This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. And welcome to Zen Shinji. So that way I welcome myself. And I was told this is the last guest for this sound system. Tomorrow it gets changed. So we'll see how it goes, right? I don't know that we need it, but. Well, I don't know if it helps people hear. Can people hear? Yeah. All right. As you know, we do this every once in a while.

[01:06]

We get together and have someone say a few words. And then we go back to sitting or working. I want to thank people here who are here for the work period. How many people are here for the work period? Just about everyone. So thank you for taking care of Tassajara. Tassajara would not would not work, would not be possible without your contribution. Makes a big difference, of course. And it is the body of Tassajara. You're putting pipe together. Today I saw, I walked past, there was a hole in the ground out there by the bathroom. There's Marty down in the hole with big pipes fitting him together. You might not have thought that that was the Buddha's body, but that's the Buddha's body.

[02:11]

Maybe I'll talk about that a little more. I came down for a couple of reasons. One, the Four Winds Council gathering happened this morning. And I'm not sure if everyone here is aware who are the members of the Four Winds Council. The council meets quarterly, and there are four members, four wins, four members. And so we meet at Esselin Institute over in Big Sur. We meet at the New Carmelville Hermitage, which is a little farther south in Big Sur. on the other side, so on the other side of the mountains. And then on this side, we usually meet with the Esalen tribe, nearby in Arroyo Seiko at Kachun, and then here.

[03:21]

So this is the fourth member. And altogether, these four neighbors keep a vigilant watch. on the wilderness, right? So we're taking care of. Our thought is that we are actually stewards of the wilderness, of the Ventana wilderness, and of the Los Padres National Forest. Now, the federal government, the Forest Service, thinks they're taking care of the forest, right? Maybe. Anyway, there are people who have that assignment, right? But we are living here. And we're living here, but we're living here in the sense of having a real interest in the spirit of the place. The spirit of the mountains, the spirit of all the plants, all the forms of life.

[04:29]

and realize that our own forms of life are also nourished and not separate from the mountains, not separate from the trees and the plants, the foxes, the mountain lions. So it's this little different sense of mission. So I wanted to talk a little bit about the notion that this is Buddha's body. It may not be quite right. Even to say Buddha, it can be confusing. But it is a true body. To say true body may also be confusing. It's vital, dynamic, and constantly changing.

[05:37]

An old Buddha said that the entire universe is the true human body. And that the entire universe, or we could say the entire Earth, But the entire universe is the gate of liberation. And the entire universe is the body of, the true body of each one of us. The true body of each one of us. So, hearing the crickets right now, do you know that that's your body? We say crickets. Each one of us is experiencing something, right? Each one of us is embodying this night.

[06:43]

So we have maybe a little different understanding of taking care of the Ventana wilderness than the Forest Service. I think, though, that when I meet people from the Forest Service and we talk a little bit, that we begin to feel, oh, OK, we have some shared. We have some connection. So part of what we do is just meet and appreciate each other. And everyone is doing their, I think, everyone's doing their best. So I appreciate that everyone here coming here whether you're cooking, cleaning, I don't know what all was going on. I went in today to shave my head in the steam room, and there was no steam. There was no steam room. I felt, well, that was the real reason I came down here.

[07:46]

But then the real reason I came down here was to discover that the steam room was not the steam room. So to be willing to appreciate what is, is our practice. Now this morning there was someone talking about paradise in the Four Wands Council, and I thought, well, this is kind of interesting, because in Zen it's maybe a little different. Someone was talking about the hermit being focused on not what's this world, but focused on another world, or the hereafter. I thought... That's interesting. What is after here? This practice of moment-by-moment awareness is that this is here, [...] moment by moment. So the thought of paradise, the thought of paradise is maybe a little different when you think that the true body

[08:57]

the entire universe is the true body. True body is now. Does that mean that paradise is now? If paradise is now, does it include everything? I want to read a poem, I think I have a poem in my sleeve, from a friend of mine, who used to live here. In fact, she was here when I did my Tongariya practice period here in 1974, I think it was. Jane Hirshfield. So this is a poem. It's called Against Certainty. Some of you may know it. It's worthy of some study. I think there are many many points to investigate in this poem.

