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. And welcome to the first Saturday Dharma Talk of 2013. This may not be a surprise to you, I was thinking about the phenomena, the process of New Year's... Is this signed okay? Yeah? Yeah. The phenomena of New Year's resolutions, you know, that... that way in which we say to ourselves, okay, I'll start over, I'll do it right this time, whatever that may be, and how it can serve a function in our lives.

[01:14]

Certainly in the process of spiritual practice, starting over is a great benefit. And I'd like to come at that topic from this position, starting at this place. In the 40s, there was a psychologist, Abraham Maslow, who created this notion of hierarchy of needs. I don't know how many of you have heard of it, but it was an attempt to formulate the issues, the needs of our human existence. starting with the basic ones and then working up to what we might consider self-actualization, self-realization. And then, of course, as you might expect later, it was critiqued and criticized and modified in many ways. The reason I chose to mention it, because I think...

[02:25]

while we may consider many of the critiques to be accurate, or even the criticisms to be accurate, I think still within it there's a way in which it can point to the issues, the preoccupations. Where did we go wrong that we need to start over and do it right? Did we pay too much attention to this and too little attention to that? And I think of Maslow's hierarchies of needs almost like a way to take a personal inventory. That way in which we can pause and say, well, what is going on for me? Huh? So Maslow's hierarchy of needs is something like this.

[03:32]

And for those of you who know it better than I do, I already apologize for the oversimplification. But the first aspect is physiological. You need air, water, sleep, food. You have basic needs. And then the second aspect is... You need security, you need safety. Those basic needs have to be met within an environment that allows you to maintain your existence. Then the third need is around intimacy, relatedness, connection, belonging. We want to love. We want to be loved. We want to belong. We want intimacy, maybe within romantic relationship, familial relationship, circle of friends, national, on a national level.

[04:51]

You get the picture. And then the next one is on the level of esteem and respect. As you can see, they grow in complexity. Like self-esteem, being appreciated and acknowledged by others. Cultivating that self-respect and having that from others. And then the fifth one. in Maslow's scheme is self-actualization, self-realization. And then he developed his own thinking like this. He said the first four, physiological, security, I don't know if you'd call the next, psychological, or sociological, and psychological. these needs became most prevalent in relationship to the absence of them being met.

[06:04]

If you're getting enough to eat, you don't think much about eating, most of us. If you're not getting enough to eat, we think a lot about it. And similarly with each of these needs. And then the fifth one is in a different category, this self-actualization. It arises more as a prompting from a spiritual and existential aspect of our being that wants to be more fully alive, that wants to be more open, engaged, and connected, not as a response to something we're missing, but in the aspect of the first four, with some deeper calling.

[07:07]

What just came to mind was an extraordinary poem by Rilke, where he talks about, he describes this calling as a calling from the East. getting up from the dinner table and walking out the door to meet this calling. This spiritual dimension of our lives. And then what's the balance? What's the relationship between these? You know? And then the critiques came along and said, well, wait a minute, they're not hierarchical. It's not one, two, three, four, five. Any one of them, if it's a major deficit, I mean, if you have a toothache, your physiological being takes precedent over all these other things, you know?

[08:16]

You can't wait to get to the dentist or get rid of your toothache, even if you dread the dentist. There are They're cultural. The different cultures hold different ones of them in a different set of priorities. They're circumstantial. If you're in a violent situation, safety may take precedence. But setting aside all those worthy and valid critiques, something in our being creating for us a set of urgencies, a set of needs that become compelling, that captivate our attention, stimulate our emotions, motivate our actions and behaviors.

[09:19]

We're in the throes of of such a constellation of being, that we are that constellation of being. And then what is it to wake up? Do you have to somehow transcend it? Do you need to go and live in the Himalayas, in a cave, in a pristine environment, where you are immune to the complexities of these multitude of issues? Or do you need to, which would be maybe, I would say, and I'd love to hear your, and I hope later you'll give me your notions, a more compelling paradigm of our current time, which is, especially as Buddhist practitioners,

[10:23]

Meet each arising with full awareness so that somehow you're not overwhelmed, you're not caught up in the stickiness of its request. that notion. Constellation of needs and issues. And how do we address it? How do we wake up? How do we not just spend a lifetime struggling with them? In one way or another. And maybe without quite realizing what we're doing. So this is what I would call human dilemma.

