Ima ken man shi juji surun gozo etari negawaku an yorai gyo shinjitsu diyo geshi date matsaran An unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect dharma is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million kalpas. Having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's word. Good morning. I learned a new phrase yesterday so that's what I'm going to talk about today.

[01:20]

I teach a course and I invited this person to to talk at the course, and his name is Jacques Verdun. And about 15 years ago, Jacques and I were invited to teach all the prison guards in the San Francisco city and county jail system. We were invited by jail psychology to do that. So, of course, we said yes, even though we didn't know how the heck we were going to do it. And really yesterday was the first time since then that we've really spent time together. So it was very sweet reunion. And it was actually a lot of fun to teach the prison guards in batches of 30. It's about 250 of them then. It's probably many more now. They'd sit with their arms crossed.

[02:21]

Go ahead, teach me. Try to make me listen. Jack now runs a program in San Quentin. He has a building in San Quentin that houses about 200 inmates. And they go through this program. It's a little bit like living at Zen Center. You have to do the morning practice, and then you have to go to work, and then you have to come back and do the evening practice. And they sign up for it. You request to be put in this...

[03:24]

Each block, it's called. It's like a big warehouse. They all live in this kind of like giant dormitory. And they have to sign up, and then they have to commit to practice, and then they can get to move in. And that's what Jack does for a living. He goes there every day and runs programs for those guys. So the phrase he introduced myself and the group to yesterday was called normative learning. It reminded me of something I'd read recently where in New York State there are many children come who don't have English as a native language. In fact, some of them speak very little English. And so part of the challenge is, how do you educate these children in English, in English-speaking environment, when they don't speak English?

[04:27]

And what they've discovered that rather than educate them the way most of us were educated was, sit in your desk, don't look at your neighbor's, what your neighbor's writing, and don't talk, just make it all up yourself. They put these kids around the table, And then when they have their assignments, they help each other. And then some of them can speak English better than others. And then there'll be a total mix. They'll be from all over the world. They'll be Polish, Hispanic, Russian. And so maybe the Russian kid will speak to the Polish kid in Polish and explain the problem. And Hispanic kids will explain it to each other. So there's this whole United Nations going on around the table as well as, you know, learning whatever it is they're learning that day.

[05:32]

And they've discovered that the children learn really well in this system. There's just something about it. This kind of messy interactive process. seems to work much better than trying to have some kind of linear way. You should do it on your own. And then Jacques was finding, within the process of Saint-Quentin, that similarly, then group learning that enabling each other has an efficacy and then somewhere he read this phrase called normative learning it's wonderful you know you you have some vague notion or some feeling and then you get a word or a concept that can identify it and then it's legitimized

[06:44]

Then it's real. If you can put a label on it, if you can poke it with your finger, you know, or taste it, it's real. Which, of course, is the process of human experiencing. You know, that's what we do. We identify it. We label it. We categorize it. And And then the danger is we return to the learning process that most of us were brought up in, which was abstract learning. You know, you go to a room, they sit in straight rows and abstractly learn about the world, about living. A while back, well over a decade ago, there was a wonderful teacher in New York, John Gatto, who taught inner city kids in very difficult situations.

[07:56]

But he had the notion that none of us do well with abstract learning and children least of all. And so rather than keep the kids in the classroom, he would take them He took them to the truck stop, and he'd say, okay, now let's measure the size of this, the back of this truck. What's this size? Now if we had this many boxes this size, how many of them could we get in the back of that truck? And the truck has a gas tank this size, and if it gets this many gallons to the mile, how far can it go before it needs more gas? Now let's look at the map and see what city it could get to. And the kids loved it because they were out of school. They were playing. They thought it was a great scammer. So Zen is about learning to be alive.

[09:03]

And which of course is an absurd proposition because What do you need to learn? What did you not come into the world fully knowing that you need to learn since then? And yet, it seems like there's some way of becoming conscious, some way of engaging that that which we know in our bones can be brought into a more conscious relationship. So this is the nature of Zen. And Zen is, in fact, the heart of Zen practice is this interactive learning. And so I'd like to offer you a little interactive learning right now. So, in the form of a meditation.

[10:07]

So if you could... take your best meditation posture that's right and just start by Start with awareness of body. Just checking in with your body. Your sense of physical presence. Not so much how it should be, but how exactly is it. How is your breathing?

[11:16]

Where is it being experienced? How do your shoulders feel? How does your abdomen feel? Are your hands warm or cold? What about the breath in the body? Where is the inhale felt as there's breathing in? Does your chest rise and fall? Does your stomach, your abdomen move in and out? How is breathing experienced?

[12:16]

this state of being reflect upon your life circumstances. Today, this week, what's up for you this period of time? What challenges, delights, disappointments, nagging issues, exciting possibilities hovering around you, running through you. And considering them, what's your advice for yourself? Approaching yourself like a very good friend. Gently taking your own hand and saying, please, please remember this.

