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 by people like you. Good evening. It's really incredible to be here. I was really surprised when Jordan asked me to come in and speak to you all. This seat has been occupied by. Such a long line of. Great teachers. My teacher, Paul. All the way back to Suzuki Roshi, it's. So I'm very grateful to be here. Thank you.

[01:02]

I'm a little bit of an unusual monk, I think. My teacher named me Wild Untamed Source, sincere way. And many people around here have called me wild thing for most of my duration at Zen Center. So in that light, although I've chosen the topic to speak on the Eightfold Path, I'm really going to be using it to riff on, to improvise on, to use it as a basis for talking about my own experiences in Zen, sitting here, especially in the Zendo. And some of my experiences with my previous teacher, Sasaki Roshi, who some of you may know as a Rinzai master near Los Angeles.

[02:03]

I came to Zen Center in around 1980 after spending the three previous years sitting with Sasaki Roshi. So I do have a little remainder of that flavor left, although Michael is my teacher and I'm very grateful for to him for putting up with me for all these years and for teaching me so much. So I thought that I wouldn't go in order to start out with being a little bit unusual and I would go to write mindfulness. But before I started to talk about right mindfulness, I wanted to read the first fascicle parcel part of the Ginjo Koan. which to me is the most important and most telling part of my understanding and of my practice of Zen Buddhism. As all things are Buddha Dharma, there is delusion and realization and practice and birth and death, and there are Buddhas and sentient beings.

[03:16]

As the myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no Buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death. The Buddha way is basically leaping clear of the many and the one. Thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and Buddhas. Yet in attachment blossoms fall and aversions weeds split. So with that in mind, I think that's the way I want to look at the eightfold path. You can't look at it from a completely complete point of view of just subject object. And if you look at it just completely from the point of view of the absolute, that too can be a real mistake.

[04:22]

So it's important to blend the two as you look at the Eightfold Path, at least in my view. Some of the things that I say tonight may be very heretical and I'll get scolded later by my teacher. Right mindfulness. Right mindfulness is the control. and perfected faculty of cognition is the ability to see things as they are with clear consciousness. Cognitive process begins with an impression instead of by perception or a thought. And then it does not stay with that impression. Instead, we almost always conceptualize sense impressions immediately. We interpret them and set them in relation to our other thoughts, memories and experiences. The mind then posits concepts, joins concepts into constructs, and weaves those constructs into complex interpretive schemes.

[05:31]

All this happens in only a second, and mostly unconsciously, and as a result, we often see things obscured. Right mindfulness enables us to skip all that and stay with the experience of pure phenomena that induced all that mess in the first place. The Buddha accounted for four foundations of mindfulness. Contemplation of the body. And as I learned from Pat Phelan when I was first studying here, that's really important. I came here in 1981 and I thought, well, I wanted to talk about koans. And I went to Pat Phelan and she wanted to talk about posture. And I have spent 30 years sitting in bad posture, working on my posture, trying to refine it, but it's still not the posture that I want. And I think it's really important to keep a relationship with your posture and to know what your posture is doing at all times in and out of Zazen.

[06:44]

I do triathlons now. I do it because they're healthy for me. And I also do it because they're a way for me to relate to the way my body is performing and for me to feel my body and to keep my body in an alignment that keeps me mindful. And it's a very easy way. It's much harder. to do that during the day when I'm the sales manager at Hill & Company, and I have to sit in a desk and talk to a lot of people, and I lose perspective on my body. So every time the phone rings, I try to let it ring once, and I try to bring myself back to the perception of where my body is and how I'm aligned and how I'm sitting. And I think that in itself...

[07:48]

brings me back to a mindful state of the entire spectrum of phenomena. Second, the Buddha talked about contemplation of feeling. And I think feeling attraction towards something or treating feeling. repulsed by something, feeling neutral towards something. It's important to realize what you're doing. I was recently in a situation where I was involved with someone who was not very stable. And my instinct in those situations is to find as graceful an exit as quickly as possible.

[08:51]

It's kind of hard for me to talk to people that are crying or screaming or especially if they're going between the two hitting the wall with hammers. And it's very, very hard for me to do that. So I just paused, followed my breath, watched my posture and tried to stay engaged with the person. and found that that was a very, very helpful way to deal with the situation and to learn how to be aware of how to practice within the framework of being a realtor, which is like saying a lawyer almost in this country. And then contemplation of the state of mind. If you've ever done a sashin here, you know that there's going to be periods of time when you are completely defeated.

[09:55]

And there's going to be other times when you are completely elated. And there's going to be other times when you're completely neutral. It's really important, especially if you're going through it for the first time, not to grab on to any of those. Because they're all just passing through. You know, it's nice to know where you are. It's nice to know if you're having trouble. And sometimes you may want to see somebody and talk to somebody. But that too will pass. The sadness or the I'm in so much pain, I can't do this. That too will pass. And finally, Contemplation of phenomena. This is to me one of the most interesting practices, and this is when I work with my students at UCSF.