[11:30]

And I would say different spiritual traditions address it in their own way. Whether you want to say, well, with God's grace or with God's request, you address it like this. Or you address it like this as someone who is convinced of the efficacy of of awareness or mindfulness. Whatever way you want to think about it, or you live an austere, celibate life, or you open up to the complexities of everyday life as we think of it in our contemporary society. And within Zen practice, one of the interesting features of Zen practice is that one of its primary agendas is to stimulate the question, is to get us genuinely interested, rather than to quickly give us the answer.

[12:53]

Okay, here's the answer. Because in a way, This hierarchy, complexity of means, has too many facets, has too many variables within it to have a singularity of solution. Okay, everybody should do this. And in the process of Zen practice, we call this inquiry. We call this questioning. This genuine curiosity about our being, we call it way-seeking mind. In the midst of the experience you're having, can you keep learning and discovering how not to be overwhelmed, how not to be just lost in either anxiety or avoidance or an unrelenting striving to master it all?

[14:00]

Can the behaviors start that you're bringing forth, can they start to be informed by an insightfulness? And can the very process of doing that be an unfolding, a continual teaching? Can it have built within it a sense of renewal. More than just, you know, once a year, the day after the excesses of the holidays, you think, okay, I've really got to clean up my act. And then to look at how do you do that?

[15:04]

Way-seeking mind. What's the way you wake up? What's the way I wake up? What's the way I come into contact with my own constellation of needs and agendas and issues and patterns of behavior? And then within Zen practice, Zen practice creates its own methodology. And then it has some very interesting characteristics. One characteristic is the emphasis on awareness, the emphasis on being awake as best you can in whatever you're doing. And then another characteristic is a fluidity of response.

[16:11]

That if your response becomes narrow, if your response becomes something like a process of avoidance, a process of confrontation, a process of control. If it becomes rigid in that way, there isn't the capacity to meet the multitude of experiences that enter a human life. And so right within the process of zazen, these two attributes are held up. Can you come back to awareness? Can you stay present for the multitude of experiences that arise in human consciousness?

[17:22]

And whatever they're stimulating, can they be met in a way that doesn't spin off into control, avoidance, overwhelm, or however else this hierarchy of needs might present itself. And so along with this is an appreciation for the request of what's being asked. And in some ways, this is an impossible request. And in a very real way, very tangible way, part of that request is to say, yes, I will.

[18:41]

This is impossible, and yes, I will engage it. Today we're going to have an ordination in the afternoon, and throughout the ceremony of the ordination, the ordanan, the person who's being ordained, is asked a question. Will you continue this practice? Will you continue this practice? Will you continue this practice? Even if you become a Buddha, will you continue this practice? And they say, yes, I will. Will you do the impossible? Yes, I will. And will you do this impossibility too? Yes, I will. Will you keep renewing your intention? Will you keep coming back to something fundamental and rediscover how that is relevant for living a human life?

[19:51]

Will you keep coming back to something fundamental and let it teach you how to live a human life? Yes, I will. So in terms of mastery, can we master the complexities of our needs and issues? It's impossible. In terms of a willingness to accept how things are and a willingness to engage intentionally how things are. This is a much more intriguing proposition. Can we intend to be present? Yes, we can.

[20:53]

Can we intend to meet the life we're living as it presents itself? Yes, we can. So within the thought of Zen, this intentionality, Yunmin, a famous Zen teacher of a thousand years ago, he said, this intentionality turns your life upside down. In our conventional life, this hierarchy of needs are compelling and urgent. And maybe on a good day, Or once a year, after the excesses of the holidays, we think, okay, a new intention for my life. When we turn this life upside down, it's like that intentionality becomes the foundation.

[21:58]

Out of that intentionality, each of the different dimensions of our life, you know, our relationships, our work, our sense of our physical well-being. However self-respect and self-esteem construe themselves in our being, they're held within the context of our intention. They're another aspect of what it is to wake up. So within the formulation of Zen practice, yes, I will. When you're sitting Zazen, you discover your mind has wandered off, sometimes into an old, painfully familiar state of being, sometimes into an utterly mysterious state of being.

[23:04]

Yes, I will. We return to the moment. We return to the body. We return to the breath. We return to being willing to experience what's coming up. Zazen is the enactment of, yes, I will. And, you know, if you want to be... clever about it, you can say then the will drops away because it becomes an activity and then the I drops away because there's just activity and it's just yes. It's just experiencing what is. But more practically, it's a constant renewal. We're constantly grasping onto something or pushing away something, some experience, some arising of these hierarchy of needs.

