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, everyone. Thank you for coming up here in the heat. I am not mic'd, so let me know if you can't hear me. I'll try to speak up. So there is a sitting group I lead in Larkspur, but of course we're now all on Zoom. And we've actually been having really good online meetings, and there's a way in which people seem to speak actually more freely online.

[01:02]

and so recently a number of people in the group have been taking turns giving way-seeking mind talks, and probably you all know what a way-seeking mind talk is. It's basically a kind of spiritual autobiography, you know, what motivated you to begin practicing. So when they give these talks, people talk about the big issues of their lives, you know, the motivations for their spiritual practice. So when I thought about doing this talk, all I could think of was the big issues. You know, that just came up, the big issues. So I put a piece of paper in front of myself and I said, all right, write them down. What are the big issues? And they came up, they just came up. One, impermanence, in particular, the fact of death. Two, the woes of the world.

[02:04]

the world's suffering and what can I do about it? Three, working with difficult emotions, especially fear, which more generally speaking is how to work with one's own mind-caused suffering. And then four came up, just not an issue, but just came up, the joy of practice, the incomparability of gratitude for. But this seemed like a bit much, too much, you know, to try to talk about in one talk, because these are really big topics. So I thought, you know, better not try to do that. So then I thought I would just talk about this book that we're discussing in the group. It's a book by Patricia Nadson on some of the principles of improvisational theater, which are really quite Buddhist and really nice practices. But then again, I thought, you know, look at the world.

[03:07]

Look at the world right now. There's all this stuff, you know, global warming, floods and droughts and fires, political polarization, global pandemic. Everybody must be feeling the weight of this, the weight of these big issues. You know, if not in the forefront of the mind, then certainly in the background. It's something we have to practice with. At least I do all the time. So actually, I'm going to talk about both. The big issues briefly. And then also these lovely, sweet improvisational practices. The improv practices are so doable, and they're so practical, and they're also very encouraging. So a few words about the big things. And I think... first thing is we don't need to take them so seriously.

[04:07]

You probably know, Suzuki Roshi said, what we are doing is so important we shouldn't take it too seriously. So life and death and the woes of the world and our own suffering, we shouldn't take them too seriously, really. One of my earliest memories when I was maybe three or four years old. And I remember where I was. I was sitting on the clothes hamper in the laundry room in our house. It's one of those things that you remember the rest of your life where you were when it happened. And what happened was, you know, I realized we die, that this doesn't continue on forever unchanged like this. I hadn't known that before, you know, really. Other people die. I will die. And I wasn't as much, you know, afraid as I was just surprised, almost startled.

[05:11]

And I thought, I remember thinking, there's something I need to understand about this. So it's been like a lifelong koan. And I think that the most true thing is that death is not a problem. It's easy to have many views and speculations about death and what happens after death, but strictly speaking, they're actually beside the point and not necessary. Fundamentally, there is no problem. Suzuki Roshi in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, you know, my favorite chapter is Nirvana, the waterfall, where he talks about his trip to Yosemite. And he sees Yosemite Falls, you know, the river flowing, and then it flows over the lip of the cliff. And all the streams come down. They get separated into individual droplets. And at the bottom, they rejoin the stream again. He says they must be very glad when they rejoin the stream at the bottom because then they have perfect composure again.

[06:20]

But as he says, this composure may be too perfect for us just now we are attached to our life to our individual existence now and so we do see death as difficult so because it's difficult for us sometimes we need some comfort to take comfort in knowing about the waterfall about the oneness or whatever you want to call it It is our original and continuing home. We're always home. Even though this is not how we usually perceive ourselves, but we are all always totally part of the river, the oneness. Because we're all always part of it, life and death are not a problem. No need to speculate on an afterlife.

[07:25]

No need to speculate about rebirth. Life knows what it's doing. Death knows what it's doing. No need to escape either of them. As Dogen teaches, Dogen Zenji teaches, life is Buddha, death is Buddha. Life is a stage of the truth. Death is a stage of the truth. He says, simply understanding that birth and death is itself nirvana, there is nothing to reject as birth and death, nothing to seek as nirvana. Thus, one has some measure of detachment from birth and death. So how do we come to this understanding? Through our practice. Facing clearly just what is. Letting go of seeking, letting go of rejecting. Now this is really our fundamental practice. No escape.