[13:58]

Now, if that advice was to be held in your body as a feeling, I know it's a bit of a stretch, but just go with it. To be held in your body as a feeling, that advice, what would that be? Can you locate it now in your body? When you're ready, you can open your eyes or just shift your mind.

[15:50]

It's a part of practice. part of learning how to live is staying true to what we already know. Because we've been living up to this moment. We're already alive. We're already doing it. And yet, there's something that most of us fall for, some way of getting wrapped up in our preoccupations, in our distractions, of letting certain kinds of thoughts and feelings and habits run our life.

[16:58]

And then usually it's in a significant moment, sadly often a moment of crisis. we drop down to something deeper and in a very significant way practice is about making a practice of dropping down into something deeper on a regular basis you know it's it's like exercising a muscle you know just dropping down And finding our own language, finding our own kind of access to it. Whether you want to say what's the most important thing, or whether you just want to feel your feet on the ground. Just discovering that inner alchemy, it allows you to connect to that. And to learn how to discern that that is different from the opinions we have.

[18:10]

That's why it's so helpful to come into our somatic experience. We have opinions about all sorts of things. Some we made up, some we read, some we heard other people say. It's a little bit like that realm of abstract knowing. But this deeper knowing has more to do with this connected knowing, this interactive knowing. The thought occurred to me when you were doing that little bit of practice. every single group of those prison guards that we taught, at the end of the session, it was a four-hour session, probably about five out of 30 would come up and say, hey, where can I do more of this?

[19:17]

And one thing that has stayed with me all this time, one of them come up to me and he said, I'd like to offer you a tip And I said, oh, okay. He said, yeah. At the end of the group, you should say to the group, out of all of this, if there's one thing you should remember, what is it? And actually that little meditation exercise, what's your own advice you have for yourself? I made that up myself, but it was inspired by his comment. Having people reflect on their own experience and wisdom. So we learn interactively too. Certain moments, certain occasions, certain experiences, they touch us.

[20:25]

They touch us in a way that we find meaningful. That phrase touched me and stayed with me, even though in a way I took it and reshaped it into the world of my being. So there's something about going inside, so to speak, that inner learning. which there's a phrase that a poet David White uses and he says, the vows we make are loud, we will break. The secret vows. And one of the ways I'd like to offer that is a sense of knowing that's not our opinion, as I said before, some deeper sense.

[21:33]

And often it emerges, often it comes forth when we quiet time. When our mind quiets and our heart opens. And often the expression of it isn't that complicated a thought. But the way it resonates in our being, that's what gives it potency. In that particular moment, it's like, oh yeah, right. And then we can do that for each other. So if you think about your history, I think almost all of us can think up moments. Moments of learning. Moments of being touched. And not to say that the moment of learning was...

[22:39]

particularly you know complicated piece of information usually it's not at all I remember being at my mother's funeral and I was raised Catholic and we we left the church and I realized in that moment I was about 20 that I didn't really believe anything at all. I didn't believe anything the church taught and I didn't believe anything else. And that moment sent me on a journey. And my whole life started to change. And the career path I'd chosen, soon after I gave it up,

[23:41]

I left where I lived and went off traveling without knowing where I was going. So moments. Moments of learning. What did I learn in that moment? Apparently all I learned was that I didn't know anything. Or something more subtle that always as humans we do conjure up belief systems and we do conjure up ways of engaging and interacting and defining them and formulating them but they're ephemeral and you know now I go back to where I was born to Ireland And I teach. And often people say to me, well, what do Buddhists believe in?

[24:47]

And of course I say all sorts of different things. But in my mind, the truest response I have is nothing. We teach nothing and we believe nothing. Or as Suzuki Roshi said, it's important to believe in nothing. Very important. And very difficult. It's much easier to believe in something. So inside how we can engage each other and then how just through our human disposition, particular moments become relevant, formative, and even transformative.

[25:50]

And in the Dharma, the teaching of what is says that any moment has that capacity. Yeah. It's not just the moment your mother dies, it's not just the moment your son is born, You know, it's not just the moment you go through a difficult experience that shakes your life, any moment. Because if those are the only moments where we touch our truth, when we touch our truth, maybe it will be so shocking, maybe it will be so traumatic that we won't be able to respond to it. that we'll need to duck for cover. Someone told me once for his master's thesis, he did research into people's first response when they heard they had a terminal illness.

[26:58]

And the predominant response was, no. Or, oh no. So there's something about almost like a training to let ourselves be in these moments of learning, to let ourselves stay present, to be present. And then the extraordinary irony for us is those are the moments when we're fully alive. The moments of deep learning, often they're the most almost frightening moments, but they're also the moments where most fully alive. His heroically put it into words. And the world that is looked at so deeply wants to flourish in love.