[24:10]

And then we come back with this renewal of intention. And then there's an almost paradoxical relationship between this renewal of our intention in a way we could say to be fully alive, to fully engage, to be open, to be willing. Almost paradoxical relationship between that and the notion of renunciation. When you look at world of spiritual endeavors East and West how we do it you know like a few moments ago I mentioned the notion of going to live in the Himalayas you know this notion of renunciation it's it's it's a theme that appears in all

[25:29]

the major spiritual traditions. Sometimes it's extolled as a great, as the way. Sometimes it's held up as the most efficacious way. I was reading recently Nagarjuna, a famous Buddhist scholar, in some ways one of the most prominent Buddhist scholars, and he said, you can live in the busyness of the world and practice, but if you give the busyness of your world, you know, the practicalities of your life, the attention they deserve, your spiritual practice will suffer. If you give your spiritual practice the attention it deserves, the practicalities of your life will suffer.

[26:34]

And yet, as we develop, and I think in our own sincere and dedicated way, the practice of the West. the practice of urban life. We're drawn to interweave these two. So a few moments ago, I offered this paradigm. It's about intention. And then intention illuminates the particulars that you're living. And and I would say this is one aspect, one element of the process of practice, then the aspect of renunciation, at the heart of it, it's about non-attachment.

[27:52]

How do we stay fluid? How do we stay... engaged in the particulars of our life without getting lost in the struggle to make them the way we want them. And I would say it's a delicate balance. We can dissociate. We can tune out. I mean, to my mind, I think... Now you can read about the disasters of the world. You can get all the details of a terrible event in Delhi within hours or days of it happening. How do we process that? How does that find a way of, in a practical way,

[29:00]

staying wholesome within our being? How does it open our hearts to compassion? How does it strengthen our resolve for justice? For a collective society in which such things are as best we can diminished. and again we have an immense challenge and the process of Zen practices don't run away from immense challenges don't go to sleep don't dissociate don't distract yourself but let The immensity of the challenge draw you down into a deeper, authentic being.

[30:11]

This is the world we live in, whether we like it or not. And actually, some parts of it we like, and some parts we don't. When I read that story about that... young girl, young woman getting raped in Delhi, I find it deeply unsettling. I had been in India, and I was in India in the fall. I wasn't in the north of India, but still, this is our world. Can our honest acceptance of it draw us down into sound place? Such experiences, bearing witness to them, reminds us of the fundamental truths we want to live by.

[31:24]

That rather than it frightens us, and dissociates us from the courage and confidence of yes, I will, that it returns us to it from a place of compassion. And again, even in our zazet, as we open, as we settle and make experience and acknowledge the stuff of life inside of this one and the stuff of life inside of all of us, you know, that we don't turn away. And

[32:27]

And that rather than being torn apart, somehow through compassion, the wholesomeness, the wholeness of being is strengthened. And again, an immense challenge. And again, we contract, we separate, we become agitated, distressed, and we renew our vow. Yes, I will. I will return to being open. Yes, I will. I will be honest about the experience of being alive. Yes, I will.

[33:31]

I will remember the virtuous conduct, behavior, principles that bring about the well-being of us all. And in the ceremony this afternoon, we... In the formulation of Zen, we present the person. This is how you could do this. Will you do it? And they say, yes, I will. And it's wonderful because... Does any one of us really know what we're letting ourselves in for?

[34:31]

Do you really know what it would be like if you were totally open to all the murky workings of your own being? If you totally, you know, were present and bore witness in an ignominium, acknowledging way of, you know, of the narcissistic rants that arise, you know, when you don't get what you want, of the annoyances, frustrations. I want what I want when I want it. But there is both a request, and as we meet the request, a request to turn towards it, a request for this radical honesty, this radical courage of staying present.

[35:41]

And it stimulates a compassion. It simulates self-esteem that's not so much reliant upon the construct of self, but that more taps into the nobility of the human spirit. That we are capable of kindness. Selfish as we are, we're capable of unselfish act. Frightened as we are, we are capable of a courageous, open response. Like the people of India, you know, in particular the women of India who've been, you know, subject to this hostile environment standing up and saying, no, this cannot

[36:57]

Continue. This is not okay. How to keep that alive within ourselves as an act of compassion, not righteousness, not establishing an enemy who has to be destroyed, but realizing that within each of us this extraordinary capacity that can be stimulated. And this kind of self-esteem or no self-esteem, this kind of respect, or not so much self-respect, but respect and appreciation of something that we're capable of, individually and collectively.