[10:01]

So here's what she says in Against Certainty. There is something out in the dark that wants to correct us. Each time I think this, it answers that. Answers hard in the heart's grammar's strictness. If I then say that, it too is taken away between certainty and the real and ancient enmity. When the cat waits in the path hedge, no cell of her body is not waiting. That is how she is able so completely to disappear. I would like to enter the silence portion as she does, to live amid the great vanishing as a cat must live, one shadow fully at ease inside another."

[11:13]

So, the poet here wants to imagine, you know, what's it like to be so completely absorbed and being present as the cat. And there's this quality of the cat being so still that the cat just disappears into the hedge. But this cat has resolved this whole matter then of what is this enmity, this difference, or this kind of an argument between certainty and what's real. So to go back to the beginning, she says, there is something out in the dark that wants to correct us. So when I say that the entire universe is the true human body, does that include what's out in the dark?

[12:21]

So to say what's in the dark is to say what's unknown. And to say what we usually work with is what we're so sure about, that we believe it and we hold on to it. There's something, I think, that comes from our fear that we want certainty. So because we... experience ourselves as being separate. As soon as we experience ourselves as being separate. So this morning someone was talking about Adam and Eve leaving the garden, right? The paradise. Adam and Eve leaving paradise. So we have this story, this story about Adam and Eve leaving paradise. But leaving paradise actually happened as soon as they realized they were separate. As soon as they realize, oh, we're not the tree.

[13:28]

So to realize that one is not the tree is only one side. So we would say here in Zen, we'd say, that's only one side. The other side is you are the tree. The other side is you're completely intimate, that you and the tree could not exist without each other. That everything here is existing in a mutual interwoven dynamic where you can't take anything away. In fact, everything has to be accepted exactly as it is, because it is what it is. To accept everything because it is what it is right now is to completely know your own true body. Otherwise, you're imagining that you have some separate body, that somehow you can exist without your whole true body.

[14:38]

So in this matter of the poem of certainty, it's like we have the idea of what we know, which is in the light. We have the idea that that is even what's real. And what we think of and what we can actually see in the light is just a tiny, tiny portion. Really. When you begin to investigate carefully, we begin to see how clumsy we are actually with our whole concepts of what's happening. And by the time we even figure out what something is, it's gone. It's already changed. So at the end of the Heart Sutra we chant, you know, Gatte, Gatte, Pada, Gatte, Padasam, Gatte. Going, going, going, gone, gone, gone. So to remind ourselves that that's also, that is our body, our gone body.

[15:42]

So to play with this then is to say, okay, there's this matter of how to come to terms with what is. And it strikes us that we tend to think we know what is happening or what should be happening. That makes a big problem. The shouldness. The idea of the way things should be happening. So a friend of mine was telling me the other day that she, this is a Zen student, she's been practicing for many years, and she was commuting with someone, she didn't have much choice, she had to commute with this person, but they were supposed to be working together, and this was a new assignment, and they were both going together, riding in the car, the other person's driving, and she's feeling, we should be getting acquainted.

[16:48]

So she tried to start a conversation. And the other person didn't want to say much. So the other person didn't have the same idea of what should be happening. So my friend was thinking, OK, well, I want to have this conversation. And I want to know who she is. And I want to get her talking. And she's not talking. And the more she had these thoughts the more irritated she got she's riding along feeling more and more irritated and then she began to notice that she was feeling irritated and and because maybe because of her many years of practice it occurred to her that she was creating this whole situation right and being really upset with this person is just driving the car right So once she realized that, she said, what if I stop the story in my head about what should be happening?

[17:55]

What if I just drop that and just sit here and become comfortable in my own body and notice my breath? And so she did that. Then she was quite surprised, and she said, suddenly, she said, I had this feeling that everything was perfect. Looking out the window, everything was just perfect. Everything was beautiful, everything was just the way it should be. The person driving the car was perfect, just the way she is. She doesn't want to talk, no problem. And then she thought, well, everything's perfect. But as soon as she had that idea, then she began to think of things that did not fit. There's a lot of trouble in the world.