[11:01]

I think we work on this more than anything else. I say just let phenomena wash over you without judging it, without naming it, without doing anything but becoming it, becoming one with it. When the bus goes around in the corner in the mornings, don't say bus. Just say beep, beep, beep. And that's all you need to say is don't even think about bus. Don't make bus with your mind. When the helicopters fly overhead, it's not helicopters. It's just that noise. New Year's Eve, I'm sure many of you said you're on New Year's Eve when at 12 o'clock in this neighborhood, guns are fired, rockets are fired, firecrackers are fired. It's just part of your zazen.

[12:05]

It's just phenomena. And phenomena is just going to occur. If you're really having trouble and doing your zazen, And you're having a lot of thoughts. Or you're making your grocery list. Or you're thinking about what you want to do later that day. Sometimes it's nice to give yourself the freedom to do that for a few minutes. And then come back. And just go ahead and give that up. And there's several practices that you can do. And here I may be stepping a little bit outside of the teachings that I've been taught. But there's several practices that I do that get me back on track. One is I try to use my seeing organ to hear.

[13:07]

So that really helps me both in concentrating. Really trying to hear the beep beep beep, but see it and see the beep beep beep instead of hear the beep beep beep. It does two things. One is it makes me concentrate very deeply. And two, it keeps me from falling asleep. Because you can't hear the bus go around the corner with your eyes if they're closed. The second is. and I talked about this once with my teacher, is that I will really put a lot of force of air into my lower abdomen. And I will fill up my lungs from bottom to top. And then when I exhale, I will exhale from the top to the bottom. And I put a lot...

[14:13]

of effort in keeping my mind in my hara, or my lower abdomen, and I really try very hard to pursue that breathing. And if you concentrate really hard on doing that, or if I do in any way, I hope some of this helps some of you, then I'm able to come back to A space, a place where it's easy to let phenomena wash over you without judging, without naming, without anything else coming across but the phenomena itself. The light is turned up a little bit in the zendo. Well, that's a change in phenomena. Your legs hurt. It's just something you're seeing with your or you're hearing it. You hear the pain. You don't feel it.

[15:14]

You hear it. It keeps you. It gives you a chance to experience all your sense organs and it gives you a chance to to really hone your concentration. I really think that you should. try some of these practices sometimes. I know that I've gotten to the point over the 25 years that I've practiced that I can count one to 10, one to three, one to one, and I can write a novel with the other section of my brain. So that's been not working for me so much anymore. And that's why I've moved on to to trying other experimental practices. So.

[16:15]

The second thing I guess I want to talk about in the Eightfold Path is right effort. I had a lot of trouble with right effort for a really long time. I think I talked to Michael about this many times. I always. In the beginning, I had a lot of thoughts that effort was something extra, that you brought effort, if you brought too much effort to your practice, that you were bringing something that you're putting a head on top of a head. And so I was a little uncomfortable with bringing so much effort. But as time went on, and I started trying these other practices, it became clear to me that there was a middle path in that way of effort.

[17:19]

No effort means not answering the alarm clock. Effort means answering the alarm clock, putting on your robes and going to the cushion and practicing as best you can. You can't get to this lecture without putting some effort into it. You can't come to 300 page street without putting some effort into it. I was always a little afraid of it should come naturally, like you should be able to breathe naturally. So I was. A little afraid of putting too much effort into it, but I think that was wrong. And I think you should put effort, should bring right effort into it. So I'm going backwards.

[18:25]

Right livelihood. Well, clearly we want to avoid dealing in weapons. And we want to avoid dealing in human beings. And we want to avoid dealing in intoxicants. One of the reasons I came to real estate was that for years before I became involved in Zen, was sometimes dealt in combustible products, marijuana. And as I first got exposed to Zen, I had a really hard time with right livelihood because I had to give up that opportunity to make money. But clearly my life changed when I was able to give that up.

[19:34]

and was able to just pursue a path of the Eightfold Path in its completely righteous way. So, right action. We want to abstain from harmful action, especially taking other life. Easily done, except, geez, I go to the sushi bar every day. Not so easily done. This is the one I have the hardest time with. I'm just used to my sushi. I have noticed that when I first started sitting with my teacher that he would come to the sushi bar with me.

[20:37]

And now when he goes to the sushi bar, he only orders vegetarian rolls. It's not that I'm not paying attention, Michael. I just haven't gotten there yet. But I think that that's someplace that I want to go. Also right action to abstain. from taking what is not given, including stealing, robbery, fraud, deceitfulness and dishonesty. That pretty much precludes my being a realtor. But one does her best. That stuff comes up all the time.

