This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Rumi says, Your old life was a frantic running from silence. The speechless full moon comes out now. So I stopped halfway up the steps to get another look. A Zen moment. A couple of nights before I was heading in the other direction, after Zazim was over, around 10 or

[01:05]

or so. And there was a homeless lady shuffling her stuff around on the steps up to my place. She said, oh, excuse me. She had a big beat-up bag. The handle on it was all beat-up piece of wire. It was falling apart and stuffed with stuff. And she also had a carry-on bag, or another bag over her arm, stuffed with stuff. I was speechless.

[02:12]

Thinking of what it is that sustains our human life we hold onto to keep us going. funny life. It's a tragic life. It's a poetic life. It's a mysterious life. Look at us. Look where we ended up. How did that happen? Maybe this life is a mysterious spiritual pilgrimage.

[03:23]

Sometimes pushing us along. Sometimes we're eagerly moving forward. Sometimes totally perplexed about what's going on. Sometimes feeling a resolve of where we're headed. Yangshan asked the monk, where are you from? Where are you from? Why are you keeping with you as if it was necessary just to stay alive. And who says it's not?

[04:39]

How did you end up here on the corner of Page and Laguna in trendy Hayes Valley. San Francisco. The West Coast. Planet Earth. Milky Way. Youngshan asks the monk the impossible question. Where are you from? And the monk answers the impossible question. Aren't we all answering the impossible question every day?

[05:41]

Creating our new set of agendas, concerns, which for a large part look very much like the old set that we had five minutes before, five weeks before, maybe five years or fifty years. So like a fool, the monk answers. as if he knows what he's talking about. Is there a wisdom in that kind of foolishness? Are we all obliged to be where we are? Are we all obliged to be where we came from? Or at least have come from there?

[06:47]

Because our practice obliges to own our own karma. All my ancient twisted karma, I now fully avow. Youngshan offers the monk this. How is it? How is it possible? How is it to do it? What happens when you do it? Let awareness, rather than look out at the object, look back at the subject that's co-creating that object.

[08:04]

How is it then? Shashin, we walk Shashin, we stand Shashin, we move through Shashin. One way or another looking at this constant process of co-creating reality. Sometimes pausing for a Zen moment. Sometimes confronted with the impossible harshness of the life we've co-created.

[09:14]

Are we looking at the subject to try to resolve the dilemmas we've co-created? To try to taste, have some glimpses, some experiences of the possibility of liberation? practice you know seems to me sometimes it's asking us to savor the most impossible questions to not run away from them to not have trite answers for them but to let them render us speechless

[10:41]

frantic running from silence. The speechless full moon comes out now. Is that the product of our diligence? Or is our diligence a strange and beautiful way compound our problems so they render us speechless. To diligently bring forth awareness, awareness, awareness until something

[11:56]

open. Maybe it's our diligence. And instead of doing, we surrender. Instead of doing the inhale, we surrender to the inhale. Instead of doing kinheen, Let the flow of the body from foot to foot, contact with the wood floor, let it happen. And have a glimpse of the absurdity of it all. It's already happening. Here, this proposition, me, has a lot to say about it.

[13:16]

Has a determined effort to engage it. I was somewhat relieved by that homeless lady's determination. in poverty and hardship in a whole variety of ways. But fortunately for me, with a determination to survive. I've often thought of it like a rodent or a raccoon. They're very adaptable. seem to have a determination to survive. Is that our gift or is that our hindrance?

[14:32]

clamor of our life starts to quiet down I don't know if it falls into silence maybe in moments Maybe there's moments when the full moon radiates the fullness of just this. Or maybe there's glimpses. Maybe we see some pause. And often the pause happens when we least expect it. midst of activity it's when your body is really hurting.

[16:03]

It's when some personal issue is presenting itself with a ferocity. And we taste the intensity of it. How utterly timeless Yongshan's question. How contemporary. Who among us cannot be asked where do you come from? Who among us cannot be asked and what is it to be here? What is it to turn awareness to look at the constructs.

[17:07]

And how amazing it is, in this relatively short time we've been involved in this machine, even though there were moments that seemed to stretch into hours, and other moments that seemed to collapse into seconds, Overall, relatively short time, something in us is experiencing the consequences of that, the effects of it. That we can sit here in this so-called Buddha Hall, on this so-called corner of Page and Laguna, in this neighborhood creatively called by some real estate agent Hayes Valley.

[18:16]

It used to be called Lower Haight but as the property prices went up it became Hayes Valley. Or maybe it was called Hayes Valley and the property prices went up. somehow now we have a lived sense of it is and it isn't you know it is the corner of Page and Laguna that's just a label that's attributed to this event this locality So Yangshan hooks the monk in this regard.

[19:21]

And in the middle of all those things that you've put together in your so-called life, when you turn back and look at the mind that's creating them, then what? When I get here, when I get here. In moments, in fleeting glimpses. In one of his poems, Seamus Heaney says, there's no use parking your car to be and feel like you can be more here. It's just the passing through. And then he goes on and wonderfully says, and still, the buffering wind can blow against the car and blow your heart open.

[20:30]

When I get here, I don't see any existence at all. A scary proposition. Although sometimes an utter relief. Sensations in the body. An electric, somatic sensations of the breath. A tingling sensory journey through that electric somatic event.