[18:56]

There are people who are harming each other. There are people who are starving. There are people who are dying painfully. There are people who are sick. So how can all this be perfect? And so then she got into a whole state of distress and confusion about her idea about She'd had the experience of everything being perfect, but now that experience didn't fit her word perfect. But there is a word that says things are perfect, and suddenly that didn't work anymore. So she had a whole new problem. So I say this because this is maybe something you're familiar with. And there's a pointer in here about how to practice with uncertainty. Certainty and uncertainty. Notice how moment by moment one can be so certain of something. A few years ago I learned about a part of the brain called the amygdala, which is kind of an ancient part of the brain that's very protective.

[20:06]

It really helps one's survival. And I think it was the amygdala that kicked in. I was camping out. outside up in Mendocino County with my wife and kids. And it was just, it was dark, but it was maybe just beginning to get light, a little bit light. And suddenly, this animal ran right across my face. And it was like, I thought it was a raccoon or a skunk or something running right over my face. And I yelled, like, yeah, like this. Naturally, right? And then my wife said, what's the matter? And it turned out that she had just been reaching over for a flashback. And her hair had brushed across my face, you know?

[21:08]

And I was so certain that it was some animal. It took me a little while to believe, you know, because I had instantly formed this perception that this was some animal that I had to kind of push off of my face. But it was humbling to realize that that's just something that kicks in, that's hardwired into my whole anatomy, right? It's a very protective reaction that comes up before I know what's actually happening, before I can actually think it through and figure it out. I immediately react. And that's something that I have to take into account. Part of our practice is to learn the tendencies that we have. And some of those tendencies are tendencies that are, say, karmically hardwired, inherited. part of our body, part of our mind that's already given to us.

[22:14]

And each one of us has our own particular, say, unique slant on that, unique configuration on that. And then as we go through life, we begin to build on that. And there are then reactions that we no longer question. something creates some tension in this body, and I'm not quite sure what it is, but I know that I'm certain of it. There's a way in which if I were asked about it intellectually, I wouldn't say I'm certain of it. I might be willing to question it, but I actually carry it as a belief in my system. I carry it as a belief in my body, and I carry it as a way of coping and responding to what's happening around me.

[23:16]

So this way of accepting that this world is it, this world is paradise, that there isn't some other universe actually, means to take all of that into account. to take everything, all of my own tendencies into account, and to notice then how I create, I'm creating this universe. And each of us has this amazing capacity to create our own universe. Everyone in the room here has their own whole picture. Each of us thinks that we're in this room. But everyone has a different room. Everyone has a different angle, a visual perception. Everyone hears the sounds differently. And that's just a tiny piece of it.

[24:23]

So to have this practice of seeing what is as it is, as this is the self. This is this true body. Am I willing, actually, to do that? Am I willing to see it? Am I willing to see it as it is? Am I willing to know that there's something in the dark that may want to correct my misperception? I experience it as in the dark because it's something that I haven't adopted as my own view. In the dark may mean it's somebody else's idea, right? Somebody else has a different idea. So that's actually, for me, that's in the dark. Somebody else wants to be quiet, but I want to have a conversation. So that's something coming at me from the dark.

[25:30]

Somebody else tells me that the words I used offended them, right? Or hurt them. And I don't want to hear that because that wasn't the way I thought I was speaking. That wasn't my intention. That wasn't something that was on my side of certainty. So what's it like to actually hear their point of view? What's it actually like to accept that my idea of certainty is not the whole picture? What's it like to accept that their idea is also the true human body, that their idea is also a gate of liberation for me. What I've been coming to and working with people on this lately is the need to completely accept what is.