[21:39]

And now that I'm a manager instead of just a realtor, I have more of an opportunity to see what other people are doing and more cases to stop it, more opportunities to stop it. I could talk about real estate for a long time and a good friend of mine from real estate is here, so I'm not going to do that. But it's really a good opportunity to practice to keep yourself again from fraud, deceitfulness and dishonesty. I got sued once for fraud in real estate when I hadn't done anything wrong. But, you know, that's out there.

[22:40]

And that's the perception a lot of people have of realtors. So it's a wonderful, wonderful arena to get an opportunity to practice right action. And then this is probably more. comes up more when you're taking your precepts, but to abstain from sexual misconduct. And I would just say. Make sure that your action is compassion, has compassion for all beings and that it's really honest, you know, and that's that that will cover just about every situation. You can look at it for yourself. I was having lunch with my niece who had just graduated from Westland. And there's the evil uncle does.

[23:44]

And any opportunity that comes up, I said, Gabby, how's your love life? And she said to me, well, you know, Uncle Jamie, you don't know anything about love until you've been at all three places on the love triangle. The lover, the loved, and the betrayed. Well, here's a chance to avoid those situations, to be aware of those situations, and to act with compassion, not only for the lover and the loved, but often it's the betrayed that's left out of the equation. And... Their feelings can be deeply injured if you are not taking care of them. Right intention. I'm just going to quote straight from my research.

[24:51]

The intention of renunciation and the resistance to the pull of desire. The intention of goodwill. Resistance to feelings of anger and aversion. Gee. I got angry the other day when somebody... I was trying to turn into my driveway and there was someone parked in it. So I stopped for a second. I saw there was somebody pulled into my driveway. The car behind me beeped a couple of times. Then he decided to pull around me. Sped up, so I sped up. to go around the block to see if the person would clear out of my driveway. And he went about 20 yards and then he slammed on his brakes to see if I would rear end him. And then he did it again. The opportunities for anger are endless. I mean, we can just get ourselves all worked up all the time if we want to.

[25:55]

I have some other thoughts about anger. This is what I think. I don't think I've ever heard this from anybody else. But I think before you allow yourself to be mounted by anger, you have a little nanosecond. I know in Kategori Roshi's latest book about time, he talks about the divisions of time being... Well, you have a couple of those seconds before you allow yourself to go, I'm going to be really mad now. I'm going to be angry. I'm going to let anger take me over. I'm going to be righteously angry. And so I think anger is a choice. I don't think anger is something that comes externally. I think anger is a choice that you make. And if you want to make that choice, you can. But you can also choose not to be angry.

[26:58]

So that would be my counsel. Don't be angry. And aversion, well, I know Chris works with the homeless downtown. I know you work with the homeless. How many of us don't look at someone who's panhandling, especially if they're aggressively panhandling, and don't interact with them? There's endless opportunities for aversion in our daily life, in the zendo when our legs hurt. I don't want to go down to the zendo today. I don't want to meet with so-and-so. I think one of the things that I've tried to teach my children is that if you have difficult tasks in front of you in a day, do them first.

[28:06]

Go ahead and engage yourself in difficulty before you start doing the easy things and the fun things. Right view. Well, this is the beginning and the end of the path, understanding of impermanence, dependent co-arising, all beings are subject to suffering. And this is something that you've got to realize intuitively. I don't think intellectual understanding of this stuff goes very deep. I think the longer you sit, the more that you sit, the more intuitive you become.

[29:10]

And let that light shine. So the last one. because I went in sort of a circle here, is right concentration. Thich Nhat Hanh talks a lot about right concentration. And I think I talked a little bit about it when I talked about the different ways of trying to concentrate and center yourself during Zazen. finding ways of allowing the oneness of all things enter into your consciousness.

[30:19]

Another thing that I wanted to say is going back to, I'm sorry I'm so discombobulated and disorganized, but I did want to talk a little bit about the fascicle that I just read from Dogen or I read from Dogen when I started. It's really easy for all of us to make subject-object in the things that are politically correct for Zen students to like and dislike. And I'm guilty of it myself. I don't like George Bush. I really want the war to end. And the minute that I say I don't like George Bush, I'm creating a situation of me and George Bush.

[31:36]

I think the way to save all beings is to be able to hold George Bush as closely in your hand as you do Blanche. You know. with as much love and let them become one together as you do, Lou. I'm sorry I was speaking so short and I'll let you guys go out so early, but I don't have much else to say. Does anybody have any questions? Please. This is a general question. Is she going to go out in the center? I've never been to Eno, so I wouldn't I wouldn't want to I wouldn't want to make a ruling on that. But food and drink is discouraged.

[32:43]

Oh, thank you. Anyone else? Thank you so much for putting up with me. May all beings be happy.

[33:16]

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