This podcast is offered by San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. You know, I've given many talks in this Buddha hall, but still, every time I walk in, it's like a shock to the system. I have a room upstairs and I just sit quietly in my room, minding my own business, thinking about what to say. Then I come down here, like the great shock of a whole bunch of people sitting here. Here's what I'm going to talk about this morning.

[01:04]

Bodhisattva, immersed in Prajnaparamita, realizes the mind is no hindrance. And without hindrance, no fears exist. Far beyond delusions, abiding in nirvana. That's the centerpiece, to my mind, the centerpiece of the Heart Sutra in its short version that we chant every morning. What I'm not going to do is pick it apart and this is what a bodhisattva is, this is what a prajnaparamita is. I'm going to try to create a context in which illustrates something. There's a way in which we can take sacred teachings and think of them and relate to them as utterly different from our everyday experience.

[02:20]

Then there's another way in which we can let them show us, oh, And this is what I experience every day. This is something that I, some way of being, I'm immersed in. Like the Bodhisattva, immersed in Prajnaparamita. So last Saturday morning, we had a wonderful speaker, Rhonda McGee. A woman, an African American, a Buddhist person, practitioner and a law professor. And I don't mean to rank those. That wasn't... It's just how they came into my mind. And she spoke about how mindfulness can inform and support how we relate to some of our societal norms.

[03:25]

You know, what... What are the prevailing ways in which we uphold or don't uphold equality? What are the prevailing ways we structure differences and how that can create difficulties, oppressions, that our diversity somehow is so often the ground from which Bitterness and separation and hardship and suffering are created. Profound and lovely talk. And it's on our website if you didn't hear it. And then next week, not on Saturday but on Sunday, we are quite literally going to construct with plywood,

[04:27]

and two by fours, a raised platform here. And then someone will walk up a set of steps that we've made on the side, stand about this far off the ground, and I assume for the person, and for the gathered assembly, this will be a momentous occasion. Within the Zen world, it's steeped in symbolism. It's steeped in tradition. It's part of the The nature of the Zen way is that we construct a version of reality willingly and knowingly.

[05:38]

Yes, we're making this up. But here we go, making it up. Not only that, we're going to attend to it as if it's a matter of life and death. a matter of life and death. What we construct willingly and knowingly. What we assume in an unexamined and unacknowledged way. And everything in between. And then in between the two of those today we're sitting here doing nothing special. And actually, about 70 of us are going to spend the day sitting downstairs doing nothing special.

[06:40]

Doing zazen, doing walking zazen, doing eating zazen, doing chanting zazen, doing sweeping zazen. And I would say attempting, just as it says in the Heart Sutra, immersion in Prajnaparamita. Prajnaparamita says, every experience, even something so seemingly simple and uneventful as a motor scooter scooting up Page Street is a constructed experience.

[07:45]

The sound was heard because of an ear, because of the sound, because of the consciousness of both of those. Out of that sound, something was constructed. Motor scooter. Place here and there. Some trajectory. nature of our consciousness. It's in the process of relating to something that it's also part of creating. And the Heart Sutra says this is always going on in one way or another.

[08:53]

And as Rhonda said last week, And some of the constructions are extraordinarily painful and difficult and cause a lot of suffering. And then within our Zen practice, within our tradition, we uphold certain ways of behaving. construct platforms. And we say to someone, please be the abbot. Please ascend this mountain. Let's call this wooden platform three feet off the ground, let's call it a mountain.

[09:57]

Please ascend this mountain take the authority of being abbot. And fortunately, or unfortunately, the person said, yes, I will. I glanced over to see how he took that. Why do we do that sort of thing? My rational mind would assume that it supports us to be intimate with what's going on.

[11:01]

It supports us to not get stuck in constructs that cause suffering for ourselves and for others. It supports us in a way that helps us see what we're constructing, to be able to look deeply into it and see that when the constructs are unexamined, when the constructs are created out of desire and aversion and confusion, when the constructs are related to as if they're permanent and absolute, a lot of suffering happens. And you know, rationally, we could ask, well, why don't you practice in a way

[12:03]

that has absolutely no constructs. Because it's not possible. Once we had a teacher come here, a Dharma teacher come. And she had an assistant with her. And her assistant said, well, you should know that she's completely informal. And I said, well, is she going to give a talk in the Buddha hall or is she going to give a talk in the dining room? And I think in a way I was saying, it's not possible to be completely informal. You're going to be somewhere, you're going to do something. Or, going to be completely still and let everything flow through.