[38:17]

And all this fits under the rubric of way-seeking mind. This is a journey. This is not simply something you accomplish on a weekend retreat. It's a journey that as you continue that journey, you realize It touches every part of you, every part of your life, and it touches every part of your relationships. That this intentionality is informed by the hierarchy of needs and reaches out through those very same needs in the process of contact. Yes, we yearn for intimacy. in a variety of ways.

[39:27]

We yearn for relatedness, and that relatedness informs how we can let our intentionality touch others. And as I say, it's a journey. And then to make one last reference to the sermon this afternoon, there is, as I said, a formulation. The formulation is one of intentionality and the one of particularity. We don't live in an abstract world. And to put it in another kind of language, we arise the intention, the principle of practice, and then we put it into practice.

[40:52]

And one aspect of that is what... what kind of environment, what kind of behaviors are conducive to that, stimulate that, support that. And then the accompanying aspect is, and how do you let it flow into all the aspects of your life? You know, if we say this actualization is Buddha, then how? What are the teachings? What's the methodology? This is dharma. And then this engaging, this connecting, this is sangha. Like over the last several years, within City Center, we've concocted what we call a year-long program that we call Establishing the Path of Practice.

[41:56]

And it's attempting to take these three aspects and formulate intentionally in a way that's not simply contingent upon contact with the center. The notion is that you come here, you receive some hopefully helpful guidance and support, and then you carry it out. And it's year long because this is a journey. You can't just get a snippet of information and say, okay, got it. There has to be a process that helps you to get it again and again and again. There has to be this process of renewal. There has to be a way, a functional way in which, yes, I will, is supported and stimulated, re-educated, re-validated.

[43:08]

And that's what this year-long course attempts to do. And it's our attempt to answer the question, How do you practice in an urban environment? How do you practice in a way that combines life as it is for most of us? That this hierarchy of needs manifests as juggling a variety of agendas. I read an article in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago And I would recommend it. It was called The Power of Concentration. It starts off a little funny. It starts off as Sherlock Holmes. But after about three or four paragraphs, it starts to talk about mindfulness and awareness.

[44:11]

Kind of just like, I guess, to get people interested. And then it lists a variety of experiments that have been done. One of the experiments that was done was around multitasking. And they got people to practice mindfulness, not for very long each day, 15 or 20 minutes. And then they subjected them to an environment of multitasking. In this environment, I think you had to do something like you had to write something, but when the phone rang, you had to answer it, and then there was some third thing you had to do too. And all these happened intermittently. As they do, in most of our lives. And amazingly, and then they did it scientifically. You have your control group who didn't and your active group who did.

[45:12]

These guys did practice mindfulness and these didn't and then they were tested. And amazingly, they discovered with only that amount of practice that it influenced how the people who were practicing mindfulness for the first time were cognitively functioning in this multitasking changing environment. That they were both more fluid in moving from task to task and more present within the task that they were doing. Sometimes I'm struck, I like to read these studies, I find them fascinating. Maybe it's my belief in science. If it can be produced as a scientific experiment, it has some extra validity or cachet.

[46:17]

But I'm struck that if we made these kind of claims in the absence of of a verifiable study, they would seem exorbitant, extravagant. You know, no, no, come on. Couldn't be that efficacious. But the extraordinary truth is, it seems to be. It seems that these extravagant studies are not so extravagant. These extravagant claims are not so extravagant. The... practice of coming into awareness, the practice of opening, acknowledging, experiencing the moment has a profound positive effect on human consciousness. And it's my own extravagant notion as it

[47:26]

ribbons into yes, I will. And as yes, I will permeates the many aspects of our life, there's also something extraordinary beneficial. It's what inspires us, encourages us, fortifies us to turn towards tragedies of our world and find within that bearing witness the capacity for kindness, generosity, compassion, the willingness to help. A quickening of the mind and heart that supports us.

[48:28]

It feeds back into the foundation of life for us. And for good measure, I will stop. And for good measure, I'll also read a little bit of Rilke. quiet friend who has come so far. Feel how your breathing widens the space around you. Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring what strikes

[49:31]

you becomes your strength. The striker rings a bell. As you ring, what strikes you becomes your strength. Move back and forth into the change. What is it like, such intensity of being? If the cup tastes bitter, turn yourself into wine. Okay, 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 sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[50:30]

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