[28:04]

When the work of the eyes is done, now go and do the heart work. of all the images imprisoned within you, for you overpowered them, but even now you don't know them. Learn, inner man, to look at your inner woman, the one who attained from a thousand natures, the merely attained but not yet beloved form." So maybe there's no strategy to do this. However, Buddhism has many strategies, and now I'm about to mention one. It's called the six paramitas, you know, the six ways of becoming whole. Paramita can mean perfect, but more exactly it means whole or complete.

[29:10]

Maybe this morning we could say the six ways of being fully alive. And the first three are generosity, morality, and patience. Generosity is about shifting from life as our enemy, being alive as our problem, Life as a path of exploration and awakening and being alive as the gift that's constantly offered. Receiving the gift and returning the gift. It's this mutuality of receiving and giving. This is generosity. And then morality here means a way of being, a way of acting, a way of feeling and thinking that engenders, that prepares the grind for being present in the moment, that enacts being present in the moment, that acknowledges and resonates with our interconnected existence.

[30:36]

And then patience is simply acknowledging that life doesn't turn out the way we want it to. Light turns out the way it turns out. And some part of us has to not be uptight about that. That's what patience is. Patience is not waiting for life to be the way you want it. the perfect job, the perfect love, the perfect circumstance. But somehow letting your shoulders relax, letting your abdomen relax, and just taking it the way it is. Accepting it. And then the next Paramita is Vridhya in Sanskrit.

[31:41]

which means the energy translates as the energy of engagement that not only is engagement where this true learning happens I mean all we really have is the engagement of the moment the activity this experience and then we do with it whatever we do with it but not only is that the creation of our learning that guides our life, but it's also the moment of passion and expression that expresses our life. You know, we all know the difference between doing something that we're bored with and how tedious it becomes and doing something that absolutely captivating. Our body feels different.

[32:43]

Our mental state is different. Our capacity to pay attention is different. Our very sense of aliveness. I mean, sometimes we do things. A couple of weeks ago, I was over in Marin, and these hind gliders were running off this cliff and soaring up into the air. And I was thinking, hmm, that would have you be in the moment. And I was thinking, oh, you know, yeah, it's a dangerous proposition to cast yourself completely into the moment. You know, how much we all want to do it on our own terms. And through that hesitancy, we qualify the experience to this energetic engagement then that gives rise to attention when we're in the moment we experience the moment as it is

[34:08]

There's attention, there's concentration. And then we learn from that the nature of what is. When we're in the moment, then we're literally experiencing life as it is. And so the fifth and sixth paramita are concentration and wisdom. And so Jacques was talking yesterday about working with the inmates in St. Clinton. Most of our prisons, in my opinion, are horrible places. For one thing,

[35:11]

they're very overcrowded for given a variety of reasons and in many ways they're predatory to just the human spirit and and they're very complicated So when you go there to teach, it's this enormous presumption. Many of us who go there come from this life of privilege and sweet circumstances. And then you go there where it's harsh and difficult. But this phrase that Jack was learning was producing yesterday normative learning is really that each of us can speak from the wisdom of having the life we have and what Jack was saying was he enables the prisoners just to speak to each other to teach each other who can teach someone how to practice in prison

[36:35]

any better than someone who's already doing it. So in this inner learning, it's like we're already living the life we have and we can teach ourselves how to live it. It's like your body knows completely how to breathe. But when you meditate, you discover it actually takes a diligence to learn what your body already knows. To let the breath flow unhindered in and out. To let the thoughts flow unhindered in and out. To let being alive become an easy activity rather than a distressful struggle.

[37:37]

So always life is offering us this teaching. And meditation is simply sitting down and embodying, embracing and expressing that teaching. You know, there's a famous book about practicing in prison called We're All Doing Time. And, of course, the point of the book is that each one of us is living within a set of circumstances and conditions. Each one of us has the challenge of finding freedom, of not being enslaved by our habits and compulsive behaviors. and obsessive thoughts. And meditation, Zazen, is about sitting down and recognizing that the capacity to do that is already present.

[38:57]

That this original mind, this original way of being is right in us the same way every breath is. And yet, there's something to purposefully engage. There's the six paramitas of generosity, ethics, patience. How to prepare the ground of our life so that we can walk through our life upright with dignity, respect of ourselves and others. that we can hold our fear, that we can make room in our hearts to be generous and kind. And that we can face the uncertainty of life as a learning experience.

[40:05]

So let me read Rutte's way of phrasing it. A world that is looked at so deeply wants to flourish in love. Work of the eyes is done. Now go and do the heart work on all the images imprisoned within you. For you overpowered them and even now don't know them. Learn, inner man, to look on your inner woman, the one attained from a thousand natures. the merely attained but not yet beloved form. Thank you. May our intention equally extend through every place.

[41:13]

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