[13:08]

And so in a way, that's the tantalizing proposition of zazen. Can you be present and let all the constructs you live by that you recall that you anticipate, even down to the notion of me, even down to the notion of my body, my life, even down to the notion of time and place. The bodhisattva immersed in the fluidity of everything, that this constructed existence is the entirety of existence.

[14:18]

There is no permanent, independent existence surrounding it, underneath it, above it, or in the middle of it. I sometimes think, Engaging in this way is a little bit like learning to swim. I don't know if you remember, but when we're learning to swim, there's a very strong impulse to keep one foot on solid ground. Something in us is in the water because we want to learn to swim And yet, something in us is saying, wait a minute, this could be dangerous, this could be life-threatening. The deep impulse of survival.

[15:23]

And then the impulse of survival. giving over, letting the fluidity of existence flow, being part of it. So what? I come into the Buddha Hall and there's a moment of shock. Fortunately, we've constructed a process. Come in, stand here, do this bow, then this bow, then go up here, do this, this, and this. And it's a very interesting proposition.

[16:35]

Can we intentionally introduce into our lives helpful constructs. And this is one of the interesting and intriguing challenges for us. Well, am I just replacing one set of constructs with another set of constructs? Maybe. Hopefully, the intentional constructs help us go beyond constructs. A long time ago, I was a monk in Thailand, and I went to a Buddhist psychology class once a week.

[17:43]

The professor of the psychology class was strongly of the opinion that meditation was a denial of Prajnaparamita. It was a construct. It was inevitable that if you were meditating, you had some agenda. You weren't simply being. And pretty much every week, She would say that, and then she'd look at me. And I would just think, guilty as charged. And I would add to that Part of the gift of the Zen way, the gift of non-dualism, to broaden it out, however that appears, and it appears in many traditions, the gift of it is that we willingly and knowingly engage a certain way, almost paradoxically, in this service of going beyond.

[19:12]

ideas, fixed ways of behaving, fixed attitudes. And what you discover when you try to do that, especially when you take up something as exacting as zazen, is that within us is this sometimes seemingly inexhaustible reservoir and repertoire of constructs. And that the notion that somehow with determination and dedication you can stop them, you discover that that is actually only momentarily possible.

[20:17]

The very process of being alive is to generate constructs. This is a relational existence. Without air, without water, without food, without concepts of here and there, and scooters going up Page Street, and memories of being in Thailand, existence becomes an abstraction. It becomes some something that has a dreamlike quality to it. That the very activity of experiencing the moment enlivens and illustrates what the nature of existence is.

[21:24]

And this, in our tradition, and I think in many spiritual traditions, is called realization. And in the moment of realization, something's illustrated, manifest, and communicated, or transmitted, maybe it's a better word, that goes beyond our thinking. And this is the heart of Prajnaparamita, a wisdom beyond wisdom. And we're always in it. We're always swimming in the waters of this existence. We eat it, we breathe it, we see it, we smell it, we taste it, we touch it, we think it.

[22:43]

this proposition of Zen practice, this proposition of the Heart Supra that says, even though you're always immersed in it, somehow it seems that an intentional relationship to it helps it to be realized. We could say to the person who's going to be appointed or installed abbot next week, we could just stop him in the hall and say, oh, by the way, you're abbot next week. And he's likely to say, oh, okay.

[23:45]

But instead, we create an intentional expression of that. And in a way, we're always creating significance of our experience. And we're always dismissing as insignificant. is the nature of it. And part of the request of practice is to somehow let that be so. Is that so? Somehow

[24:56]

even though walking into the Buddha hall might be shocking. So be it. And can we explore both within the subtleties of sitting zazen, within the intensities of the difficult challenges of our lives and our relationships? Can we explore this heart of being? Is that so? Can what we're experiencing be experienced? The bodhisattva, the being who's in the process of awakening, The being that is awakening, the being that includes everything in awakening, is immersed in this relatedness.