[08:26]

No escape from things as they are and no need to escape. Just stay with it. Zazen helps us come to an understanding of birth and death because it helps us stay with birth and death. And zazen also opens us up to a wider point of view, a wider experience, you know, to oneness. We have some actual experience of oneness, of the river, this river. A number of years ago, I was at my parents' house, and they had a box of of Christmas cards that they'd collected over the years. And I sat down one day and I just kind of read through it. And it was mostly people I didn't know or barely knew. But reading through them and reading through them and all these people's lives, all the things they were so busy doing in their lives, all these events that were part of their lives, positive things and negative things, illnesses and so on,

[09:41]

And then every now and then I'd come to a card that announced one of these people's death, like, you know, a program, a memorial program. And suddenly I realized I would have this feeling of a kind of joy that with them now there is no more separateness, no more ego, no more coming and going. For them, all is well. All is well. The second existential problem for me arose when I was like four or five years old. My parents had a book in their house, a big picture book, called The Life, like Life magazine, you know, they collected all these pictures, Life Picture History of World War II. And I think there are some things that small children should be shielded from until they're older, and the atrocities of World War II are probably one of them

[10:46]

So the deep distress that I felt, horror, you know, actually, at how the human world can go down. And it ushered in a lifetime of distress, how the human world goes down. And this, of course, is a big problem for most of us. When we have these chusso ceremony questions, you know, the chusso ceremony where the head student Everyone in the assembly, in turn, asks a question of the abbot. And I noticed so many of the questions have to do with injustice is happening in this world. People are suffering. The planet is suffering. What can we do about it? What can I do? Should I be doing more? I'm just sitting here. In our Buddhist practice, we heal the world by healing ourselves.

[11:53]

Not necessarily first we heal ourselves and then we heal the world. You know, even as Dogen says, practice and realization are the same thing. They happen simultaneously. Likewise, practicing for ourselves and others is the same thing. Healing ourselves is healing the world. Our peace is world peace. You know, we might think sometimes that our practice is a selfish practice. I'm just practicing, you know, for myself, my own problems, my own suffering. Or maybe we wonder, you know, what am I doing sitting on this cushion or living in a monastery when there's so much to be done, social ills and so on. But to take care of our own practice is to take care of others. Taking care of our own practice helps beings. Through our practice, of course, we are better able to take effective action in the world.

[12:59]

This is true. But it's also true that it's actually a little bit dualistic to say that because there's a sense in there that there are beings to be saved and a world that needs saving. And again, through our practice, we're able to actually experience a wider point of view This is what the point of view, the Avatamsaka Sutra calls the vast perspective of the enlightened ones. Through our practice, we actually can experience the truth that there are no beings to be saved, no world that's in need of saving. And we need to have at least some intimation of this vast view, this ultimate point of view. which is sometimes called the absolute or emptiness or oneness. But at the same time, as we know, we live in a relative point of view where there are beings to be saved and we want to help beings.

[14:02]

We want to save beings. We can't help wanting to save beings because we're bodhisattvas at heart. All of us are, from the Buddha to us. The Buddha was... really dismayed, you know, at the suffering caused by the warfare among the local clans in India. And for us, you know, if you really ask yourself, you know, you know, you truly have this desire to save beings from harm, truly want to decrease suffering, truly want to help this world, this home for all life. So even as we take care of our own practice, we also find what we can do to take care of the world's woes. Even if for a time, maybe a short time, maybe a long time, we let go of the world like a retreat or a monastery, this in itself helps beings, helps the world.

[15:04]

It's important for there to be people in the world who see the oneness of everything and approach the many difficult things in life with a certain joy, a lightness. And also our practice, very importantly, also includes meditation, but also the practice of non-harming and of ethical conduct. Since we practice harmlessness and ethical conduct, we thereby can inspire action that reduces cruelty. even when it may not be easy to see how our actions are creating benefit. I recently read an article online about Buddhism and social justice. And the article says, the Buddha said, our non-harming conduct gives to an immeasurable number of beings freedom from fear, enmity, and affliction.