[21:44]

No existence at all. Nothing permanent, nothing to grasp. And then Yongshan says to him, this is right for the stage of faith. It's like Suzuki Roshi saying, it's important to believe in nothing. Very important. It's important to believe that this is all the interplay of causes and conditions. corner of Pagin Laguna sparkle with coincidental existence. If we declare it permanent and then just live in an unexamined world without soap.

[23:01]

If we declare our past permanent present and permanent, or our own attitudes about life, our own fixed ideas about each other. The nature of existence that's impermanent. That's a coincidental arising of all causes, conditions. This is right for the stage of faith.

[24:03]

But not yet right for the stage of person. one stage after another, or do they dance back and forth? Check it out and see. Sometimes we touch stillness, then it echoes through us. Just the body walking kinhin. And then just the zendo being the zendo. Just the bell being struck to end kinhin.

[25:11]

And the delight of speeding up and walking back to your dharma seat. being nobody, going nowhere. A refuge, a relief. And then is the arising self, is that an affliction? Is that this ancient twisted karma we're avowing? Or is it the profound teachings of coincidental existence? So even though it's a relatively short period of time we've been engaging in this foolishness, still it's ripening us to look more deeply

[26:28]

at who we are and how we are and what we are to see things that we've never seen before and to hear things we've never heard before this we have now is not imagination not grief or joy. Not a judging state or an elation or sadness. Those come and go. This is presence. Another utterance by Rumi. And yet it is those things. That's how it expresses

[27:29]

its momentary existence. And something in us willing to allow that to be so. And then the monk asks Yongshan, don't you have any other particular guidance? Is that the best you've got? Is that all you've got? I got a lot of issues. I got a lot of stuff. I saw a title of a book and it was 75 ways to practice mindfulness to bring joy. Seventy-five. So can you blame the monk for asking Young Shine?

[28:39]

He probably saw the same book title. Could I have the other seventy-four, please? allow something to be itself, when we allow the moment stillness. In that reverberation, in that radiance, in that full moonlight, the teachings appear. You know, sometimes in the Dharma it says Sati, mindfulness, and then investigation. But it just appears.

[29:42]

We don't have to run after it. It arrives here. We arrive here. It arrives here. We've never been anywhere else but here. It's never been anywhere else but here. But don't you have any other particular ways of guidance? To say that I have anything particular or not would not be accurate. To say that have anything particular or not would not be accurate. For each of us to discover our own variations on a theme. For each of us to discover, okay, Given my body, given just the way it is, how to sit. Given my mind, given my emotional patterns, my psychological patterns, my patterns of thought, what's a skillful way of relating?

[30:56]

Given the circumstances of my life right now, what's appropriate response. Given my relationships, the way I hold them in my mind and my heart, what's a skillful way to relate to them? Usually these things spark And this is your soul was saying last night. The moving into or pulling back from. But can there be a pause that engages awareness rather than just impulsively, reactively moves into or pulls back from? in some ways we in our diligence we explore we discover more exactly what it is to lean into it to grasp it to push away to push it away

[32:36]

something is being refined. We discover stillness through motion. We discover effortlessness through effort. The experience that either of them produces and experience it. We can move towards it, engaging it, open to it. Other teachings there, endless other teachings. Young Chan goes on to say, to clarify his own statement, to say that I have anything particular or not would not be accurate.

[33:58]

Based on your insight, based on how you're engaging this moment, your life, the circumstances, the sound of the truck, based on your insight, the mystery arises this translation says you get you only get one mystery what is the you what is the get what is the one mystery the moment arises in awareness And our moments of awareness teach us, instruct us in what's being asked of us.

[35:11]

What mix of surrender, opening, willingness, patience, dedication. stimulates the conditioned person that you are to move towards awareness, to open to awareness. So Yongshan says, you just get one mystery. You get that ability. It's innate. You were born with it. You only get one mystery. You can take the seat and wear the robe. After this, see on your own. You can do the practice. Dogen Zenji says, without practice, it doesn't manifest.

[36:17]

You can wear the robe. You can take up a tradition. You can take up a style of practice. You can be part of a Sangha. You can engage that. And for most of us, some or all of those parts help. They draw us back to remembering our vow, our intention. Based on your insight, you get only one mystery. You can take the seat and wear the robe. After this, see on your own.

[37:26]

So the so-called fourth day. Maybe noticing that the mind and body and issues and reality of the first day still echoing perhaps and at the same time have shifted somewhat that here has become more the place where you're living And to let it be so. Even though it's just a foolish game we're playing with ourselves. Now in the real world, it's time for lecture.

[38:28]

And again in the real world, after lecture, it will be time we will have Just something we made up. It's both real and not real. Like everything else. Like all the ideas that occur to us. that we put together in the teaching of Avalokiteshvara, practicing deeply the prajnaparamita and seeing that all five skandhas are just conditioned existence.

[39:35]

And I would say to you to see your own version of that, not to let that be a mysterious comment or some abstraction, but to find in your own living what's being put together. marvel at it, as if it was the full moon as you walked across the street. To accept it, even though you would rather not. It's a homeless lady in the dark of night, dragging behind her, a heavy, beat-up bug.

[40:47]

This is your life. This is your one mystery. This is the vehicle of the Dharma. This is the liberation, the path of liberation and the illumination of liberation that teaches you directly. What a wonderful coincidence that in the midst of all our foolishness we've created this opportunity. Let's use it before it disappears. 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.

[41:59]

For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[42:08]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.34