[26:11]

That's happening all the time. That nothing whatsoever in the entirety of existence is separate from. paradox of the Zen way is that we construct a way of engaging to go beyond constructs we engage the body the breath the moment the senses and then it's like from there it's like let loose and let whatever happens happen The spirit of it is. And whatever happens, pay attention and let it teach you about the nature of life, about the nature of the world you construct as a person, the nature of the world you construct as a member of your version of us, the nature of the world that you create

[27:39]

your identities. Rhonda, as a woman, as an African-American, as a tenured law professor. Who do you say you are? And the great paradox of practice, you know, where we read no self. In some ways, The way to know self is to say, let's see if I can have 50 different identities. Try it on sometime. I would say if you can get up to 20, you'll be... somehow loosening up them all.

[28:40]

That we enter fully into the constructs and discover, realize something that goes beyond. And so this, the heart of the Heart Sutra, bodhisattvas immersed in Prajnaparamita, experience the mind without hindrance. Because built into us is a deep intention, a deep strategy of creating a secure, happy, a successful, you name it, whatever you're known and unknown, agendas for life are. And you might think oh well then in Zazen it's about crafting a purity in which all of those have been set aside.

[29:57]

Actually it's about brazenly and recklessly and shamelessly experiencing every single one of them. having 20 names for the self. The more we experience, the less impulse there is to name one experience as definitive in exclusion of others. So in a way, so-called hindrances, so-called constructs, teaches us help us realize going beyond constructs. Without hindrance, no fears exist.

[31:03]

But what if a certain experience causes me great hardship, great pain? will destroy me. It is true, the Heart Sutra is a pronouncement of the archetype of compassion. In its simple essence, There is nothing to fear and nothing to grasp. But as in the territory of intimacy, in the territory of the vulnerability of our constructed existence, a deep benevolence, a deep

[32:25]

passion and generosity and kindness. Can our very fears, our hesitancies, our subtle and gross holding back and resisting the ways in which we are persistently navigating our life in terms of what we want and what we don't want? Can they be experienced and be our teacher? No. The request of Prajnaparamita is not to demand our superhuman abilities, it's to discover, it's to realize within our all-too-human abilities, we can discover not being stuck.

[33:42]

We can discover that everything flows, including the things that cause us afflictions and suffering. beyond delusions, beyond these constructs, abiding in nirvana. So in early Buddhism, the notion was, well, if desire and aversion are the metric by which we're always gauging our life and responding, acting out desire and aversion. Let's cut it off at the root. The root of the word nirvana is to extinguish

[34:47]

Prajnaparamita proposes something different. Not to say that relating to our desires and aversions in a prudent and appropriate manner. And certainly the rigor of sitting all day. The rigor of saying, okay, here's the schedule and you're just gonna do what you're told all day. When the bell rings, you're gonna do this. When the clackers clack, you're gonna chant this. When the gong hits, you're gonna go to the courtyard. There's a rigor, there's a discipline to it. In some ways, it's only when we commit to being still that we discover how we're in constant motion.

[36:19]

And it's only in some ways when we commit to not just doing it the way I want to do it, that we discover the persistence of our desires and aversions. And Prajnaparamita creates a more interesting proposition. While it acknowledges the skillfulness of not simply acting out your desires and aversions, it also invites us to explore the heart of them. And as I say, sometimes we see the heart of moving by attempting to be still. Sometimes we see our own fearful separations by attempting to be part of everything.

[37:31]

We see our own stinginess by committing to generosity. And then, very interestingly, the flowering of nirvana that that creates is not pristine. It's not separate from The world. You know, last week Rhonda was talking about the insidious way that racism is structured into our society. That there's an oppression structured in.

[38:37]

And she gave a poignant example of when she'd received the notification of being a tenured law professor. Someone bought her flowers, and the person delivering the flowers was surprised to see that Professor McGee happened to be an African-American woman rather than some, you know. prestigious white male, for instance. And then part of the poignancy was that very unbiased person was an African-American. The insidious nature of our prejudices. a sense of nirvana that's all-inclusive.

[39:44]

This is our teaching. This is our gift. Well, let's notice. Let's acknowledge. Let's let that be a teaching. Let's show us the way forward. Let's not set aside ourselves in some virtuous... while those other terrible people act out something. Let's acknowledge we're all in this together. Down to the very nature of our existence. Let's practice from that place. And so the bodhisattva vow... includes engaging the world. It includes taking on, acknowledging and acting from the place of acknowledgement.

[40:55]

Bodhisattva, immersed in Prajnaparamita, realizes the mind is no hindrance. Without hindrance, no fears exist. Far beyond delusions abiding in nirvana. Thank you. 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 sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:56]

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