[16:10]

And the Buddha said that this is a gift, primal, of long-standing, traditional, ancient, and pure. We can trust the power of our practice to have real, even though perhaps unseen, fruits. So, we practice. We practice to ground ourselves. And what are we grounded in? Well, we have the practice of zazen. practice of non-harming, practice of ethical conduct. Zazen practice actually gives us experience of some freeing realization of the ultimate, where there is no problem anywhere. And at the same time, it gives us the courage to be able to live in the relative, to turn ourselves around as bodhisattvas and pledge to stay in the world. and make an effort to do our best in this human realm.

[17:12]

This is our effort to do what the Avatamsaka Sutra calls teaching and civilizing all sentient beings. Here's a quotation from Allen Ginsberg. I sit just to sit. I sit for world revolution. So we sit Also, of course, for world revolution. Ours is a nonviolent revolution, utterly nonviolent revolution. Okay, shifting gears. Improvisational principles. Some of you may have studied improvisation or had some experience with improvisational theater and the book is Improv Wisdom by Patricia Madsen. So this might be familiar to some of you. She taught improvisational theater at Stanford for many years and she was and I presume is a Zen practitioner and I believe she was on the board of San Francisco Zen Center for a time.

[18:27]

She describes these these practices that they help shake loose rigid patterns of thinking and doing. These principles invite us to lighten up, pay attention, and look around. They offer an alternative to the controlling way many of us try to lead our lives. These ideas will be familiar to those who have studied Eastern thought. So, those who have studied Eastern thought, that obviously includes us. So I'm going to talk a little bit about a couple of the principles that the people in my group found especially helpful. And I'll talk about them in the context of our practice. Very useful. Doable. The first principle is say yes. She says, join the elite club of improvisers. You already have the password, which is yes.

[19:30]

It is the cardinal principle. Say, right, sure, I will. Okay, of course. She says, whenever you answer with yes, you enter a new world, a world of action, possibility, and adventure. Yes expands your world. And... Saying yes is an antidote toward what's called in the world of improvisation, blocking. Blocking, she says, is to focus on what's wrong in a situation, to be critical, be negative. It's a way of trying to control the situation instead of accepting it. We block when we have a better idea, when we change the subject, when we correct the speaker, when we fail to listen. Finding fault is the hallmark of blocking. For many of us, the habit of saying no, of resisting, of blocking, is so ingrained we don't notice we're doing it.

[20:32]

It is undoubtedly an exaggeration to suggest we can say yes to everything that comes up, but we can all say yes to more than we normally do. Once you become aware that you can, you will see how often we use the technique of blocking in personal relationships simply out of habit. Turning this around can bring unexpected positive results. In the book Not Always So by Suzuki Roshi, he tells this story. He mentions the koan, this Zen koan about the 100-foot pole. Someone climbs up to the top of a 100-foot pole, and Suzuki Roshi says, if they stay at the top, they're not the enlightened one. If they jump off the top of the pole, at that time they may be the enlightened one. So the top of the pole, you know, means being stuck to enlightenment or being stuck to anything.

[21:36]

So jump off the top of the pole. Forget this moment and move on fresh into the next. And Suzuki Roshi goes on, when breakfast is ready, my wife has some wooden clappers. If I don't answer, she continues to hit them. The problem is quite simple. I am not saying hi, yes. When I don't answer, I am on the top of the pole. I'm not jumping off. I believe I have something important to do at the top of the pole. You shouldn't call me. You should wait. Don't you know that? This, of course, is how we create problems. So the secret is just to say hi, yes, and jump off from there. then there is no problem. It means to be yourself in the present moment without sticking to an old self. When you say yes, you forget all about yourself and are refreshed. You are a new self, and before that self becomes an old self, you say yes again, and you walk to the kitchen for breakfast.

