path ahead? Or to have all our work somehow neatly tied up and everything done. How often we think then everything would be okay. Then I would be okay. Then my life would be in order some way. And I find this sometimes coming up for me. I love the experience of kind of deleting emails or checking off boxes of my to-do list. There's kind of an adrenaline rush, a sense of accomplishment somehow that makes me think that I'm getting somewhere. Something's happening because I've checked another box. And even if I could just not only clear the driveway or clear out my email box, which would be a godsend,

[34:23]

someday I could delete everything, you know, right? If I can also delete all the email in my mind, the chatter and the thoughts, ideas and concepts in my mind, and maybe even go so far as getting rid of myself, then maybe everything would be perfect. Then I could relax and be at ease. Then I could be a Buddha, right? But the thing in is that impermanence doesn't stop. So we don't stop our endeavors. So the thing is, obstructions, such as snow, in this case, or dust, or thoughts, or problems, or even basic greed, hate, and delusion, as we talk about, will never end in this life. So constant care... is required to clean or sweep them away because they obstruct us.

[35:29]

They obstruct Buddha's work. But sweeping doesn't mean getting rid of them. Sweeping means recognizing that they are fundamentally empty. If we're able to see into the truth that all perceived obstructions, including our ideas about ourselves and others, are empty of inherent existence, then obstructions are no longer obstructions. And we realize they never were obstructions to begin with. In other words, snow was never an obstruction because snow is always perfectly empty from the start. So shoveling, And constant clearing is emptiness realized. Our making effort, what Dogen calls continuous practice, is emptiness realized.

[36:37]

It will keep snowing. Obstacles will keep appearing. So we may never arrive as long as we live at the end of the driveway or a path that's perfectly free of any obstructions. No matter, for we can realize that the very act of shoveling is perfect liberation. And we do this for ourselves. We do it for the ones who cannot do it for themselves. And we do it for the one who is both busy and not busy. And we do it for all beings. In a certain sense, we might say that getting the driveway clear or even trying to get from the front door to the street is almost besides the point. Yet, we go on with our work. In fact, how would we have anything else to do if not to honor, receive honor and virtue through our work practice, through the

[37:51]

practice of shoveling if there were no snow. We could not live without snow. We cannot live without obstacles in our lives. So that means we should be grateful for them. Grateful for our obstacles, whether or not they're in the form of thoughts or problems or other people or natural phenomenon such as snow or volcanoes in some cases. Gratitude for there being a reason to shovel, a reason to work, a reason to do something in our lives, to make an undivided, wholehearted effort. Dogen Zenji is the founder of our school of Zen. He stated that practice and enlightenment are one and the same. In Japanese, this is shusho ichinyo.

[38:52]

meaning that awakening, another word for that is bodhi, awake, is manifested through practice. By practicing the Buddha way, we manifest the Buddha way. We make the Buddha way. We bring it into being. And if we don't manifest it, we are not living an awakened life. So to practice the activity of consciously shoveling snow, we manifest awakened activity. if we don't shovel snow, if we don't do what needs to be done, then there is no awakened activity, nor is there one who awakens. I stumbled upon a blog post that referenced this poem, and it's by Jundo Koen of Tree Leaf Zendo, and it said the following. The Soto Zen perspective is that there is much shoveling to be done in life,

[39:53]

and so we proceed ahead. And yet each scoop by scoop is the driveway totally realized and clear. Yet there is much work to be done, making a path so we can get out of the house and engage the world. And yet, the point is not only some destination, for example, the end of the driveway, but constant realization and perfect arriving with each step and scoop. constantly arriving, but with no place to go. In fact, each swing of the shovel is a Buddha's fully exerting shoveling. And each shovel full of snow is a snow Buddha's fullness. It is a dance, one great function, with shovel shoveling snow, snow snowing shovel, only a Buddha's shoveling Buddhas. Reality is such that snow is always falling.

[41:05]

Falling day after day. Just an endless stream of changing conditions and perceived obstacles that are confronting us and enveloping us. And so we shovel. And we shovel day after day. And we need to repeat this effort endlessly as long as we live. For that is life itself. That is life itself. I remember once in a Dharma talk that Mel Weitzman was giving at Tassajara, he became deeply moved when speaking about about an image that was described in one of Hockwin's commentaries on the five ranks. And the image was of foolish men, foolish wise men shoveling snow into a well, knowing that they can never do it.

[42:11]

It can never be filled. Foolish wise men shoveling snow into a well, knowing that they can never do it. It can never be filled. Snow goes into the well, goes into the water, the water melts the snow. It can never be filled with snow. So they just do it nonetheless. And that's what practice is. Just doing it. Without worrying about the results. Without worrying about where we're going to get in the end. And we have to be satisfied with doing something. Doing what we can. and not worrying about it. And there may be a result. There may be some big reconciliation or some accomplishment of sorts. For example, we reach the end of one particular driveway in our life, but we can't depend on it happening in a particular way. There is great beauty and nobility in witnessing our sincere effort to just live this life.

[43:19]

So I, just before concluding, want to say something about play. Only near the apparent end of our current task at hand does the Buddha, in the poem, lift his eyes and leans for a moment on his shovel. After this, he asks, can we go inside and play cards? And one of the things that's notable, both in this poem as well as in the koan, the one who's not busy, is the sense of play that's happening between the characters in each of these endeavors. One is in the form of friendly dharma combat, and the other is the suggestion of just enjoying hot chocolate and a game of cards. And we have this tendency to often contrast work with play, that first we do work so that we can then do the opposite of work, which is something we call play.

[44:23]

And conventionally thinking, there's a time to work, to do work, and then there's a time to play. So again, these oppositions are created. And yet, how might we find the play in the midst of our work? And more so, what would it be to see all of our efforts to do something as some form? Isn't all of our activity our playing in the fields of the Dharma? Dancing together with each other in emptiness, in vast spaciousness, as interdependency? Our dancing together is what makes this life. We make it all up as we go. It's all a play. So you shouldn't lose touch with the need to bring a sense of lightness, a sense of spontaneity and humor to our work, to our endeavors.

[45:36]

Otherwise, we're going to get weighed down by our self-seriousness and our self-cherishing. So find a way to introduce play into whatever it is you want. are doing in some fashion. Discover the lightness in your life. So there's a lot more to say, but I'm out of time. And so I'm going to leave it at that. And I'll just preface, or no, it's not words, maybe it's not preface, but I'll just let you know in advance that Vicki Austin is going to speak on Saturday on the theme, Study of Work Practice. So she will continue this conversation around wise effort in the realm of work. So thank you for your effort in listening to me, and thank you for being together in this way.

[46:39]

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.

[47:08]

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