[26:41]

as it is, and then go from here. We don't actually know where we are until we accept here, and then we can go forward. But to do that means to really understand that everything that's already happened is a given. And there's really no point spending time wishing it were otherwise. It doesn't mean that we can't learn from mistakes. It doesn't mean that we can't. In fact, it's the only way that we can change something that's trouble, something that's karmically creating more suffering. We can only change it from now. And we can only change it by seeing it. So to see it really means that we actually have to be willing to see it

[27:42]

to understand it. And the experience of that is like forgiveness. In human relations, it's forgiveness. Usually, I don't necessarily have to forgive the table where I stubbed my toe. I get it that the table didn't stub my toe. The table is just the table. So I usually think, well, I don't have to forgive the Oh, table, you stubbed me. So I forgive you. But with people, we think, oh, somebody hurt me, I feel hurt. And I think, oh, they did it to me. That's a very common next thought. I feel hurt and somebody did it. I feel put upon. How can I accept that they are also just who they are doing what they do? I have to forgive them.

[28:46]

I have to forgive them for whether it's ignorance or whether it's even malice. I still have to forgive them because if I don't, I'm not fully accepting what's happened. That doesn't mean condoning somebody doing something harmful. It doesn't mean that that I shouldn't take action to stop something that's harmful. It actually helps take that action to forgive them and then go ahead and say, don't do that again. So there's a poem about forgiveness I want to read a little bit too, which comes from the end of the movie, Smoke Signals. How many people here have seen the movie Smoke Signals, know that movie? Maybe no one in this group there, huh?

[29:53]

Someone there, someone there, someone back there, yeah. So Smoke Signals, I think at the time anyway, it was unique that it was, I think, the first movie that was completely written and directed and produced and acted by Native American people. And it comes from work that was primarily done up in the northern part of Idaho and eastern Washington, Spokane tribe and Coeur d'Alene tribe. Sherman Alexie, poet, who wrote a book called The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. from that book of stories, and some of that was put together as the basis for the movie Smoke Signals. But the end of it, the movie actually is having to do with redemption. Is redemption possible?

[30:54]

Is it possible? And then at the end of it, there's a poem that's read that comes from Dick Lurie, and it's called Forgiving Our Fathers. So I'm going to read a little part of Forgiving Our Fathers. It could be forgiving mothers. It could be forgiving brothers, uncles, whoever it is that's, say, harmed you the most. Whoever it is who's really in a big problem, if you're still holding onto that as a problem. Shouldn't have happened. So this is forgiving our Father. I'm just going to read The last few phrases here. Forgiving our fathers maybe for leaving us too often or forever when we were little. Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage or making us nervous because there seemed never to be any rage there at all.

[32:05]

For marrying or not marrying our mothers. for divorcing or not divorcing our mothers? And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness? Shall we forgive them for pushing or leaning, for shutting doors, for speaking only through layers of cloth, or never speaking, or never being silent? In our age, or in theirs, or in their deaths, saying it to them, or not saying it, if we forgive our fathers, what is left? So to me, the last line is so powerful. If we forgive, what is certain? What's it like to be left in the dark? What's it like to be left not knowing?

[33:09]

What's it like to be entering a world where you've let go of what you thought was your justification for everything else? If you've actually just released that justification. What happens if I don't need that anymore? Can I go naked forward with confidence? in the true body that's already supporting me can I actually go forward with some confidence that what is right now in this present moment giving me this life that that's enough so The work that everyone's doing here, I think, is something to completely celebrate and accept as a part of body.

[34:29]

I'm already putting the pie together, I think. That's my body. Whoever was cooking Nut loaf, right? And the pan it was in. Well, the pan it is in. That's this body. Everyone here is contributing. And so to wish for something else, like there's some other paradise, I think is... kind of disrespectful of this body. So I invite you to fully appreciate everything that you meet as your own body. So this morning we opened our Four Winds Council meeting chanting the Enmei Juku Kanongyo and

[35:39]

At the beginning I commented on it a little bit, saying that the last two lines, Nen Nen Fu Ri Shin, Nen Nen Ju Shin Ki, Nen Nen Ju Shin Ki, Nen Nen Fu Ri Shin are these moments. Nen is like a thought moment. Nen Nen arising. Nen Nen is arising in the totality of mind, the totality of the whole field of awareness. Nen-nen is not separate from mind. So what is arising appears to be separate. You may think, oh, everyone here is separate. And it's separate, independent. Each one is independent. And each one is also not independent. Each one is also not separate from mind. So Maybe that's enough for the moment.

[36:40]

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[37:01]

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