[22:42]

So on each moment, just concentrate and be yourself. At this moment, where is Buddha nature? Buddha nature is when you say yes. real compassion or love, real encouragement or true courage will arise from here and you will be a very kind person. And then the other principle I'm going to talk about is called face the facts. And facing facts the facts actually starts with saying yes, you know, yes to what's really happening. Facing the facts is to recognize things as they are, work with things as they are, work with what is given. Even though we want things to be better or to be different, we also need to face the facts, to accept how things are in their imperfection and their unpredictability and chaos.

[23:53]

In our Buddhist practice, we, of course, not only face the facts of the external world, but even more so of our internal world, that is, our mind. When we face our interior facts, we are facing our own imperfection, unpredictability, fears. Yet all of this is the truth, the Dharma. It's the reality of our own minds, our own thoughts and our own emotions. It's the truth, the Dharma of our own conditioning, you know, how we've been shaped by our lives. The Blue Cliff Record, Blue Cliff Record is a collection of Zen teaching stories and it was put together maybe a thousand years ago. And there's a case in there, it goes like this, a monk asked teacher Yun Min, what is the teaching of a lifetime? Yun-men replied, an appropriate response.

[24:59]

An appropriate response. And the Chinese, apparently, according to what I read, the Chinese pictographs that make up the words appropriate response means something like teaching others facing oneness. Teaching others while facing oneness. So facing oneness means we see another person as not fundamentally different from ourselves. When we interact with them, our response then can be not so reactive, but rather kinder. When we have some experience of others being the same as us, we can understand in a flash how their inappropriate responses so often come from their own fear, their separateness. their kind of self-defensiveness. And seeing that, you know, an appropriate response arises in us, one of compassion, one of understanding.

[26:02]

And, of course, we also find ourselves having inappropriate responses that arise out of our own fear, our own defensiveness or reactivity, our own conditioning. And this is a cause of difficulty for ourselves and for others. So we practice to face the facts, to face our ancient twisted karma. For example, maybe a person felt friendless as a child. Maybe they developed an ingrained unconscious idea, people don't like me. How does one face something like that? paying attention. Enough attention to be able to notice this feeling when it arises and to be able to allow it to arise. When we sit, over time, you know, all our ancient twisted karma does arise.

[27:12]

And our not-so-ancient twisted karma arises. And in our daily life, it might be triggered by something or some event. Maybe something someone says or a situation that we are in. So facing the facts of our conditioning can be painful. Yet, if the pain is allowed to arise, if we don't blame others for the pain, and instead we, you know, turn back, look at ourselves, allowing it, allowing the pain, facing the facts, allowing it to be present and to be felt, then some wisdom takes place. Shame or grief might be and usually as part of facing some of the facts or ancient twisted karma. But allowed, you know, to be present in our body, these troubling ingrained things ease. They sort of relax into greater acceptance, greater understanding,

[28:18]

greater kindness. And this is a process of coming home to ourselves as we are. Thus, we study ourselves, awareness, acceptance, facing the facts, accepting things as they are. So I have time to end with a story. One of the women in my group told us this. And in the late, in the 1960s, she was working in Africa in the Peace Corps. And she says, I went there with the idea of helping people. I was idealistic. And I saw that I wasn't helping. I wasn't helping. My ideals were not about anything real. And then a number of years later, she eventually came to Tassajara.

[29:25]

She was doing a practice period at Tassajara. And she was having a hard time. She said, I didn't like sitting. I felt so out of sorts. Every day was difficult. But then one day I came out of the kitchen and I was walking up the path when I had this realization. I realized that I could just take care of each thing as it comes. I could offer myself to each thing as it comes. That was enough. And she said, also, I could offer a prayer for their and my well-being. I could offer a prayer to the well-being of whatever arises. And then I will end with this little by Gary Snyder. Gary Snyder says, My teacher once said to me, Become one with the knot itself till it dissolves away.

[30:31]

And sweep the garden any size. So just become one with the knot itself till it dissolves away. Sweep the garden. any size. Just take care of it. Maybe it's just your doorstep. Maybe it's a lot bigger. Just take care. Thank you very much. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[31:35]

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